Location: The Gullies, Maatari
Time: 06:47 AM
Maatari didn't sleep.
It sparked. It hissed. It rerouted.
From the spires of its shattered skylines to the sub grid slums clinging to its gutters, the city pulsed like a dying circuit that refused to short out. The Gullies — the stretch of low-tier districts along the old east rail — buzzed before the sun even cracked.
And on one of its broken roofs, Khazim Liba sat motionless.
Cross-legged atop his apartment complex, he hovered in the eye of the static storm. Beneath him, the concrete still held faint glyph burns from past training. Around him, the faded skyline of Maatari blinked in alternating pulses of smog, flickerglass, and neon-bled clouds.
The wind brushing over his deep waves while his rat-tail braid flowed with the wind from the nape of his neck.
The deep scar that stretched from his hairline to his jaw, intersecting with his dead right-eye, faintly pulsing with a pale indigo glow.
His torso was bare, revealing a lattice of old scars and inked Se'lo threadwork etched into his back. Across his chest: a faintly glowing chain — herringbone-woven and threaded with fragments of Ghostglint Core.
Not just jewelry. Not even a trophy.
It was a tether anchor — one of the few tools a Se'lo Sage had to house and channel their T'alü energy and beasts. Khazim had carried it since he was a kid running the streets. When the city swallowed him, the chain gave him a way to bite back.
Its embedded Ghostglint fragment pulsed faintly, in sync with his breath.
Eyes closed, he let his mind drift downward — not to rest, but to align.
T'alü energy coiled at his solar plexus and surged slowly upward through the Se'lo threads etched into his body. The chain responded with a flicker of warmth.
No mantra. No prayer. Just rhythm and memory. He didn't meditate to escape the world.
He meditated to master his stillness inside of it.
A low growl curled out of the rooftop alcove behind him.
Tre'co stirred — or something like him. The tether beast rarely showed this early, but Khazim could feel his presence brushing the edge of sync. A whisper from the other side of the chain.
"Not yet," he muttered. "You'll eat soon."
The growl receded.
Khazim opened his eyes as the first line of sun crept over the distant towers. Burnt orange against steel-gray silhouettes. The kind of light that didn't warm the skin so much as remind you the day had started.
He rose slowly.
Spine straight. Neck loose. Jaw relaxed.
Then he dropped into stance — a tight martial flow, bare feet grounded on the cracked rooftop.
His body moved in deliberate arcs: elbow rotations, angular strikes, pivot footwork that flowed like something between dance and damage. The sounds of the city below blurred as his breath took over. One movement, one exhale, one reset.
Each form drew Se'lo through him — not to flare, but to align.
When he stopped, he stood tall, arms loose at his sides, chain dimming back to a resting pulse.
A faint chime echoed from the stairwell.
Khazim crossed the rooftop and grabbed his halosync resting on a decaying ledge.
>> NEW MESSAGE INCOMING…
→ FROM: Mom
→ PRIORITY: None
→ MESSAGE:
"Don't be late. 6PM sharp. No excuses. And you better eat this time."
He let the message linger on screen for a few seconds before responding.
[REPLY: I'll be there.]
His stomach grumbled.
"Alright," he muttered. "Diner first."
With a final glance over the waking chaos of the Gullies, he slipped his shirt back on, shrugged his jacket over one shoulder, and descended into the bones of the city.
"The Rustpan"
Location: The Gullies, Maatari
Time: 08:30 AM
Khazim moved through the Gullies with the ease of someone who didn't need to look twice.
The streets were already cracking at the seams — vendors shouting half-priced synthfruit deals, grid-techs resetting power terminals with jury-rigged pulses, and street kids launching bottle rockets off mag-rails for Musa scraps. Everything buzzed with that particular kind of Maatari madness: choreographed chaos.
But he didn't flinch. Didn't slow.
People moved around him.
A few nodded as he passed. No one called his name. Everyone knew better.
The Rustpan Diner sat wedged between a seared data repair shop and a bootleg glyph parlor. Its sign buzzed louder than the food sizzled, but inside, the regulars knew exactly what they were getting.
Khazim stepped in and was immediately greeted by the scent of burnt oil, pepper stew, and fried dumplings bubbling in sweet-glaze sauce.
"Look who finally left his cave," came a voice from behind the counter.
Marta, wide-shouldered and sharper than the kitchen knives, flipped a pan with one hand and pointed at him with the other. Her braids were tucked into a sleeve cap, and her apron looked like it had survived several wars.
"You gonna order or just scare my customers again?"
Khazim slipped into his usual booth near the back. "That depends. You serving actual meat today or just regret?"
Marta barked a laugh. "Get this ghostboy some food before he starts brooding on my furniture."
One of the younger servers — a girl no older than seventeen with half her face tattooed in neon-thread — dropped off a bowl of white rice, fried veggies, and a thick square of grilled meat crusted in spice salts.
"Extra sharp," she said. "Like your attitude."
Khazim gave her the smallest nod of thanks. The tiniest twitch of a smirk.
He ate in silence.
The noise of the diner folded around him — casual arguments, holo-sports replays, old heads arguing over bracket stats. One corner booth argued fiercely over the merits of trap glyphs vs. beast rush decks in tournament play.
"…I'm telling you, if you don't layer at least two glyphs to reinforce your field-effect Se'lo Tablet, your whole play collapses mid-match."
"Unless you're running tether overload. Then you just let 'em burn themselves out."
Khazim listened but didn't engage.
He let the city breathe through him. Let it remind him that he was still part of something, even if he didn't feel it.
His holosync pinged.
>> NEW MESSAGE INCOMING…
→ FROM: Mom
→ PRIORITY: High
→ MESSAGE:
"ADDENDUM: Your dad said bring grain. I said you won't. So, prove me right or prove me wrong. Your choice."
He exhaled through his nose. That slight smirk again.
Another ping.
>> NEW MESSAGE INCOMING…
→ FROM: Spots Ren
→ PRIORITY: None
→ MESSAGE:
"Heard Gor Delmin talking slick at the Westway Strip — said he's been stringing you along. Never planned to pay you for that bracket win. Syndicate backs him so he's feeling bold.
Said your 'ghost act doesn't scare him anymore.'
You going soft or should I get the mop ready?"
Khazim wiped the bowl clean.
Then he stood, dropped a few Musa on the table, and gave Marta a glance on the way out.
"That wasn't regret."
Marta raised a pan in salute. "Next time bring more Musa and less mood."
The door buzzed shut behind him.
Time to collect.
"Temperature Check"
Location: Westway Strip, Maatari
Time: 11:13 AM
Gor Delmin's office was a forgotten relic stapled to the underbelly of a freight stack in Westway Strip — rusted rivets, blinking signs half-scraped off, and a single guard posted like a bad afterthought.
Khazim approached with the same silence he gave everything. A slow walk. Boots that barely echoed.
The guard looked up from his seat, started to say something—
—and found himself staring down the curved blade of a retracted weapon Khazim held at his side: the Hunterfly. A butterfly hunter's knife when collapsed — double-bladed and forged with twin Ghostglint tips that shimmered faintly under the shadowy entryway.
Khazim didn't blink. "I'm not here to talk to you."
The guard swallowed hard and slid the door open without another word.
Inside, the air was thick with incense and artificial lemon oil. A holo-wall flickered behind the desk, displaying bracket wins, fighter clips, and promotional reels Delmin used to impress investors who never showed.
Gor Delmin looked up mid-laugh, leaning back in a velvet-worn chair with his boots on the desk. His blazer shimmered with bootleg crystal embroidery. His beard was sharp, his smile smug.
"Khazim. My favorite phantom. I was just—"
Khazim flicked his Hunterfly once. The knife hissed open into its full staff form with a quiet snickk — blade tips gleaming.
The holo-wall glitched and went black.
Delmin's smile dropped. "Alright. Alright. No need for the ghost act. You want your Musa?"
Khazim stood still.
Delmin sighed, sitting up. "Look, I was gonna send it. But the pool's been dry. You know how these brackets are — lean payouts, bad turnover—"
"You're talking," Khazim said.
Delmin froze.
Then reached under the desk.
Khazim moved first.
The Hunterfly swept forward, blade-point now resting gently on Delmin's hand before he could reach whatever was hidden beneath the console.
Delmin flinched.
Khazim said nothing.
"Okay! Okay," Delmin muttered, retracting his arm. "I got something better than Musa."
He shuffled sideways, unlocked a side drawer, and pulled out a thin black drive — fractured at the edges and faintly glowing with corrupted pulse data.
"Shadow Bit," he explained quickly. "Encrypted dossier. Came off a vault-runner I owed. Could be dirty pics, could be insider trades. Who knows. But it's real."
Khazim didn't flinch. "Half in Musa."
Delmin blinked. "What if it's worth more than your take?"
"Then consider it interest," Khazim replied, eyes like slate. "And a tax for not shattering your jaw."
Delmin didn't argue. He passed over a compact pouch of Musa — thick, matte-paper notes stamped with glyph-threaded seals.
Khazim took both and turned for the door.
"Don't go saying I never paid my debts," Delmin muttered, adjusting his collar. "I just… delay them occasionally."
Khazim didn't respond.
As he stepped out into the wind tunnel of the Strip, the Hunterfly snapped back into blade form and vanished beneath his bomber jacket.
The black market in Westway Strip didn't hide underground — it was the ground. A shifting sprawl of vendor vaults, fencer corners, and signal-choked alleys tucked beneath the skeletal bridges of old rail lines. If you knew where to look, you didn't need passwords. Just purpose.
Khazim walked like he had both.
The crowd parted around him without fully realizing it — as if instinct knew better than curiosity. He passed through hanging fabric stalls, over crates of synth-fruit and se'lo-laced incense, ducking under tangled fiber wires and past a squad of rookies arguing about fake beast cards.
His destination was tucked behind a discarded sonar tank shell: Fynn's Cache, a reinforced alcove lit only by flickering neon strips and a modded heat lamp overhead.
Fynn sat at the back — legs folded on a dented coil chair, amber goggles reflecting five screens at once. The man looked like a network node given flesh: silver plugs in each wrist, a subdermal scanner wrapping one eye, and fingertips branded with old smuggler seals.
"Didn't expect to see your silhouette today," Fynn called, not turning around. "Unless you've come to buy back one of your bad decisions."
Khazim held up the Shadow Bit.
Fynn turned. And grinned.
"Now that looks familiar."
He reached out and accepted it delicately, setting it into a data-dish that hovered over the workbench. A violet pulse scanned the drive three times. Then a soft tone chimed. Screen readouts began to stream code and half-visible decrypts — corrupted video, unread messages, and several locked vault packets.
"Mm," Fynn hummed. "Definitely real. Definitely dirty. You wanna know what's inside?"
"No."
That earned a longer glance.
Fynn tilted his head. "So just Musa then."
Khazim nodded once.
Fynn tapped a few commands, then slid a fresh currency band across the table. It clicked open, revealing layered notes in dusky greens and warm blacks — stamped with a golden glyph seal.
"Seven hundred Musa. Could've gotten more if I knew who to sell it to, but you came early."
Khazim accepted the band and didn't flinch.
"Careful," Fynn added. "You keep showing up like this, and people are gonna start thinking you're back in rotation."
"I'm not," Khazim said, already turning.
Fynn smirked. "Sure, you're not."
Khazim disappeared into the outer lanes of the Strip without another word.
"Familiar Fractures"
Location: East Circuit Plaza, Maatari
Time: 03:40 PM
Khazim's boots tapped against the layered pavement of East Circuit Plaza — quieter here, but no less alive. Sunset spilled across the storefronts like honey over rust. Synthetic ivy crawled up ceramic towers, and magnetic delivery drones hummed above glass awnings.
He stopped at a corner vendor half-buried beneath hanging baskets of dry-rooted herbs and coded produce.
The old man behind the counter squinted, then raised a palm. "Ah. Didn't hear your feet this time. Boy, anyone ever tell you that you have 'murder feet'? You move like an assassin!"
Khazim said nothing. Just pointed to a sealed satchel of crimson grain, then two jars of marinated pulsefruit — the kind his mother always soaked in salt before stewing them in broth.
"Family night?" the vendor asked, bagging the items into a lightweave tote.
Khazim handed him a fresh Musa note.
"No change needed," he muttered.
The man chuckled. "Tell your mother the spices were on me."
"I didn't say who they were for."
"Didn't have to."
Khazim left without another word.
By the time he reached the outer loops of Maatari, the skyline had dipped beneath the burnline — that last strip of day where shadow climbed fast. His transit pass clicked against the reader of a magnetrail terminal, and the platform doors hissed open.
He rode in silence, watching the city mutate through the window.
High-rises gave way to housing towers. Towers gave way to low-built structures and winding roads lined with light-trees and passive defense nodes. This was the outer ring — the slow belly of Maatari. Clean. Faintly lit. Reconstructed after the last quake. It was where the forgotten went to try again.
Where his family stayed.
He stepped off the platform as the train whispered away, the air thicker here with the smell of treated wood and static-churned soil.
And despite the years of absence, his legs knew the way.
One curve. Two lefts. A garden wall with chipped paint. A familiar door.
He paused.
Let the stillness sink in.
Then knocked once and stepped inside.
The scent hit first — spice charred over woodsmoke, grilled cevi-root patties crisped on a synth-skillet, and something sweet laced with citrus and maza peel simmering near the back of the kitchen. Home — if such a word still applied.
His mother's voice followed from around the corner.
"Didn't even knock twice. I knew it was you."
Khazim set the groceries on the entry table. "I don't double knock."
She appeared a moment later — apron worn thin, eyes sharp and soft all at once. Curls pulled back into a thick knot, streaks of wisdom silvering the edges.
"You never change your tone either," she said, stepping in to hug him. Not long, but firm. "You look leaner."
"I'm not."
"Not arguing. Just observing."
She sorted the bags while talking. "Everyone's already here. Drelan's been bragging about some internship. Marek's trying to play peacemaker like always. And Harok… well. You'll see."
Khazim exhaled. "Should I leave?"
"You made it this far. Might as well eat."
The dining table sat beneath a dome of aged skyglass, letting in dull twilight filtered through the city's rising haze. Plates steamed across hand-etched glass: fried maza sticks, sweet-oil cassava wedges, spice-rubbed grillfish, honey braised lom root, and sour rice studded with shrimp flakes. An open bottle of Tundari bitter sat beside a pitcher of melonwater, condensation running like veins.
Drelan was already mid-story.
"So, then they said my project cycle was clean enough to ship. Like, fully vault-worthy. I mean, sure, it was just internship routing, but the system flagged it as tier-two viable. My supervisor said I might get a temp badge before end of cycle."
He noticed Khazim enter and smirked. "Wow. You came. Mom must've guilt-hacked you."
Khazim pulled out a chair and sat. "You still talk like that?"
"I speak future," Drelan grinned. "You grumble in static."
Harok sipped from a dark ceramic cup. "He shows up once every few moons and still smells like alley concrete."
Khazim didn't look at him. "Better than smelling like false security."
Marek chuckled. "Let's keep the spice on the table, yeah?"
Their mother entered, tray in hand. "Enough. Eat first. Jab after."
The meal moved in stages. Harok droned about enforcement restructuring, how even "middle districts need heavier codescans these days." Drelan offered more internship talk, now about clearance keys and "desk nodes optimized for pulse-redirect environments."
Khazim ate in silence.
"You still punching things for coin?" Harok finally asked, not looking up from his cup.
Khazim didn't blink. "Sometimes for cause."
"Still think cause pays your rent?"
"Sometimes it pays better."
"You ever think about joining real enforcement? I could put in a word."
"I'd rather bleed honest."
"Cute," Harok muttered, "until you're bleeding for nothing."
Marek, ever the salve, raised his glass. "At least you're winning, yeah? Saw a flyer last week. Your bracket posted you with five knockouts in two nights. That's something."
Khazim gave a barely-there nod.
"You always were fast," Marek added. "Freakishly so. Like you bend seconds."
"I count them," Khazim replied.
The table fell quiet for a moment.
After dessert — a half-melted cube of vanilla zap-ice and baked maize crumble — Harok and Drelan excused themselves. Drelan gave Khazim a look that landed somewhere between envy and defense. Harok didn't look back.
When the door clicked shut, his mother handed Khazim a small, sealed wrap.
"Found this while clearing out your father's old things. He passed it to me when you left home. Said it came from his father. I didn't give it to you then… because I wasn't sure you'd come back."
Khazim unwrapped it slowly.
Inside was a eye-shaped pendant, carved from worn Ghostglint — weathered but symmetrical. The iris of the eye looked etched by hand, not machine. A soft seam clicked open at the back, revealing a thin hook lock — a perfect fit for his chain.
He didn't speak.
Just clipped it into the last open link of his herringbone, where it sat without glow. No hum. No spark. Just… present.
"I thought he gave both pieces to Drelan," Khazim finally said.
"He did."
A pause.
"He didn't argue when I said you should have this one."
Khazim looked up. "Thanks."
She placed her hand over his for a second. "Don't make this your last time."
He stepped to the door, paused, and said — soft, but clear:
"You're the only reason I come."
Then vanished into the dark again.
"Introducing, the unknown."
Location: The Gullies, Maatari
Time: 07:35 AM
The sun had barely begun to crack the sky when Khazim climbed the ladder to the roof of his building. The metal creaked like old bones, each rung coated in dew and city dust.
At the top, the skyline of Maatari stretched wide — neon scars splitting the haze, rail lines humming far off in arterial rhythm. The Gullies rolled below him in waves of broken rooftops and half-lit corridors, a place both forgotten and alive in its own jagged tempo.
He stepped to his usual spot — an exposed slab near the corner edge — and sat cross-legged. No mat. No cushion. Just cold stone.
The Ghostglint Chain rested against his collarbone, warm from body heat. The newly added folded-eye pendant nestled against it like it had always belonged.
Khazim closed his eyes.
He drew in breath — slow and shallow. The kind that traveled through ribs, not lungs. The kind that silenced sound, even the noise inside.
His pulse slowed.
His mind didn't.
Not completely. Something buzzed beneath stillness — a friction just behind his thoughts. Not chaotic, but insistent. A spark scratching at the edge of awareness.
Then it happened.
A low harmonic thrum passed through the pendant. Not loud. Not forceful. But ancient. Elemental. Like memory, not noise.
His Ghostglint Chain vibrated once, faintly — then flared.
Light spilled through the links like ink set ablaze. A thin violet-blue thread passed from the pendant into his chest, then up along the side of his face… until his dead eye lit with spectral resonance — not seeing but feeling.
Khazim didn't move.
He didn't panic.
He simply observed — like always.
The glyphs weren't visible. Not yet. But he could sense their shape. Their tension. Something within him had synced — not to the pendant, not to the chain, but to the buried signal they'd both carried all along.
His Se'lo stirred.
He placed two fingers to his temple — out of reflex more than purpose — and felt the scar pulse once, then fade.
A beat of silence.
Then a soft growl behind him.
Tre'co stood in the rooftop shadow — smoke-bodied, luminous-eyed, silent until that sound.
Khazim glanced back over his shoulder.
"No idea what that was," he muttered.
"Don't care right now either."
He stood. Cracked his neck.
His Se'lo settled back into stillness.
"But I know one thing."
Tre'co's head lifted slightly, waiting.
Khazim rolled his shoulder once, expression unreadable.
"…It's time to eat."