The first week was the hardest.
Kaelen woke every morning convinced the rabbit had been a dream. A hallucination. A trick of the light and a mind too lonely to accept its own emptiness. He went to the library. He swept the floors. He shelved books. He nodded at villagers who nodded back with the particular politeness people reserve for those they pity.
And every night, he lay awake and saw those words.
[Corrupt? Y/N]
Yes, he'd answered.
And the rabbit had died.
It wasn't real, he told himself. It couldn't have been real. Nulls don't—
But that was the problem, wasn't it? Nulls didn't do anything. Nulls couldn't do anything. So if he'd done something—anything—then he wasn't a Null.
And if he wasn't a Null, what was he?
---
On the eighth night, he stopped pretending.
He waited until the village was dark and quiet, then slipped out of his cottage with a lantern and a burlap sack. The woods welcomed him with open shadows and the rustle of unseen things. He walked past the oak where he'd found the rabbit. Past the grave he'd dug with his bare hands. Deeper, where the trees grew close and the moonlight barely touched the ground.
He found what he was looking for near a rotting log: a cluster of mushrooms, pale and glistening in the lantern light.
He knelt.
Mushrooms weren't rabbits. Mushrooms weren't even animals. If something went wrong—if he corrupted them—what would that even mean?
Only one way to find out.
He reached out and touched the largest cap.
The shudder came immediately—weaker than before, like an echo instead of a scream, but unmistakable. His vision blurred. For half a heartbeat, he saw words:
[Fungal Colony — Dormant]
[Corrupt? Y/N]
Yes.
The mushroom blackened.
Not slowly. Not like rot or age. Instantly. One moment it was pale and firm; the next, it was a smear of black dust on the log, crumbling at the slightest breath.
Kaelen stared.
The mushrooms around it—the ones he hadn't touched—remained perfectly normal.
He looked at his hand.
It's real.
The thought should have terrified him. Part of him was terrified—the part that remembered the rabbit's convulsions, the part that knew he'd just killed something with a touch. But underneath the terror, something else stirred.
Curiosity.
What else can I do?
---
He spent the next month learning.
The woods became his laboratory. His subjects: mushrooms, moss, beetles, spiders, a wounded squirrel he found half-dead and tried to save (it died faster than the rabbit). His tools: Old Marta's journal, a pencil stub, and his own two hands.
He learned:
. The shudder always came when he touched something with a System-granted skill.
· The words only appeared if he focused—really focused, like squinting at something just out of sight.
· He could choose not to corrupt. The words would appear, the question would hang there, and if he thought no, nothing happened.
· Small things were easy. A beetle's [Minor Carapace] corrupted into [Brittle Shell] with barely a whisper of effort. A spider's [Web Weaver] became [Web Breaker]—the poor thing kept walking through its own webs and getting stuck.
· The stronger the skill, the harder the corruption. A crow with [Sharp Eyes] took three tries and left him with a splitting headache.
· Corruption was permanent. Nothing he touched ever went back to normal.
He filled seventeen pages of Old Marta's journal with observations, questions, and increasingly desperate theories.
Page 3: What IS the System? Where do skills come from? If I can break them, does that mean I'm outside it?
Page 7: The beetle didn't seem to notice its shell was brittle. Does corruption affect the creature's awareness? Or just the skill?
Page 12: I tried to corrupt a stone. Nothing happened. No shudder, no words. Stones don't have skills. That means something.
Page 14: What if I tried to corrupt something BIG?
He stopped writing at that one, stared at the words for a long time, and didn't go back to the woods for three days.
---
The dream came on the thirty-fourth night.
He was back at the oak tree, kneeling over the rabbit. But the rabbit wasn't dying. It was watching him with eyes that weren't rabbit eyes—too deep, too knowing, too human.
Why? it asked.
Kaelen tried to answer, but his mouth wouldn't move.
You didn't have to touch me. You chose to.
I was trying to help.
Help. The rabbit's head tilted. Blood dripped from its wound, but the wound wasn't on its flank anymore. It was on Kaelen's hand. You helped me die.
I didn't mean to—
Does it matter? The rabbit stood, shook itself, and walked toward him. Each step left no prints. Each step brought it closer. You have a gift, Kaelen. The question isn't whether you meant to use it. The question is what you'll do when you can't control it anymore.
I can control it. I've been—
Testing. The rabbit laughed, a sound like breaking twigs. You've been playing with bugs and mushrooms. What happens when something plays with you?
Kaelen woke gasping.
The cottage was dark. The window was open—he didn't remember opening it. And on the sill, staring at him with eyes that might have been reflecting moonlight or might have been glowing faintly green, sat a wolf.
Not a big wolf. Not the alpha of anything. Just a young one, maybe a year old, with fur the color of wet ash and ribs visible through its sides.
It looked at him.
He looked at it.
Above its head, half-seen, half-felt, words flickered:
[Young Wolf — Level 2]
[Skills: Keen Nose, Pack Instinct]
Run, Kaelen thought. Run, and I'll pretend I didn't see you, and you'll pretend you didn't see me, and—
The wolf jumped through the window.
Kaelen rolled off the bed, hit the floor hard, and came up with his hands in front of him—useless, stupid, what was he going to do, corrupt it? The wolf was already turning, already crouching, already—
Stopped.
It stood in the middle of his cottage, head cocked, nose twitching. It sniffed the air once, twice. Then its eyes fixed on something behind Kaelen.
The journal.
Old Marta's journal, open on the table, filled with seventeen pages of Kaelen's handwriting and Kaelen's secrets.
The wolf took a step toward it.
No.
Kaelen moved without thinking. He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed the journal, and pressed it to his chest. The wolf's eyes followed the movement—then lifted to his face.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then the wolf's lips pulled back from its teeth.
And Kaelen saw, beneath the snarl, something that made his blood run cold.
The wolf wasn't looking at him like prey.
It was looking at him like a question.
Like it knew.
Like it wanted.
---
End of Chapter 2