Elisha woke to the sound of screaming.
He bolted upright in the narrow bed, sweat coating his skin. The screaming cut off abruptly, leaving only the normal sounds of the city—distant voices, creaking metal, the ever-present hum of the barrier generators that kept Haven Seven from being overrun by the dead.
Just a dream. Or a memory. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference anymore.
He splashed cold water on his face from the washbasin and tried to shake off the lingering images. The guard's head hitting stone. The wet sound it made. The way Cardinal Thessa's voice cracked when she ordered her own people to let him pass.
Three days since his escape, and he still couldn't wrap his head around what had happened. What he'd become.
A soft knock interrupted his thoughts. "You awake in there?" Tommy's voice carried through the thin door.
"Yeah, come in."
The boy slipped inside, carrying a tray with what looked like actual bread and something that might've been cheese. "Vera wants to see you downstairs. But she said eat first. Says you look like death warmed over."
Elisha's stomach growled at the sight of real food. "Thanks, kid. This is... this is good of you."
Tommy shrugged, but his cheeks reddened slightly. "Ain't nothing. We all gotta eat."
As Elisha tore into the bread, Tommy perched on the windowsill and watched the street below. "Vera's been asking questions about you. About how you... you know. Did what you did."
"What kind of questions?"
"Like, did you study anywhere? Did anyone teach you? Did you find any old books or artifacts?" Tommy glanced back at him. "She seems real interested in the fact that you just... woke up one day and could do it."
Elisha paused mid-bite. "Is that unusual?"
"Mister, most people spend years trying to awaken their Path. My cousin Marcus, he's been studying Alchemist rituals for three years now, and he's still Sequence 9. Can barely turn water into wine, and even then it tastes like piss."
The boy counted on his fingers. "Then there's old Henrik down on the docks. He awakened as a Knight maybe ten years back, been stuck at Sequence 8 ever since. Says the ritual to reach Sequence 7 needs twenty monster cores and a blessed weapon, and he ain't got either."
"Monster cores?"
"You really don't know anything, do you?" Tommy looked at him with a mixture of pity and amazement. "When the awakened die, they leave behind these crystal things. Pure concentrated power. You need 'em to advance, along with other stuff. Relics, sacrifices, catalysts."
Elisha set down the bread, his appetite suddenly gone. "Sacrifices?"
"Different for each Path, they say. Some need blood, some need territory, some need..." Tommy's voice dropped to a whisper. "Some need people."
The golden light flickered behind Elisha's eyes for just a moment, and with it came the memory of that voice in his cell. *Blood calls to blood. Will calls to will.*
"The System," he said quietly. "What is it exactly?"
Tommy blinked. "You mean the interface? The thing that tells you when you advance?"
"Yeah, that."
"Nobody really knows. My grandmother used to say it was the last gift of the old gods, back before the cycles started. A way for regular folks to touch divine power." Tommy swung his legs absently. "Course, my grandmother also said vegetables could talk if you listened hard enough, so maybe don't put too much stock in that."
Elisha almost smiled despite everything. "What do you think it is?"
"I think it's hungry," Tommy said matter-of-factly. "Every time someone advances, something has to die. Monster cores, sacrificial victims, destroyed territories. It's like it feeds on destruction, you know? Makes you stronger by taking strength from somewhere else."
The boy jumped down from the windowsill. "But hey, what do I know? I'm just a street kid. Maybe Vera can explain it better."
After Tommy left, Elisha sat alone with his thoughts. The bread turned to ash in his mouth as he replayed the conversation. Twenty monster cores to reach Sequence 7. How many people had died to make those cores? How many more would die when those cores were used?
And he'd skipped all of that, gone straight from nothing to Sequence 8 in a single night.
*What am I?*
The question followed him downstairs to the main room where Vera waited. She sat at the same corner table as before, but today she wasn't alone. Three other figures occupied the nearby seats—two men and a woman, all dressed in the black leather that marked them as Null operatives.
"Elisha," Vera said without looking up from the map spread across the table. "Good. We need to talk."
He approached carefully, noting how the other operatives watched him. Not hostile, exactly, but wary. Like they were sizing up a dangerous animal.
"These are my associates," Vera continued. "Marcus, Jin, and Kessara. They've been investigating your... situation."
"What situation?"
Vera finally looked up, her storm-cloud eyes studying his face. "The situation where a dock worker with no training, no resources, and no connections somehow awakened as a Controller and jumped straight to Sequence 8."
Marcus, a scarred man with prematurely gray hair, spoke up. "I've been tracking awakened individuals for fifteen years. Never seen anything like what you did in that cathedral."
"The normal progression is well-documented," added Jin, younger but with the same watchful intensity. "Sequence 9 requires basic understanding of your Path's principles. Usually takes months of study just to achieve initial awakening."
Kessara, the woman, leaned forward. "Sequence 8 requires mastery of fundamental techniques, plus two monster cores and an occult relic. The standard time frame is two to five years, assuming you can find the necessary materials."
"But you," Vera said softly, "you did it overnight. In your sleep. Without any of the required components."
Elisha felt their attention like physical weight. "Maybe the System made a mistake."
Marcus barked out a laugh. "The System doesn't make mistakes. It's been consistent for thirty-nine thousand cycles. The rules don't just... change."
"Except maybe they do," Jin said thoughtfully. "We've been getting reports from across the wasteland. Small things, mostly. Rituals succeeding with insufficient materials. Awakenings happening faster than expected. Power manifesting in unusual ways."
"The barriers are weakening," Kessara added. "Between the cycles, between the Sequences, maybe between reality and whatever lies beyond it."
Vera traced a finger along the map, following routes between different Havens. "Which brings us to our current problem. Word of your escape has reached every major faction. They all want to know how you did what you did."
"And some of them want to cut you open to find out," Marcus said bluntly.
"The Ghoul Alchemists especially," Jin continued. "They've been experimenting with artificial Sequence advancement. A natural anomaly like you would be... valuable to their research."
Elisha's blood ran cold. "You're talking about vivisection."
"Among other things." Vera rolled up the map and stood. "Which is why we need to move quickly. The longer you stay in one place, the easier you are to find."
"Move where?"
"North, toward the Shattered Isles. There's an old research facility there, pre-collapse. The Fallen Sages have been using it to study cycle patterns and System anomalies." Vera's expression was grim. "If anyone can figure out what's happening to you, it's them."
"And if they can't?"
"Then we find other options. But staying here isn't one of them." She gestured toward the window. "My scouts report unusual activity around the Haven's perimeter. Ghoul Alchemist bio-sensors, Weeping Sun patrols, even some Ocean God Worshipper tide-walkers moving inland."
Marcus cracked his knuckles. "Like sharks circling blood in the water."
"How long do we have?" Elisha asked.
"Hours, maybe less." Vera was already moving toward the stairs. "Pack light. We leave as soon as it's dark."
As the others dispersed to make preparations, Elisha found himself alone with his thoughts again. The weight of what he'd learned pressed down on him like physical mass. The System that had awakened him fed on death and destruction. The power he'd gained so easily had cost others years of struggle and sacrifice.
And now he was being hunted by factions that saw him as either a threat to be eliminated or a resource to be exploited.
Tommy appeared at his elbow, moving with the silent grace that kept street kids alive in places like Haven Seven. "Heard you're leaving."
"Yeah. It's not safe here anymore."
"Ain't safe anywhere, from what I hear." Tommy's voice was carefully neutral. "You gonna be okay? Out there, I mean?"
Elisha looked down at the boy—really looked at him. Dirt-streaked face, patched clothes, but intelligent eyes that had seen too much too young. A kid trying to survive in a world where gods walked among mortals and madness lurked around every corner.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "I don't know what I am anymore, or what I'm becoming."
"You're still you," Tommy said firmly. "Power don't change who you are inside. Just gives you more ways to show it."
"What if who I am inside isn't good enough? What if this power... what if it changes me into something worse?"
Tommy was quiet for a moment, staring out at the twisting maze of Haven Seven. "My grandmother, the one who thought vegetables could talk? She used to say something else too. She said the System don't choose people at random. It finds folks who got something inside 'em that resonates with it."
"What does that mean?"
"Maybe it means you were always gonna be what you are now. Maybe the System just... woke it up."
Before Elisha could respond, Vera's voice echoed from downstairs. "Time to go."
The boy grinned and punched Elisha lightly in the arm. "Don't go getting yourself killed out there, mister. World's got enough dead heroes already."
Then he was gone, vanishing into the shadows with the practiced ease of someone who'd learned long ago that survival meant staying invisible.
Elisha gathered his few belongings—the stolen sword, the clothes on his back, and the growing weight of questions he couldn't answer. As he headed downstairs, the golden light flickered behind his eyes again, and for just a moment he could swear he heard that voice from his dreams.
*The cycle turns. The pattern shifts. What was bound comes free.*
Are you ready?~~~~
He wasn't sure if the voice was asking about the journey ahead, or something far more fundamental. But as he joined Vera and the others in the street outside, one thing was clear.
Ready or not, change was coming. For him, for the factions hunting him, and for the world itself.
The only question was whether any of them would survive what came next.