The smell of ozone was thick enough to taste. It sat heavy on the back of Aisling's tongue, metallic and sharp, mixing with the acrid stench of burnt flesh that drifted up from the stairwell landing.
Aisling leaned back against the cold concrete wall, her chest heaving. Her breath came in ragged, jagged gasps, scraping against her throat. She stared at her right hand. Just moments ago, it had been engulfed in flames—not the chaotic, burning fire of a house trap, but a living extension of her will.
The green-skinned creature—a goblin, her mind supplied the term from the fantasy games Craig used to force her to watch him play—was nothing more than a pile of grey ash and bone fragments on the linoleum floor.
A blue, semi-transparent window hovered in her peripheral vision. It bobbed gently, anchored to her retina like a smudge on a contact lens. It was invasive. It was impossible.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[ENEMY DEFEATED: SCAVENGER GOBLIN (LVL 1)]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 10]
[MANA REGENERATION: ACTIVE (1.5/sec)]
"Experience," Aisling whispered, the word feeling foreign and absurd. "It really is a game to them."
She reached out to touch the blue box. Her fingers passed through the light, tingling slightly as if she'd touched a static-charged balloon. The window didn't flicker; it merely waited, indifferent to her disbelief.
If this is a game, she thought, a cold, clinical logic washing over her panic, then I need to see the rules.
"Status," she croaked. The command felt instinctive, buried in her brain alongside the sudden knowledge of how to ignite the air.
With a soft digital chime that only she could hear, the window expanded. It filled her vision with rows of neon blue text, overlaying the grim reality of the stairwell.
[STATUS WINDOW]
[NAME: AISLING DAVIS]
[CLASS: PYROMANCER (INFERNO)]
[LEVEL: 1 (10/100 XP)]
[HP: 100/100]
[MP (MANA): 35/150]
[ATTRIBUTES]
* STRENGTH: 8 (Average Adult Female: 9)
* AGILITY: 12
* VITALITY: 10
* INTELLIGENCE: 18 (Class Bonus Applied)
* SENSE: 14
[TRAITS]
* [SEVERANCE]: A mind honed by trauma and emotional detachment. Grants Mental Resistance +10%. Panic states are suppressed in combat.
[SKILLS]
* [IGNITE (ACTIVE) - LVL 1]: Manifests flame from the user's extremities. Damage scales with Intelligence. Cost: 10 MP per activation + continuous drain.
* [EMBER SKIN (PASSIVE) - LVL 1]: Increases resistance to heat and fire damage by 20%.
Aisling stared at the numbers. It was a dissection of her existence.
"Strength... eight," she muttered. A bitter laugh bubbled up in her throat, strangled and tight. "Weak. I'm statistically weak. Craig was right about that much."
But then her eyes drifted to Intelligence: 18. It was nearly double her strength. And Sense: 14. She wasn't strong, but she was sharp. She was aware.
She focused on the mana bar. [MP: 35/150].
"Thirty-five mana left," she analyzed, her mind switching into the compartmentalized mode she used during difficult surgeries at the clinic. "That burst in the hallway... it took over a hundred mana? That's inefficient. I panicked."
She closed her hand into a fist. She had unleashed a torrent of uncontrolled fire to kill something the size of a toddler. It was overkill. If she ran out of mana, she was just a girl with a pocket knife in a building that had become a dungeon. And with 8 Strength, she wasn't going to be fighting anything off physically.
I need to control the output. Regulate the flow. I can't just be a flamethrower; I have to be a scalpel.
She pushed herself off the wall. The phantom weight of the diamond ring on her finger throbbed, a ghost of the chains she had just cast off. She rubbed the spot with her thumb, feeling the indentation where the gold had dug into her skin for two years.
Craig was upstairs. The penthouse was a cage. The world had ended, and in a twisted way, the apocalypse had unlocked the door.
"Down," she whispered. "Only way is down."
She began to descend.
The stairwell grew darker as she passed the 30th floor. The emergency lights flickered with a dying red pulse, casting long, grotesque shadows against the cinderblocks. The air pressure felt wrong here—heavy, pressing against her eardrums. The building itself groaned, the steel skeleton protesting against the sudden shift in the planet's axis.
Step by step. 29. 28. 27.
On the 25th floor landing, the silence broke.
Skitter. Skitter.
The sound was wet, rhythmic, and multiplied. It came from the shadows beneath the stairs leading down.
Aisling froze. Her hand went to the pocket of her coat, gripping the small folding knife. The [Severance] trait hummed in the back of her mind, dampening the spike of terror that threatened to freeze her legs. It didn't remove the fear; it just put it behind a layer of glass.
She peeked over the railing.
Emerging from the gloom was a nightmare made flesh. It was a spider, but wrong. It was the size of a large dog, its carapace glistening with an oily, black sheen. Eight legs, tipped with jagged hooks, clicked softly against the concrete. Its multiple red eyes glowed with a malevolent intelligence, scanning the landing.
A blue tag floated above its head.
[MONSTER IDENTIFIED]
[DUNGEON SPIDER - LVL 2]
[STATE: HUNTING]
Level 2. It was a higher level than her.
"I can't blast it," she whispered to herself, her eyes darting to the blue MP bar in her vision. It had regenerated slightly to 40/150. "If I use the full Ignite stream, I'll burn through half my remaining mana. If I miss, I'm dead."
She recalled the anatomy of arachnids from her veterinary textbooks. Cephalothorax. Abdomen. The pedicel connecting them is the nexus of the nervous system.
She needed precision. She needed a bullet, not a bomb.
Aisling raised her right hand, pointing her index finger like a gun. She visualized the fire differently this time. She didn't want it to flow; she wanted it to condense. She imagined compressing the heat, squeezing a bonfire into the size of a marble. Vibrating. Pressurized.
"Ignite," she whispered.
A small, bead-sized flame appeared at the tip of her finger. It wasn't orange; it was a bright, welding-torch blue. It hissed, consuming the oxygen around it.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: SKILL PROFICIENCY INCREASED]
[MANA EFFICIENCY INCREASED.]
The spider sensed the heat. It hissed, rearing up on its hind legs, exposing its hairy underbelly. It prepared to leap.
Aisling didn't hesitate. She didn't flinch.
Bang.
She released the compression.
The bead of fire streaked through the air, leaving a faint trail of white smoke. It struck the spider directly in the cluster of eyes, drilling inward before detonating with a muffled pop.
HISS-SCREEE!
The creature recoiled, thrashing wildly as smoke billowed from its shattered faceplate. It wasn't dead, but it was blinded and disoriented. It scrambled in circles, its razor-sharp legs slashing the air inches from the railing.
Aisling didn't celebrate. The glass wall in her mind kept her focused.
She vaulted over the railing, landing heavily on the lower platform. Her knees buckled slightly—Strength 8, she reminded herself—but she kept her balance. She drew the small folding knife.
She didn't use magic this time. Mana was life. Mana was precious.
She stepped into the creature's guard, dodging a flailing leg that scraped sparks off the concrete wall. She moved with a desperate agility she didn't know she possessed.
She drove the knife into the soft tissue between the head and the thorax.
Green ichor sprayed over her hand, smelling of rotten eggs and copper.
The spider convulsed once, curled its legs inward, and then—impossibly—dissolved. The physical body simply unraveled into black mist, leaving behind a dark stain on the floor.
[ENEMY DEFEATED: DUNGEON SPIDER (LVL 2)]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 25]
[LOOT DROPPED: SPIDER SILK GLAND (COMMON)]
Where the body had been, a small, slimy grey sack remained on the concrete.
Aisling stared at it, breathing hard. She wiped the green slime from her cheek. The sheer gamification of it was nauseating. A living thing—a monster, yes, but living—had just turned into data and dropped an item.
"I have to pick that up, don't I?" she grimaced.
She crouched down. The gland was warm and fleshy. It felt real.
She grabbed it and shoved it into her coat pocket.
"One spell. One stab," she murmured, checking her mana. [MP: 30/150]. The condensed shot had cost 10 MP. The regeneration was slow.
"Better," she told herself. "But not good enough. I need to get out of this building."
She continued her descent. 20 floors. 10 floors. The silence of the stairwell began to be replaced by a muffled roar from below. Screams. Car alarms. The sound of chaos.
When she finally reached the lobby, the world she knew was gone.
The lobby of the Driscoll Tower, once a pristine expanse of imported marble and gold leaf, looked like a bomb had gone off. The revolving glass doors were shattered, diamonds of safety glass crunching under Aisling's sneakers. The concierge desk was overturned. The lush potted plants that used to decorate the entrance had mutated, their leaves turning a deep, bruised purple, thorns growing inches long in seconds.
But it was the sky that stopped Aisling in her tracks.
She stepped out through the broken door frame onto the street and looked up.
The sun was... wrong. It was hazy and dim, like a lightbulb failing to ignite. The sky itself was a swirling canvas of violent violet and charcoal grey. Clouds moved unnaturally fast, spiraling inward toward a point directly above the city center.
And the gravity. It felt heavy. Not crushing, but oppressive, as if the planet itself was trying to pull her down to her knees.
"Help! We need a healer!"
"Loot that store! Grab the water!"
"Get away from me!"
The sounds of society collapsing were loud, chaotic, and terrified.
Aisling hugged the limestone facade of the building, making herself small. The street was a war zone of panic. Cars were piled in heaps, some floating a few inches off the ground where gravity pockets fluctuated.
People were running in every direction. Some were frozen in the middle of the street, staring blankly at the blue screens hovering in front of their faces, reading their tutorials while the world burned around them. Others—the ones who adapted fast, the ones with darkness in them—were already raiding the smashed storefronts.
Aisling pulled her coat collar up. Keep your head down. Don't engage. Get supplies.
Her stomach growled, a sharp, cramping reminder that her HP and Stamina bars needed fuel.
She aimed for a small convenience store across the intersection. It looked looted, the windows smashed in, but maybe there were scraps.
As she stepped off the curb, a group of three men blocked her path.
They wore torn business suits, ties loosened, looking like they had just come from a boardroom meeting that turned into a brawl. The one in the center, a heavy-set man with a receding hairline and sweat stains on his shirt, held a putter from an office golf set.
A blue box hovered over his head.
[PLAYER: GREGORY]
[LEVEL: 2]
"Hey! You! The redhead!" Gregory shouted, pointing the putter at her like a weapon.
Aisling stiffened. She didn't stop, but she slowed her pace, calculating the distance. Ten feet.
"I'm talking to you!"
Gregory stepped forward, flanked by two younger men holding jagged pieces of rebar. They looked terrified, but that terror was curding into aggression. They needed someone to control, someone to make them feel powerful again.
"We're forming a coalition," Gregory said, puffing out his chest. "Safety in numbers. We're taking control of this block. Driscoll Tower is ours now."
He looked her up and down. His eyes didn't see a person; they saw an asset. Or worse, a resource. It was a look Aisling knew intimately. It was the look Craig gave her when she wore a dress he liked. A look of ownership.
"You look capable," Gregory sneered. "We need women for the... domestic tasks. Cooking. Inventory management. You know, keeping morale up."
One of the flankers snickered, a nervous, ugly sound.
Aisling felt a cold calmness wash over her. It was [The Severed] trait working overtime. The panic that should have been there was replaced by an icy clarity.
"Not interested," Aisling said, her voice flat.
"You don't get a choice, sweetheart," Gregory laughed, stepping closer. "The System says PVP is enabled outside of Safe Zones. And this?" He stomped the pavement. "This ain't a Safe Zone."
He reached for her arm.
"Come on, don't be difficult. You'll be safer with—"
[SKILL ACTIVATED: IGNITE]
Aisling didn't throw the fire. She let it coat her hands like gloves.
WHOOSH.
Bright orange flames erupted from her wrists, engulfing her hands and forearms. The heat was intense, distorting the air around her, but to her, it felt like a warm bath.
Gregory stumbled back, yelping as the heat singed his eyebrows. He tripped over his own expensive Italian shoes and landed hard on the asphalt.
"What the—?!"
Aisling stepped forward. She raised her burning fists. Her eyes, usually a soft blue, glowed with the reflection of the inferno.
"Come closer," she challenged. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the street noise like a razor. "Please. I need the XP to reach Level 2."
The threat hung in the air, heavy and absolute.
The two men with rebar dropped their weapons. They looked at the fire, then at Aisling's face, and realized with terrifying certainty that she wasn't bluffing. She was hoping they would try.
"Crazy bitch!" Gregory scrambled backward, crab-walking away on his hands and feet. "She's a Caster! Run!"
They fled, disappearing into the chaotic crowd, their "coalition" crumbling before it began.
Aisling held the fire for a moment longer, watching them go. She felt the mana draining from her core, a sensation like blood loss. [MP: 15/150].
She extinguished the flames with a thought. Her hands were trembling, not from fear, but from the adrenaline crash.
"Intimidation is expensive," she muttered.
She turned and slipped into a narrow alleyway, avoiding the main street. She needed somewhere quiet. Somewhere she could think. Somewhere she could survive.
The world had tilted, but Aisling was still standing. And she wasn't going to be anyone's inventory ever again.