The road stretched empty under a gray sky. No birds, no merchants, no carts — just wind moving through hollow trees. Kael walked along the cracked stone path, hood drawn low, his boots kicking at bits of broken tile. The rain had stopped hours ago, but the smell of wet iron still clung to the air.
Each step made a faint hum under his feet, a reminder that the world itself wasn't normal anymore. Lines of faint light ran through the ground — old mana conduits, flickering like dying veins.
> Rewrite energy detected: ambient field instability — increasing.
Kael muttered, "Yeah, I can feel it."
The system didn't respond. It rarely did unless the readings turned critical.
He looked ahead. The outline of a small town appeared in the distance. The walls were half-collapsed, one tower leaning as if exhausted from standing too long. The sign at the entrance was so worn it only read Vel— before breaking off.
Velden. He remembered the name faintly from an old map — a trade town that used to connect the border mines to the capital. But that was years ago.
Now, it was silent.
---
Kael entered through the broken gate. The streets were covered in dust and rusted debris. Houses leaned inward like they were listening to something underground.
A faint whisper crossed the wind. It wasn't human. It sounded like someone humming inside a metal pipe.
He followed the sound. It led to the town square, where a fountain stood dry, filled with cracked stone.
A figure sat on the fountain's edge — a woman in a worn cloak, her hair streaked silver-gray despite her young face. She looked up as Kael approached.
"Didn't think I'd see another traveler this far from the routes," she said, her tone dry but calm.
Kael stopped a few steps away. "Didn't think there was anyone left here."
"There isn't. Just me and the echoes."
The wind stirred again. For a moment, the fountain shimmered — not with water, but with fragments of color, like light trying to take shape.
Kael frowned. "That's not natural."
She smiled faintly. "Nothing's been natural here for months. You can feel it, can't you?"
His guard rose. "Who are you?"
"Lira," she said simply. "Or I was. Depends if names still matter."
He hesitated. There was something strange about her — not dangerous, but familiar. Her aura wasn't chaotic like the distorted mana around him. It was steady, deliberate.
Then she looked directly at him and said, "You're the one who broke the seal at Aster Academy, aren't you?"
Kael froze.
"How do you know that?"
She reached into her cloak and pulled out a small crystal shard. It pulsed faintly in sync with the rhythm of his ring.
"Because this town started dying the same day you walked out of there."
---
Kael sat beside the fountain, his mind racing. The system had been quiet, but the energy readings were climbing again.
> Rewrite resonance: spreading — 12% radius expansion.
He clenched his fists. "I didn't mean for it to spread."
Lira studied him. "Intent doesn't matter to systems like this. It rewrites reality to fill gaps. It's not evil; it's logic."
He looked at her sharply. "You talk like you know it."
"I studied anomalies. Once worked under Central Command before they decided containment was easier than understanding."
Kael smirked faintly. "Let me guess. They fired you for asking too many questions."
"Something like that. I saw what they did to people with broken Crests. You were lucky they didn't dismantle yours."
He looked at his hand. The faint lines of his Crest pulsed under the skin, steady and quiet. "Not sure I'd call it luck."
She tilted her head. "You're holding it together better than I expected. Most Rewrite hosts lose shape by now."
He looked up. "Lose shape?"
"Their mana patterns collapse. The body can't handle adaptive resonance. They become... code ghosts. Fragments of will in unfinished form."
Kael was silent.
Lira leaned back, eyes on the gray sky. "But you're different. You're stabilizing it. Which means the Rewrite isn't consuming you — it's syncing with you."
He frowned. "That good or bad?"
She smiled. "Depends on what you want to become."
---
They stayed there for a while. The wind quieted. The town creaked, like old bones settling.
Lira finally said, "If you're trying to stop the spread, I might be able to help. But you'll have to go where the corruption started — deep inside the first collapsed node."
"Where's that?"
"West of here. Underground. There's a transit shaft from the old mines. But if you go down there, you'll see what Rewrite energy does when it stops pretending to be gentle."
Kael stood. "Then that's where I'm going."
She raised an eyebrow. "You're fast at agreeing to terrible ideas."
He smiled faintly. "Only way I know how to move forward."
Lira pushed herself up and slung her bag over her shoulder. "Then I'm coming too. I've already lost one home to this. Not losing another."
Kael didn't argue. He just nodded once.
As they left the town square, the fountain flickered again — this time showing faint images within the light. Buildings reversed collapse, people walking in reverse motion, like the town was remembering itself for a second.
Kael stopped to watch. "The world's rewriting old data."
Lira glanced back. "Then we're running out of time."
---
Hours later, as dusk fell, they reached the edge of the mining cliffs. The old lift shaft descended into darkness, ropes swaying in the wind.
Kael tightened his gloves. "You ever been down there?"
Lira looked at the hole and gave a tired grin. "Once. Came back missing half my tools and most of my common sense."
"Still here though."
"Barely."
She stepped onto the lift and looked back at him. "You coming, rewrite boy?"
Kael followed, pulling the lever. The platform groaned, then began to lower slowly into the dark.
Above them, the last light of the day faded. Below, faint silver lines pulsed through the rock — veins of the same energy that now lived in him.
For the first time, Kael felt it hum back, like the world was answering him.
He whispered under his breath, "Guess we're connected now."
Lira didn't ask what he meant. She just stared into the dark and said, "Let's hope the connection doesn't kill us."