The Null District was silent, but not in peace. It was the kind of silence that swallowed sound, memory, and hope. Cracked cobblestones whispered under Kael's worn boots as he passed rows of abandoned warehouses, their walls smeared with decades of illegible markings laws long forgotten, edicts that no one enforced. No one dared.
Kael kept his head low. The Archive demanded his presence, and the Archive tolerated nothing else. For him, a laborer among a thousand faceless clerks, each day was a struggle for relevance or survival.
The air smelled of dust and rust, but beneath it lay something else, faint and bitter: the residue of dormant Names. Kael knew it instinctively, though he had no reason to; the Archive did not teach this. It only cataloged, preserved, and consumed. And Kael? He consumed it with trembling hands, sorting fragments into neat boxes while dreaming of nothing at all.
Until he found it.
A shard of a Name, broken and blackened at the edges, lodged between the pages of a decayed ledger. The moment his fingers brushed it, the world hiccuped.
A whisper of impossible weight settled in his chest, as though the air itself was judging him. Light bent at odd angles, shadows pooling unnaturally in corners. He blinked and the ledger was gone. Or perhaps it had always been gone.
The Seed awakened.
Kael gasped, collapsing to one knee. The sensation was electric, unbearable yet intoxicating. His heartbeat echoed against his ribcage, each thump resonating in the bones beneath. Every instinct screamed to drop the fragment, yet curiosity, raw and ravenous, pinned him in place.
A voice or something like a voice slithered around him, just beyond the edges of hearing. Do you wish to be named?
Kael froze. No one had ever spoken to him. Not truly. He wanted to speak, but his lips refused.
Then came the first Edict.
The walls shimmered, the floor twisted. The crates of decayed records floated for a heartbeat, then crashed down with a deafening clatter. The world didn't bend entirely it glitched. A single sentence scrawled across the wall in dust:
"Existence is conditional."
Kael's stomach churned. He tried to move, but his body hesitated, uncooperative. Reality itself seemed uncertain. A crate hovered a hair above the ground, then fell. Then rose again. His own shadow moved out of sync.
He laughed. Or screamed. He didn't know which.
The Seed pulsed within him, demanding acknowledgment, demanding recognition. A dormant Authority stirred, subtle yet undeniable. It was a warning and a promise: you are more than your insignificance but not yet yourself.
Somewhere, deep in the Null District, a crack formed not in the wall, but in the world. A whisper followed him: The Name waits.
Kael's hand remained on the fragment. He should have thrown it. He should have screamed. He should have run. Instead, he felt the first thrill of power terrifying, fragile, and absolutely intoxicating.
And in that moment, the Null District, the Archive, and the laws of men all shifted, even if only slightly. A laborer had touched something forbidden, and the world had noticed.
The first fragment of Kael's story had been written.