Nothing should happen in the City of Iron at three o'clock in the morning—nothing except rats fighting over spoiled bean curd and drunks arguing about whose turn it is to forget their own name. Down in the gutter quarter, that rule is almost a law: silence, darkness, resignation.
Tonight, however, the darkness hums.
I crouch beneath Maiden Bridge, knees tucked to my chest, a stolen stub of alchemist's chalk pinched between shaking fingers. Each breath tastes of river rot and furnace smoke, but I ignore the stench and keep drawing circles—perfect circles—on the damp stone.
One circle equals one, two circles equals two, and so on, until I add the last crucial mark: a slash that makes a circle a zero. My entire life has been about that slash—about the difference between something and nothing.
Zero is the one thing no one bothers to steal, I remind myself, tracing a larger ring around the smaller ones like a protective nest. Zero can be tucked inside a pocket no guard will ever search.
A rumble shakes the bridge overhead. The City's Iron Tram, a chain of boxy carriages powered by Pulse furnaces, clanks across the rails. Sparks drift through the ancient wooden slats in the bridge deck, glowing cinders that swirl like angry fireflies. Each spark is a seed of raw energy—Strata in the Spectral Authority's math—tiny, hot, and dangerous.
I swallow hard. If even one ember lands on my chalk map, the whole thing could ignite into a premature spell. Just finish the grid, I think. Then run.
...
Why risk everything on chalk and chance? Because tonight's map is the biggest secret in the gutter quarter: a ley-diagram showing where Spectral lines—rivers of invisible power—cross beneath the city. I pilfered the coordinates from a drunken Flux-surveyor who tried to pay for wine with promises instead of coin. He woke up without the map, without his purse, and without his memory of me. That last bit wasn't theft; he'd simply tried to outdrink a memory-burning liquor called Echo's Regret. A single sip and half a day vanishes.
His loss, my opportunity. If the map is right, there's a Null-Well under this bridge—a spot where the power of absolute nothing seeps up from the Deep Null itself. Null-Wells are priceless. The Concord of Twelve, the empire-wide council that polices all Spectra, claims ownership of each one. Anyone caught meddling with a well can expect a public execution or, worse, conscription into the Paradox Carnival.
So why am I here? Because I'm nobody. Literally. I don't have a name, a birth record, or a single copper loud to my sorry existence. The Concord only notices people who exist on paper. Paper costs money. I don't.
The tram rumbles away, sparks fading—except one. A single ember lingers in the air, a stubborn mote of orange drifting like a lazy snowflake. I hold my breath, willing it to float elsewhere. Fate is rarely kind to gutter rats.
The ember lands dead-center on my largest circle. The chalk burns blue.
Within a heartbeat, the entire diagram flares, lines rising from flat stone into hovering threads of silver-white light. The air roars like a furnace bellows. My ears pop. River water ripples against its banks even though no wind blows.
Words materialize inside my skull, crisp and cold like temple chimes:
Flux Detected: 0.01
Spectral Mass: 0
Constraint: Undefined
—Initialize Riddle?— Y/N
My first reaction isn't fear; it's awe. Kids on the street whisper about the Spectral Interface—messages the Authority built into reality itself—but I always figured they were bedtime stories to scare apprentices into locking their doors. Yet here the Interface is, talking to me.
I blink, trying to steady my thoughts. Flux measures how quickly you can shove power through your body. A reading of 0.01 is a cosmic joke—one drop of water in a desert. Spectral Mass is how much raw energy you own. Mine is zero; naturally. Constraint is a self-imposed rule, the personal riddle that stops your power from devouring you. Without a Riddle, people go mad or implode.
Riddles usually take the form of vows—I will never lie,I will always repay a debt,I must sing a hymn before casting—limits that keep power bottled behind purpose. The Interface is asking whether I'd like to set one.
"Not yet," I whisper, too soft for anyone but the Interface—or maybe the river—to hear. "I don't even know the question."
But then—
Boots splash behind me. A shadow blocks the alley mouth where river meets cobblestone. Standing there is Brack Morrow, a gladiator who fights in the Blood-Arena three nights a week and tears people in half the other four for fun. He's taller than any sane man, chest armored in rust-red plates scribbled with bounty tags.
His eyes fix on my suspended chalk lines. Greedy eyes, bright with sellable secrets.
"Street-rat," he calls, voice echoing under the bridge, "that diagram just shot a flare the length of the district. Concord scribes will arrive by dawn. Hand it over, and I might settle for selling you alive."
I scramble backward, bare feet slipping on slime. My half-Spectral senses—still flickering from the Interface—tag Brack's outline in pulsing colors: Pulse 5 / Nova 1. He's a mid-tier powerhouse, a man who can launch kinetic shockwaves with his heartbeats and superheat steel with a whisper. I, by comparison, glow so faintly I'm practically a candle beside a lighthouse.
He hefts an iron war-pick longer than I am tall. The tip sizzles; he's charging it already.
Division by Undefined
Power equals Mass divided by Constraint. The formula races through my mind, something an old math tutor once muttered before he died of plague. If my Mass is zero, no amount of division will create power—unless the denominator is something special. Something like "undefined."
The Interface still waits for my decision, silent but present, like a door half open in a burning building. Brack steps closer. His war-pick whistles through an experimental swing, cracking stone. The river trembles.
"Last chance," he says. "Be clever. Sell me the coordinates, I sell you to a healer, maybe you limp another day."
Clever. Zero needs cunning to matter. I look at the blazing map and the silver strands connecting each circle. The ember sits at the heart of everything, a tiny sun.
"I choose undefined," I whisper, palms flat on the wet stone. Then louder, to the Interface: "My Constraint is Undefined. I refuse to be measured."
Warning: Paradox Risk 97 %.
—Continue?— Y/N
Brack lunges. I scream "YES!" to the night.
Silence detonates. It isn't the absence of sound; it's the murder of it. The river freezes mid-splash. Ember sparks stall in midair, each a tiny bronze statue. Brack, mid-stride, becomes a painting of a man about to kill.
My consciousness tunnels outward and inward at once. I see every zero within a five-block radius—cracks between cobbles, the empty spaces inside knots of rope, the hollow of a beggar's missing tooth. Every zero is suddenly me.
A flood of Interface data scrolls behind my eyes:
Spectral Mass: 0 ⇌ ∞ (Zero-Infinity Superposition)
Flux: Variable
Rung Achieved: Null Overtone
Effect: User exists simultaneously at all zero-points within radius.
I blink and find I have no body—yet I am body, plural, scattered like dandelion seeds. Places where nothing resides, I reside. Where cobblestones touch, the thin sliver of gap is me. Where Brack's armor plates don't quite meet, the seam is me.
Interesting.
I let curiosity guide a fragment of myself into Brack's gauntlet. Heat hums through the metal as his Pulse energy charges the pick. I borrow a single droplet of that power—one—you might call it a spark of Strata—and pull it into my superposition.
Notice: Constraint "Undefined" forbids permanence; any stolen Strata will revert to zero in 3 heartbeats.
Three beats. Practically a lifetime when you're everywhere at once.
Three Heartbeats
First beat: I pour the spark back into Brack's war-pick—but upside down. Energy subtracts instead of multiplies. The pick head crystallizes into brittle glass.
Second beat: I reappear behind Brack, still formless but present enough to whisper, "Run." The word echoes as a command laced with borrowed power. His muscles obey before his mind can refuse. He stumbles forward, slipping on the frozen time-river.
Third beat: The stolen spark implodes to zero, dragging all residual heat with it. Brack's pick shatters like sugar glass. The frozen silence shivers, cracks—and reality snaps back.
River water roars. Ember sparks fall, hissing out. Brack tumbles face-first into mud on the opposite bank, weaponless, dazed, but alive. Good for him.
The Null-Well map—my beautiful diagram—dissolves into harmless chalk dust, its energy spent. I thud into my own flesh, lungs burning. All those scattered selves condense back into a single, hungry, frail boy in ragged trousers.
The Interface dims but does not vanish:
Null Overtone Stabilization requires Anchor.
—Potential Anchors Detected: "Name," "Purpose," "Promise."—
Select?
Blood trickles from my nose. Stars burst behind my eyelids. An Anchor will keep me from tearing apart each time I use the Overtone. Anchors are like knots in a rope: choose well, the rope holds; choose badly, it frays.
A name? I've never had one. Names cost coin at the city registrar, and coin is something minus me. A purpose? Stay alive—too small. A promise…
I look at the bridge, the river, the empty chalk. Above, the Iron Tram recedes into industrial night, its sparks now ordinary.
"I promise," I croak, voice ragged, "to solve the impossible fraction. To prove zero can be anything."
Anchor Accepted.
Paradox Risk reduced to 35 %.
Good luck.
The Interface falls silent. Good luck indeed.
Brack groans across the water. His Pulse aura flickers but doesn't swell; he's spent. Soon guards or rival bounty hunters will arrive. The ley-diagram is gone, but rumors are faster than hoofbeats. I need to move.
With legs like wet paper, I push myself upright. Mud squelches between my toes—yet where I step, the mud leaves no footprint. Zero walking on zero.
Behind me, the river swallows what remains of the chalk and the ember. Ahead lies the labyrinth of alleys, market stalls, and abandoned furnaces I call home. Somewhere in that tangle, I will find a name, a mentor, or another riddle to keep me alive.
But for tonight, it's enough to breathe, to feel the ordinary cold, and to know that somewhere between zero and infinity, a path has opened only I can walk.
Let's count, I think, and vanish into the dark.