The air in the cupboard under the stairs was stagnant, smelling of old dust and Dudley's discarded socks. Ten-year-old Harry Potter curled into a ball, his stomach aching from a missed dinner.
Usually, the pain in his forehead was a dull throb. Tonight, it was a rhythmic pulse, like a second heartbeat. It felt as if two tectonic plates were grinding together behind his eyes—the cold, killing green of a memory he couldn't name and the warm, stubborn gold of a mother's final breath.
He closed his eyes, wishing he could be anywhere else.
[SINGULARITY STABILIZED]
[AETHER GATEWAY: OPENING...]
Harry's eyes snapped open, but he wasn't in the cupboard anymore.
The sky wasn't blue or black; it was a swirling nebula of violet and silver. Harry stood on a patch of grass that glowed faintly beneath his bare feet. The air tasted like ozone and static electricity.
Before he could scream, a translucent screen flickered into existence in his vision.
[USER: HARRY POTTER]
State:Mortal (Degraded)
Body Grade:Rank 0 (Frail)
Soul-Glitch Output:0.001% (Restricted by physical vessel)
Current Objective:Survive. Hunt. Refine.
"What is this?" Harry whispered. His voice sounded different—clearer, vibrating with a power he didn't understand.
A rustle in the glowing tall grass answered him.
Out stepped a Knarl. In the real world, it was a harmless hedgehog-like creature. Here, it was the size of a bulldog, its quills made of serrated obsidian, its eyes glowing with a frenzied red light.
The Knarl didn't wait. It rolled into a spiked ball and launched itself at Harry like a cannonball.
Harry's frail body should have been too slow. But the Soul-Glitch flared in his forehead. Time didn't stop, but it stretched. He saw the trajectory of the beast. He felt the friction of the air.
He dove to the left. The Knarl smashed into a glowing tree, the impact shaking the ground.
Harry didn't have a wand. He didn't have a sword. But he felt a "leak" of energy coming from his scar—a raw, formless heat. As the Knarl turned to charge again, Harry did the only thing he knew: he reached out and pushed.
It wasn't a spell. It was a Pulse.
A wave of distorted space slammed into the Knarl. The creature's obsidian quills shattered, and its body dissolved into shimmering white particles before it even hit the ground.
Where the beast had been, a small, fist-sized orb of swirling grey light floated in the air.
Harry walked toward it, his heart hammering against his ribs. The moment his fingers touched the light, the orb vanished into his palm.
[LOOT ACQUIRED: KNARL REFLEX ORB (LOW)]
[INTEGRATING...]
[BODY GRADE IMPROVED: RANK 0.1]
A jolt of ice-cold energy raced up Harry's arm, through his spine, and settled in his brain. Suddenly, the world felt slower. His vision was sharper. The ache in his stomach vanished, replaced by a strange, metallic vitality.
Harry's eyes flew open. He was back in the dark cupboard.
He expected to feel the usual morning grogginess, the hunger, the weakness. Instead, he felt like he could run to London and back without breaking a sweat. He reached up to adjust his glasses, but his hand stopped mid-air.
He realized he didn't need them. The blurry edges of the cupboard were now perfectly sharp.
He looked at his wrist. There, glowing faintly before fading into the skin, was a tiny, silver rune—the mark of the Aether.
He wasn't just a wizard. He was a predator in training.