"Here, I'll decide who I become."
The words echoed in Rael's mind as he left the ridge behind. The fractured valley stretched out below like a forgotten scar, its broken ruins and glowing runes fading into red-tinged haze. He walked slowly at first, wary of how his legs moved with unfamiliar strength. Each step tested the limits of a body that hadn't grown but had been... assembled.
Rael inhaled. The air buzzed with static, thick with the scent of burnt mana and scorched earth. Not welcoming. Not hostile either. Just... indifferent.
His vision flickered briefly.
[System Sync: 39%]
[Core Class: Undefined]
[Stabilizer Thread: Inactive]
[Status: Unregistered]
Still broken. Still unstable. Still... him.
The ground beneath his feet shifted from ash to packed stone. A long-abandoned trail cut through the warped terrain, leading toward flickering lights in the distance. As he followed it, a faint pulse of blue shimmered in the ash to his left.
Half-buried.
Still humming.
Rael approached it cautiously. A mana shard. Not cracked, not drained. Alive.
He knelt down and hovered his fingers just above the surface. His ThreadSight activated on instinct, and glowing lines danced around the object. Unlike the chaos surrounding him, these threads were firm, tightly bound, anchored in a way that felt... safe.
"Feels different," he muttered. "Like it's waiting."
He touched it.
[System Fragment Detected]
[Integration Recommended – Result: Partial Stabilization]
"Wait—hold on," he said aloud, blinking at the prompt. "What do you mean, stabilize?"
The shard dissolved into his palm before he could pull back, flooding his arm with warmth. The sensation wasn't painful—more like being filled with a memory that wasn't his.
Faint shadows. Distant voices. A flash of silver armor. Then gone.
[System Sync: 42%]
[ThreadSight Lv.1 → Lv.2]
[Stability Margin Increased]
Rael exhaled slowly.
His perception sharpened. The web of threads around him grew denser, more readable. The violent pulsing he'd seen in everything—especially in himself—dulled slightly.
Still unstable. But... not untethered.
He flexed his fingers, feeling the strange pulse where the shard had merged. The energy was not just raw power—it felt... familiar. Like an echo of something once important. He couldn't place it, but the sensation lingered, like a name at the edge of memory.
"That shard wasn't neutral," he muttered. "It knew me. Or something that did."
Following the trail, Rael soon found signs of civilization—faded glyphs etched into waystones, mana pylons barely flickering, and the ruins of what must've been watchposts long ago. Strange, fractured symbols hovered near the pylons, like corrupted code stuck mid-command.
Eventually, a battered sign appeared:
KARETH OUTPOST – 3 KM
Not a capital. Not a fortress. Just something.
He didn't expect warmth or welcome. But maybe it held answers.
Or people.
Or both.
Kareth Outpost rose like a stitched wound in the earth, a patchwork settlement clinging stubbornly to the edge of nowhere. Its mismatched walls—cobbled from rune-etched stone, scavenged plates, and half-melted relics from forgotten ruins—stood crooked and uneven, as if the land itself had tried to reject them. Some sections pulsed faintly with residual enchantments, while others were blackened by scorch marks or corrosion, held together more by stubbornness than structure.
Above, the blood-orange sky bled into the clouds like rust in water, casting an eerie hue over the entire settlement. Watchtowers loomed at uneven intervals, their cores humming with flickering magical wards that glitched now and then with a sharp buzz, as if struggling to stay active. On each tower, old banners hung in tatters, sigils of forgotten factions faded beyond recognition.
Beyond the reinforced gate, life flickered like a stubborn ember. Faint lights moved through the narrow streets—some torches, some hovering mana drones, and others projected from embedded system terminals lining the walls. Everything felt temporary, as if the whole outpost was one thread away from unraveling, but no one dared pull it.
The air carried the scent of burned crystal dust and oil—evidence of repairs done in haste and with whatever scraps could be scavenged. Beneath the noise of activity was a deeper silence, like the outpost was holding its breath, waiting for something to fall apart… or something worse to arrive.
Rael slowed as he approached the main gate. A dented pylon buzzed overhead, scanning for signatures. The gate itself was reinforced with layered steel and bone, etched with half-functional runes that sparked at irregular intervals. Two guards lounged nearby, half-armored and half-alert, their stances too casual to be military.
One of them—a lean man with a blinking ocular implant—gave Rael a glance. His system panel flickered briefly, scanning Rael's presence.
[No Affiliation Detected]
[Stabilizer Thread: Dormant]
[No Threat Registered]
The man barely blinked. "Another stray," he muttered to no one, then waved Rael through.
No questions. No challenge. Just indifference.
Inside, the outpost was louder, but not lively. It breathed like an old machine running on fumes—functional, but exhausted. Adventurers moved in loose groups, some chatting, some silent, many visibly wounded or burned. Their armor carried faction marks Rael didn't recognize, but the symbols meant nothing to him—just more systems, more rules, more things he didn't belong to.
Scattered vendors sold charms, salvaged gear, and strange alchemical concoctions from stands built out of crates and collapsed barricades. A woman hawked thread-stabilized potions that glowed faintly blue. A grizzled smith hammered on a warped blade while arguing with a floating terminal about the cost of mana compression.
Children darted between pylons and makeshift tents, laughing as they chased a drone that flickered between stability and glitching static. No one seemed to mind the malfunctions—they were part of life here.
Rael kept walking, unnoticed.
Everyone he passed had glowing quest threads trailing behind them. System prompts, guides, paths marked by floating text or subtle pulses of light.
Everyone except him.
He was an outlier. A blank slate. And the silence of that absence pressed heavier than armor.
A few people glanced at him—just briefly—then looked away. Some muttered. One man stiffened, as if his system had flagged Rael with a warning it didn't know how to process.
Rael's gaze flicked to a nearby wall, where a cracked display projected news logs:
[ALERT: Two more rifts opened in the Ash Vein]
[REPORT: Anomaly readings near Verdshade increased to 88% Corruption]
[CAUTION: Stabilizer-Class Glitch still uncontained]
He narrowed his eyes. The last message vanished when he stared too long, like the system was trying to hide its own suspicion.
Something about this world didn't want him here.
And yet, here he was.
He found a tavern near the southern wall. The sign hanging over its door read:
THE BROKEN THREAD
Fitting.
The interior was cramped, dim, and thick with the smell of smoke and mana residue. Adventurers clustered at tables, muttering over bounties and broken weapons. System notifications blinked on walls like cheap advertisements. A bard sat in the corner, tuning an instrument that never played.
Rael approached the bar.
"Room or rumor?" the barkeep asked without looking up.
Rael placed two cracked mana shards on the counter. "Both."
The man slid over a worn brass key. "Room's upstairs. Second left."
"And the rumor?"
"They say someone came out of Verdshade," the barkeep murmured. "Killed a corrupted knight. No tag. No core. No path. Like the world coughed him up."
Rael smiled faintly. "Sounds unstable."
The man nodded once. "That's what worries people. Errors don't belong. And what doesn't belong usually breaks something."
Rael said nothing. In the reflection of a cracked mirror, his own eyes stared back. Tired. Focused. Old, despite the youth in his new face.
Upstairs, the room was dusty but functional. Rael dropped onto the bed and opened his system panel again.
[System Integrity: 42%]
[Thread Anchor: Not Found]
[Emotional Sync: Low]
[Core Role: Undefined]
[Stabilization Path: Incomplete]
Still floating.
Still undefined.
Still alone.
But as he looked again, something flickered at the edge of his ThreadSight—a line. Thin. Fragile. Reaching from outside the building toward him. It shimmered like a spider's thread catching moonlight.
"Not mine," he whispered.
He stood and followed.
The thread led him through dim alleyways and forgotten corridors of the outpost. He passed sleeping guards, old prayer statues, and empty training yards where threads hung lifelessly in the air.
Then it stopped.
At a ruined fountain near the wall.
A girl stood there, hood pushed back, moonlight outlining her face. Black hair tied loosely behind her. A gray cloak wrapped around simple travel leathers. Her silver eyes met his without surprise.
She'd been waiting.
[Thread Anchor Detected]
[Compatibility: 61%]
[Anchor State: Dormant – Awakening Potential: Moderate]
"You've been following the thread," she said, her voice calm.
Rael nodded. "It's connected to you."
"I figured it might be." She tilted her head. "You're hard to miss. No tag, no glow, no guide. You walk like someone waiting for gravity to remind them they're real."
Rael narrowed his eyes. "You're not surprised."
"Because I've seen others like you. Not many. Fewer still that lasted."
"Thread readers?" he asked.
She nodded slowly. "Not common. And not welcome in most places."
"You see mine?"
"I see the storm around it. You're not bound to this world the way the others are."
[Thread Interaction Detected]
[Stabilization Potential: Low – Increasing]
[Emotional Sync: Initiated]
Rael hesitated. "Why are you here?"
"To see if you'd fall apart," she said honestly. "Or if the system would swallow you whole."
"And?"
"You're still standing."
"That shard earlier," he said. "It wasn't ordinary."
Her eyes darkened slightly. "No. It wasn't. That one came from an origin core. Ancient. Dangerous. Not meant to be accessed casually."
"It felt familiar."
"That's because it remembers you."
Rael's breath caught. "But I've never been here."
"Not in this body," she said. "But this world is stitched from echoes. And some shards hold pieces of things that should've stayed lost."
He stared at her. "You came all this way for a rumor?"
"I came because Kareth is where anomalies surface first," she replied. "The system here is... thin. Easier to observe."
"And if I collapse?"
"Then I'll deal with it," she said simply. "I've done it before."
[Anchor Candidate: Elira – Thread Reinforcing]
[System Sync: 46%]
[Stabilization Status: Improved]
She turned to leave, but paused. "Your system isn't done shifting. That shard was only the beginning. More pieces are scattered. Some... worse."
"And you'll keep watching?"
"Until you stop being interesting," she said, walking into the dark.
Back in his room, Rael sat at the window, watching the stars fade behind the clouds. Something in him had begun to shift. The flickering chaos of before had stilled, even if just slightly.
His system whispered softly now. Not broken. Not healed. But starting to find its rhythm.
One thread had connected.
And one girl had seen him and hadn't flinched.
Not a savior.
Not a mentor.
Just a stabilizer.
And maybe that was enough for now.