Dawn in Zerzura was a slow, hot blush across the sky. It started as a pale grey line on the horizon. Then it turned to soft pink. Then to a burning, brilliant orange. The sun rose fast in the desert. It brought heat with it instantly.
In Bran's workshop, the air was already warm. It was warm with the stored heat from the forge. The fire was banked low, just glowing coals. But the heavy stone walls held the warmth from yesterday's work.
Kaito stood in the center of the cleared floor. His hands were clenched at his sides. His knuckles were white. His eyes were closed tightly.
"Feel the air," Bran rumbled from his stool by the main workbench. The dwarf had a large, chipped mug of strong-smelling tea in his hand. The steam curled up into the still air. "Not with your skin. Not with your lungs. With your… whatever that thing inside you is. Your System. Your core. Feel the energy in the room."
"I don't know how," Kaito said. Frustration crept into his voice. It had been a long, sleepless night. He had been standing in this spot for what felt like an hour. He felt nothing but his own tiredness. "It doesn't work like that. It gives me screens. It gives me skills. I don't 'feel' magic."
"You know how to make it do things," Elara chimed in. She was perched on a high stool by the tool wall. She was polishing a set of delicate, wicked-looking lockpicks with a soft cloth. "You tell it to shoot bolts of force. You tell it to make your brain work faster. You tell it to fix broken springs. So now, tell it to listen. To be quiet. To turn its senses inward."
Kaito took a deep, slow breath. He tried to push the frustration down. He focused inward. On the familiar blue screens in his mind. He pulled up his main status screen. The numbers glowed steadily.
[Status]
Name: Kaito
Level: 3
HP: 40/40
MP: 30/30
Title: Otherworlder, Anomaly
Condition: Soul Fatigue (12 hours remaining)
System Instability: 14%
[Glitch Meter: 17%]
The Glitch Meter was the key. He knew it. It was a measure of the chaotic, wrong energy inside him. The energy that pulsed like a bad radio signal. The energy that had attracted Lilith from across dimensions. The energy that had confused and angered Seraphina. He needed to control it. To hide it. To make it silent.
He imagined the meter like a glass of water. The water inside was the glitch energy. It sloshed and shimmered. He imagined putting a heavy lid on the glass. Sealing it. Containing the slosh.
Nothing happened. The number 17% did not change. He didn't feel any different.
"Stop trying to crush it," Bran's voice cut through his concentration. The dwarf's tone was calm but firm. "You cannot crush a river. You cannot wish away the tide. You can only dam it. Or you can channel it. You must feel for the flow. Find where it comes from. Find the source spring."
Kaito shifted his focus. He stopped trying to imagine lids on glasses. Instead, he focused on the actual feeling of the energy itself. The constant, low buzz in his veins. The faint static behind his eyes, like the hum of an old television. It was always there. A background noise in his soul.
He followed that hum inward. Past his muscles. Past his bones. Deep into the center of his being. To his core.
And there, he felt it.
It was not a glass of water. It was a tiny, fiercely spinning star. The star was made of blue light—clean mana. But the star was cracked. Fine, hairline fractures ran across its surface. And from those cracks, red light leaked out. A violent, staticky red. The Glitch.
The Glitch Meter was the measure of the leak. Of the red light spilling out from the cracked star of his System core.
He couldn't plug the cracks. Not yet. The System Instability: 14% was the damage to the star itself. The structural weakness. To plug the cracks, he would have to heal the instability. That required time, rest, and something he didn't understand yet.
But maybe… maybe he could catch the leak. Contain the red light as it spilled out. Wrap the cracked star in something that would absorb the spill, or hide it.
He imagined wrapping the spinning, fractured star in a fine, tight net. A net made of his own will. Not to stop the spinning. Not to seal the cracks. Just to catch the red sparks flying off it. To hold them close, so they didn't spill out into the world.
A new notification appeared in his vision. It was blue, not red. A success.
[New Skill Unlocked: Internal Dampening Lvl 1.]
[Description: Allows conscious suppression of external energy signature. Creates a mental 'shroud' around the core, reducing the detectability of Glitch energy emissions by approximately 20%. Active cost: 1 MP per minute.]
[Passive effect unlocked: Glitch Meter growth from emotional spikes is reduced by 10%.]
He opened his eyes. The workshop came back into focus. Bran was watching him. Elara had stopped polishing her tools. "I did it," Kaito said. His voice was a little breathless. "I think I did it. I unlocked a new skill. It's called Internal Dampening."
Bran nodded slowly. A glint of approval showed in his deep-set eyes. "Good. That is the first step. The most important step. Now, you must keep it active. All day. Every moment you are awake. You must make it as natural as breathing. You are a lantern in the dark right now, boy. A bright, sputtering lantern. We need to turn you into a single, shielded ember. A spark hidden in a closed fist."
Kaito focused again. He activated the Internal Dampening skill. He felt a subtle but immediate change. A tension settled in the front of his mind. It was a constant, low-grade effort. Like holding a muscle slightly flexed. He watched his MP bar. It began to tick down slowly, one point per minute.
MP: 29/30… 28/30…
"It's using mana," he reported. "Constantly."
"Everything has a cost," Elara said, going back to her polishing. "Better to spend mana than to spend your life. Mana comes back. Your head on a Legion pike doesn't."
"Now," Bran said, setting his mug down and standing up. His joints popped. "Let us see what you can really do. With control. Without blowing another hole in my wall or calling every monster in a ten-mile radius. Show me your basic skills. One at a time. With precision."
The morning became a training session. A grueling, focused, exhausting training session.
First, Mana Bolt. Bran cleared a space against the far wall. He set up a stack of old, cracked clay tiles—discards from a roofer. "Accuracy first. Then power. Then control."
Kaito stood fifteen feet away. He raised his hand. With Internal Dampening active, he had to split his focus. He fired a basic Mana Bolt. The blue sphere shot out. It hit the top tile dead center. The tile cracked in half.
"Good. Now, make it smaller. A needle, not a hammer. Punch a clean hole."
Kaito focused. He visualized the bolt compressing. Becoming tighter. More focused. He fired again. The bolt was thinner. It hit the next tile with a sharper crack. It punched a neat, round hole through the center, leaving the rest of the tile intact.
"Better. Now, the opposite. A wider blast. Less piercing, more concussive. To knock someone off their feet, not kill them."
This was harder. Kaito willed the energy to spread out as it left his hand. The next bolt was wider, shimmering. It hit the tile with a thump. The entire tile shattered into a dozen pieces.
He learned quickly that fine control cost more MP. The needle shot used 4 MP. The wide blast used 7. Efficiency was key.
After thirty minutes of this, a notification chimed.
[Skill Level Up: Mana Bolt is now Level 3.]
[Increased versatility. Reduced base MP cost to 3. Enhanced shaping control.]
Next was Enhanced Cognition. With no immediate threat, Bran had him use it to observe. To learn.
"Activate it. Tell me how many tools are on the west wall."
Kaito activated the skill.The world slowed. His mind accelerated. He looked at the tool wall. He didn't just see tools. He saw each one individually. He counted them in a heartbeat. "Thirty-seven. Two hammers are missing from their hooks. The third chisel from the left has a hairline crack in the handle."
Bran grunted, impressed. "Now listen. Tell me what the city is saying."
Kaito closed his eyes. He let the sounds of the workshop fade. He pushed his hearing outward. Through the stone walls. Into the street. He heard the cacophony of the city. But with Enhanced Cognition, he could pick it apart. He heard a merchant two streets over arguing about the price of dates. He heard the rhythmic clang of a blacksmith's hammer three blocks away. He heard a mother singing softly to a child. He heard the flutter of a pigeon's wings on a rooftop above them.
He reported it all. The skill ended, and the world snapped back to normal speed. His head throbbed slightly from the strain.
[Skill Level Up: Enhanced Cognition is now Level 2.]
[Duration increased to 15 seconds. Sensory acuity improved.]
Then came Minor Reality Mend. Bran brought him a series of broken items from his "junk" pile. A gemstone with a clean crack down the middle. A single, torn page from an old ledger. A chair leg that had splintered.
The gemstone was easy. Kaito touched the crack. He focused on the "error" of the break. He let a trickle of Glitch energy interact with it. The crack glowed and sealed shut. The gem was whole.
Glitch Meter: 18%.
The torn page was impossible. The tear was complex. The fibers of the paper were ripped and tangled. His skill couldn't parse the "error" in a way it could fix. It was too messy. He shook his head. "I can't. It's… too broken."
Bran nodded. "Understood. There are limits."
The splintered chair leg was somewhere in between. It was a clean break, but with small splinters. Kaito focused on the main break. He mended it. The splinters remained, but the leg was structurally sound again.
[Skill Level Up: Minor Reality Mend is now Level 2.]
[Can now mend slightly more complex fractures and minor material fatigue.]
[Glitch Meter: 19%]
Finally, he demonstrated Shadow Spark. Bran didn't have shadow constructs lying around. So the dwarf did something surprising. He muttered a few words in a guttural language. He made a twisting motion with his fingers.
A small, dark figure appeared on the blank stone wall. It was a simple illusion—a shadow-puppet of a dog that ran in place.
"Use your spark on it," Bran said.
Kaito aimed. He fired Shadow Spark. The murky, static-filled bolt hit the shadow-dog.
The effect was instant and total. The shadow didn't flinch or distort. It vanished. It was erased from the wall as if it had never been drawn. Not even a smudge remained.
Bran's bushy eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. He was silent for a long moment. "A direct counter," he murmured, more to himself than to Kaito. "A perfect, absolute counter to shadow magic. Not a resistance. An erasure. No wonder the Shadow Sovereign is so obsessed. You are not just a strange star to her. You are a living weapon. A thing that can unmake the very fabric of her being."
The thought made Kaito feel sick to his stomach. He wasn't a weapon. He didn't want to be a weapon. He was just a guy trying to survive. Trying to understand the broken thing inside him.
They broke for a simple lunch—flatbread, hard cheese, and dried figs. As he ate, Kaito explored his System menus more deeply. He found the Bond Links tab again. This time, he focused on it, willing it to show more detail.
The screen expanded. The two entries grew, showing more text, more data.
1. Seraphina (Valkyrie Captain, Celestial Legion)
Status: ❤️⚔️🌀 (Disoriented / Intensified)
Glitch Resonance: Medium
Last Interaction: Catastrophic Glitch Pulse. Direct emotional/mental feedback.
Emotional Log: Confusion (High), Duty (High), Latent Empathy (Medium), Suppressed Guilt (Low).
Note: Subject is actively suppressing the bond using religious meditation techniques. Her conditioning is creating high internal conflict. The bond remains strong but is being resisted.
2. Lilith (Shadow Sovereign, Calamity)
Status: ❤️🔥💢 (Grieving / Rage)
Glitch Resonance: Very High
Last Interaction: Forced Separation / Betrayal.
Emotional Log: Profound Grief (Extreme), Betrayal (High), Possessive Rage (High), Loneliness (Extreme).
Note: Bond is deep and primarily empathic. Subject is not resisting the bond; she is embracing it. She is using the bond as a scrying focus to trace general location. Active search in progress. Signal strength fluctuating.
He stared at the hearts. The symbols. The clinical, System-generated text describing such raw, powerful emotions. This wasn't just a game interface. It was a map. A map of terrifying, real emotional connections he had forged through chaos and desperation.
"Bran, Elara," he said quietly, putting his bread down. "My System… it's doing more than giving me skills. It's creating links. With people. Real, emotional links. It's analyzing their feelings. Their conflicts."
Elara stopped chewing. She put her own food down. "Explain. In small words."
He told them about the Bond Links screen. He told them what it said about Seraphina's confusion, her internal war between duty and something else. He told them about Lilith's grief, her rage, and the chilling note: Active search in progress.
"That… is deeply problematic," Bran said, stroking his beard. The copper wires in his braids glinted in the lamplight. "Forced emotional bonds are the stuff of dark curses. Of love potions and obsession spells. They twist the will. They create dependencies that are not natural."
"I don't think it's forcing them to feel a certain way," Kaito tried to explain. He struggled to find the words. "It's more like… it's amplifying what's already there? Or it's connecting us because we shared incredibly strong, intense emotions during the Glitch Pulses. Seraphina was already conflicted. I saw her memory. She has guilt about her friend's death. About following rules instead of 'light.' Lilith was already lonely. Already possessive. The Glitch just… took those existing feelings and lit them on fire. Made a bridge between us."
"Either way," Elara said, her green eyes serious, "it means the Valkyrie's hunt is personal now. It's not just orders. It's a conflict in her own soul she has to resolve by catching you. And the Calamity… she's not just chasing an escaped prisoner. She's chasing a piece of her own heart she thinks you stole. That makes them both more dangerous. More unpredictable."
Kaito's small appetite vanished completely. He pushed the rest of his food away. The sanctuary of the workshop felt thinner. The walls felt less solid. He was bringing a storm with him wherever he went. A storm of light and a storm of shadow.
After lunch, Bran changed tactics. "You need to understand what you are dampening. And what you are not. Sense the mana in the room. The natural mana."
With Internal Dampening still active—a constant drain on his focus and MP—Kaito tried. He closed his eyes again. He reached out with his senses, not for Glitch, but for the ambient magic of the world.
He felt it. It was different. The low, steady, comforting heat from the forge's embers—that was Fire Mana. The solid, silent, immovable strength of the stone walls and floor—Earth Mana. A faint, swirling trace from Elara's enchanted lockpicks on the bench—a hint of Air and Illusion magic, subtle and clever.
"And your own?" Bran asked. "What does your own energy feel like now, with the dampening?"
Kaito looked inward. His own energy was fundamentally different. It wasn't pure, elemental mana. It was mana shot through with the Glitch—the red static, the chaotic, "wrong" frequency. The Internal Dampening skill was like a muffler on a loud engine. It quieted the noise of the wrongness, but the engine—the powerful, glitched core—was still running. The power itself remained. It was just harder to hear from a distance.
"Now," Bran said, his voice dropping into a graver tone. "The most important lesson. Your Limit Break. And your Glitch Meter. Explain them to me again. In detail."
Kaito did. He described the Limit Break: Seed skill. Its terrifying, overwhelming power. The 300% increase in everything. And the cost: the guaranteed Glitch Pulse at the end, the soul strain, the cooldown. He explained how the Glitch Meter filled from stress, from strong emotions, from using certain skills. He explained what happened at 100%—the uncontrolled pulse, the distortion of reality, the damage to his System Instability.
Bran listened. His face grew grimmer with each sentence. When Kaito finished, the dwarf let out a long, slow breath. "Lad. You are a walking cataclysm. A self-contained disaster waiting for a trigger. Each pulse is you screaming your location to every sensitive being for miles. It is a flare in the night sky. And each one damages your soul. This 'System Instability'—it is not a status effect. It is a mortal wound to your very being. And it gets worse every time you break your limits."
"I know," Kaito whispered. The weight of it was crushing.
"The only solution is control," Bran said, fixing him with a hard, unblinking stare. "Absolute, iron-clad control. So you never need the Limit Break. And so you can manage the Glitch Meter without it ever spilling over. You must become the master of the dam. Not the prisoner of the flood." He leaned forward. "This means mastering your emotions. Fear, anger, panic, despair—even great joy or surprise. They are fuel. They will feed the Glitch. You must find a center. A calm place inside yourself. An anchor. You must live there, especially when the world is trying to tear you apart."
A calm. A center. While being hunted by a legion of holy warriors and an ancient, grieving Calamity. It sounded like a cruel joke. An impossible task.
But he had no choice. It was that, or break.
As the afternoon sun began to fade, painting the high window in shades of gold, Kaito returned to his small room. He needed to meditate. To practice holding the Internal Dampening for longer periods. To find that elusive "calm."
He sat on his cot, cross-legged. He focused on his breathing. In, and out. He focused on the contained, spinning star in his core. He focused on the net of will holding in the red light.
That's when he felt it.
A tug. A cold, deep, sorrowful pull on the Bond Link. It was not a sound. It was a sensation in his chest. A hollow ache that was not his own.
He opened the Bond Links screen. Lilith's status was flickering. The text was unstable.
Lilith: ❤️🔥💢(Grieving/Rage) >> ACTIVE SEEKING PULSE DETECTED.
She was doing something. Actively using the bond. Not just feeling it. Using it as a tool. A dowsing rod for his soul.
He didn't reach out. He was afraid to. But he focused on the bond. He tried not to send anything down it. He just… listened.
A wave of foreign emotion washed over him. It was faint, like a distant radio signal, but clear.
Empty halls. The silence is no longer peaceful. It is accusing. The bowl is still on the table. The soup is cold now. A skin has formed on the surface. The garden… the silverweep leaves are trembling. They miss your footsteps. The cold is back. It is deeper than before. Because now I remember the warmth. I had forgotten what warmth felt like. And you reminded me. And then you took it away. Why? Why does everything beautiful leave? Why does everything warm turn to ash?
It was her grief. Her profound, centuries-old loneliness, carved open fresh by his escape. It was a void. A sucking, empty void of sorrow.
And beneath the grief, like bedrock under a dark sea, was something else. A dark, iron-hard, determined resolve.
I will find you. I will bring you home. The world is full of sharp edges. It is full of bright, burning lights that will scar you. They will try to cage you, to cut the glitch from your soul. They do not understand its beauty. I do. I will keep you safe. Even if I have to fold the world in shadows. Even if I have to drown every sun in darkness to do it. You are mine. My anchor. My star. And I am coming.
The connection faded. The wave of emotion receded. Kaito was left shaking on his cot. A cold sweat coated his brow. His own heart was hammering. Her emotions were so vast. So deep. They were an ocean, and he was a cup. If he wasn't careful, they would drown him.
He couldn't let her find him. He couldn't go back to that beautiful, suffocating cage. But a part of him—the part that knew hospitals and loneliness and pain—ached for her sorrow. He understood it. In a way no one else possibly could.
This was the true price of the System. Not the MP cost. Not the instability. This connection. This terrible, unwanted responsibility for emotions he never meant to create. For hearts he had accidentally broken and inflamed.
A soft, urgent knock on his door. It was Bran. The dwarf's face was tense.
"Lad. We have a problem. Elara just got back from her rounds. The Legion isn't just posting wanted bills. They have full squads at every major city gate. They are questioning everyone. Checking papers. Using detection magic. And there are… rumors coming in with the last caravan from the east. Travelers talking about a moving storm. A storm of pure shadow on the horizon. It's not moving with the wind. It's heading this way. Deliberately."
Lilith. She was coming. Not just searching. Moving. And the Legion was tightening the net around the city. The walls were closing in.
Kaito made a decision. He had known it was coming. The sanctuary was temporary. He stood up.
"I have to leave," Kaito said. His voice was steadier than he felt. "Tonight. I'm putting you both in too much danger. The bounty is too high. Her search is too close."
Bran shook his head, but it wasn't a refusal. It was a gesture of frustration. "You won't make it a block. Your dampening is better, but it's new. It's not perfect. And you look like you. The dye helps, but your eyes, your posture… you stick out like a sore thumb to anyone looking for a five-thousand-gold prize."
"Then I need a way to hide completely," Kaito said, his mind racing. "Just for a minute. To slip through a checkpoint. To become someone else." His thoughts spun, combining what he knew. Shadow Spark disrupted shadows. What if he could do the opposite? What if he could use the Glitch not to erase shadow, but to amplify it? To weave it? To wrap himself in it like a cloak?
Skill Fusion. He needed to fuse Shadow Spark with… something else. With the concept of self. With Internal Dampening. To turn the dampening field inward and outward at the same time.
"Bran," Kaito said, a spark of desperate hope in his eyes. "I need to try something. Right now. It might be dangerous. It might make things worse."
The dwarf studied him. He saw the determination. He saw the fear. He saw the glimmer of an idea. He nodded once, a sharp, decisive motion. "The back storage room. Stone walls on all sides. Thick door. Do it there. And for the love of the forge, try not to unravel reality."
To be continued...