The scream tore Lowwater awake.
Lightning cracked the bakery roof open like a ribcage. Arcs ripped gutters free, split shutters, made barrels jump in place. Evan was on his knees with Marra's blood on his hands and the X above her still smoking, black in the flour-dusted air. His storm burned too bright to see through; the room stuttered between violet and nothing, as if the world couldn't decide to stay.
Cross's laugh ran down the lane like a bell that hated good news.
Evan did not think. He ran.
Quest Directive: Pursue anomaly [Cross] immediately.Failure: Domain collapse risk escalating.
He vaulted the windowsill, hit the cobbles in a blast of arcs that shattered a line of tiles, and tore the street into pieces with each stride. Doors that had stayed open for heat slammed. Carts tried to get out of his way and failed because his way had become everywhere. The pipes hammered three–two–three without hands; the Slums were screaming for him.
Cross limped ahead, cutting his Xs into walls as he went, slow on purpose, leaving breadcrumbs made of terror. His claws dripped wet and wrong. Black lightning webbed his forearms, crackling low like a laugh that had run out of air.
"Ghost," Cross called over his shoulder, not turning, voice dragging stone dust. "Bread breaks easy."
Evan hit him.
[Arc Ascension] — Forced Activation (Unstable).Conduction strain: 64% → 71%.Neural burn risk: 83% → 88%.
The lane imploded. Cobblestones went up and came down as teeth. Cross folded around the punch, flew into a wall so hard the bricks organized into dust. Evan was already there when the dust learned gravity, fist a hammer, shoulder a verdict.
He didn't weave. He didn't count. He didn't pace. He tore.
A straight right cratered Cross's jaw. A hook collapsed his chest. A rising elbow took the head back against beam, beam snapped, head came forward again because monsters forget they shouldn't.
Cross slashed on instinct—black lightning ripped Evan's shoulder open. Blood went hot down his ribs. Evan's storm only screamed louder.
Critical condition ignored. Override active.HP: 27% → 23%.
"Shut up," Evan snarled, and the order wasn't for the panel anymore. He drove a knee into Cross's gut and lay a thunderstep under it so the shockwave did the rest. The monster left the ground, hit the next wall, bounced, gathered his claws like he remembered he had them.
"Finally," Cross wheezed, laughing through blood and light. "Now you look like—"
Evan's headbutt crushed the sentence. Bone rang. The sound traveled up scaffolding and made the Towers flinch.
Technique Reinforcement — Vector Break (microplane) +20% while Ascension active.Momentum Shift: pain → propulsion (conversion 11%).
Everything hurt. Everything moved.
He chased Cross through a market stall—splinters, a table turning into knives—then through a stacked pair of crates that tried to have an opinion and were ground into one. The Slums watched from cracks they had carved for the purpose; eyes wide, mouths shut: a city learning that mercy costs more than meat.
Cross got one clean swing in—claws low, ankle high. Evan jumped, barely. Even in the air he twisted his waist and dropped a violet heel on Cross's collarbone.
The collarbone went away.
Cross hit his back, rolled, came up on one knee with a grin like a mistake. He spat red-black, wiped his mouth with the back of a claw, left a smear that could have been grease on a machine if not for its heat.
"Good," he said. "Hurt me."
Evan obliged.
He pulled the city into his spine the way you take a breath on a cold day. Hook Street heat pressed his back forward. Foundry iron filled his calves with intent. The Docks' pull set in his hips like ballast. The Towers—late, hesitant—squared his timing. The Slums climbed into his hands, stubborn and ugly and perfect.
Domain Network Surge — Conduit Reinforced.Fear resonance −20% (Slums). Ally speed +20% (Slums).Overflow: 26% → 28%.
He drove Cross backward across a threshold that had used to be a door and wasn't sure anymore. Lightning crowned him—no crawling filaments now, a tower of violet with feet. Each hit sounded like a page tearing from a book you hated.
Cross tried to grab the storm. The storm bit him.
Black lightning flared, desperate, and sputtered. Violet sank into it and made it heavy.
"Mine," Cross hissed, trying to stand the word up again.
"Not yours," Evan said, and put the word through the wall with the rest of him.
Quest Progress — Rise Again:Anomaly threshold exceeded.Reward: Stat Increase (+45 Speed).Reward: Technique Evolution — Arc Ascension (Unstable) recognized.
He stood over the monster then, both of them shaking, both of them bleeding, one of them winning. The Slums' pipes hammered until rust found new places to live. Kids who had learned three–two–three with their teeth in their lips looked at each other and decided to keep living long enough to see the next thing.
Cross laughed. It wasn't triumph now. It was a thing like relief.
"Kill me," he said, as if asking for bread. "Earn it."
Evan raised his hand. The arcs gathered like a verdict under a judge's robe. He could see the end he wanted: clean, final, proof.
He lowered his hand.
"No," he said. "You'll live. Crawl back. When I beat you again it'll be clean."
Cross's grin split. "Mercy," he said. "Expensive."
He rolled, limped, let his black lightning wrap him like night that had learned a trick. He went into shadow. He laughed.
Evan let him go. He did it because he had decided earlier who he was, and because cities need examples. He turned to the watching Slums, forced air through a chest that wanted to stop, and lifted his storm in proof.
"I told you," he said, and if the voice cracked it still carried, "I don't stop."
Domain Bond — Slums (Strong).Network: Stabilized. Overflow: 30%.+2 Speed.
Pipes answered like a choir that only knew one hymn.
He made it three corners.
The scream tore Hook Street raw.
Not metal now, not system, not alarm: human, cut short, ripped out of a mouth that would not use it again. Evan ran. He stopped remembering his body. He stopped remembering his name. The storm carried what was left.
The bakery door open, flour like ghosts. The ovens glowing like a throat that didn't know the head was gone. The ladle broken. Marra on the floor with a cut that had decided to be the only definition of her.
The X above her black enough to burn.
Cross's laugh becoming distance.
Evan went to his knees in shattered pastry and blood.
The storm went out of his skin and into the world, violet turning white, air turning knife.
Critical Quest Update — Rise Again.Failure condition: Loved one slain — TRIGGERED.New Directive: Eliminate anomaly [Cross].Penalty: Domain stability threatened (Hook Street morale fracture imminent).Reward: Path Evolution Opportunity (Silver → ?).Failure: Global network erosion.
He stood up wrong, the way men stand when they've decided not to be one for a while.
He left the ovens, the ghosts, the broken tool. He left Marra on the cooling boards, because there were rules about who was allowed to touch the dead and one of them was that the living had to make the next thing stop.
Cross had not gone far. He had chosen not to. He wanted to be found; cruelty likes its audience. Evan found him by a lane that had learned elbows, cutting another X at shoulder height like a clerk keeping books.
"Bread breaks easy," Cross said again, turning at the line's end. "So do vows."
Evan did not answer with a word.
[Arc Ascension] — Overclock (Unsafe).Conduction strain: 88% → 94%.Neural burn risk: 90% → 96%.Cardiac failure probability: 52% → 61%.Override?YES.
The world narrowed to two shapes and the room between them. He stepped into that room and made it his.
He hit Cross in the mouth so hard the black lightning left his tongue. Then the throat—where strange things live—then the chest again, higher this time, then the knee that had thought it would hold.
Cross's claws found Evan's ribs and wrote a new story there; Evan wrote a period through Cross's sternum with his fist.
They went through a stall, through a wall, through a wall that had been behind that wall, into a stair, onto a landing that remembered it was wood and caught fire out of loyalty.
Cross tried to stand inside the fire. Evan didn't let him choose his verbs.
His storm pinned the claws. Violet ate black. The sound of it was wet and electrical at once, like a butcher's saw in a storm.
"Mercy," Cross coughed, still grinning because his face did that without asking him. "Expensive."
"This," Evan said, and his voice had iron filings in it, "is the receipt."
Fatal Strike — Confirm.Last chance: De-escalate?NO.
He drove his hand through Cross's chest. Not into—through. Lightning burned like a verdict passed and stamped. The back of the monster opened in a white roar. Black arcs went briefly beautiful and then they were not.
Anomaly [Cross] — TERMINATED.Quest Update: Target eliminated.Reward: Level Up (Lv. 15 → 16).Reward: Path Evolution — Arc Ascension STABILIZED (Rank B).Reward: Stat Increase (+60 Speed).Penalty: Mercy Oath — BROKEN.
Cross twitched, laughed once without a voice to push it, and died like a door shutting.
Evan stood over him with his storm still wanting a thing to hate.
The pipes stopped. Not because they were commanded; because the Slums didn't know whether to sing. Hook Street went quiet the way ovens do when the wood runs out and nobody goes to fetch more.
New Quest Branch — The Weight of Mercy (Active).Objective: Bear consequence of anomaly elimination after mercy withdrawal.Status Effects: Guilt Load (stacking), Public Trust (volatile), Domain Drift (Hook Street ↔ Slums, −8%).Potential Rewards: Unknown.Failure: Bell cadence collapse; leadership vacuum.
The system had run out of comfort.
Evan's legs forgot their job. He found the floor for them. He was still burning, but smaller; the arcs hissed like rain on a forge. He stared at his hands until they were tools again instead of weapons.
He walked back. He did not run. Running is for the living, and he had decided to be something else for the walk.
They did not let him carry Marra at first. Hook Street women with arms like truths stood over her, mouths set, eyes red but open. One lifted the broken ladle like a badge and set it across her chest, as if metal could apologize for having been wrong material at the wrong time.
"Let me," Evan said, voice gone hoarse from lightning and grief. "Please."
They looked at each other in the language that comes before speaking. Then one nodded, short, and another moved aside.
He gathered her. She was light in ways people shouldn't be when they aren't moving. Flour made her hair look like dawn had gotten ideas. He felt every step in his ribs and found that good.
The Slums came out for the procession. No pipes now. Hats came off. Knives did too. Men who owed him nothing took sides to keep lanes clear. Children lined up like chalk marks and didn't touch.
Aelira met them at the edge of Hook Street with Silver squad at her shoulder. Her braid looked like a weapon she'd consider using. She took one glance and all the breath left her mouth without sound.
"Is she—" she began, then didn't, because questions are cruel when the answer is a shape you can see.
"Cross is dead," Evan said.
Cairn blinked, once, as if stones had surprised him. "And you are not."
"I will be," Evan said, which earned him the nearest thing to pity Cairn owned: an almost-shake of the head.
"We'll take her," Aelira said, hands already blood-wet from work she hadn't started yet. "We know where the ovens end and the ground begins."
He nodded, because asking to do more would have been a theft.
Public Event — Death of Marra (Anchor of Hook Street).Morale: −22% (Hook Street), −9% (Slums).Counterbalance: Anomaly Eliminated (+13% citywide).Net: Unstable.
Marra went into the ground with flour on her dress because nobody knew how to get it off anymore. The ladle went with her because some tools are promises and belong in the earth when they are finished. The ovens went cold. The room above them would never be a room again; it would be a story.
Evan stood at the edge of the people and listened to them try to decide between praise and blame. They landed on silence. It weighed the same as either.
The panel—merciless, honest—filled his sight.
Path Evolution Opportunity — READY.Candidate Forks:— Ghost Current (Control/Lanes/Domain Weighting): sustain networks, compress vectors, convert fear → speed.— Judgment Strike (Punitive/Overclock/Retribution): overcharge Ascension, burn HP for impact, immolate anomalies.Warning: Selected fork will alter future rewards and city response.Note: Mercy Oath — BROKEN. Reputation effects persist.
He stared at the choices like doors that emptied into other doors.
Cairn slid nearer, not touching, because he knew where men break. "He's really dead?"
Evan nodded.
"Good," Cairn said, then added a second word he didn't admire: "Costly."
Aelira set a hand on the coffin rope and did not look at Evan when she spoke. "We need your storm. We also need your spine. Don't trade one for the other."
He almost said he already had. He did not say anything.
They lowered Marra. Dirt was dirt again. Hook Street men and women covered her with the same hands they used to knead and mend and lift and knock. The last shovel did the same job as the first. The ladle disappeared under the sound of soil.
Evan backed away until the stone under him remembered to be stone and not water.
His storm finally sat down.
Debuff Applied: Guilt Load (Major) — −5% max HP, −5% regen, +10% Domain sensitivity.Buff Applied: Anchor Fury — while within Hook Street/Slums, +10% vector control, +8% impact on anomalies.New Quest — The Weight of Mercy (Active):Objective 1: Inform families of anomaly elimination; stabilize Hook Street morale (≥ 80%).Objective 2: Choose Path Evolution fork.Objective 3: Rebuild: replace bakery function (food anchor) within 7 days.Failure: Fear spillover into Docks/Towers; bell cadence collapse.
A bell rang on time. Only one. It sounded like a single boot on a stair that had forgotten the rest of the people were coming.
Evan looked at his hands until they were his again. Then he went to Aelira and Cairn because leadership is sometimes just the act of walking toward the work.
"I'm choosing a fork," he said.
Aelira's eyes did the math of him and found debt. "The one that lets you live long enough to pay for what you owe."
"Judgment," Cairn suggested without shame. "Burn the next one before it speaks."
"Ghost Current," Aelira countered. "Keep the lanes. Hold the network. Don't become the knife that forgets the bread."
Marra was somewhere he couldn't run to anymore. He closed his eyes, saw the room, saw the flour, saw the ladle, saw the X, saw the punch, saw the hole, saw the quiet afterward.
He opened them on the city that still needed a shape to gather around.
"I keep the lanes," he said, voice low. "I make speed weigh something. And if something needs burning, I'll burn it from inside the lanes."
Path Evolution Selected — Ghost Current.Effects: Domain Weighting +15%; Vector Compression unlocked; Fear → Momentum conversion enabled (cap 12%).Penalty persists: Mercy Oath — BROKEN (Reputation volatile).
The panel dimmed. The choice did not.
He started walking. He would speak to the butcher, the lantern-mender, the boys at the barrel. He would put a cart where a cart needed to be. He would find a baker with two hands and put flour on them. He would not sleep until ovens woke again because some ghosts are only quiet when you keep promises to the living.
Halfway down the lane, a new message slid into his vision like a knife that had learned to whisper.
Registry Notice:Anomaly surge detected — outer districts.Codename: "Chorus."Behavior: Multiplicity.Advisory: Anomalies evolve when anchors fall.
Evan stopped. He did not look back at the fresh dirt. He did not look up at the Towers. He looked at his hands a third time, and this time he saw work instead of blood.
He breathed in. The city breathed back, ragged and ready.
"Rise again," he said, and this time the rafters weren't there to listen. The lanes were. The pipes were. The ground was. It would have to be enough.
He walked toward the next thing that wanted to eat his people. His storm came like a dog that had seen what killing cost and would bite anyway when told.
Lowwater counted three–two–three again, softer, like a promise practiced under breath.
And underneath that, quieter still, a note that hadn't been there last night: regret with teeth.