The dawn air in the guild square held the sharp, clean scent of hope. It was a smell that arrived once a season with the Turning of the Stone, and it drew the youth of Bracken Vale like moths to a lantern. They stood in a shuffling, murmuring line that coiled from the heavy oak doors of the Adventurer's Guild, across the cobblestones still damp with dew, and wound around the central fountain where stone heroes battled a forever-frozen dragon.
Leo stood among them, a lanky shadow trying not to tremble. He was sixteen, all elbows and knees in a homespun tunic that had been let out at the seams twice and was now thin as parchment. His stomach was a hollow pit, but not from hunger—from a fear so profound it felt like a living thing trying to claw its way out of his throat.
He watched as the line inched forward. Each step was a lifetime. Each face that approached the dais was a canvas of raw human emotion—pale fear, trembling hope, arrogant certainty. The System Stone sat atop a marble pedestal, an unassuming sphere of polished, slate-grey rock. It looked inert, dead. But Leo knew it held the gate to every future.
A girl with fiery red hair, the daughter of the town's only enchanter, placed her hand upon it. The stone awoke. A gentle, swirling light of sapphire blue rose from its core, wrapped around her arm like a friendly serpent, and sank into her skin. Her eyes flew open, glowing with the same light for an instant.
"Uncommon Tier," intoned the Guild Scribe, a gaunt man with a voice like rustling parchment. He didn't look up from his enormous ledger. "[Mana Sense]. Proceed to the Quest Hall for orientation."
The girl's face broke into a radiant smile. She floated more than walked towards the side door where other successful aspirants clustered, their new status making them stand taller, their laughter already sounding different—like they belonged to a separate, brighter world.
Leo's fists clenched at his sides. Uncommon. That was good. Very good. Mana Sense could lead to spellcasting, enchanting, all sorts of paths. He didn't let himself dream that big. His own hopes were smaller, more desperate.
He wasn't the blacksmith's son, hoping for [Heat Resistance] to follow his father. He wasn't the hunter's daughter, praying for [Trackless Step]. He was Leo, orphaned, raised on the charity of the village granary keeper. His hope was a simple, brutal equation: Get any skill. Any usable skill. Do not be Null. To be Null was to be a ghost, to remain in the fields and the tannery, to watch life and magic and purpose pass you by forever. It was a quiet, lifelong death.
The line dwindled. The sun climbed, its warmth doing nothing to melt the ice in Leo's veins. He saw a boy get a Common [Night Vision] and weep with relief. He saw another get a Rare [Iron Hide] and puff his chest out, his friends clapping him on the back. Each success was a needle in Leo's heart. Each was a reminder of the yawning chasm of failure that awaited most.
Finally, it was his turn. The boy before him, the broad-shouldered son of the blacksmith, got his Common [Heat Resistance] with a warm orange pulse and a grin. He lumbered off, already flexing his hands.
The square seemed to grow silent, though it wasn't truly. The murmur of the crowd, the clatter from the nearby smithy, the splash of the fountain—it all faded into a dull roar in Leo's ears. His boots, thin-soled and patched, scuffed against the worn stone of the dais as he stepped up.
Before him, Guild Master Thorne was a monolith of scarred leather and grim authority. His beard, shot through with grey, was trimmed to a sharp point. His eyes, the colour of flint, swept over Leo with an indifference that was worse than contempt. He saw another body, another statistic. To his right, the Scribe dipped his quill, ready to record another line in the eternal ledger.
"Place your hand. Do not press. Simply make contact," the Scribe recited, his tone bored.
Leo's mouth was dust. He looked at his own hand, pale and long-fingered, calloused from hauling water and grain sacks, but soft compared to the hands of real labourers or warriors. It seemed alien, a thing that might betray him. He swallowed, the sound loud in his own head.
Just give me something, he prayed, not to any specific god, but to the universe, to the Stone, to the mysterious System that governed their world. A [Minor Strength]. [Keen Eye]. [Resist Fatigue]. Anything that works. Anything that proves I exist.
He took a final, shuddering breath that did nothing to fill his lungs, and laid his palm flat against the Stone.
It was cool. Smooth. Utterly lifeless.
A heartbeat passed. Then two. The silence stretched, taut as a bowstring. A cold worse than any winter seeped from the stone into his bones. Null. I'm Null. The thought was a final, crashing wave of despair. He saw his future—the granary keeper's pitying look, the back-breaking labour for a handful of copper, the slow erosion of his soul in a town that valued only magic.
Then the Stone answered.
It was not the gentle awakening of the others. It was a rebellion.
A cacophony of light detonated from the Stone's core. Not a single colour, but a screaming riot of them—jagged bolts of emerald that burned his eyes, pulses of sapphire that felt like ice water in his veins, strobing violet arcs that crackled with a sound like tearing metal. The light didn't just travel up his arm; it assaulted it, lashing around his limb like furious, luminous whips. The air in the square popped and sizzled, reeking of ozone and scorched stone.
The Scribe shouted, his ledger tumbling to the ground, pages fluttering. Guild Master Thorne's hand went to the hilt of his sword, his flinty eyes wide with shock and something else—alarm. The crowd gasped as one, a sound of pure, stunned wonder that quickly curdled into confusion and fear.
Inside Leo's skull, a presence manifested. It was vast, cold, and utterly impersonal. It spoke without sound, imprinting words directly into his consciousness.
SYSTEM LINK ESTABLISHED.
ANOMALOUS MANA SIGNATURE DETECTED.
PARAMETERS... INCONSISTENT.
RECALIBRATING...
SKILL ALLOCATION: BYPASSING STANDARD TIERS.
GRANTING: [ARCANE REPLICATION].
RARITY: MYTHIC.
The words meant nothing and everything. Mythic. The tier of legends, of ancient kings and slain dragons. It echoed in the hollow of his mind, grand and utterly meaningless.
As suddenly as it began, the light-show died. The violent colours snuffed out, leaving only the bland grey of the stone and the blinding afterimages dancing in everyone's vision. The crackling silence was replaced by a ringing one. Leo stumbled back, his arm numb and tingling, his palm feeling seared. He clutched it to his chest, staring at the Stone, then at the stunned faces of the crowd.
Guild Master Thorne recovered first. His initial shock hardened into a granite mask of cold fury. He strode forward, his boots heavy on the dais, and seized Leo's wrist in a grip that ground the bones together. He yanked Leo's hand up, examining the palm, then glared at the Stone as if it had personally insulted him. He leaned close, his breath smelling of stale coffee and authority.
"What did you do?" Thorne hissed, his voice low and dangerous.
"N-nothing!" Leo stammered, true terror now joining the chaos in his mind. "I just touched it!"
Thorne's eyes bored into his, searching for deceit, for a trick, and finding only abject, genuine terror. He saw no guile, only the confusion of a mouse in a thunderstorm. His lip curled. He released Leo's wrist with a shove.
He turned to the square, his voice booming out, magnified by the silence and his own palpable outrage. "Defective!"
The word was a hammer blow. It didn't just describe; it condemned. It echoed off the guild hall walls and the faces of the watching townsfolk. A few of the newly-branded Adventurers, their own fears now comfortably past, snorted. One, the boy with [Iron Hide], muttered, "Freak," just loud enough to be heard.
The Scribe scrambled for his ledger, his hands shaking. "Manifestation… chaotic. Energy pattern… non-standard. Unstable. No clear utility." He looked at Thorne for guidance.
"Brand him," Thorne said, the words final as a headsman's axe falling. "A broken tool is a danger. It must be marked."
The procedural efficiency that followed was its own kind of horror. Two guards in the guild's livery—men with faces as expressive as stone blocks—materialized from the crowd. One clamped a heavy hand on Leo's shoulder, pinning him. The other produced the Brand.
It was a slender rod of dark iron, cold and sinister. As the guard activated it with a twist, the tip began to glow with a sickly, persistent yellow light—the colour of infection, of warning. This wasn't for the Null, who were simply ushered away with pity. This was for the flawed, the dangerous, the ones the System had touched but broken. A permanent sign reading 'Beware'.
There was no more ceremony. No audience for this part. They marched him, stumbling, not back through the hopeful crowd, but around the side of the guild hall, through a gate that led to the reeking midden heaps and stacked crates of the service yard. The grand façade of the guild gave way to stained stone and muddy ground. They shoved him against the rough, cold wall of the building, the moss and grime pressing into his tunic.
"Hand," the guard with the brand grunted.
Leo, tears of shame and terror blurring his vision, numbly extended his left hand. The guard with the iron grip forced it flat against the wall. The other did not hesitate. He pressed the glowing yellow tip into the back of Leo's palm, right over the tendons.
Leo screamed. It was not the clean pain of a cut or a burn. It was a cold fire, a searing invasion that seemed to etch itself directly onto his soul. It smelled of his own flesh cooking and something sharper, more metallic—the smell of magic being forced into a shape it rejected. The glow from the brand didn't just mark his skin; it sank in, leaving the flesh outwardly unblemished but pulsing with a faint, ugly yellow light from within. A permanent scar visible to anyone with even a flicker of mana sense. A beacon of failure.
When it was over, they didn't speak. They simply released him. One guard jerked his thumb towards a heavy, iron-reinforced door set in the back wall. The message was clear. Leo, cradling his throbbing, glowing hand, stumbled towards it. The door opened to his push, and he was expelled into a narrow, filthy alley that ran behind the guild.
The door swung shut behind him with a solid, resonant THUD that was the sound of his future slamming closed.
The hope of the morning was ash. The line, the Stone, the futures—all of it was gone, replaced by the dripping eaves of the alley and the smell of rotting garbage. The rain began then, not a storm, but a fine, cold mist that seeped into everything. It soaked his thin tunic in minutes, plastering his hair to his forehead.
His legs gave out. He slid down the wet, slimy wall until he was sitting in a puddle of mud and something unspeakable, not caring. He held his branded hand up before his face. In the dim alley light, the yellow glow was faint but unmistakable, a tiny, cursed lantern in his flesh. A brand for a broken animal.
A sob, raw and ragged, tore from his throat. He choked it back, swallowing the sound until it was a painful knot in his chest. Despair, thick and heavy as wet clay, settled over him, smothering the last embers of the morning's hope.
Mechanically, driven by a habit born of a lifetime of hearing about it, he focused inward. Everyone said you could feel your status after the Stone. He pushed past the pain, the shame, the crushing emptiness.
A blue screen, cold and impersonal, flickered into existence in the darkness behind his eyes.
NAME: Leo
LEVEL: 1
XP: 0/100
STATS: STR 6 | AGI 7 | VIT 5 | INT 8 | WIS 5 | LCK 1
SKILLS: [ARCANE REPLICATION] (Mythic)
- COPY SLOT: [EMPTY]
- MASTERED SKILLS: NONE
He stared at the words, the glowing blue letters reflected in the sheen of rainwater on the alley stones.
Mythic.
A laugh bubbled up, harsh and broken. It echoed in the empty alley. Mythic. The highest tier. The skill of heroes in the old tales. And it was his. And it was useless. What did it even mean? Replicate arcane things? How? The interface offered no explanation, no instinct, no guiding warmth. It was just a name. A grand, empty title for a void.
Guild Master Thorne was right. He wasn't Null. He was worse. He was Defective. The System had given him a crown made of smoke and mirrors, a treasure so incomprehensible it was worthless. In a world that prized the solid, tangible utility of a [Power Strike] or a [Lesser Heal], he held a riddle that promised everything and explained nothing.
He was marked, alone in the cold rain, with a mystery burning in his soul and the ghost of a scream still tasting of ozone on his tongue. The distant sound of laughter and celebration from the guild square drifted over the rooftops, a melody from a world he had just been forever exiled from.
Leo, the Defective, curled his glowing hand against his chest and shivered, waiting for nothing at all.