The air was still.
Kael lay on the cold stone floor of the ruin, staring at the faintly glowing sigil across his chest. It pulsed with a rhythm separate from his own heartbeat—slow, steady, alien.
His breathing was shallow, his mind a chaos of soundless echoes.
The Flow Codex hovered in front of him, its lines of light wavering like reflections on dark water. He'd seen others' Codices before—clean panels of text and color, neatly organized with levels and stats. His wasn't like that.
The symbols that floated before his eyes shifted endlessly, never settling on one shape. The text refused to stay still.
> [Flow Codex Active]
Designation: Kael Ardyn
Veyra: The Hollow Veyra (Sealed)
Codex Status: Unquantifiable
Flow Sync: [???]
Skill: Flow Reversal — dormant until trigger event.
"Unquantifiable," he whispered. "That… doesn't even make sense."
The word made the ruin seem colder. He pushed himself up, wincing as the sigil on his chest burned faintly. His Histinak felt like it had awoken for the first time, pulsing through his veins like fire and frost at once.
A faint hum filled the air. The fractured mirror—now a pile of dust—still whispered at the edge of hearing. It wasn't a sound, exactly. More like a thought brushing against the inside of his skull.
—The world will not see you. But it will feel you.
He froze. "Who's there?"
No reply. Only the drip of water from somewhere deep in the dark.
He looked around the chamber, now illuminated faintly by strands of pale light bleeding from the cracks in the walls. Strange markings pulsed faintly along the stone—threads of Histinak veins, channels where the world's energy flowed.
They were responding to him.
When he reached out, the light recoiled as though afraid.
Kael clenched his fist. "What am I?"
The Codex flickered once more.
> [System Message: Incomplete Awakening. Find a Conduit.]
A Conduit—his weapon. Without one, his Veyra was unstable.
He took a step forward, then another, his body adjusting to the new current inside him. Every heartbeat felt sharper, every breath too full. The Flow wasn't outside him anymore—it was under his skin.
As he climbed from the pit, the ground trembled faintly.
Something moved behind him.
Kael turned.
From the shadows of the ruined hall emerged a shape—long, low, and crawling. Its body shimmered like glass filled with ash, its eyes burning blue. A Flow Wraith, drawn to the awakening of Histinak.
Kael had seen one before, from a distance. The academy used trained fighters to clear them when they emerged near city limits. They were corrupted fragments of Histinak—souls without Veyra, mimicking life through stolen Flow.
It let out a grinding hiss, the sound of stone against bone.
Kael backed away. He had no weapon, no training for this kind of close encounter. His Codex flickered in warning.
> [Warning: Flow Entity Detected.]
Threat Level: Low to Moderate.
Combat Recommended.
"Recommended?!" he snapped. "With what?"
The Wraith lunged.
Instinct took over. Kael rolled aside, the creature's claws scraping the floor and sending sparks through the dust. He grabbed a broken shard of stone and swung wildly, the impact ringing out uselessly.
Then—pain.
The sigil across his chest flared as the Wraith's claw grazed his arm. The wound didn't bleed. Instead, his Histinak surged, devouring the invading Flow from the creature's strike.
The world bent.
For an instant, Kael felt the Wraith's energy—the structure of its Flow, the trembling desperation holding it together. He didn't think; his Codex reacted on its own.
> [Skill Trigger: Flow Reversal Activated.]
Redirecting Energy Path...
The Wraith screamed. Its blue glow inverted, black light bursting outward in tendrils that funneled into Kael's chest. He staggered as energy flooded him, a torrent of life force trying to find balance.
Then, silence.
The creature collapsed into dust.
Kael gasped, falling to his knees. His Codex reappeared, pulsing faintly.
> [Experience Absorbed.]
Level +1
Skill Progress: Flow Reversal stabilized.
He stared, shaking. "I… leveled up?"
It was real. His Codex responded. But it wasn't supposed to work like this.
No training. No meditation. No Conduit. He hadn't drawn energy from the world—he'd taken it from something else's.
The system pulsed again, faintly.
> [Warning: Unstable Flow Accumulation Detected.]
Containment advised.
His veins burned. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the pulse of the Hollow Veyra echo through him, not painful, but vast—like standing on the edge of a storm and realizing it was inside you all along.
"I didn't mean to—" He stopped. The air thickened. The dust that had been the Wraith was dissolving, returning to the Flow, and he could feel each particle of it slip away through him.
He hadn't just won.
He'd consumed it.
Kael staggered toward the exit tunnel, desperate to reach the surface.
The ruins trembled again. The whisper returned, faint and knowing:
—You were never meant to fight. You were meant to end.
Kael stumbled out into the night air.
Above, the stars pulsed faintly—every constellation mirrored by glowing Codex lights across the city skyline. People were celebrating their awakenings, their new levels.
He looked at his own hand. His Flow Codex still shimmered faintly over his palm, and beneath the lines of text, his reflection stared back from the Hollow sigil etched into his skin.
> Level: 1
Title: Unrecorded.
Skill: Flow Reversal (Active)
Codex Class: Unknown.
The final message appeared again, only this time… it flickered once, as though rewritten.
> [System Notice: Observation in progress.]
[Welcome, Kael Ardyn.]