The Veridia Waste Unit didn't just smell; it had a taste—a perpetual metallic tang on the tongue, a constant reminder of burning oil and the slow, grinding death of discarded technology. For Jae-seong, a boy officially labeled Rueless and therefore worthless, the gnawing hunger in his gut was a more immediate monster than the unit's pervasive stench. Three days without a proper meal had left him wire-thin, his joints a map of aches, each movement a silent negotiation with his own fading endurance.
His work was simple, brutal: manually sifting through the slag the magnetometers missed, searching for salvageable copper and iron. It was a task reserved for the despised, ensuring they absorbed maximum toxic residue under the watchful, indifferent eyes of the foremen.
Foreman Thrax was currently propped against a rusted conveyor, his silhouette a heavy, oppressive presence. Thrax wasn't subtle; he was a living monument to brute, legalized force. His status was etched into his very skin: the Bronze Rune of Fortification glowed a dense, dull brown on his forearm, a symbol of the lowest Rune Tier, yet one that granted him absolute physical superiority over every Rueless worker. Every petty insult, every casual kick, every open palm strike Thrax delivered was cushioned by that passive energy field. Runes, the shattered fragments of the world's magic, gave the haves everything, and left the Rueless with nothing but the dust of their desperation.
Jae-seong's fingers, already raw and bleeding, probed through the jagged scrap. His only anchor against the physical pain and the deeper, psychological dread was the cold, smooth weight of the Obsidian Shard hidden deep within a tattered pocket sewn into his tunic. It was just a black rock, found years ago amidst the very waste he now sorted, but touching it, feeling its almost absolute zero temperature, always muted the surrounding chaos and silenced the screaming hunger.
"Scraps, boy! Your quota is low, your movement is slower than a dead battery!" Thrax's voice was a low, rumbling threat that reverberated in the stale air. He kicked a discarded fusion cell—not at Jae-seong, but close enough to shower him with sharp, acrid metal shards.
"The law of the Bronze Tier says I get paid for what I find, not for my speed," Jae-seong muttered, just loud enough for Thrax to hear. It was a small, desperate act of defiance.
Thrax's smile was ugly, revealing gaps where his teeth had been broken in earlier, greater fights. "The law of the Bronze Tier also says if you refuse management, you forfeit your right to the unit's shelter. Out in the Cold Tunnels, you starve by morning."
Jae-seong didn't look up, but the image of an old beggar flashed through his mind—a man from his childhood, once powerful, now reduced to gibbering in the street, obsessed with a ridiculous notion. "Fear the small beginnings, boy. Fear the bronze. It holds the oldest kind of hunger." He had dismissed it then. Bronze was the weakest, the most common. How could it be feared more than the terrifying, unpredictable power of the higher Tiers, the legendary Gold and Platinum?
That night, after the shift's deafening grind finally ceased, Thrax cornered him by the immense disposal chute, a cylindrical cavern of crushing machinery that fed the city's incinerators. The air here was heavy with the latent, stale energy of countless shattered Runes.
"The payment is due," Thrax sneered, raising his thick arm. His Fortification Rune pulsed violently, the brown energy snapping into a rigid, defensive layer around his fist, ready to deliver a blow that would shatter ribs and ensure Jae-seong was out of commission for a week, likely to be discarded to the Cold Tunnels.
Desperation wasn't a choice; it was the final, animal trigger. Jae-seong knew the blow would break him. He didn't have the strength. He didn't have a Rune. He had only the black rock in his pocket, and an instinct born of final, utter defeat.
As the Rune-infused fist descended, Jae-seong didn't dodge or block. He launched himself forward, not toward Thrax's head or chest, but toward the glowing Rune itself. He pressed his entire, bleeding palm flat against the shimmering brown surface—an impossible, suicidal violation.
For a split-second, the two energies met: the dense, defensive power of the Fortification Rune, and the utter, hungry null that was Jae-seong's touch.
The Fortification Rune shattered.
It was silent. It was absolute. The dense brown energy didn't scatter or explode; it simply collapsed inward, sucked away from Thrax's arm by a terrifying, soundless vacuum centered in Jae-seong's hand. The power was gone, ripped out of existence.
Thrax didn't scream in pain, but in pure, primal confusion, in ontological agony. The Rune, which had been his identity, his shield, his very definition of self, was gone. Where the Bronze light had been, only a raised, red phantom scar remained—a symbol of stolen power, already beginning to fade to a sickly white. Thrax crumpled, utterly depleted, his mind unable to compute the void.
Jae-seong fell backward onto the metal grating, clutching his head as a white-hot, invasive spike of consciousness flooded his mind. This was the horror of the consumption.
He wasn't absorbing just raw energy; he was absorbing the Rune's entire conceptual history and the core memory of its previous owner. He saw fleeting, disorienting images: a small, dark room; a terrified plea for a job; the immense pride of receiving the Fortification Rune; and the final, crushing hunger of Thrax, who had used his Rune to bully others because he, too, was desperate to survive, to matter.
The feeling of Fortify merged with the feeling of Hunger. Jae-seong gasped, the contradictory emotions tearing at his sanity.
The pain intensified, peaking in a blinding, internal flash. The memories twisted and warped, and in that moment of absolute psychic overload, he saw a vision: a cold, dark blue shimmer—Cobalt—stretching across a boundless, empty sky. It was the color of oppressive, absolute law.
And then, a soundless, overwhelming word whispered across his new, fractured consciousness, carrying a primal, desperate craving: "Vesper."
The intense surge faded, leaving behind a cold, sharp certainty. He looked at his own arm, still bare, but now humming with a subtle, alien knowledge. He had consumed the Rune, but it was now merely a cold, tactical voice in his head, whispering specific, metal-sharp instructions on defense, offense, and structural weaknesses: the Force Echo.
Jae-seong shoved the Obsidian Shard deep into his pocket, forcing the chilling contact to ground his racing mind. The Shard accepted the excess energy, growing noticeably colder, making the new Force Echo easier to bear.
He was a monster now, a vacuum walking the Deep Markets. He had the power of a Bronze-Tier user without the Rune, and Thrax's desperate memory was now his own. He looked down at the foreman, still twitching in the conceptual ruin of his loss.
Jae-seong knew he had to escape Veridia. His survival meant the shattering of the entire tiered system, and the Cobalt world would soon hunt the cause of the void. The beggar's final words echoed in the cold calculation of his new power: Fear the bronze. It held the oldest, rawest hunger, and now, that hunger was his.