The tavern's din had settled into a familiar rhythm—a low hum of half-drunken adventurers swapping tall tales, punctuated by the occasional bellow from a dwarf deep in his cups.
Zephyr slumped at a wobbly table, its surface sticky with spilled ale and faintly tilted like it held a personal grudge against balance.
The booth creaked under him, but it was a damn sight better than standing, his legs still shaky from the alley sprint that felt like a lifetime ago.
Across from him sat Lyra Vex, her posture as unyielding as a mage mid-casting, radiating the kind of controlled intensity that suggested she could summon a firestorm with a misplaced sneeze.
Her staff, Emberthorn, rested against her chair, its sapphire shaft etched with flame runes that pulsed with a soft, rhythmic thump-thump, like a heartbeat forged from arcane fire.
The glow cast fleeting shadows across her face, highlighting the sharp line of her jaw and the faint scar above her left brow.
Zephyr tried not to stare at the staff too long, half-convinced it might ignite just to mess with him.
"So…" he ventured, drumming his fingers on the table to fill the tense silence. "You hunt glitches? Like, for a living?"
Lyra fixed him with a long, unimpressed stare, her emerald eyes glinting with the patience of someone who'd heard one too many dumb questions.
"Yes," she said, her voice as flat as a server crash.
"Cool." Zephyr nodded, undeterred, leaning forward with a grin. "Like, full-time? Got a glitch-hunting license and everything?"
Her brow twitched, just enough to betray her annoyance. "Why? You applying for the job?"
"Maybe." He flashed a crooked smile, the one that had once charmed sponsors before his career imploded.
"I'm told I have an incredibly marketable skill set in chaotic incompetence."
"Confirmed," GlitchWitch chimed in, her sprite flickering into existence above the table, upside-down and spinning lazily like a digital acrobat.
"His top-tier talents include 'tripping over nothing,' 'accidentally exploding soup,' and 'making enemies out of perfectly nice bartenders.'"
Lyra ignored the AI, her gaze dropping to Zephyr's wrist, where his CosmoCore interface flickered erratically, its edges glitching between neon blue and a sickly green.
Occasionally, it spat out bizarre pop-up ads—BUY ONE FIREBALL, GET ONE COLD SNAP FREE! or UPGRADE YOUR MANA CORE NOW, ONLY 9999 VOID SHARDS!—before snapping back to its chaotic menu.
"Your setup's corrupted," she said, her voice low and clinical. "I've never seen a UI behave that erratically. Not even in the Surge Zones."
Zephyr glanced at the flickering screen, his stomach twisting as a random error code scrolled past: [WARNING: CORE_STABILITY_17%_REBOOT ADVISED].
"I didn't install anything," he said, raising both hands in mock surrender.
Lyra tilted her head, her braid sliding over her shoulder as she studied him like a puzzle she wasn't sure was worth solving. "Where did you get this interface?"
Zephyr hesitated, the memory of that blinding white flash in the locker pod still raw, like a wound he hadn't dared to prod.
"I… woke up with it," he admitted, his voice quieter now, tinged with the unease he'd been shoving down since Ironspire.
"Literally. One minute I was… somewhere else, losing my mind over a rigged match. Next thing I know, I'm face-down in an alley with a sarcastic system nanny and a jacket that can't decide if it's leather or a glittery unicorn hoodie."
As if on cue, his jacket shimmered, briefly transforming into a garish hoodie emblazoned with a winking unicorn before snapping back to its scuffed leather default.
A faint trail of sparkles lingered in the air, mocking him.
Lyra's brow furrowed, her fingers tapping lightly against the table as she processed his words.
"There are rumors," she said slowly, her voice measured but laced with a new intensity.
"Anomalies tied to CosmoCore's original architecture. Lost code fragments. Admin privileges surfacing in random users. You're not an admin, are you?"
Zephyr blinked, caught off-guard by the question.
"I don't even know what that means here," he said, a nervous laugh slipping out. "Back where I'm from, admin privileges meant unbanning myself from a server, not… whatever this is."
She leaned back, her lips tugging into a faint, thoughtful frown, her eyes never leaving his face.
"Well, you're either a bug, a plant, or an idiot," she said, her tone matter-of-fact, though a flicker of amusement danced in her gaze.
Zephyr grinned, leaning forward to prop his chin on his hand. "Can I be a charming idiot?"
"No." Her response was immediate, cutting through his charm like a blade through paper.
A beat of silence hung between them, thick with unspoken tension.
Then, reluctantly, Lyra sighed, her shoulders easing just enough to suggest she wasn't about to incinerate him.
Yet.
"Look," she said, her voice softening but still edged with steel, "I don't know what you are, but that glitched interface is going to attract attention—and not the good kind."
"Like who?" Zephyr asked, his grin fading as he caught the gravity in her tone.
"Guild Inspectors sniffing for unregistered mages. Mana Cultists hunting for 'divine anomalies.'
The Iron Council, who'd lock you in a lab just to see what makes your system tick." She paused, her gaze darkening. "And that's just the start."
"Also," GlitchWitch piped up, her sprite now sporting a tiny detective hat that glitched in and out of existence, "there's a 67% chance your core emits low-frequency pulses that attract quantum rats. Nasty little buggers."
Zephyr shot her a flat look. "That's not a real thing."
"It will be," she said brightly, her grin all teeth and mischief.
Lyra shook her head, clearly regretting her life choices as she pressed two fingers to her temple.
"There's a bounty posted on an artifact called the Broken Cog," she said, steering the conversation back to business. "Rumor has it, it's tied to the recent system errors. Glitches. Surge events. It's hidden in the undercity."
Zephyr arched a brow, leaning back in his chair with a creak. "The undercity? What, like a sewer level?"
"Worse," Lyra said, her voice grim.
"The old Ironspire beneath Ironspire. Flooded tunnels, mana-leaking ruins, abandoned arc-tech that's half-alive and twice as hostile. It's a dungeon someone forgot to turn off, crawling with things that don't play by System rules."
Zephyr's grin returned, undaunted. "And you want to go down there?"
"I go where the gold flows," she said, her eyes narrowing as if daring him to judge her.
He laughed, a sharp, reckless sound that drew a few curious glances from nearby tables.
"So you're not just fire and sarcasm. You're greedy, too. I respect that."
Lyra stood abruptly, her cloak swirling as she adjusted it with a practiced flick.
"I'm offering to guide you," she said, her voice low, "through the most dangerous place in this city. You'll owe me."
Zephyr tilted his head, his grin widening. "Owe you what?"
"Fifty percent of whatever we find." She paused, her gaze locking onto his with an intensity that made his pulse skip. "Assuming you don't die first."
He stood, stretching with a theatrical groan, his jacket flickering briefly into a pattern of dancing flames before settling back to normal.
"Deal, Sparkle Princess," he said, his tone teasing but laced with a spark of genuine excitement.
Her eyes flared, a dangerous glint igniting in their depths as Emberthorn crackled faintly, its runes flaring brighter.
"You call me that again," she warned, her voice a low growl that sent a shiver down his spine, "and I'm using you as a torch."
"See?" Zephyr said, unfazed, his grin widening as he stepped around the table. "I knew this partnership would be explosive."
"Oh, stars," GlitchWitch groaned, her sprite morphing into a tiny storm cloud that rained pixelated tears. "It's only Chapter Two, and I already hate this party."