The abyss smelled of ozone and rotting meat.
Kaelen adjusted his respirator, checking the seals. Three green lights. Good. He crouched on the rusted girder, looking down through the smog. Two hundred meters below, the shantytown of District 9 hung suspended in the dark like a tangled net of fairy lights.
A scream echoed off the metal ribs of the dead god.
Kaelen didn't flinch. Screams were currency in the Ribs. If you weren't screaming, you were buying silence.
"Target identified," he whispered.
Below him, on a precarious platform of scrap metal, a man in a velvet robe stood over a kneeling shopkeeper. The man in the robe was a Projector—a low-level reality warper. A thug with a magical badge.
"The Tithe is unpaid," the Projector announced. His voice boomed, unnaturally loud, amplified by the ambient belief of the terrified crowd gathering around. "Therefore, gravity is heavy here."
The shopkeeper gasped, slamming face-first into the metal grating. Blood pooled around his nose. The Projector wasn't touching him. He was simply asserting a lie: that the shopkeeper weighed a ton. Because the crowd believed the Projector had power, the universe agreed. The shopkeeper's bones creaked audibly.
"Classic," Kaelen muttered. "Mass-induced localized hyper-gravity. Sloppy execution."
Kaelen stood up. He wasn't a hero. He didn't care about the shopkeeper. But the Projector had a pouch on his belt containing pure Ether shards. Kaelen had rent to pay.
He dropped.
He fell twenty meters, landing silently on a corrugated roof behind the Projector. The crowd didn't see him. Their eyes were fixed on the glowing figure in velvet. Their fear fed the magic.
Kaelen pulled a small glass vial from his coat. Sulfuric acid.
He stepped out of the shadows. "Hey. Wizard."
The Projector turned, sneering. The glow around him pulsed. "Another rat? Kneel. The air around you is lead."
Kaelen felt nothing.
The crowd gasped. They expected Kaelen to collapse. They believed he would collapse. The pressure in the air spiked, heavy enough to crush a tank.
But Kaelen was a Null. His brain lacked the receptor for the Consensus. To him, the Projector was just a fat man in a dress yelling at physics.
Kaelen walked forward. The Projector's eyes widened.
"I said kneel!" the Projector screamed, sweat breaking on his forehead. The Dissonance was starting. When reality refuses to bend, the mage breaks. "You are heavy! You are stone!"
"I am one hundred and sixty pounds of flesh and bad decisions," Kaelen said calmly. He closed the distance.
The Projector panicked. He raised a hand, conjuring a blade of shimmering light. "This sword cuts steel!"
"That's a flashlight," Kaelen corrected.
He sidestepped the thrust. The "blade" passed through his shoulder, singing the coat but doing no damage. It was an illusion made solid by fear. Kaelen had no fear.
Kaelen uncorked the vial and splashed the acid into the Projector's face.
The magic didn't matter. Chemistry always worked.
The Projector shrieked—a raw, human sound. The glowing sword vanished. The crushing gravity lifted instantly as the crowd's focus shattered. The shopkeeper gasped, inhaling greedily.
Kaelen kicked the screaming man in the knee, shattering the joint, and snatched the Ether pouch from his belt.
"Lesson one," Kaelen addressed the stunned crowd, his voice flat. "Fire burns because it's hot, not because he tells you it is."
He looked at the shopkeeper. "You owe me ten percent of your earnings for the next month. Don't make me come collect."
Kaelen turned and vanished into the steam vents before the Enforcers could arrive. He didn't run. He walked with the efficiency of a machine.
In his pocket, the Ether shards hummed. Enough for food. Enough for filters.
Above him, the gargantuan, fossilized heart of the world beat once—a tremor that shook the entire city.
Thump.
"Go back to sleep," Kaelen whispered to the dead god. "I'm not done robbing you yet."