The medication bottle was empty. Obviously. Aki had known it was empty yesterday when he shook it. Knew it was empty this morning when he shook it again. Would probably shake the goddamn thing tomorrow too, because apparently his brain had decided that performing the same useless ritual every day might somehow rewind time and unfuck his entire life.
It never worked. Shocking.
He threw the bottle at the trash can. Missed. Didn't pick it up. The pipes groaned when he turned on the faucet—they always did in this building, like the whole structure was one strong wind away from collapsing—and rust-colored water splattered into the sink. Aki waited for it to run clear, then splashed his face hard enough to hurt.
His reflection was still there in the water droplets clinging to the faucet, distorted and fractured. Black hair hanging in his eyes. The kind of bone structure that used to make his mother's friends say *what a handsome boy* in that tone that meant *what a waste*. Sharp features that might've opened doors if he'd been born literally anywhere else, to literally anyone else. Instead they just made the exhaustion more obvious—dark circles carved so deep under his eyes they looked like bruises, cheekbones too prominent because he kept "forgetting" meals weren't optional.
Conventionally attractive and conventionally fucked. The universe's idea of a joke.
His phone buzzed against the counter. Three cracks spiderwebbed across the screen like some kind of modern art installation titled *This Is What Poverty Looks Like*. One new message.
*Rent's three days late. Pay by tomorrow or you're out. —Landlord*
Aki stared at it. Read it again to make sure he'd absorbed the full weight of how completely fucked he was. Tomorrow. He had until tomorrow to manifest three hundred marks out of thin air for an apartment that barely qualified as habitable.
Current funds: sixty-three marks.
Rent: three hundred marks.
Gap between the two: approximately the monetary value of "go fuck yourself, Aki."
He grabbed his jacket—too thin for Seriglia's autumn, but it was either this or the winter coat he'd sold last month—and left before his brain could spiral into the full existential crisis it was clearly warming up for.
-----
Morning in Seriglia, the so-called City of Towers in the grand nation of Rowen, meant watching everyone else live the lives Aki would never have.
The towers themselves loomed overhead, Curio-reinforced spires stretching toward the sky like the city was trying to physically escape the ground where people like Aki lived. Fated kids his age were already heading to Path academies, wearing uniforms that probably cost more than his rent. Transcendents moved through the crowds like they owned the air itself. Which, to be fair, they basically did.
Everyone had somewhere to be. Something to do. A Path to follow.
Everyone except him.
The temp agency squatted in the warehouse district, wedged between buildings that looked structurally unsound even by Seriglia's impressively low standards. Aki had been here enough times that the woman behind the desk recognized him. She'd never bothered learning his name, but she definitely recognized him. Like furniture she was tired of seeing.
"Path?" she asked, not looking up from her screen.
"Don't have one."
She sighed like he'd personally ruined her morning. "Warehouse loading. Fifty marks for a full day. Take it or leave it."
Fifty marks. Quick mental math: two weeks of full days to make rent, assuming he got work every single day. Assuming he didn't need to eat. Assuming the landlord suddenly developed patience as a personality trait.
Lot of assumptions. None of them likely.
"I'll take it."
She handed him a slip of paper with an address scrawled on it. Her handwriting was worse than his prospects. "Don't be late."
-----
The warehouse was exactly what Aki expected—massive, loud, smelling like oil and rust and the collective sweat of people who couldn't afford better options. The foreman took one look at Aki and pointed to the back section where they stored the heavy equipment.
"That needs moving to the other side. Get to it."
The crates were industrial-grade. Meant to be moved by Pulse users who could enhance their strength to superhuman levels. Not by some pathless eighteen-year-old who'd skipped breakfast because breakfast cost money he needed for rent he couldn't afford anyway.
Aki got to work.
The first crate made his arms shake. The second made his shoulders scream. By the fifth, his hands had stopped sending coherent signals to his brain and had settled on a continuous white noise of *pain*.
Around him, Pulse users were laughing and moving triple the load, their bodies heated up and enhanced, making it look easy. Making Aki look pathetic by comparison.
Nobody offered to help. Why would they? He was pathless. Helping him would be like helping a piece of furniture. Actually, furniture would probably get better treatment—at least furniture had value.
Hours blurred together. Lift, carry, set down, repeat. Ignore the pain. Ignore the Pulse users making jokes about "the slow one" in the corner. Ignore everything except the need to get through the day so he could get paid so he could maybe, possibly, somehow not lose the last place that still had his mother's things in it.
By the time the foreman called time, Aki's body had transcended pain and entered some new realm of suffering that didn't have a name yet. He'd moved maybe fifty crates. The Pulse users had moved twice that. Easily. While having conversations.
The foreman counted out marks without looking at him. Thirty bills hit the counter.
Aki's throat went tight. "The posting said fifty."
"That's for people who actually pull their weight." The man's voice was flat, bored, the tone of someone who'd had this conversation a thousand times and found it equally tedious every time. "You want fifty? Get a Path. Otherwise, take the thirty and stop wasting my time."
Thirty marks.
After working until his body gave out. After doing everything they asked. After breaking himself down to component parts for their convenience.
He was worth thirty marks.
Because he didn't have a Path. Because he'd never had the money or connections to get one the "right way." Because the world had decided a long time ago that people like him didn't matter, and the world was very committed to that decision.
Aki took the thirty marks and left before he could say something that would get him blacklisted from the only temp agency that still hired pathless workers.
-----
Outside, the sun was setting. Aki's legs shook with exhaustion as he walked. Thirty marks put him at ninety-three total.
Still two hundred and seven short.
Still hungry.
Still failing at the basic act of staying alive in a city designed to make that as hard as possible for people without Paths.
His mother's voice echoed in his head, soft and tired the way it always was near the end: *It's not fair, baby. But fair isn't something we get to have. We just survive the best we can.*
She'd said that from her hospital bed. One month before she was supposed to get her heart transplant. One month before the Valdora family—old money, Path royalty, probably descended from gods or whatever the fuck rich people told themselves—had "donated generously" to the hospital. One month before the transplant list got mysteriously reshuffled and suddenly Aki's mother was no longer priority.
The Mend doctors had tried, apparently. Back when there was still something left to save. But Mend worked best early, and early treatment cost money Aki's mother didn't have. By the time she qualified for the free clinics, her heart was mostly scar tissue. Dead meat that no amount of healing could bring back. She needed a new heart. And new hearts went to people whose families made generous donations.
One month before she died.
Aki's jaw clenched. He kept walking.
The wealthy district sprawled ahead like a different world. Clean streets. Path-enhanced architecture that glowed with Curio-crafted lighting. Shops selling things Aki couldn't even name, let alone afford. People strolling without worry. Pulse users as private security on every corner. Mend clinics offering same-day appointments for anyone who could pay.
This was where his mother might have lived if she'd been someone else. Somewhere else. If the universe had rolled different dice.
A crowd had gathered in the central plaza. Music played—live musicians, not the cheap Curio-tech recordings. People cheered. Aki slowed, drawn by the kind of morbid curiosity that made you look at accidents.
A massive banner stretched across the square: *CONGRATULATIONS ALARIC VALDORA—OPENING THE PULSE PATH!*
Valdora.
Of course it was a fucking Valdora.
Everyone in Seriglia knew the Valdora family. Wealthy beyond imagination. Connected to every Transcendent in the city. The kind of people who reshaped transplant lists with donations and didn't lose sleep over it.
Their son stood on a platform in the center of the plaza, nineteen years old according to the banner, smiling and healthy and so completely, utterly, *obscenely* alive.
The celebration was massive. Expensive. The kind of Path opening ceremony that cost more than Aki would earn in five years. Maybe ten. Probably more—math got depressing after a certain point.
Some people were just born into different worlds. That was the truth of it. Alaric Valdora would never work in a warehouse for thirty marks. Would never choose between rent and food. Would never watch his mother die because someone richer had better connections.
He'd just exist in his bubble of wealth and power, opening Paths and throwing parties, completely untouched by the reality that crushed everyone else.
Aki stared for a long moment. At the celebration. At the crowd. At all the things money could buy—safety, power, futures that didn't involve slowly grinding yourself to death just to survive another month.
His mother had died in a city where people like the Valdoras could afford celebrations like this. Where Path openings got monuments and music while pathless workers bled out in alleys and nobody noticed.
The bitterness in his chest was familiar. Manageable. The kind he'd learned to carry every single day since she died.
He turned away. Standing here staring wouldn't change anything. Wouldn't bring her back. Wouldn't suddenly make the world fair.
Aki cut through a side street, heading back toward his apartment. Tomorrow he'd figure out the rent situation. Tomorrow he'd—
The sound stopped him.
A cry, cut short. Then a heavy thud.
Aki's feet slowed. *Not your problem*. Whatever was happening in the alley ahead, it wasn't his business. He had enough of his own problems without borrowing someone else's.
But he didn't keep walking.
Another sound. A whimper, weak and scared. Then a voice, young and cruel: "Come on, old woman. You really don't have anything?"
Aki's hands clenched. He should walk away. Should leave before he saw something that would make walking away impossible.
He turned into the alley.
Three guys, early twenties, stood over someone on the ground. The person was older—sixties, maybe seventies—curled up with arms over their head. A woman. Gray hair, thin frame, grocery bags spilled around her like evidence of a life interrupted.
One of the guys kicked her in the ribs. Not hard enough to kill, but hard enough to hurt. "Pathetic. Pathless trash wandering around here like you belong."
The woman tried to speak but only managed a gasp.
She reminded Aki of his mother. Not in looks. But in the way she was curled up. Small. Fragile. Powerless against people who'd decided she didn't matter.
"Hey."
Aki's voice came out rougher than he intended.
All three guys turned. The one who'd done the kicking—a Pulse user based on the heat shimmer around his hands—looked Aki up and down and laughed.
"Another one? Must be pathless day in the rich district." He grinned at his friends. "Want to make it two?"
Aki looked at the woman on the ground. At her groceries scattered in the filth. At the way she was shaking.
He should walk away. He couldn't win this fight. Three against one, and at least one of them was Fated. Aki was exhausted, hungry, and had exactly zero combat training.
But the woman's eyes met his for just a second, and Aki saw something he recognized. The same look his mother had in that hospital bed. The knowledge that the world had decided you weren't worth protecting.
"Let her go," Aki said.
The Pulse user's grin widened. "Or what?"
Aki didn't have an answer. Didn't have a plan. He just stepped forward, putting himself between the guys and the woman, and knew with absolute certainty this was going to end badly.
-----
The Pulse user moved first.
Fast, but not impossibly so—he was Fated, not Transcendent. Aki saw the punch coming and tried to dodge left.
Almost made it.
The fist caught him in the right side of his ribs instead of center mass. Pulse-enhanced strength behind it. Something cracked. Pain exploded through his chest. Aki stumbled sideways, hit the alley wall with his shoulder.
"Too slow," the Pulse user said, already closing in.
Aki pushed off the wall, threw a wild punch aimed at the guy's face. It connected—barely—but it was like hitting concrete. The Pulse user's enhanced durability made Aki's knuckles scream. The guy didn't even flinch.
"That it?" He grabbed Aki by the front of his jacket and slammed him back against the wall. Aki's head bounced off brick. His vision blurred. "Pathetic."
Aki brought his knee up hard, aiming for anywhere soft. The Pulse user twisted, took it on the thigh instead. Half a second of space. Aki tried to wrench free, got one arm loose—
The Pulse user's forehead cracked into Aki's nose.
Hot blood poured down his face. Aki's knees buckled.
"Stay down," one of the other guys said. Not the Pulse user—one of the friends, sounding almost bored. "You're just making it worse."
Aki didn't stay down. Couldn't. If he did, the woman would still be there when they were done with him. Still powerless. Still hurt.
He drove his shoulder into the Pulse user's stomach, trying to create space. It was like hitting a wall. The guy barely moved.
"Stubborn." The Pulse user's knee came up and caught Aki in the stomach. All the air left his lungs in a rush. He doubled over, gasping. "Stupid, but stubborn."
A boot caught Aki in the side, right where his ribs had cracked. The pain was white-hot, blinding. He went down hard, hands and knees on filthy alley ground.
"That's better," the Pulse user said. He grabbed Aki by the hair, yanked his head back. "You pathless idiots never learn. You don't belong here. You don't belong anywhere."
Aki tried to speak. Couldn't get enough air. Tasted blood in his mouth.
The Pulse user pulled his fist back—enhanced, heat radiating from it—and drove it into Aki's jaw.
Aki's head snapped to the side. His vision went dark at the edges. He felt himself falling but couldn't stop it.
He hit the ground next to the woman, who was crying quietly. Everything hurt. His face, his ribs, his hands where he'd tried to fight back. Everything.
"Boring," the Pulse user said, standing over them both. "Come on. Let's find someone who'll actually fight back."
The three of them left, laughing. Their footsteps faded.
Aki lay there, tasting blood, feeling his ribs scream with every breath. The woman was saying something but he couldn't hear past the ringing in his ears.
Powerless.
Again.
Always.
His mother had died powerless. This woman had almost died powerless. Aki was lying in an alley, beaten half to death, completely and utterly powerless to change anything.
The anger wasn't new. He'd been angry for five years. Angry at the hospital that shuffled the transplant list. Angry at the Valdoras who'd donated and smiled and never thought twice about what it cost. Angry at a world where power determined everything—who lived, who died, who mattered, who didn't.
But this was different.
This was rage.
Pure and sharp and burning, at the sheer *injustice* of being born without a Path in a society that worshipped them. At being powerless in a world that punished powerlessness with death.
Something in Aki's chest cracked.
Not metaphorically.
*Actually* cracked.
Like ice shattering under pressure. His emotion core—dormant his entire life—suddenly split wide open.
Heat flooded through him. Violent. Uncontrolled. Wrong.
Pain exploded through every nerve. Aki tried to scream but his lungs had locked. His muscles seized. Power poured into him—raw and wild, with no guidance, no training, nothing to channel it or stop it from tearing him apart from the inside.
*This is how Forsaken die*, some distant part of his brain supplied helpfully. *Right here, in the first moments, unable to handle what they've unleashed.*
The woman scrambled backward, eyes wide with terror. Not of the guys who'd hurt her.
Of Aki.
His skin felt like it was splitting. Like something was carving into him with molten metal. The ground cracked under him—or maybe that was his bones breaking. Heat radiated in waves that made the air shimmer.
Through the agony, Aki saw his hands.
Gold scars were spreading across his skin like lightning strikes. Glowing faintly in the dim light. Crawling up his arms, across his chest, up his neck to the left side of his face.
The woman's face reflected back at him in her eyes, wide with horror. Aki saw himself—gold eyes burning like molten metal, scars branching across his face like veins of lightning frozen beneath his skin.
*Forsaken.*
The word echoed through his fragmenting consciousness. Dangerous. Unstable. A time bomb that would explode and take everyone nearby with it.
His legs gave out. The world tilted. Distantly, Aki heard the woman running, heard her calling for help that wouldn't come. Not for him. Not for what he'd become.
The pain was everywhere. Consuming. Impossible to endure.
His last thought before darkness took him was bitter and sharp and true:
*At least I'm not powerless anymore.*
Then everything went black.
-----
Aki woke to sirens.
Not close. But not far enough either. The mechanical wail of Order patrol vehicles cutting through the night air, systematic and relentless.
He pushed himself upright. Every muscle screamed. His hands touched his face and felt something wrong—raised lines, hot to the touch.
He looked down.
Gold scars covered his arms. Glowing faintly in the darkness like veins of molten metal frozen beneath his skin.
"No. No no no—"
The words came out rough, panicked. Aki's breath came faster. His hands shook as he touched his face again, tracing the scars he could feel branching across the left side.
Forsaken.
He was Forsaken.
The sirens got louder.
*The woman.* She'd run. She'd seen him. Seen what happened. She would've told someone. Called the Order. They were coming for him.
Think. *Think*.
His shirt. Aki grabbed the hem and pulled it over his head, ignoring the protest from his ribs. The fabric was torn, bloodstained, but intact enough.
He looked down at his torso.
More gold scars. Covering his chest, his stomach, spreading like a web of lightning across pale skin.
The sirens were getting closer.
Aki wrapped the shirt around his head and face, covering everything from his nose up. The gold eyes. The scars. Anything that would mark him as Forsaken. His hands fumbled with the fabric, tying it tight at the back of his head.
Not perfect. But better than being immediately identified as the thing everyone was hunting.
He forced himself to stand. His legs shook. Everything hurt. But the sirens were close enough now that he could hear individual vehicles, multiple units converging.
On him.
Aki stumbled out of the alley into a side street. Empty. Dark. He picked a direction and walked. Fast as his body would allow.
Behind him, red and blue lights painted the alley entrance.
He walked faster.
Voices now. Sharp. Professional. "Witnesses reported the awakening in this sector. Spread out. Forsaken are unstable—approach with caution."
Aki turned a corner. Then another. The streets blurred together. His wrapped face drew looks from the few people still out, but no one stopped him. Just another person having a bad night in a city full of bad nights.
The sirens followed. Systematic. Organized. Closing the search grid.
Aki's breath came harder. His ribs burned. The gold scars on his arms pulsed with his heartbeat, visible even in the darkness.
He ducked into another alley, this one narrower. Darker. A shortcut that would—
Light flooded the far end.
Order vehicles. Three of them. Blocking the exit.
Aki spun.
The entrance behind him lit up too. More vehicles. More officers in their distinctive armor, Path-enhanced and armed.
Trapped.
"Stop!" A voice amplified by Curio tech. "Hands where we can see them!"
Aki's hands clenched into fists. The gold scars flared brighter. Heat built under his skin, responding to the spike of panic and rage.
An officer stepped forward. Young. Maybe mid-twenties. Heat shimmer around his body—Pulse user. "Remove the covering from your face. Slowly."
Aki didn't move.
"Now," the officer said.
More officers were moving into position. Surrounding him. Cutting off any possible escape.
Aki looked left. Right. Behind. Ahead.
No way out.
The heat under his skin built hotter. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to fight, to do *something* other than stand here waiting to be contained.
"Last warning," the Pulse officer said. "Hands up. Face uncovered. Or we will use force."
Aki's vision narrowed. The officer. The vehicles. The alley walls closing in.
No way out.
His blood felt like it was boiling. Muscles tensing. The gold scars burning brighter with every heartbeat.
No way out.
Except—
Aki ran.
Straight at the vehicles blocking the front. The officers shouted. Someone moved to intercept him.
The Pulse officer was faster. He blurred forward with enhanced speed, reaching for Aki—
Something inside Aki *snapped*.
Heat exploded through his legs. His muscles spasmed, seized, activated in a way they never had before. Power flooded into them—raw, uncontrolled, overwhelming.
His heartbeat was uncountable. His blood felt like fire. Every nerve in his legs lit up at once.
Aki's foot hit the pavement.
The stone shattered.
He launched forward like a bullet from a gun. The world blurred. Wind screamed past his ears. The Pulse officer's shocked face disappeared behind him in an instant.
Aki was *flying*.
For one glorious second, he was faster than anything human should be. The alley stretched out ahead, the vehicles shrinking behind him, freedom just ahead—
Then his legs exploded.
Aki's scream tore through the night.
His right femur burst through his thigh in a spray of blood and bone fragments. His left leg twisted at an angle that shouldn't exist, muscle and flesh shredding under forces it wasn't built to handle.
He was still moving. Still airborne.
But now he was just a body tumbling through space, trailing blood and bone.
"*FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK*—"
The words came out in a continuous stream as pain finally caught up to what his body had just done to itself.
Ground rushing up. Aki threw his arms out, desperate to protect his head, to cushion the landing somehow—
He hit.
*Hard.*
The impact drove the air from his lungs. His shoulder took most of it, rolling him sideways. He slid across rough pavement, leaving a trail of blood, finally stopping face-down in the middle of the street.
Everything was pain. White-hot, all-consuming agony radiating from what used to be his legs.
Aki forced himself to look down.
And immediately wished he hadn't.
His legs were *destroyed*. Bone shards jutting through torn flesh. Blood pooling beneath him, spreading fast. His right femur had pierced straight through his thigh and was pointing at the sky like some kind of grotesque art installation titled *This Is What Happens When You're Stupid*.
"Oh god. Oh god oh god—"
Aki's hands shook. His vision blurred at the edges. This was it. This was how he died. Eighteen years old, bleeding out in a street, having shattered his own legs trying to escape.
Then something changed.
Heat flooded into his legs. Different from before. Not explosive. Not destructive.
*Rebuilding*.
Aki watched in horrified fascination as flesh began to knit itself back together. As bone fragments pulled back toward each other like magnets, reforming, realigning. As muscle fiber regenerated strand by strand.
The pain didn't stop. If anything, it got *worse*. Like his legs were being set on fire from the inside out while simultaneously being rebuilt cell by cell.
"No no no stop—"
Aki didn't know if he was begging his body to stop regenerating or stop hurting. Both. Neither. The words just came out because screaming was getting old.
The process was fast. Unnaturally fast. Flesh sealed over exposed bone. Muscle reformed around shattered femurs. Skin grew back across raw tissue.
But every single second felt like an eternity of burning, tearing, *wrong*.
Behind him, voices shouted. Footsteps pounded closer. The Order had recovered from their shock and were closing in.
Aki's legs finished regenerating.
He tried to move them. They *worked*. Barely. Like they'd been asleep for hours and were just waking up, pins and needles and pain.
But they worked.
Aki pushed himself upright. The world spun. His makeshift face covering had come loose, hanging around his neck now. His gold eyes glowed in the darkness. His face scars were visible to anyone looking.
The Order officers stopped ten feet away.
One of them raised a weapon—some kind of Curio-tech device that hummed with power.
"Don't move," the officer said, but his voice shook. Because he'd just watched a Forsaken shatter his own legs, fly thirty feet, and regenerate in under a minute.
Aki looked down at his legs. At the blood covering them, the torn pants, the fact that they were whole again when they'd been destroyed seconds ago.
He looked at his hands. At the gold scars glowing brighter with every passing second.
He looked at the officers surrounding him, weapons raised, ready to contain or kill or whatever they did to Forsaken who'd just demonstrated that level of power.
And Aki started laughing.
Not because anything was funny. But because the alternative was screaming and he'd already done enough of that tonight. Because his life had officially transcended *bad* and entered some new realm of *cosmically absurd*.
Because apparently he could explode his own legs and grow them back, which was either the worst superpower ever or the universe's idea of a punchline.
"Well," he said, voice rough and slightly hysterical, gold eyes meeting the lead officer's. "That's new."
The officer's finger tightened on his weapon.
And the world exploded into light.