The city of Hollow's End was a vertical lie, a stack of shanties and spires built into a sinkhole that had no bottom anyone had ever measured. The Architect's purge had collapsed his garden, but the city above barely noticed—sinkholes were Tuesday here. The only evidence was the cloud of cyan dust boiling from a newly-formed crater, and even that was already being scavenged by children with filtered cloths tied over their faces.
My overlay identified the substance: [ARCHITECT DUST (INERT)] [VALUE: 3 COPPER/GRAM]. They were collecting the cremated remains of harvested skills like it was gold dust.
"Welcome to Hollow's," Callum rasped, his voice still reassembling from its phase-scatter. "Where even the dead have a price."
He was fractured. His Unique Skill was intact, but his identity had been partitioned during extraction. He remembered the Architect's network in fragments— node maps, test protocols, the Handler's face (Mira's mother's face). But he couldn't recall his own last name.
Mira didn't ask. Her face was a mask of stone, but her overlay betrayed her: [GRIEF: SUPPRESSED] [RAGE: BUILDING]. The Handler had been her mother. Now she was a hollowed echo with admin privileges.
Drek spat the last of the sludge. "We need a base. Somewhere the Architect's eyes aren't."
"Nowhere," Callum said. "Every stone in Hollow's is marked. The city is Node #7. The entire population is either cultivators or crop."
I scanned the crowd. The overlays triggered:
[NAME: ???]
[RACE: HUMAN (MASKED)]
[LEVEL: ??]
[UNIQUE SKILL: HIDDEN]
[NAME: ???]
[RACE: ELF (MUNDANE)]
[LEVEL: 4]
[UNIQUE SKILL: NONE (HARVESTED)]
Ninety percent of the population were empty. Skill-less. The Architect had already been here.
"The free ones," Callum continued, "are the sifters—they collect dust, trade in essence, broker deals for the Architect. They keep the machine running."
"How do you survive here?" Mira asked.
"You sell." Callum looked at me. "Or you buy. There's a market for rebel Worldlost. The Architect pays bounty: 5000 Essence per captured node."
Drek's hand tightened on his hatchet. "You're saying we're worth money?"
"You're worth everything," a new voice said. Smooth. Oily. A man in grey silk emerged from the crowd, his smile too wide. [NAME: VESSEL (PROBABLE ALIAS)] [RACE: HUMAN (AUGMENTED)] [LEVEL: 12] [UNIQUE SKILL: "NULL CONTRACT"] .
Null Contract. A skill that erased other skills on contact.
"Node #5, #6, and #9," Vessel said, eyes on us. "Walking free in my district. The Architect will be delighted."
[QUEST OFFERED: THE BOUNTY]
[REQUESTER: VESSEL (SIFFER BOSS)]
[OBJECTIVE: SUBMIT TO ARCHITECT (REFUSEABLE)]
[REWARD: 5000 ESSENCE + LIVING STATUS]
[ALTERNATIVE: FIGHT (PROBABILITY: 3%)]
Three percent. Against Level 12.
But my INT 30 brain saw the secondary win condition . Vessel's Null Contract required line-of-sight . And we were standing next to a dust cloud.
I grabbed a handful of Architect Dust. [ITEM: ALCHEMICAL GREY GOO (VOLATILE)] . I threw it at Vessel's face.
He laughed, the dust passing through him. [PHASE-PARTIAL: 40% SOLIDITY] . He was a projection. A hologram. The real Vessel was elsewhere.
"You're not here," I said. "You're a proxy. The Architect doesn't let his sifters get their hands dirty."
The projection's smile flickered. " Astute. But irrelevant. The hunt has begun. "
He vanished. But his voice remained, broadcast across the entire district: " 5000 Essence bounty on River's Reach Worldlost. Alive. Tag: #5, #6, #9. Happy hunting."
The crowd turned . Not all. But enough. A dozen eyes locked onto us, hungry.
[QUEST ACCEPTED: ESCAPE HOLLOW'S END]
[ENVIRONMENT: HOSTILE ZONE]
[PURGE PROTOCOL: ACTIVE (CITY-WIDE)]
The Architect's Test 4 wasn't an ambush.
It was a population-wide manhunt .
Drek grinned. "Well, this is fun."
Mira's bow was up. Callum's hands were phasing in and out of reality, unstable.
I opened my status screen. [LEVEL 8 → 9, PENDING EXP FROM PURGE] . The system was waiting. It knew what I was about to do.
I dumped all 5 points into Luck .
[LUCK: 1 → 6]
The universe screamed. My 1 Luck had been a shield—the system couldn't target me because I was statistically irrelevant. Now I was relevant. The Architect's purge protocol locked on.
[WARNING: ARCHITECT DIRECT INTERVENTION IMMINENT]
Perfect.
If he wanted to see my math, I'd show him.
Starting with survival in a city of bounty hunters.