Lowwater woke under a sky the color of hammered lead. Smoke from the Old Foundry smeared the sunrise into a dirty orange, and the river below the Docks breathed out the cold stink of tar and fish. Hook Street's shutters creaked open one by one, like eyelids deciding to forgive the night. The city's three notes—market, water, furnace—hummed together in Evan Sharp's bones.
Status — Evan Sharp Level: 9 Speed: 523 Skills: Quickstep (F), Burst Step (F), Momentum Shift (F), Echo Step (F)Techniques: Velocity Veil+ (E), Speed Sense (E), Vector Break (E) Titles: [Uncatchable I], [Domain Strider I]Domains: Hook Street (Strong), Docks (Minor), Old Foundry (Minor) Overflow: 11% (streak active)
He stood on the lip of a warehouse roof with one foot hanging over open air, arms loose at his sides, eyes on the braided alleys below. Hook Street's thread tugged at him—strong and sure, a friend braced under his weight. A little farther off, the Docks answered like a new ally learning his rhythm; beyond that, the Foundry's heat thrummed with a stubborn, iron heartbeat.
"Three corners," he murmured. "One path."
The panel pulsed, an answer and a dare.
Quest — Train Vector Break Objective: Cancel three hostile vectors in live combat. Progress: 2/3Reward: +20 Speed, Vector Break (D) (larger radius/longer uptime)
He'd broken a guard's thrust on Hook Street, then cut a crane rope's swing at the Docks. The third would come to him. Lowwater delivered trouble on schedule.
He dropped from the roof without a sound and ran.
Rooftops blurred. Smoke tore on his shoulders. The river wind bit his cheeks, vanished, returned behind him; every corner he cut taught the next to step aside. Domain Strider made the transitions seamless—the moment Hook Street's hum dimmed, the Docks' pulse picked up the song, and when the Docks faded, the Foundry's iron took the melody like it had always owned it.
Domain Network: Movement +10% between bonded zones. Perception Distortion: +5% to enemies across network.
He cut his circuit twice, three times, building heat in his legs until his breath was a metronome and thoughts turned into tidy stacks he could choose between. Speed Sense laid ghost-lines over the day: cart wheels that would lock, a warden patrol that would pause at a corner to argue, a loose tile three steps ahead he avoided without a glance.
He angled toward the Foundry for the fourth lap—and froze mid-stride, one foot already past the roof edge.
The air down in the yards rippled. Not heat. Smoke.
It moved wrong.
He dropped to ground level in two steps and slid into shadow, eyes narrowing. A pair of men in dull gray coats worked by the slag heaps with the itch of thieves. One poured a glistening slurry into a crack between paving stones; the other planted a thumb-sized vial with a metal tongue like a cricket's. Their faces were wrapped in cloths the color of ash.
"Make it three points," one whispered. "Street, Dock road, Foundry gate. When it cooks, the whole corner goes up. The ghost loses ground; the Registry sweeps the rest."
Pike's voice floated from deeper shadow, raw and gleeful. "Do it. Light him where he sleeps."
The men flinched to attention. One bowed without turning. "As the Cinder Guild promised."
Evan didn't know the name, but his bones recognized the shape: men who sold fire to those who couldn't earn it. He stepped from the shadow so quietly his own echo didn't hear him.
"You're laying explosives in my city," he said.
Three heads snapped toward him. The first Cinder man fumbled for a spark-rod; the second clawed a pressurizer bulb on his belt; Pike cursed and bolted deeper into the maze of piles and sheds.
Fire kissed the air as the spark-rod hissed into life. The slurry twitched, turned from glistening to greed, and began to crawl into the cracks like it had found a mouth.
[DING] Hazard: Volatile thermite array. Effect: Self-propagating once ignited; blast turns stone to soup, steel to water. Advisory:Do not punch.
He already hadn't planned to.
Quickstep slid him into the first man's reach; his knuckles tapped the wrist holding the spark-rod, and the tool spun harmlessly into slag. The second Cinder raised the pressurizer—
Vector Break pulsed under Evan's ribs like a held breath. He stepped into its space.
The world around the pressurizer gave up relationships. For two heartbeats, push didn't push. Pressure forgot to pressure. The bulb wouldn't compress; the slurry's crawl stuttered like a bad dream in morning.
Evan plucked the device away and crushed it flat between wrapped palms.
Vector Break progress: 3/3[DING] Quest complete — Train Vector Break.+20 Speed. Technique rank up: Vector Break (E → D)Effect: Radius ↑ (to ~3m), uptime ↑ (to 3s), cooldown ↓.
The Cinder men looked at the flattened tool, then at him, the way mice look at a cat that had politely set down the bell they were told to wear.
The slurry stirred, remembered itself, and lunged for the nearest crack.
Evan kicked the vial free, Momentum Shift catching the mud-thick motion and turning it into his propulsion. He slid along a beam, flipped over a heap, and smashed the vial into the heart of the slag pile—then triggered Vector Break (D) in a circle around the impact.
The compound's rush lost its vector. For three seconds, the slurry forgot which way was "into" and lay slack like guilty sauce.
"Stamp it," Evan snapped.
Foundry workers who had wandered close, eyes wide, didn't ask for clarification. Boots pounded. Shovels slammed. Someone upended a sand bin, and the greedy glitter disappeared under a suffocating blanket that hissed its fury and went dumb.
Pike's voice rose in a cut-off scream somewhere among the sheds. Evan moved.
He pulsed Vector Break in a narrow strip at knee height—clean step—and used it like a bridge through a tangle of hanging chains that wanted to snag. A lad leapt across the lanes ahead, knocking over a rack for a delay. Evan ran up the rack as if it had volunteered.
Pike shot out into daylight, eyes wild, found Hook Street's direction like a rat finds the only hole, and sprinted.
Evan appeared in front of him and didn't have to say don't; the way Pike's shoes found stillness on their own was answer enough. The man's breath sawed like a saw that had never cut straight. His knife appeared in his hand anyway—as if calling a prayer he no longer believed.
"You don't die," Pike whispered. "I keep throwing you to fire and you don't die."
"I run," Evan said. "And I don't stop."
Pike lunged. It was not clever. It was not slow either; hate makes decent strides. Evan tilted his head, let the white arc slide by, and set two fingers against Pike's wrist with gentleness that hurt more than violence. The knife fell. His second hand found Pike's shoulder and pressed him back against a slag block that remembered being a mountain.
"Stop lighting my city," Evan said. "There won't be a third ask."
"Registry will—"
"Run and tell them," Evan said. "Use your feet. See how far they carry you."
Pike's mouth worked. He spat by habit. The spit stuck in his throat and turned into a swallow.
Evan let him go. Pike fled and this time did not look back to make sure fear was following.
The Foundry yard exhaled. Workers stood with shovels like spears, eyes uncertain where to point reverence. One cleared his throat. "That… stuff. You stopped it like turning off a wheel."
"Just took away its favorite direction," Evan said.
The man grinned, sudden, a good grin that had not had reason to exist yesterday. "You're ours too, then."
Evan looked at the slag pile that had hidden a fire and at the men who had stamped it flat because a stranger said stamp, and nodded once. "Yes."
Domain Bond — Old Foundry (Minor → Moderate)Effect: Heat haze distortion ↑; minor resistance to magnetic pulls within Foundry; stamina recovery ↑.
Metal sang in the furnaces, a different note now—less spite, more promise. The title at the edge of his vision pulsed like it wanted to grow teeth.
Title — [Domain Strider I]: Network stability ↑.Next threshold: Four domains or one Major Domain.
He needed miles, not moments. He turned and ran before gratitude could make him heavier than he could afford.
Hook Street was bright when he arrived, sunlight striking chalk lightning bolts and tin charms hung from awnings. The baker saw his face and didn't ask questions she could read in his shoulders; instead, she shoved a paper-wrapped loaf into his hand and pointed with her ladle.
"Trouble tried to borrow fire at the Foundry?" she said. "The air tasted wrong for a minute."
"Cinder Guild," Evan said around a bite. "They sell arson to cowards."
"Pike," she said, name like something sour to spit. "He does his own cooking? No. He buys."
"He's finished buying," Evan said. "At least from the ones who tried today."
Kids swarmed, eyes alight. "Show the trick!" one yelled. "The thing where spears forget where to point!"
"Not here," Evan said automatically, then paused. He stepped into an open square where the cobbles were already scarred and lifted a hand.
"Three breaths," he said. "Behind the line."
They scuttled back, toes on cracks like a practiced game. Evan took a breath, set his stance, and flicked Vector Break (D) on and off in a tight dome at chest height. A boy tossed him a fruit without warning; it drifted to the edge of the dome, then slid around it like rain deflected from an umbrella—and plopped into his open palm.
The cheer was a wall of sun. The baker whooped and shook her ladle until flour dusted the crowd.
Overflow (11%) → (12%).+1 Speed. Speed: 543 → 544.Daily Streak: 5/7 (compound active).
The panel chimed again, businesslike beneath the laughter.
Technique Synergy unlocked: Vector Veil (E): While Velocity Veil+ is active, apply Vector Break (D) to one afterimage at a time, letting a ghost "carry" a clean step/strike window that rotates every second. Cooldown shared.
He blinked at that, then grinned without trying. Ten of him punching, and one of those ten carrying a pocket of truth through enemy lies every heartbeat—that was an army he could afford.
He didn't get to savor the thought.
Speed Sense pricked like a cat's fur noting a wrong breeze. A tremor slid through the threads of his network—not pressure like Aelira, not heat like Ravel. A pulse, regular as a heartbeat and too clean for alleys: disciplined boots, too many, moving together. Registry patrol, large. Not Bronze. Not Silver.
Between.
[DING] Advisory: Enhanced patrol entering bonded network from the north gate. Composition: 24 guards, shock-shield rig (nonlethal field projector), two wardens with countermeasure nets. Objective (inferred): Crowd control + extraction.
Hook Street's hum sharpened; shutters clapped, awnings flapped and then were still. Merchants didn't scream. They looked to him the way people look at weather if they know a sailor.
"Inside," Evan said, not shouting. The square emptied like someone had pulled a cork.
He walked to the mouth of Hook Street where it narrowed to a friendly choke and waited.
The patrol rounded the corner in tidy threes, shock-shields at the front humming faint blue, wardens at mid with slates and shoulders telling the world they'd never been late to anything, guards at rear with batons that promised pain without blood. The field projector rode in a wheeled cradle, its dish smelling like storm metal.
The sergeant raised a fist. The line stopped. The dish whined and the blue field bucked forward, shimmering, washing over cobble scars like someone had poured a lake where stone used to be.
"By order of the Registry," the sergeant called, voice trained to sound like law. "Disperse. The anomaly known as—"
"Your net will tangle the market," Evan said, and his voice cut across the blue like ink across water. "Your field will break bones. Step back."
"Disperse," the sergeant repeated. His eyes slid across Evan like he was an optical illusion the man wanted to ignore into nonexistence. "You are under—"
Evan stepped.
Velocity Veil+ bloomed in the narrow. Ten Evans filled the throat of the street like a wall that moved, half-strength fists pattering the shield with enough noise to make men flinch even if the energy drank most of it. The front rank braced; the dish crackled and pushed.
"Now," a warden barked, and flung a countermeasure net—a ragged sheet glittering with woven studs, its mesh designed to disrespect Echo Step, to pin ghosts and find the single body that cast them.
Evan smiled.
"Vector Veil," he said, and slid the clean pocket onto his leftmost afterimage.
The net fell over five ghosts and bit; studs sparked with greedy certainty—and didn't catch the one ghost that carried a slice of truth where vectors didn't apply. It stepped through the mesh like curtain and became real in the space the warden's slate had sworn was impossible.
Evan's palm tapped the dish's control mast. Vector Break flickered on inside its guts for a heartbeat—gears forgot their task, capacitors forgot their duty. The field stuttered.
He walked through blue like it was bad weather and put two knuckles on the sergeant's breastplate. The man folded around gravity that had nothing to do with Silver and everything to do with simply being hit by a faster object than his day had scheduled.
"Back," Evan said again, conversational. "No nets in my market."
The second net came anyway—panic cares less about conversation than orders. He tagged the clean pocket to a different ghost this time; the mesh found eight lies and fell happy and heavy on them, and the one that mattered drifted past and put a fingertip on the projector dish's power toggle like turning off a lamp before bed.
The field died with an embarrassed cough.
Guards at the rear tried to push forward into the choke; Hook Street's shape betrayed them. The lane kinked twice in little elbows that had felt quaint for years and suddenly became hostile geometry. A baton clipped a doorframe; a man who'd trained on straight boulevards learned about friendly corners the hard way.
Evan didn't punish them. He walked the line, Vector Veil ghost rotating like a clock hand, and tapped men in the right places—a jaw, a wrist, a knee—until the formation unlearned the meaning of the word.
The wardens snatched their nets back with curses that sounded like prayers misremembered. One glared at his slate, flicking through screens that showed only a latency that refused to be charming.
"Fall back!" the sergeant croaked through a throat learning humility. "Fall back!"
They went, stumbling but not broken, dragged by training that had not prepared them for alleys that fought back.
The square breathed out. Doors cracked, then opened. Children poured like water and stopped dead at Evan's raised palm, discipline floodwalling awe.
"Practice later," he said. "Be small for a minute."
They shrank into themselves with grins too big to obey the rest of their faces.
The panel chimed, tidy as an accountant.
Micro-Objective: Break an enhanced patrol without civilian harm.Reward: +15 Speed.Speed: 544 → 559.
He rolled his shoulders. The ache under his ribs had downgraded from sentence to footnote. The river wind wandered up the lane and found the flour-dusted air and decided to stay for lunch.
Hook Street's thread hummed. The Docks tugged. The Foundry answered with heat. Somewhere beyond all that, a far steadier pulse walked the city like an idea that didn't need to hurry.
Not Aelira. Not Bronze. New math.
[DING] Long-range ping:Unidentified velocity signature flickered and gone. Classification: Unknown. Note: Out of range. Pattern archived.
Evan stared toward the Towers where the city's richer spine pretended to be above smoke. Speed Sense held nothing there now but a memory of a footfall that had not touched stone.
He let the thought go for today and turned to the work in front of him—the work that kept his network humming and his numbers honest.
"Stall frames," he said, pointing. "We rebuild stronger. Keep the lane narrow; it's a friend."
Men and women moved. Kids fetched nails. The baker swatted a boy for trying to eat uncooked dough and then handed Evan a second loaf to replace the first he'd inhaled.
He took the bread and the laughter and the weight and the hum in his legs that said run and nodded to all of them at once.
Then he ran.
Overflow (12%) → (13%).+1 Speed. Speed:560
Hook Street became Docks became Foundry became Hook Street, the city itself a track laid down under his will. Somewhere a Silver braided her hair tighter. Somewhere a man without a crew bought fire with a debt he could not count. Somewhere a step landed too clean to have been a step at all and decided not to introduce itself yet.
Evan smiled into the wind.
"Catch me."