Kael didn't sleep that night.
The city rarely allowed it anyway. The alleys never stopped coughing smoke, the metal bones of broken towers groaned, and the beasts outside the barricades sang like dying flutes. But this time it wasn't the noise. It was the feeling.
The new skill. Ash Phase. It lingered under his skin like embers under wet wood, flaring at random. Sometimes his fingers blurred at the edges; once, his entire right arm dissolved mid-reach, scattering into a cloud of dust that made the rats under his cot hiss and scatter.
"Convenient," he muttered, shaking the ash back into a hand.
[ SIDE EFFECTS: Unknown. Please report all anomalies to Technical Support. ]
"Where's Technical Support?"
"Dead," the Codex said matter-of-factly.
Kael almost laughed. Almost. His chest was too tight.
He kept thinking of the moment he'd slipped through stone like smoke, of the way his heartbeat had vanished in that instant. For one second he hadn't been alive in the human sense of the word—he'd been something else. Something beasts might not understand.
And maybe that was the point.
By dawn, hunger forced him out. The market stank of yesterday's blood and sour fruit. Traders shouted prices nobody could afford; scavengers huddled near the bone fires, eyes hollow. Kael wove through the crowd like shadow, satchel light with only a crust of bread left.
The Codex projected faint icons above heads in the street—Potential Threat, Potential Ally, Potential Pickpocket Target.
"Helpful," Kael muttered. "You're basically an accountant with attitude."
"Correction," the Codex replied, "I am an Anomaly. Please treat branding seriously."
At the dungeon gate, the Association had already marked the perimeter with yellow banners. Official hunters milled around, shining gear polished enough to reflect the broken sun. They laughed too easily, blades on their hips humming faintly with enchantments.
Kael lingered at the edge. He could never afford their kind of gear, never join their kind of ranks. Not unless he wanted to rot on waiting lists until beasts ate through another district.
He slipped past the guards when they weren't looking. A boy-shaped shadow moving like smoke.
[ Entering Dungeon: Glass Maw Tunnels — Level D ]
The air inside was sharp. Every breath scraped his throat like glass splinters. The walls glistened with translucent crystal, jagged and pulsing faintly with trapped light.
The first beast came quick—a spider-thing with glass for legs, clicking across the stone. Its fangs dripped with something that smelled like vinegar and blood.
Kael raised his hand. Fire Spark flickered, faint as a matchstick. The spider hissed, unimpressed.
"Not good," Kael muttered.
[ Suggestion: Combine Ash Phase with Fire Spark. Result: Improvised attack. ]
"What happens if it backfires?"
"Then you are backfired."
He didn't have time to argue. The spider leapt. He pushed both skills together, teeth clenched—
—and for a heartbeat, he became flame and ash at once. His body blurred into smoke laced with fire, and when he reformed, the spider's thorax was caved in, its core flickering out in shards.
Kael dropped to one knee, panting. His skin smoked faintly, but his grin was sharp and ugly.
"I can work with this," he said.
The deeper he went, the stranger the tunnels grew. Crystal spires like teeth jutted from the ground, humming with faint resonance. The Codex highlighted fissures in the walls, whispering of hidden paths, optional tasks, secret caches.
[ Optional Task: Investigate Resonance Nodes. Reward: ??? ]
He ignored it—for now. He needed cores. Food. The basics.
Another beast lunged from a crack—a lizard with two heads and no eyes. Kael slid into Ash Phase, his body scattering just enough for its jaws to bite smoke instead of skin. He reformed behind it and drove a jagged rock into its skull. Messy. Efficient. Survival.
The core it dropped pulsed in his palm. He tucked it away, already counting coin in his head.
Then he heard it.
A voice. Human. Weak. Somewhere deeper in the maze.
"Help… anyone—please—"
Kael froze. His first instinct was to leave. People begging in dungeons usually meant bait, or corpses waiting to happen. But something in the tone—it wasn't desperate like a trickster, it was raw. Ragged. Real.
He exhaled, ash leaking from his lungs like smoke.
"Codex," he whispered, "odds of survival if I check this out?"
"Statistically unwise. However…" The voice paused, almost conspiratorial. "Heroes get remembered. Rogues get interesting stories."
Kael smirked, the fire in his chest flaring. He tightened his grip on the core and stepped deeper into the crystal jaws of the dungeon.