The first time Kael Kane smelled the world burning, he was eight and a boy who still believed adults could fix anything.
His mother had her arms full of groceries—two stale loaves, a tin of beans, a rusted kettle they'd been saving to repair—when the sky split like someone had dragged a knife across it. A hush dropped, and then the light went wrong: colors scrambled, shadows grew teeth.
By the time the beasts came, his father was already on the porch with a spear he'd carved from an old curtain rod. Kael remembered how the beast moved like a wrong dream—too fast, too many limbs, a mouth that kept rearranging itself. He remembered his hands smearing with blood he couldn't stop, his mother's eyes asking questions without sound, the world narrowing into a single thin thread of terror.
He remembered losing everything, and the memory burned so deep it became his compass.
"Never again," he'd told the ashes.
When you survive by your own hands for ten years in a city that smells like old metal and yesterday's smoke, the promise hardens. It becomes an engine. Kael had learned to trade beast cores for coin, to pick pockets of the dead for anything he could pawn. He learned to move like hunger was a skill; he learned to sleep with one eye open.
On the morning of his awakening the city tasted like iron and rain. He was eighteen now—thin, wiry, and stitched together by necessity. He kept his hair long enough to hide the scar that ran across his right forearm. It throbbed sometimes, like a pulse someone else had left behind.
His palms were steady when he finally inserted the copper token his parents had buried in a biscuit tin—every last coin scraped together, every favor called in. He had promised them, in whispers beneath the blanket of that burned-out hut, that he would do this. That he would try.
He pressed the token into the cheap interface, and the world hummed.
A pane of cold blue appeared in the air before his face: a system window, intact, humming with a light that promised answers and a little magic. He'd seen others—polished kids with smooth voices bragging about their class trees, about tiers and skills and mentor signatures. He'd expected something tidy. He'd expected instructions.
He did not expect personality.
[ SYSTEM ACTIVATING... ][ LOADING: ORIGIN CODEX v?..? ][ Welcome, User: Kael Kane. ]
The voice was calm. Like an announcer. Like a teacher who had just swallowed sarcasm and decided not to spit it out.
Kael blinked. "Is this it? Like—actually?"
[ CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE ACQUIRED: BASIC FIRE SPARK. ][ Intro Tutorial: Press— ][ ERROR. ][ ERROR. ][ PLEASE WAIT. ]
The screen hiccupped. The blue text stuttered like a mouth with one too many questions. Kael snorted before he could stop himself.
"You're kidding," he muttered. "You glitched before the tutorial even started."
There was a small, almost apologetic chuckle in the system's voice. "Dramatic emphasis," it offered. "No refunds."
That first exchange should've been funny, and Kael felt a little laugh twist up his ribs—an ugly half-laugh, half-cry. He felt the absurdity of it: his parents had traded all they had, and he had a system with the personality of a bad tour guide and a single, pathetic spark of flame.
But the spark was real. He cupped his hands and watched a pale orange bead of heat form and then sputter like a bad candle. It was laughable, fragile, but it did what fire does: it warmed and it burned.
[ Skill: Fire Spark (Basic) ][ Effect: Ignites small flammable objects. Damage: Minimal. ][ Tooltip: "Not recommended for dragon slaying." ]
Kael almost grinned despite himself.
"This is—" he began.
"—Not a dragon starter, yes. Practical, though. You can toast a rat or two. Congratulations," the Codex said. "Optional: Fusion Protocol available when system determines readiness."
"Fusion what now?" Kael said. "You make it sound like a bakery."
"Fusion is like baking. Sometimes the cake explodes."
He shoved the system away—technically he could close the window, but the Codex hummed inside him like a second heartbeat. He could feel its interface at the edge of his mind, a soft glow on the skin of his thoughts. It whispered suggestions sometimes—tiny nudges, a list of daily tasks, a map dotted with red where dungeons had opened.
Outside, the city groaned. A distant siren warbled its rusty note. The beasts were moving again; the market stalls emptied by noon.
Kael had one plan: get into a dungeon, get cores, sell them, buy a new skill, and do it again. That was how you climbed when there was no other ladder to climb—one core at a time, one fusion at a time, until your name started to mean something.
He loaded his tattered satchel and set out with the Fire Spark tucked in his fist, a candle that would have to last him until sunset.
The lower alleys smelled of rot and old bone. A pair of scavenger dogs—more beast than canine—snapped at his heels until he tossed a stale bun into the gutter. He ducked under a rusted sign and found it: an entry to a shallow dungeon—more like a ruined subway stretch now turned den.
Inside, the light was dark, and the air was thick. The Codex painted icons in the air—faint, jagged, and almost embarrassed by the quality of the render.
[ Dungeon: Shattered Undercroft — Level: D ][ Recommended: 1–3 survivors ][ Reward: Beast Core ×1–3 ]
He crept forward. Fire Spark hummed faintly in his hand, a small warmth. From the gloom came the skitter of claws, the hiss of breath. Kael could move silent enough to be a ghost at times; years of surviving taught you where to put your feet so the world wouldn't notice.
A horned rat lunged out—no larger than a man's forearm, all needle teeth. He breathed in. The flame flared. It wasn't pretty; the fire sputtered and singed his sleeve. The rat squealed and left behind a pulsing, tiny core—a bead of living crystal the size of a grape.
He fumbled for a cloth, wrapped the core, and tucked it away like a prize. He killed two more, gritted and gutted with the sort of ugly efficiency that came from starving. The chest cavity of one revealed a ribbon—half-armor, half-organic sinew—worth a few extra coins if the right trader saw it.
Hours later, he stepped out with three cores and a battered pride. The city hadn't slowed; it was a thing with its own appetite. Shops had traders who took cores but paid in scraps. He haggled, and the man at the stall had eyes like someone who'd seen many hungry boys.
"You new?" the trader asked.
Kael nodded. He counted the coins, the kind that never felt like they were enough. The Codex pinged, and a small window opened.
[ System Task: Basic Survival — Sell Cores (3) → Reward: System Points ×20 ][ Accept? Y/N ]
He grinned then, a small hungry thing. "Y," he said aloud.
"Y selected," the Codex reported dryly. "You are officially a low-budget mercenary."
The coins burned in his palm like stolen sunlight. He slipped them into his pocket and kept walking. The Codex, in its infinite curiosity, had already suggested a shop listing two skills on the vendor board not a six-block walk away: Stealth (Basic) and Endurance (Basic). Both affordable. Both useful.
He considered for a second. His jaw clenched. "Stealth," he told the Codex. "We'll try stealth."
[ Purchase Complete: Stealth (Basic) ][ Fusion Protocol: Available. Success Rate: Undefined. ]
Kael looked at his two skills—Fire Spark and Stealth—stacked like pieces on a table. He felt the old, hot wish flare inside him—he wanted power like a fist cracking the sky. He wanted to be so loud that monsters heard his name and remembered fear.
"Alright, Codex," he said softly, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Bake the cake."
"What is your cake preference?" the Codex asked.
"Any cake that doesn't explode." He held his breath, because ruin had a habit of being dramatic.
The world stuttered. The Codex processed. The light went wrong in his vision, like a film strip burning through a projector.
[ ERROR: UNDEFINED OUTPUT ][ PROCESSING… ][ CONGRATULATIONS. NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: ASH PHASE ]
His body dissolved.
Not melodically. Not slowly. Kael felt himself unravel—smoke for a second, embers, a faint smell of burned bread—and then he was a whisper sliding along the cold stone floor. He drifted like a shadow through a crack in the wall, and when he reformed on the other side, he was whole and laughing, a short ugly snort that echoed in his chest.
He had done it. He had fused something that, on paper, should have been harmless. The Codex chimed, and for the first time since he'd activated it, the voice sounded less like a machine and more like a conspirator.
"Error: Delicious," it said.
Kael smirked and felt the fire burn in his chest, brighter and meaner than before. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked up at the sky. Beyond the smoke and the rift, something vast moved, a shadow crossing the broken sun.
His jaw tightened. There was a taste to the thought now—not just survival, not just hunger. Vengeance. Ambition. A small, hot, private oath.
If beasts had taken his family, the world had made itself a promise—one Kael intended to collect in full.
"I'll climb," he said to the void, to the Codex, to the ashes. "From this spark, I'll blaze a road up to the top. If gods or monsters stand in the way, I'll burn them, too."
[ SYSTEM NOTE: EXISTENCE VALUE DETECTED. INCREASED BY +1. ]
He grinned. The number was small and meaningless to anyone else, but in his chest it felt like a new kind of coin. He tucked the ash into his mind like an ember and stepped back into the city.
The world could notice him later. For now, he had a dungeon to clear tomorrow and a list of tasks that promised meat and coin. For now, the fire inside him had a shape and a name.
For now, Kael Kane had a system that was wrong, and that was exactly right.