The breach was contained within two hours. The news channels were already flooded with reports, praising the "Valiant efforts of the Aegis Guild." They showed slow-motion replays of the final blow against the Phantom Hound leader.
Kaelen turned off the screen. The phantom ache in his bones felt sharper than usual, a sympathetic echo to the chaos outside. He looked at the pill organizer on his counter. A week's worth of suppressants, each one a tiny, futile dam holding back an inevitable tide.
He popped today's dose, the chalky substance sticking in his throat. It did nothing for the envy, the helplessness.
His eyes drifted to a old, physical map of the city taped to his wall. His father, a cartographer, had made it. In the margins, he'd marked strange energy fluctuations he'd detected before his disappearance during the first Great Eclipse a decade ago. Most were now official, regulated dungeon sites. But one, on the edge of the city, near the abandoned industrial sector, was marked with a small, red question mark. It was never officially catalogued. His father had called it a "Fissure," a stable, non-aggressive rupture.
Kaelen had never dared to go. It was illegal, for one. And for a sickly young man, it was tantamount to suicide.
But today, watching those Hunters, something broke inside him. What was the point of a slow, quiet death in six months? To be a name on a medical report, a statistic of a rare disease?
A reckless, desperate thought, fueled by a lifetime of powerlessness, took root. If he was going to die, let it be on his terms. Let him see the mystery his father had left behind.
He pulled on a thick jacket, the night air already turning cold. He ignored the trembling in his hands—from fear or the illness, he didn't know. He slipped out of his apartment and into the descending night, heading towards the red question mark on the map.