Hook Street woke to the smell of broth and steam buns and the soft, smug murmur of a market that knew it had survived the night. Evan Sharp ran its spine at a lazy pace, boots whispering on tile. Not fleeing. Training. The rhythm soothed something inside him that had been raw for years.
Overflow (8%) → (9%).+1 Speed.Speed: 243 → 244.Daily Streak: 3/7 (compound active)
The bond to the street thrummed under his feet—a subtle give in the air when he cut a corner, a tiny hush over the noise when he needed to hear a step. People waved up at him with their hands full of morning, and he answered with a nod before sliding into the next stride.
By the time the sun shook loose of the river haze, he dropped off a roof into the market and landed without a sound. Dumpling steam curled around his face. The baker thrust a skewer at him without looking, as if the motion had already become ordinary.
"Fast boys eat first," she said.
He bit in. Salt, fat, and pepper exploded on his tongue. "I could get used to this," he said around the skewer.
"You'd better," she said, eyes flicking to the edge of the lane. "Trouble doesn't get tired."
Evan followed her glance.
A man leaned against a lamppost that had never leaned back for anyone. He was tall without being broad, dressed in plain road leathers cut too cleverly to be cheap. Gray gauntlets hugged his forearms, their surface threaded with faint metallic lines that glimmered whenever his fingers flexed. His hair was tied back with a strip of green cloth—Rust Viper color, but not uniform. A freelance fang.
He was not trying to be frightening. He was trying to be forgettable. It would have worked on anyone slower.
The man's eyes lifted to meet Evan's. They were the kind of eyes that count things—pavement cracks, breaths, exits.
He pushed off the post and walked forward at a leisurely pace that never once wavered. "Evan Sharp," he said, as if confirming a ledger entry. "You run too much."
"Occupational hazard," Evan said.
"Occupational correction." The man smiled without showing teeth. "Name's Kade. Folks with money call me the Netweaver."
A hush crawled down the lane like a cat. A merchant made the sign people made when they wanted to look like they weren't afraid.
"Kade," the butcher muttered near Evan's elbow. "He strings men up with wire you can't see."
Kade slid his fingers together and the gray gauntlets whispered. Thin lines unfurled between his hands, silver so fine they vanished if you didn't force your eyes to hold them. A lattice thinner than hair, geometry that promised pain.
"Walk away," Evan said, voice calm.
"From a bag this heavy?" Kade chuckled, and for a heartbeat the forgettable face cracked to show greed. "You've made a myth in three days. The Registry bids. The Vipers bid higher. Syndicates I won't name push the purse under the table. Boys like me retire off prey like you."
He flicked a wrist. The wires shrank into the gauntlets, gone like a thought. "Run, Sharp."
Evan felt the street's thread in his bones, the Domain leaning into his stance like a friend bracing a ladder. "Then watch."
Kade's smile thinned, pleased. "Good."
[DING] Quest — Cut the Net.Objective: Defeat the Netweaver within Hook Street without collateral damage.Reward: +25 Speed, Technique: Speed Sense (E)Failure: Domain bond weakens; civilian harm penalties.
Kade did not lunge. He raised a hand and the wires sang. The air around him tightened in invisible lines that made the light waver. Merchants gasped as cloth flickered into neat ribbons where nothing touched it. A dragonfly drifted across the lane and became two dragonflies that did not fly again.
"Move," Kade said softly.
Evan moved.
Quickstep slid him out of the first pattern, Burst Step cracked the air around the second, Echo Step left a smear of him that the wires bit into with a hiss—ghost diced to mist. He threaded the spaces the way his system painted them: white arcs, faint lines, angles with outcomes.
Kade's fingers blurred. Nets that weren't there became cages that were. The wires mapped Hook Street more ruthlessly than the Registry ever had, angles snapping shut where Evan intended to be. A loop kissed his sleeve and the cloth parted without resistance. The skin beneath felt cold for half a thought.
Micro-Objective: Evade 3 wire patterns without touching ground.Reward: +3 Speed.
Evan went up. Awning edge, window lip, signboard—feet never tasting stone—wires slashing through where ankles had been a breath ago.
[DING] Objective complete.+3 Speed.Speed: 244 → 247.
Kade's eyes glittered. "Good. You see it." He clenched his right hand and the gauntlet chirped. From the roofline above, small studs blinked alive on gutters and lampposts—pale, coin-sized devices that drank the light instead of reflecting it.
Kade tugged. The street answered.
Cords sprang from the hidden studs, crossing the lane in a heartbeat. Not wires: lines of air that didn't want to be air anymore, humming with a pressure that made Evan's teeth ache.
Hazard:Stasis Lines detected.Effect: Regional slow-field. Your motion reduced by 20% where lines intersect.
The world thickened. Evan's next step dragged, his Echo Step smear tugged like it had weight. Kade's smile filled in. "I hunted speedsters before there were Registry ranks for them. Nets for the feet, glue for the air. Run."
He pulled and the lines shifted, an invisible loom reweaving space in real time.
Evan took the measure of it in a breath—the positions, the cadence of Kade's fingers, the distance between anchor studs, how the Domain thrummed too, wanting to help but shy of whatever the devices were doing to the air.
He pushed anyway.
Velocity Veil bloomed across him. Five Evans burst outward in a ring, shadows wrapped in thin wind. Kade's lines snagged three and made meat confetti out of light. Merchants screamed—then blinked, confused, when the pieces drifted to nothing.
The two remaining afterimages stepped in opposite directions. Wires chased both. The real Evan slid through the gap between chases, the space where Kade's greed hadn't imagined someone would prefer to stand.
Kade's brows lifted a millimeter. "Pretty."
He flexed two fingers. A new pattern snapped: a funnel that wanted a neck.
Momentum Shift tugged at Evan's bones like a child desperate to be chosen. He accepted. The funnel's pull became his push. He let the hungry air shove him past a line that would have eaten his throat and used the gift to drive a Burst Step that cracked the cobbles.
He appeared in front of Kade with his fist already moving.
Kade wasn't Pike. He didn't try to block with meat. He pulled a vertical line tight between thumb and palm. Evan's knuckles kissed it and came away with a sting and a thin sheet of his wrap shaved clean. Kade's other hand flicked and a loop whispered toward Evan's calves.
Evan stamped and the loop bit where a leg had just been. He rode the stamp into a pivot, shoulder slipping past a slicing strand that would have unbuttoned his ribs.
The market murmurs had become a held breath. Aunties with ladles clutched them until knuckles went white. A Registry warden in the crowd who thought he was unnoticed dropped his slate and did not pick it up.
Kade's hands danced—calligraphy in air. Nets opened and closed in a sequence that would have folded any alley runner into parts for counting.
Evan stopped thinking about escape and started thinking about paths. Not one path. Many. The way water chooses all possible ways downhill and then, afterward, tells you it meant to do exactly that. He let the Acceleration perk stack on itself—Quickstep into pivot into low Burst Step into roll that didn't touch street—each action making the next easier, faster, tighter.
Chain: 4 consecutive motions → Acceleration +4% (temporary)Chain: 8 consecutive motions → Acceleration +8% (temporary)Advisory: Sustained chain increases risk of misstep in stasis.
Risk accepted.
He felt the moment the pattern overextended: Kade pulled two anchor studs too close and, for a breath, a pocket of air forgot which way it was supposed to thicken. Evan slid through it like a letter shoved under a door as the door closed.
His hand closed around Kade's wrist. The gauntlet whined in protest. Kade's eyes widened—a real human mistake.
Evan didn't crush bone. He twisted, rolled Kade's balance into emptiness, and flicked a short punch into the other wrist. The second gauntlet chirped a broken-bird sound. One wire drooped into real visibility and clinked against the cobbles like a hairpin.
The market's breath turned into a cheer they couldn't hold back. Kade ripped his hands free with a snarl and hopped back, fingers flexing in pain. He looked at his palms the way men look at prayers that have stopped being answered.
"Not just fast," he said, voice flatter now. "Annoying."
He stamped a heel on a pavement stud. Lines snapped sloppier this time—anger makes bad nets. Evan grinned and stepped into them like wading into tall grass he'd grown himself.
Micro-Objective: Disarm the Netweaver.Reward: +5 Speed.
He gave Kade the fight Kade wanted and then took it away. He chased loops into corners where his afterimages waited to be eaten, then arrived where the cords had not been designed to accommodate a body. He struck not to hurt but to unmake—glancing blows on anchor studs that made their whine sag, knuckles rapping gauntlet seams with the impatience of a locksmith who isn't in the mood to be clever anymore.
Kade backed toward the lamppost without meaning to. He flicked his wrists and nothing answered. He yanked with both hands and a single forlorn thread unspooled, drooping like wet cobweb.
Evan blurred. When motion stopped, he was in Kade's space with his palm on the Netweaver's sternum and his other hand resting, almost friendly, on Kade's shoulder to keep him still.
"You had one chance to walk," Evan said.
Kade's eyes flicked to the side where three children watched with their mouths open and buns forgotten. He swallowed and then, in the way men do who have learned late but learned, he let his jaw unclench.
"I've got objections to dying poor," he said. "But I've also got objections to dying here."
He tried for a smile. It didn't reach the counting eyes. "What's the fee for leaving with my bones?"
Evan held his gaze for a long second until the street's hum settled back into the sound of morning. He lifted his hand.
"You don't hunt Hook Street," he said. "Ever. You don't sell paths to people who do. If you see Registry, you remember how to be forgettable."
Kade exhaled, shoulders losing an inch. "Understood."
"And if you touch your wires before you're three lanes gone," Evan added, "you lose your hands."
Kade believed him. He nodded once—more a bow than a nod—and backed away slow, palms open, forgetting for once to be forgettable. When the crowd parted, he slipped into it and became nothing.
[DING] Quest complete — Cut the Net.+25 Speed.Technique acquired: Speed Sense (E)Description: Extend predictive perception; resolve motion arcs through partial cover; anticipate enemy patterns earlier.Speed: 247 → 272.
Noise rushed back in—cheers, laughter, someone crying because fear had to go somewhere now that it didn't need to be held in. The butcher thumped the counter with his palm until his knives rattled again.
A warden in a blue coat picked up his slate with shaking hands, glanced at the uncooperative screen, and then made the decision to be late to work. He left at a brisk, unheroic walk.
The baker leaned across her stall. "Is he coming back?"
"No," Evan said, and the way the word fit his mouth surprised him with its certainty. "Not here."
The panel fluttered again, quieter, almost shy.
Domain Bond — Hook Street: Resilience increased.Effect (Moderate → Strong): Stamina recovery further increased; hostile perception distortion improved; minor interference with nonlethal constraints (nets, binds) inside domain.
The air tasted different—less of fear, more of promise. Evan rolled his shoulders, feeling the ache of where stasis had tugged at muscle. His arm throbbed where an earlier fight had cut him, but the pain had turned into an underline instead of a sentence.
He took a step to run and Speed Sense lit like a lantern under his sternum. The world rearranged into a cleaner diagram. Footfalls on wood, a cart's lazy wobble two streets over, the furtive scrape of a boot from someone who wanted to be brave and ended up being foolish—threads, not wires, but threads he could follow if he chose.
He also felt something else, far away: a prickle along the edge of awareness like a storm deciding which hill to walk over.
[DING] Advisory: Elevated energy profile approaching Hook Street perimeter.Classification: Bronze-tier ability-user (Registry).ETA: 00:06:12
Six minutes.
The crowd did not know what his panel knew. They only saw a boy who made wires look silly and morning feel safe. Children tried to make their legs do what his had done and fell laughing into baskets. Merchants opened their hands when people reached for what they sold instead of closing them around losses.
Evan breathed in the street's breath and felt the Domain breathe back.
He looked down at his hands. They were the same hands. Scarred, wrapped, not ornate. He flexed them and the motion wrote a promise onto the air that the air agreed to.
"Six minutes," he said under his breath, and the number tasted good.
He blurred, not away but along Hook Street's edge, Speed Sense unrolling the coming direction of boots that did not belong here, heat that did not deserve shade. The city was a board. The pieces were moving. The ones that used to move him would learn how it felt when something faster than rules touched them.
Status — Evan SharpLevel: 7Speed:272Skills/Techniques: Quickstep (F), Burst Step (F), Momentum Shift (F), Echo Step (F), Velocity Veil (E), Speed Sense (E)Titles: [Uncatchable I], [Swift Claimant]Path: Velocity — Tier 1 (Acceleration)Overflow: 9% (streak active)Domain: Hook Street (Strong)
He took the last bite of the skewer the baker had given him, tossed the stick neatly into a barrel that might have been waiting for that exact motion, and smiled without warmth.
"Come on, Registry," he said to the wind that carried their smell ahead of them. "Catch me."
He stepped, and the market unblurred behind him like a satisfied sigh.