The sun beat down on Kael's back as he descended the winding, cobbled path from Skyreach Citadel's lower gates towards the sprawling, soot-stained expanse of Ashwood. The transition was stark. Behind him, the Citadel pierced the sky, a monument of polished stone, glittering enchantments, and arrogant power. Before him, Ashwood huddled, a labyrinth of cramped, timber-framed hovels leaning against each other for support, their rooftops a patchwork of salvaged slate and tarred canvas. The air grew heavier, thick with the smells of coal smoke, cheap ale, unwashed bodies, and the pervasive, metallic tang of the ore refineries that were the district's lifeblood and its curse.
He walked, not as one returning home, but as an explorer charting alien territory. The mockery from the Vestibule still clung to him like a shroud, yet it was the least of his concerns. Something had shifted within his perception since he'd touched the Ascension Crystal. The world, once a solid, immutable tapestry, now seemed… layered.
At first, it was a headache, a faint, disorienting hum at the edge of his senses, like an off-key symphony played just beyond hearing. Then, as he focused, trying to dissect the sensation, the visual distortions began. Faint, impossibly thin lines, like spun moonlight or fractured glass, seemed to trace the edges of buildings, the branches of a struggling weed pushing through cracked cobblestones, even the flight path of a dirty pigeon. They weren't physical; they were… an overlay, a deeper stratum of information.
Around a lamppost powered by a sputtering, low-grade mana crystal, the lines shimmered more intensely, forming intricate, pulsing lattices that connected the crystal to the metal casing, to the very air around it. It was a script of light and shadow, utterly alien, yet Kael felt a nascent, terrifying familiarity with its rhythm, its structure.
"To read the world, one must first learn its alphabet." The ancient voice in his mind was calm, almost instructional.
He passed the 'Rusty Flagon,' Ashwood's primary den of despair. Even from the street, he could hear the slurred songs and angry shouts. Two men stumbled out, one clutching a bottle, the other nursing a fresh bruise. For a fleeting moment, Kael saw more than just their drunken stagger. He saw faint, chaotic threads of energy, dull red and flickering erratically, wrapped around their limbs, their hearts. The threads seemed to influence their clumsy movements, their clouded thoughts. Were these the 'threads of fate' that Threadbinders manipulated? Or something more fundamental?
The whispers started again as he delved deeper into Ashwood, quieter here, laced more with pity and a strange sort of vindication.
"There he is. Virein's boy."
"Heard he got nothing. Just like his father, bless his unfortunate soul."
"Worse than nothing. Some… 'Reality Code'. Pathetic."
He saw Selka, the baker's daughter, a girl his age with flour dusting her worn apron and eyes that were usually kind, though perpetually worried. She was sweeping the stoop of her father's shop. Her gaze met Kael's, and for a moment, he saw a flicker of sympathy, quickly replaced by a carefully constructed neutrality. She looked away, her shoulders hunching slightly, as if his very presence was a discomfort. Her own Ascension Day was next year. His failure was a grim omen for all commoners.
Kael didn't react. He continued towards the small, dilapidated shack on the edge of the district that he'd called home for as long as he could remember. He had no living family. His parents, he'd been told, were laborers lost in a refinery accident, their own Skills too weak to save them. He was a ward of the district, which meant he was tolerated, barely.
As he rounded a corner into a narrow alleyway, a shadow detached itself from a grimy wall. Tybalt. The aristocratic bully from the Vestibule, his 'Stone Fist' Skill still probably itching for use. He wasn't alone. Two of his sycophantic friends, equally thuggish, flanked him. Their expensive, well-kept clothes looked comically out of place amidst Ashwood's grime.
"Well, well, if it isn't the Master of Useless Scribbles," Tybalt sneered, his voice dripping with contempt. He cracked his knuckles, and a faint, greyish aura flickered around his fists – the tell-tale sign of his 'Stone Fist' Skill activating. "Thought you could just walk away after making me look like a fool, commoner?"
Kael stopped. He looked at Tybalt, and the world around the noble youth warped slightly in his perception. The shimmering lines he'd been noticing all day coalesced around Tybalt's fists with startling clarity. They weren't just lines; they were intricate, flowing sequences, like lines of luminous code, dictating the temporary alteration of Tybalt's flesh and bone into something harder, denser. Kael could see the command: [Target:Self.Limb.Fist > Attribute:Density.Set(Stone.Value)]. It was gibberish, a language he didn't understand, yet the structure of it, the intent, was suddenly, terrifyingly clear.
He also saw the flaws. The instability in the glowing script. The inefficient energy pathways. The inherent limitations of the Skill itself.
"I did nothing to you," Kael stated, his voice devoid of inflection. It wasn't a plea or a defense. It was a statement of fact.
"Nothing?" Tybalt's face contorted with rage. "You embarrassed me! And for that, you Ashwood trash need to learn your place!" He lunged, his right fist, now a grey, rock-like cudgel, aimed at Kael's face. The air displaced by the punch carried a faint scent of ozone and granite.
Time seemed to stretch. Kael saw the incoming fist, not just as a physical object, but as a confluence of intent and altered reality. He saw the trajectory, predicted by the glowing lines of its code. He saw the subtle shift in Tybalt's balance, the minute tremor in his supporting leg. And without conscious thought, Kael moved.
It wasn't a dodge born of agility. It was a movement of pure, mathematical precision. He shifted his weight, his head tilting a mere inch, his shoulder dipping. Tybalt's stone-hard fist grazed past his ear, the wind of its passage ruffling his dark hair. The force of the missed punch carried Tybalt forward, his momentum unchecked.
Tybalt roared in frustration, spinning, aiming a backhand with his other fist, also encased in stone. Again, Kael saw the script, the intent. This time, he didn't just evade. As Tybalt's arm swung, Kael took a single, precise step to the side and slightly forward, into the blind spot created by Tybalt's attack. His hand, moving with an eerie calm, came up and tapped Tybalt's extended elbow – not with force, but with a delicate, almost surgical precision, at a point where the shimmering code of the 'Stone Fist' skill seemed to flicker with instability.
There was no crack of bone, no satisfying thud. But something in the flow of Tybalt's Skill was… disrupted. The stony aura around his fist wavered, then dissipated with a soft phut. Tybalt yelped, not in pain, but in surprise and confusion, clutching his now-normal, and suddenly aching, elbow.
"What… what did you do?" Tybalt stammered, his bravado crumbling. His friends looked equally bewildered.
Kael simply looked at his own hand, then back at Tybalt. He hadn't done anything, not in the way they understood it. He hadn't used a Skill. He had… interacted with the underlying structure.
"A flaw in the pattern, however small, can unravel the whole." The voice in his mind was a whisper of approval.
"Your technique is inefficient," Kael said, his voice flat, analytical. "The mana conversion leaks. The structural integrity of the alteration is compromised at the joint during rapid extension."
Tybalt and his cronies stared, mouths agape. It wasn't the response they expected. It wasn't defiance, or fear, or even anger. It was like being critiqued by a master artisan after botching a simple task. It was profoundly, deeply unsettling.
"What… what are you talking about?" one of Tybalt's friends finally managed, unnerved by Kael's cold, grey eyes that seemed to see right through them.
Kael didn't answer. He simply turned and continued walking down the alley, leaving the three nobles standing there, confused, a little scared, and utterly deflated. Their desire to inflict pain had evaporated, replaced by a creeping sense of unease.
As Kael reached his shack – a single, damp room with a straw pallet, a wobbly table, and a single, grimy window – he felt a new kind of exhaustion. It wasn't physical. It was the strain of processing a new, overwhelming stream of sensory data. The world was no longer simple. It was a cacophony of hidden scripts, of underlying laws he was only just beginning to perceive.
He sat on the edge of his pallet, the jeers from the Vestibule, the pity from Ashwood, the confused anger of Tybalt, all fading into the background. His "Skill," Reality Code, wasn't a joke. It wasn't useless.
It was a lens. A key.
A terrifying, exhilarating, and utterly isolating key.
He looked at the cracked mud wall of his shack. He saw the faint, shimmering lines of its physical structure, the almost invisible script that declared [Object:Wall.Material:Mud-Wattle.State:Stable(Degrading)].
They had called him an error. They believed him skill-less.
Kael closed his eyes. The silence of the shack pressed in, but it was a different silence now. It was the silence of a universe waiting to be read, its most fundamental language slowly, painstakingly, revealing itself to its sole, returning student.
He wasn't bound by the world's rules. He was beginning to see the rules themselves. And the implication, cold and vast as a dying star, settled into his core.
If he could read the code… eventually… he might learn to write it.