The city breathed soot.
Buildings sagged like broken teeth, their walls cracked and leaning, their roofs patched with tarps and scavenged planks. Smoke curled from chimneys that were little more than holes in the stone, staining the sky with black precipitate. The streets were alive with beggars, hawkers, and scavengers, their voices rising in a chorus of survival. Tents sprouted like weeds, stitched together from canvas and scrap, serving as makeshift stalls and trading posts.
Yet despite the ruin, the marketplace thrummed with energy.
"Tiger tooth for bronze! Five bronzes for a tiger tooth!"
"Relic codex for gold! Relic codex for bronze!"
"Recruiting members for a hunting squad!"
The cries blended into a rhythm, a heartbeat of commerce that kept the city alive. Children darted between stalls, clutching scraps of bread. Merchants haggled with desperate buyers. Hunters displayed trophies of beasts slain in the wilds beyond the walls.
Eylin slipped into the crowd, a scrawny figure with a heavy bag slung across his back. His boots were worn, his cloak patched, but his eyes burned with restless defiance.
Humans, he thought, were terrifying not because of strength or will, but because of adaptability. Place a man by the coast, and he became a fisherman. Drop him in the forest, and he turned farmer, mason, carpenter. Even in ruin, humanity bent without breaking.
But adaptability had its price. He remembered the stories — men and women selling their families for a loaf of bread, betraying neighbors for a slice of butter. Survival twisted morality until it snapped.
"Pathetic," he muttered, weaving through the crowd toward the only building still standing tall: a block of stone marked with a weathered sign.
MERCHANT GROUP.
Inside, the air was different. Clean. Scented. Civilized.
Reception tables lined the hall, polished wood gleaming under lantern light. Display cases showcased relics, glyph fragments, and trinkets scavenged from the ruins. The chaos of the marketplace was left outside; here, order reigned.
Eylin breathed deep, savoring the contrast.
"Aaah… that's more like it."
He strode to the nearest empty desk, where a middle‑aged woman slumped over, snoring softly.
"Moocow Mercy, what're you doing?" he asked, grinning.
Mercy stirred, lifting her head with a groan. Her sapphire eyes blinked open, glowing faintly with glyph light.
"Ooooh, hey kid. How'd the mission go?" she asked lazily, stretching her arms.
The motion drew stares from nearby men, who quickly looked away, pretending they hadn't been watching. Mercy ignored them, scratching her head as she pulled a massive ledger from beneath the desk. She flipped to the D section, scanning the entries.
"Corrupt Ashbourne mouse… intact body, two silver. Missing parts, eighty bronze. Pieces, fifty bronze." She closed the book and looked at Eylin's bag. Her eyes shimmered, glyphs glitching in and out of existence.
Eylin hesitated, caught staring at the glow in her irises. Mercy snorted.
"Don't get distracted, kid. Show me the haul."
With a sigh, Eylin dropped the bag onto the floor. The thud echoed through the hall. He pulled back the rag to reveal the charred corpse of a three‑meter‑tall mouse, infamous for preying on children.
"Counts as intact, right?" he asked sheepishly, scratching his head.
Mercy frowned, her eyes deepening to an intense blue as she examined the body.
"Low‑tier fireball spell, huh? Not bad for a low rank."
Her gaze sharpened. "But the mana traces don't match. That wasn't a fireball glyph."
Eylin's ears burned red.
"It was supposed to bind," he muttered. "It went boom."
Mercy chuckled, shaking her head.
"Why would you bind it in the first place? Sigh… Let me see the glyphs you used."
Her eyes glowed again, glyphs flickering. Eylin sighed, scratching his head.
"Maybe later. Let's deal with the Ashbourne first. Then we'll talk over a glass of milk."
Mercy smirked. "Hope you used YUN for the core sigil, vines as the restrictive source, and GRAV as the anchor. Ooooh, so great mage." She turned back to the corpse, chuckling.
Eylin stood dazed, caught staring at her jiggling backside before shaking himself free. He retreated to a corner table, pulling out a worn notebook.
The pages were filled with clumsy formulas, scribbles, and half‑finished glyphs. He flipped to one marked BIND.
Closing his eyes, he took three deep breaths, then exhaled slowly. His pen twirled between his fingers as he recalled Mercy's words.
"YUN sigil as the core… restraint concept. Got that right."
He scribbled, lines uneven but determined. His mind replayed the battle, the explosion, the failure. He needed to understand why.
Unbeknownst to him, Mercy watched from across the hall, her eyes glowing faintly blue.
The merchant hub bustled around him. Hunters argued over bounties, merchants tallied coins, glyphs flickered in the air as spells were tested and traded. The scent of ink, parchment, and polished wood filled the hall.
Eylin kept scribbling, lost in his own world. His pen scratched across the page, formulas spilling out in messy lines. He muttered incantations under his breath, testing shapes, adjusting angles.
"YUN sigil for restraint… vines as medium… GRAV anchor…"
The words became a mantra, a rhythm that drowned out the noise. His hand moved faster, sketching glyphs that jittered and fractured, refusing to hold.
Mercy sighed, shaking her head.
"Poor lad. Such talent, cursed."
Hours passed. The hall grew crowded, voices rising, footsteps echoing. Eylin barely noticed. His notebook filled with sketches, corrections, failures. Each glyph was a battle, each line a war against the glitch that haunted him.
Finally, he leaned back, exhausted. His eyes burned, his hand cramped. He stared at the page, at the fractured glyphs, and felt the weight of the curse pressing down.
But he refused to stop.
He was Eylin Glitch.
And glitches were meant to be hacked.
For half a heartbeat, silence reigned. Then the space before him cracked like glass under strain. Thin strands of mana stretched from his palm, sketching glowing lines into the empty air with surgical precision. A hexagonal shape burst into view, radiant with deep violet light. Six motes orbited its edges like rogue electrons, humming with unstable energy.
But it wasn't clean.