The sky in the Underveil is not a sky at all; it is a ceiling of thick, stagnant smog, stained the color of a bruised lung and heavy with the metallic scent of industrial decay. Up there, somewhere beyond the haze, the Crown towers pierce the atmosphere like silver needles, drawing blood from the clouds, but down here, we only get the runoff. We get the rust-rain, the oily soot, and the silence of people who have forgotten how to scream. I wiped the condensation from my forehead, my hand leaving a streak of grime across my skin. My fingers were trembling, a rhythmic twitch I couldn't suppress, a constant reminder that my body was already beginning to fail the environment it was born into. Below the line, you don't live; you merely negotiate with death on a daily basis, offering pieces of your soul in exchange for another twenty-four hours of shallow breathing.
I crouched behind a pile of rusted shipping containers, the corrugated metal cold and wet against my spine. The Underveil was a labyrinth of shadows and steam pipes, a place where the sun never touched the ground. I could hear the distant, rhythmic thumping of the great ventilators in the Grid above, a heartbeat for a city that didn't care if we suffocated. My lungs felt tight, as they always did. Every breath was a choice. Every movement was a calculated risk. I was looking for a Spirit Battery, a discarded shell from the upper tiers that might still hold a flicker of Essence. To the people in the Crown, it was trash. To me, it was currency, heat, and perhaps a few more days of relevance.
The mud beneath my boots was thick and smelled of copper and old oil. I shifted my weight, feeling the familiar, sharp ache in my optic nerve. It started as a dull throb three weeks ago, but now it was a constant, jagged presence behind my right eye. It wasn't an illness—not a biological one, anyway. It was the Interface. It didn't have a name then, just a series of flickering, translucent lines that blurred my vision, like a ghost haunting my own perception. I didn't ask for it. It arrived the night the sky turned red, the night the screaming stopped and the cold started.
"Don't look at them, Asher," I whispered to myself, my voice raspy and thin.
Across the narrow alleyway, three men were stripping a dead merchant. They weren't from the gangs, just scavengers driven mad by the hunger. They moved with a desperate, animalistic efficiency. I watched them through a gap in the containers, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I wasn't a hero. I wasn't a fighter. I was a ghost in the machinery, a fifteen-year-old boy who knew how to hide in the cracks of a crumbling world. I gripped the handle of my rusted shiv, the metal biting into my palm, but I didn't move. In the Underveil, intervention was a death sentence. You stayed quiet, or you became the next scavenged corpse.
Suddenly, the air grew heavy. The temperature dropped, not with the natural chill of the evening, but with a sudden, unnatural void that sucked the heat from the marrow of my bones. My right eye flared with a white-hot agony, and the translucent lines solidified.
[Warning: Local Essence Distortion detected.]
[Sync Rate: 0.04%]
[Objective: Survival.]
The text floated in my vision, cold and indifferent. It wasn't a hallucination. It felt more real than the rusted metal at my back. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to blink it away, but the words burned through my eyelids. Behind me, a shadow detached itself from the darkness of the containers. It didn't have a shape, not really. It was a smudge of deeper blackness, a tear in the fabric of the night.
"Hungry," a voice echoed, not in my ears, but directly in the center of my brain. It wasn't a word; it was a sensation of absolute, bottomless craving.
Velzar.
He had been with me since the massacre, a silent passenger in the wreckage of my childhood. He was a demon, or perhaps something worse—a fragment of the void that lived between the stars. We were tethered by a thread of blood and a contract I didn't remember signing. He didn't offer me power or wealth; he only offered me the burden of seeing the world as it truly was: a slaughterhouse dressed in neon and stone.
"Not now," I hissed, my teeth clenched against the pain in my eye. "There's nothing here for you."
The three scavengers in the alley froze. They hadn't heard me, but they felt the cold. One of them looked up, his eyes wide and vacant. He was a "Hollow," someone whose Essence had been drained by the city's predatory architecture until only a shell remained. He pointed a shaking finger toward the containers where I was hiding.
"Something... is there," he croaked.
I didn't wait for them to decide. I bolted. My boots splashed through the oily puddles, the sound echoing like gunshots in the narrow corridor. I knew these alleys better than I knew my own face. I swerved left, sliding under a low-hanging steam pipe that hissed with scalding vapor, then right, into a vertical shaft that led toward the deeper maintenance tunnels. My breath came in ragged, burning gasps.
[Stamina: 12% - Caution advised.]
The Interface was mocking me. I knew my limits. I lived them every second. I climbed a rusted ladder, the rungs slick with slime, and hauled myself onto a narrow catwalk that overlooked the "Pit"—a massive, circular abyss where the city's waste was processed. Below, the glowing green sludge of the refineries illuminated the underside of the pipes, casting long, distorted shadows that danced on the walls.
I stopped to catch my breath, leaning against a railing that groaned under my weight. From this height, the Underveil looked like a sprawling, festering wound. Fires burned in oil drums, flickering like dying stars. I looked up. The "Line" was visible here—the massive, reinforced concrete plate that separated the slums from the Grid. It was a horizon of grey stone, an artificial sky that reminded us every day that we were beneath the notice of the gods.
"Why do you run?" Velzar's presence was closer now, a cold weight pressing against my shoulder. I could almost see him—a flicker of obsidian wings, a glimpse of eyes that held no light.
"Because I want to live," I replied, my voice shaking. "Unlike you, I have a body that can break."
"It is already broken, Asher," the demon whispered with a chilling tenderness. "The Interface is the nail, and your soul is the wood. Every time it blinks, the nail goes deeper. You are not surviving. You are merely being consumed slowly instead of all at once."
I ignored him. I had to. If I listened to the void, I would walk off the edge of the catwalk and end the conversation forever. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small, cracked Spirit Battery I had managed to snag before the scavengers arrived. It was cold, the internal Essence leaking out in a faint, violet mist. It was almost empty, but it was enough to buy a filter for my mask and maybe a bowl of synthetic broth.
A sudden flash of blue light illuminated the tunnel behind me. I spun around, my heart stopping. Two figures emerged from the steam. They weren't scavengers. They were wearing the sleek, matte-black tactical gear of the Grid Enforcers. Their helmets were smooth, featureless visors that reflected the green glow of the Pit. In their hands, they held pulse-rifles, the muzzles glowing with a lethal, hummed energy.
"Scavenger ID 7742," one of them said, his voice distorted by a mechanical filter. "You are in possession of restricted Tier 2 Essence tech. Drop the unit and kneel."
My blood ran cold. Tier 2? This battery was a piece of junk. But in the City, the law was whatever the man with the gun said it was. They didn't want the battery; they wanted a reason to fill their quota for the day. The Enforcers were the hounds of the Crown, sent down to keep the population in check through sporadic acts of extreme violence.
"I found it in the trash," I said, holding my hands out, the battery trembling in my grip. "It's dead. It's useless."
"Drop it. Now."
I let the battery fall. It hit the metal catwalk with a dull 'clink' and rolled toward the edge. I began to lower myself to my knees, my mind racing. If they took me to the processing centers, I'd never come back. People who went up the elevators in handcuffs ended up as organic fuel or experimental substrate.
[Conflict Initiated.]
[Probability of Survival: 2.1%]
[Suggestion: Activate Contract.]
The Interface flared red, blinding my right eye. The pain was so intense I nearly vomited. I felt Velzar's excitement—a sickening, visceral pulse of dark energy that radiated from the base of my spine. He wanted this. He wanted me to break.
"No," I groaned, clutching my head. "I won't."
The Enforcer stepped forward, his heavy boots clanging on the catwalk. He raised his rifle, aiming it directly at my chest. "Non-compliance noted. Terminal measures authorized."
In that moment, the world slowed down. I could see the condensation forming on the Enforcer's visor. I could hear the hum of the pulse-rifle charging, a high-pitched whine that set my teeth on edge. I could feel the microscopic vibrations of the catwalk as the heavy machinery below groaned.
I wasn't a warrior. I was a child of the dirt. But the dirt has a memory of its own. I remembered the heat of the fire that took my mother. I remembered the smell of ozone as the soldiers slaughtered my neighbors. I remembered the cold, terrifying clarity that came when I first saw Velzar standing over the bodies, his shadow stretching across the blood-soaked floor.
I didn't want to die. Not like this. Not for a piece of trash in a city of ghosts.
"Velzar," I whispered, the word tasting like ash. "Do it."
The contract didn't manifest as a burst of light. It manifested as a sudden, absolute silence. The sound of the factory, the hum of the rifle, the heavy breathing of the Enforcers—everything vanished. The shadow at my back surged forward, not outward into the world, but inward, into my veins. My skin turned a sickly, translucent grey, and the veins in my arms began to pulse with a dark, oily fluid.
The Enforcer pulled the trigger. A bolt of blue energy hissed through the air, aimed squarely at my heart. But it didn't hit me. As it entered my personal space, the bolt began to decay. The light faded, the energy dissipated into a cloud of harmless sparks, as if the very concept of fire had been erased from that specific cubic meter of space.
[Contract Ability: The Void's Tax - Activated.]
[Cost: 4 hours of life expectancy. 15% Sanity degradation.]
I felt the price immediately. A chunk of my memory—the sound of my mother's laughter—simply vanished, replaced by a hollow, aching void. My heart skipped a beat, then another, struggling to pump the thickened blood through my system. I felt older, heavier, as if the gravity of the planet had suddenly doubled.
I didn't wait for them to recover from their shock. I moved. I wasn't fast, but I was wrong. My movements defied the natural rhythm of physics, my body flickering between points in space like a corrupted video file. I reached the first Enforcer before he could chamber another round. I didn't punch him; I simply touched his chest with my blackened hand.
The effect was horrific. His armor didn't shatter; it rotted. The high-tech alloy turned to rust and dust in a heartbeat. The man beneath the suit let out a strangled cry that was cut short as the decay spread to his flesh. He didn't bleed; he simply turned into a grey, brittle statue of ash that crumbled under the weight of his own equipment.
The second Enforcer stumbled back, his visor fogging with panic. He began to fire wildly, but I was no longer there. I was a shadow among shadows, a ghost in the steam. I appeared behind him, my hand hovering near his neck.
"Please," he gasped, the mechanical filter on his voice failing, revealing a young, terrified man beneath.
I hesitated. The void in my mind screamed for more. Velzar was laughing, a sound like grinding stones. The Interface was pulsing with a rhythmic, hypnotic light.
[Kill confirmed. Essence harvested: 12 units.]
[Execute second target?]
I looked at my hands. They were shaking again, but not from the environment. They were stained with a darkness that wouldn't wash off. This was the cost of the City. To survive the monsters, you had to invite one inside you. You had to become a transaction.
I lowered my hand. The darkness retreated from my skin, leaving me cold and nauseous. "Run," I rasped, my voice sounding like it belonged to a stranger.
The Enforcer didn't need to be told twice. He turned and fled into the darkness, his boots clattering frantically against the metal. I watched him go, feeling a strange, hollow victory. I hadn't killed him, but I had lost something far more valuable than a Spirit Battery. I had lost another piece of who I used to be.
I slumped against the railing, the pain in my eye returning with a vengeance. The Interface flickered back to its passive state, the translucent lines drifting aimlessly across my vision.
[Current State: Stable (Critical).]
[Remaining Life Expectancy: Unknown.]
I reached down and picked up the Spirit Battery. It was cracked, leaking, and worthless. I looked at it for a long time, then threw it into the Pit. It vanished into the green glow without a sound.
"You are learning, Asher," Velzar whispered, his voice receding back into the corners of my mind. "The Line is not a physical thing. It is a choice. And today, you stepped across it."
I didn't answer. I wiped the soot from my face and began the long walk back to my shack in the depths of the Underveil. The rain began to fall again—the thick, oily rust-rain that ate at the world. I pulled my hood up and vanished into the fog, just another shadow in a city that had long ago forgotten the difference between a boy and a demon. I was Asher Noctier, and I was still breathing. For now, that was the only contract that mattered.
The walk home was a blur of damp corridors and the smell of ozone. Every step felt like a betrayal of my own legs. The Underveil didn't have streets, only "Veins"—narrow pathways that wound through the guts of the lower city. I passed the "Hollow Groves," areas where the poorest of the poor huddled together for warmth, their eyes glowing with a faint, sickly phosphorescence. They were the ones the City had finished with. Their Essence had been harvested, their dreams traded for a few extra minutes of heat. They looked at me as I passed, their gazes heavy with a silent, terrifying recognition. They saw the shadow on me. They saw the Interface flickering in my eye.
I reached my "home"—a lean-to made of scavenged polymer sheets and reinforced cardboard, tucked into the crook of a massive, dormant hydraulic piston. It was small, cramped, and smelled of wet dust, but it was mine. I crawled inside and collapsed onto my pallet of tattered blankets.
I lay there in the dark, watching the smoke drift through the cracks in the ceiling. My right eye was still throbbing, a rhythmic reminder of the "Void's Tax." I tried to remember my mother's laughter, just to see if it was really gone. I could see her face, the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, but the sound was... muted. It was like trying to hear a song through a thick wall of water. It was there, but the soul of it was missing.
This was the truth of the system. Power wasn't something you grew or earned; it was something you borrowed from your own future. Every time I used the contract, I was burning the furniture of my mind to keep the fire going for a few more minutes. Eventually, there would be nothing left but the cold.
I reached into my shirt and pulled out a small, silver locket. It was the only thing I had left from before the Line. It didn't open; the hinge had been fused shut by heat long ago. But I held it anyway, the cool metal a grounding weight against my chest.
"I will get out," I whispered into the darkness.
I wasn't sure if I was talking to myself, to the demon in my head, or to the city that was trying to eat me. I looked up at the ceiling, imagining the world above the concrete sky. I imagined the Crown towers, the clean air, and the people who never had to worry about the cost of their own breath. They were the ones who built this world. They were the ones who drew the Line.
One day, I would find the person who wrote my contract. And then, I would make them pay the tax.
[Objective Updated: Ascend.]
[New Quest: Reach the Grid.]
The Interface flickered one last time before fading into a dull, pulsing amber. I closed my eyes, letting the exhaustion finally pull me under. Tomorrow would be another day of scavenging, another day of hiding, another day of dying. But as I slipped into a restless sleep, I felt a spark of something that wasn't hunger and wasn't fear. It was a cold, sharp-edged determination.
I was born below the line, but I wouldn't die there. I would climb, even if I had to use my own bones as a ladder. I would rise, even if the sky itself tried to crush me. The City didn't look back, but soon, it would have no choice but to see me.
In the silence of the night, Velzar's laughter was the only thing I could hear. It sounded like a promise. Or a curse. In the Underveil, they were often the same thing. I drifted off, my hand still gripping the locket, while above me, the great ventilators of the Grid continued to beat like a heart that had long ago turned to stone. The first chapter of my life was written in mud and blood, but the ink was still wet. And I was the one holding the pen. Or rather, I was the one being used as the pen. It didn't matter. The story had begun. I was Asher, the contract-bearer, the boy with the dying eye, and the city was about to learn that some ghosts refuse to stay buried. My journey to the top had started in the dirt, and I wouldn't stop until I touched the stars, or burned them all down. This was the only way. This was the only law. Survival was the only truth, and the cost was everything I was. As the shadows deepened around me, I finally fell into a dreamless, heavy sleep, ready to face the hell that awaited me when the bruised sky turned grey again. The silence was absolute, but the war within had only just begun. I was ready. I had to be. There was no other choice left for a boy born below the line. Peace was a lie, and the only reality was the struggle. I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me, waiting for the inevitable dawn of another desperate day. The clock was ticking, and my life was the currency. I would spend it well. I would make it mean something. I would survive. That was my only promise. That was my only hope. And in this dying city, hope was the most dangerous thing of all. But I would carry it anyway, like a hidden blade, until the time came to strike. The Underveil was my cradle, but it wouldn't be my grave. I would rise. I would definitely rise. No matter the price. No matter the pain. The ascent had begun.