Gears never lie. They mesh, they lock, and they transmit power with absolute mechanical honesty.
In Sector 9, the lowest district of the floating city of Aethelgard, oil steam and soot were the very air one breathed. Here, the city's heartbeat wasn't life; it was the rhythmic clang of sledgehammers against anvils.
Elian Laurent wiped a mixture of sweat and oil from his brow, leaving a dark smear across his pale skin. Before him lay an ancient energy regulator—a metallic carcass that was supposed to channel heat into their dull living quarters.
Its parts were worn, the copper was corroded, and the Axiom Cell—the crystal battery driving it—had dimmed to a dying, sickly blue glow.
To anyone in Aethelgard's upper echelons, this object was trash. To Elian, it was the difference between a night of rest or freezing to death on a Calibration Night.
He exhaled, his focus sharpening on the narrow gap between two main gears.
He needed that gap to shift—just one millimeter—to allow the energy flow to pass. His right hand gripped a flathead screwdriver, while his left...
remained limp and powerless.
"Come on, just a little more…" he whispered, teeth gritted.
In theory, Elian knew exactly what to do. He had memorized hundreds of faded machine manuals.
He knew the formulas for friction, the coefficients of thermal expansion, and the laws of thermodynamics. His brain was a capable calculator. But in this world, knowing the formula wasn't enough. You had to become the formula.
He tried to focus his mind, projecting his will onto the cold metal. He tried to command the air molecules around the gears to heat up, expand, and nudge the metal into place.
Nothing.
No blue grid of light flickered at his fingertips. No spatial distortion occurred.
The metal remained stationary, mocking him.
Elian was a "Zero." A defective anomaly in a world built on the foundation of Axiom—the mental capacity to hack the laws of physics. In Aethelgard, if you couldn't calculate with reality, you didn't exist.
You were nothing more than computational waste.
A blunt rage began to erode his composure. The frustration he had suppressed for years erupted, not in supernatural power, but in a coarse curse. He slammed his screwdriver onto the table, sending a pile of bolts scattering across the cold stone floor.
"Damn it! Move, you stupid piece of junk!" Elian shouted, his fist striking the weathered wooden workbench.
"Newton's Third Law, Brother. The harder you hit the table, the more your hand hurts. And the table doesn't care."
The voice was clear, cheerful, and entirely out of place in the grime of the workshop.
Elian turned, his anger evaporating instantly, replaced by a forced, thin smile. Standing in the doorway was Miya Laurent. His sister, fourteen years old, wore work overalls far too large for her frail frame. Her brown hair was tied in a ponytail, and her eyes...
her eyes shone with a curiosity that the soot of Sector 9 could never extinguish.
Miya carried a tray with two bowls of thin broth and a piece of stale bread.
"I can fix it without yelling at the furniture, you know," Miya said, stepping inside with a light gait.
She dodged the scattered bolts on the floor with uncanny precision, as if she could see a coordinate grid mapped out on the ground.
Elian grunted, picking up a rag to clean his hands. "I was... performing a stress test on the table's materials. I failed."
"Clearly." Miya set the tray on a spot free of oil. She approached the defiant energy regulator, tilting her head. "The gap is misaligned at coordinates (x: 14, y: 22, z: 5)."
Miya reached out her right hand. Her slender fingers did not touch the metal.
Zrrrt.
A clear sapphire-blue light emanated from Miya's fingertips, forming transparent geometric lines in the air—a micro-scale personal Axiom Grid.
It was the most beautiful sight Elian knew, and the most painful.
Miya didn't scream. She didn't strain. She simply muttered something that sounded like high-level algebraic variables.
To Elian's eyes, Miya was just standing still. But on a deeper level of reality, Miya was performing a frantic mental calculation. She was manipulating the friction coefficient of the air within the gear gap, reducing its resistance to zero, while simultaneously increasing atmospheric pressure on one side of the cog.
Click.
The gear shifted smoothly, perfectly, sliding into position without a whisper of friction. The blue glow in the Axiom Cell suddenly surged, stabilizing. The regulator hummed softly, and warm air began to drift from its vents.
It was magic. It was the mathematics of the gods. It was everything Elian did not have.
Miya lowered her hand; the grid of light vanished. She smiled proudly at her brother.
"Done. I set the friction coefficient to 0.001 for a fraction of a second. Easy."
Elian stared at his sister, his chest tightening with a mixture of immense pride and crushing inferiority.
Miya was a prodigy—a pure genius born once in a century in these slums. She could see the formulas of destiny in the air.
"You cheated using god-math, Miya," Elian said flatly, trying to mask his admiration with a failed cynical tone.
"Math is art, Brother! You're just too rigid," Miya retorted, sticking her tongue out. She picked up a bowl of soup and handed it to him. "Eat. If it gets cold, I'm too lazy to warm it up with Axiom. I don't want a brain overheat."
They sat on the dull wooden bench, enjoying the thin soup under the stable glow of the newly repaired regulator.
This moment... this peace was the only reason Elian Laurent hadn't given up on his fate as "trash."
"Brother," Miya said between mouthfuls of soup. "Later, when I pass the Induction Exam and enter the Aethelgard Academy in Sector 1... I'll buy you the best workshop. No, I'll buy you an entire tower! You won't have to fix Sector 9 junk ever again."
Elian froze. He looked into his sister's dream-filled eyes. The towers of Sector 1 were where the elite, the Inquisitors, and the rulers of the sky lived. A place where the air was clean and no Zero was permitted to set foot.
"Miya," Elian's voice softened, turning serious. "That Academy... they don't just teach calculations. They take people like you and turn them into tools. Into parts of the cold machine that oppresses us."
Miya set her bowl down, her cheerful face turning somber.
"I know, Brother. I know what they do to the people in the lower districts. But if I have the power—if I become a high-ranking Inquisitor—I can change the rules, right? I can make Aethelgard a place where a 'Zero' like you doesn't have to hide in fear every Calibration Night."
Elian stared at her for a long time. Miya's innocence was the most precious and dangerous thing in this world.
"The world doesn't work as simply as a linear equation, Miya. There are variables you can't calculate. People... power... they are filthy."
"Then I'll just keep recalculating the variables until I find the solution," Miya answered firmly.
Elian could only sigh, ruffling his sister's hair. "Eat your soup, Little Solution. This bread is as hard as steel; it'll take thermodynamic Axiom just to make it chewable."
Miya laughed, and the sound briefly silenced the clanging of Sector 9's machinery outside.
Happiness in Sector 9 always had a short expiration date.
Three hours later, the glow of the energy regulator suddenly flickered violently, then died. It wasn't because the machine had broken again. It was because the primary power source for Sector 9 had been diverted.
Wooooong… Wooooong… Wooooong…
The city sirens wailed, their voices hoarse, piercing the stone walls of the workshop. It wasn't a fire siren or an enemy attack. It was something far more terrifying. The Sky Calibration Siren.
And this time, it was followed by a cold, mechanical voice over the city's loudspeakers:
"ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS OF SECTOR 9. NEW VARIABLE INDUCTION BEGINS NOW. ALL CITIZENS UNDER THE AGE OF 18 ARE REQUIRED TO ASSEMBLE IN THE DISTRICT SQUARE FOR TALENT SCANNING. RESISTANCE IS A LOGICAL DEFECT AND WILL BE ELIMINATED."
Elian stood up instantly, his heart racing. Induction. It was a polite term for the abduction of gifted children by the World Government. They didn't come every year, but when they did, they took the best and never returned them.
He turned to Miya. Her cheerful face was now deathly pale, her eyes wide with terror.
"Brother…" Miya whispered, her voice trembling.
"Hide," Elian cut in quickly, his voice cold and commanding. He grabbed Miya's hand, dragging her to the back of the workshop, beneath a pile of heavy scrap machinery. "Under here. There's a narrow gap behind the steam tank. Get in. Don't make a sound. Don't use your Axiom—not even a spark. Its glow will be detected by their scanners."
"But Brother—"
"I'll be fine. I'm a Zero. They don't want me,"
Elian shoved his sister into the narrow space. It was dark, filthy, and smelled of rust, but it was the only hiding place he had.
"Do. Not. Make. A sound," Elian looked into his sister's eyes one last time before sealing the gap with heavy iron plates.
Outside, the clanging hammers stopped, replaced by the sound of thousands of panicking footsteps and the crying of children.
Elian stood in the center of his workshop, gripping a heavy wrench in his right hand—his only weapon, a physical tool that required no Axiom calculation.
His heartbeat was the only sound inside the workshop now.
One minute. Two minutes.
BOOM!
The workshop door shattered into splinters, exploding inward in a spray of burning wood.
The air inside the room suddenly grew immensely heavy, as if gravity itself had been multiplied. Elian gasped, his knees buckling, forced to kneel on the stone floor by an invisible pressure.
In the ruined doorway, a terrifying silhouette stood.
Inquisitor Valerius.
He wore the pristine military uniform of the World Government—a long white cloak with silver accents, a stark contrast to the soot of Sector 9. His face was handsome, cold, and rigid, like a marble statue carved with mathematical precision.
In his hand, he held a long silver staff that emitted a fierce blue light grid. Behind him, two armored soldiers stood at the ready.
The air around Valerius shimmered, distorted by his power.
He didn't walk; he seemed to glide over the ground, manipulating local gravity beneath his feet.
Valerius surveyed the filthy workshop with a look of disgust, then his gaze shifted to Elian, who was struggling against the gravitational pressure.
"Elian Laurent," Valerius's voice was flat,
monotonic, like a machine reading a report.
"A Zero. A defective variable wasting oxygen in a logical world. Your existence is an act of system inefficiency."
Elian growled, trying to lift his head to meet the Inquisitor's cold eyes. "Efficiency... is your god, isn't it? But your god has no heart."
Valerius did not react to the insult. Insults had no value in his equations.
"We did not come for you, Defect. Our scanners detected a surge of exceptionally pure Axiom energy at these coordinates a few hours ago. A pristine anomaly amidst the waste."
Elian's heart stopped for a beat. The energy surge. It was when Miya fixed the regulator.
"I... I was just fixing a machine. I'm a Zero, but I'm good at math!" Elian lied, his voice hoarse.
"A Zero cannot trigger a sapphire glow of that clarity," Valerius stepped forward.
The gravitational pressure in the room intensified. Elian cried out in pain, feeling as though his bones were about to crush.
"Where is the high-quality variable?"
Valerius raised his staff. A blue light grid expanded from it, scanning the entire room. The lines of light passed through the table, through the machines, and through... the pile of iron plates in the back.
The blue light stopped, locking onto a single point. Miya's hiding place.
The grid in the air suddenly bled into a deep blood-red.
"Detected. Pure Variable. Quality: S-Rank," Valerius's voice showed a hint of interest for the first time.
"NO!"
Elian roared. Rage overrode his pain. He forced himself to stand, fighting the gravity that sought to crush his body.
He swung the heavy wrench in his hand, sprinting toward Valerius. No strategy. No calculation.
Only the pure fury of a brother who would not let his sister be taken.
"Physical attack. Vector: 12 degrees from left. Velocity: 5 meters/second. Force: Negligible."
Valerius didn't even look at him. He simply flicked a finger on his left hand.
BAM!
The gravity vector around Elian reversed instantly. Instead of moving forward, Elian was hurled backward with devastating force, slamming into the stone wall until it cracked. The wrench flew from his hand, clattering into a distant corner.
Elian lay on the ground, spitting blood, his ribs broken. The world spun in his vision.
Valerius walked past the helpless Elian toward the pile of iron plates. With a wave of his staff, the heavy plates rose into the air as if weightless, then were tossed aside.
Miya Laurent cowered in the gap, tears streaming down her soot-stained face. She looked up at Valerius with pure terror.
"A beautiful variable," Valerius reached out a cold, white hand. "The world awaits you, little one. You will become part of the sky's calculation."
"Don't... don't touch me!" Miya screamed.
In her desperation, Miya Laurent did something she was never supposed to do. She channeled the entirety of her Axiom energy.
A sapphire-blue light grid exploded from her body, forming a powerful geometric shield around her. It was a personal Domain—an area where her own laws of gravity applied.
Valerius's gravitational pressure collapsed the moment it touched Miya's shield.
Valerius frowned, slightly surprised.
"Manipulating counter-gravity without preparation? Remarkable. But a logical fallacy."
The Inquisitor simply adjusted the formula on his staff. He increased the gravitational pressure outside Miya's shield a thousand-fold—not to crush it, but to isolate it.
Miya's shield began to crack under the absurd pressure. She screamed in agony as brain overheat began to take hold. Her sapphire grid slowly dimmed and vanished.
She was out of energy.
Valerius gripped Miya's arm, dragging her out of the gap. Miya struggled, crying, staring at her brother who lay broken on the floor.
"BROTHER! ELIAN! HELP ME! DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME!"
Miya's scream tore through Elian's heart.
Elian, drenched in blood, tried to crawl.
He reached out his "Zero" left hand toward his sister. "Miya... let her go! Take me! I'm a Zero! Take me!"
"A Zero has no place in this equation,"
Valerius looked at him coldly. Two armored soldiers entered, carrying a transparent glass cylinder filled with sterile medical equipment—a "Processor" tube.
They forced Miya into the tube. She pounded on the glass, her face distorted by fear and sobs. Elian could see her shouting his name, but her voice was lost within the soundproof cylinder.
"I swear…"
Elian Laurent stopped crawling.
He pressed his face against the cold stone floor. His sobbing stopped, replaced by something much darker. Rage. A pure, absolute, and uncontrollable rage he had never felt in his life.
A rage that burned away the pain in his body.
He looked up, his analytical eyes locking onto Valerius as he walked away with the tube containing his sister.
"I swear…" Elian's voice was low, rasping, and laden with a promise of total annihilation.
"I swear I will climb your tower. I will dismantle your system. I will tear down your false sky with my bare hands. I will prove that this defective variable... is the one that will shatter your entire equation."
Valerius paused for a moment, without turning back, then continued his pace out of the ruined workshop. "The logic of a Zero is irrelevant."
The Inquisitor left, taking Elian Laurent's light with him.
Elian lay amidst the wreckage. Under the steady glow of the regulator Miya had just fixed, the air in the workshop was warm, but Elian's heart was frozen solid.
The world blurred. His physical pain vanished, replaced by a terrifying void. He stared at the wrench in the corner. He stared at the shattered door.
Then, he saw something new.
For the first time in his life, Elian did not see a dirty workshop. He did not see ruins.
He saw lines.
He saw the gravity coordinates Valerius had left in the air, beginning to crack and collapse. He saw that the geometry of the space around him was no longer solid, but fragile. He saw that reality itself was a formula... and he, the Zero, the defective variable, had just found the glitch to hack it.
The Laurent Oath had been spoken.
And Aethelgard would never be the same.