Kai left Aluth's territory, muttering under his breath.
"Damn that limbless bastard… how the hell am I supposed to survive this place?"
He drifted along the alley until something caught his eye—a wall, painted over in peeling color. A world map.
He stopped.
There it was: the Lawless City, scrawled across the blot of desert Kai now knew had once been called Dubai. Lines branched out across oceans, marking the zones in Australia, Greenland, America. Whole continents carved up, each one a cage.
And yet, not everything was walled off. The paint showed cities outside the system, names written like whispers: Russia, Kiev, scattered places labeled freeworld.
Kai stared at it, a knot forming in his chest. People out there were living without zones? No suppressors, no borders, no Concord collars around their necks?
He pressed his palm to the wall, tracing the edges of continents he'd never seen. He had never left the zones—hell, the Dead Zone mission was the first time he'd ever stepped beyond his designated borders.
The thought crawled through him like a splinter: Was I ever free? Or just another slave who mistook his leash for the edge of the world?
-
It hit Kai all at once—if he could just get his phone back, maybe he could find a way out of Dubai. Out of the Lawless City. The thought felt like oxygen in a drowning chest.
But then memory clawed back—the Processing Center, the straps, the pit yawning beneath him. He shuddered. Retracing those steps would be suicide. Hope slipped away as quickly as it came.
And then the sky itself spoke.
[Devil of Words, Zeroth, has entered the Human Realm. Successor selection in progress.]
The Lawless City broke into uproar.
Only resonants received the message but mundanes were updated almost instantly
Merchants slammed their shutters. Gangs abandoned fights mid-swing, weapons clattering onto stone as men scattered in every direction. The hum of conversation turned into a roar of panic—no one understood what the message meant, but everyone felt its weight.
Some dropped to their knees and prayed to gods they barely believed in. Others shouted wild theories, swearing it was a Concord trick, or that a new plague was about to be unleashed. A few claimed it was a signal for war—that the Devil of Words would crown one of them, raise the city to glory.
No one knew.
And that ignorance was what terrified them most.
Children wailed in the streets as spirit guardians flared uncontrolled, answering their masters' panic. Rumors spread in seconds, twisting in every direction: that the Devil had already chosen, that the walls of Dubai would crumble, that the end of all zones had been declared.
Kai stood frozen as chaos swallowed the streets. He didn't know what a devil truly was, only that the name itself set them apart from demons. Demons were horrors clawing up from rifts, things the Concord at least pretended to manage. Devils, though? He had never seen a text, never heard a lecture that mentioned them.
And now one was here.
He clenched his fists as the panic churned around him. If the Concord had no answers, then the world was about to learn what ignorance truly cost.
The streets churned like a kicked anthill. Smoke rose where lanterns had toppled, and the shouts of panicked vendors tangled with the sharp crack of gunfire in the distance. No one was aiming at anything—just pulling triggers to be heard, to make their fear louder than the next man's.
Kai edged toward a shadowed wall, trying to disappear into its peeling paint. The announcement hadn't faded; its echo still pressed in his skull like a second heartbeat. Even Sovereign's messages, clinical as they were, had never felt like this. This one was heavier. Older. The words themselves seemed to bend the air.
A gang of masked men shoved past him, carrying crates on their shoulders. He heard them whispering as they ran—something about getting the goods underground before the "successor" appeared. The word tasted strange. Successor to what? To whom? Kai had no anchor for the thought.
A woman in a ragged veil grabbed his arm, eyes wide.
"Did you hear it? Did you feel it?" she hissed. "We're already chosen, all of us! The Lawless City is first!"
She released him just as suddenly, darting off into the mob before he could speak.
Everywhere, people searched for signs. Some stared at the sky, waiting for it to crack open. Others pointed at graffiti, convinced hidden symbols had been there all along. Factions that hated each other yesterday now huddled together in whispered councils, united by panic.
And then came the opportunists. Street preachers climbed onto carts, shouting that the Devil of Words had returned to crown the true rulers of men. One pulled a blade across his palm, letting the blood drip onto the stones as an offering. His followers imitated him until the street shone red, and Kai had to force himself to look away.
The city was eating itself.
A strange clarity crept into him as he watched. None of them knew what the announcement meant, yet everyone was already reshaping their lives around it. Fear made them pliable. Hope made them reckless. Maybe that was the devil's trick—he didn't need to act. He only needed to be named.
Kai's thoughts snagged on the difference again: demon versus devil. A demon was a beast, ugly and predictable in its hunger. You could point a blade at it. You could kill it or be killed. But a devil? Whatever it was, it moved in words, in unseen contracts. That was the real terror—it could tear you apart without ever touching you.
The crowd surged again, nearly trampling him as a fight broke out nearby. Sparks of resonance lit the air—flashes of blue, red, green—as guardians clashed in raw panic. Kai ducked low, weaving through the bodies, his mind racing.
He needed distance. He needed to think. But every step he took, the city screamed louder, folding in on itself.
And in the back of his skull, the echo of that message lingered like a curse: Zeroth. Successor.
And almost on que another message appeared.
[Successor has been chosen Aluth Nedreic]
Kai's stomach dropped. His face went cold. The limbless broker—the man he had just walked away from—was suddenly at the center of the storm.
The city reacted like it had been waiting for the name. The roar of panic turned into a singular direction. People didn't scatter anymore—they surged. Streets emptied into one great current, all rushing toward Aluth's territory. Merchants abandoned their shops mid-count. Gangs that had sworn blood feuds hours ago now marched shoulder to shoulder. Even mundanes were swept along, tripping over themselves just to follow the tide.
Kai stood frozen as the weight of it pressed in. Aluth. A man with no arms, no legs, carried by children. Now the chosen of something he couldn't begin to understand.
"Damn it…" he muttered, the words sticking dry in his throat.
He had just left Aluth behind. Now the whole city was running to him.