The world had once been a tapestry of magic and machinery, so tightly woven that no one could tell where spell ended and circuit began.
The Sorcery System—an invisible cosmic lattice—poured power straight into the blood of the worthy. Mages tore open skies with a thought. Engineers etched runes into adamantine bones and built cities that floated on rivers of raw mana. Children were born already glowing. Humanity called it the Age of Ascendance and built thrones on top of it.
Then the viruses came.
Not code. Not disease.
Living anti-sorcery.
Chaos that ate order for breakfast.
At their center stood Morvethis Ravok, the King of Curses.
They called him the Devil's Curse because "monster" wasn't big enough.
One look from him turned mountain ranges to glass. One whisper boiled oceans. Entire empires knelt, then burned. Heroes with legendary artifacts lasted exactly four seconds.
Humanity answered with everything they had—every archmage, every war-forged titan, every forbidden relic. The final battle cracked the planet like an egg. When the light settled, Ravok was gone.
As his body unraveled into black smoke, he still found the strength to smile.
"I will return," he promised, voice slithering into every soul that heard it.
"And the world will kneel."
They teach that story in every school, every temple, every recruitment hall.
They teach it so often that most kids can recite it in their sleep.
Most kids aren't Kael Draven.
The classroom bell chimed like a funeral gong. Students filed out, still buzzing about storms and curses and the end of the world. Kael stayed slumped over his desk, silver hair hiding eyes that had stopped shining years ago.
Baron nudged him. "Come on. Father's envoy is waiting upstairs. Again."
"Let him wait," Kael muttered.
His brother sighed. Baron was everything the Draven name demanded: golden runes dancing under perfect skin, Second Circle at sixteen, already courted by three Sky Legions. Polite, brilliant, untouchable.
Kael was the glitch. Seventeen. Zero mana signature. A noble-born blank.
"Let's just go home," Baron tried.
"I'm not going home." Kael stood, slinging his bag. "Night Owl Race starts in forty minutes."
Baron's face went the color of old parchment. "You're joking."
"Dead serious."
"That circuit's illegal. Half the riders don't walk away."
"Exactly." Kael flashed a reckless grin that didn't reach his eyes. "No runes allowed. No System. Just me and something that actually listens when I tell it to go faster."
Baron cursed under his breath, then followed. He always followed.
The starting line hung two hundred meters above the slums on a half-collapsed sky-bridge lit by flickering neon and dying hope. Thirty bikes growled in the dark—most laced with illegal mana cores that spat blue fire. Kael's was the only one running pure combustion, matte black, no glow, no mercy.
The holographic countdown hit zero.
They launched.
Razor Alley came first—crates welded into a tunnel barely wider than handlebars. Most riders braked hard. Kael pinned the throttle and trusted physics over prayer. Sparks screamed off his shoulder plates as he shot through, stealing six places in a heartbeat.
Spiral of Knives next: a corkscrew ramp slick with mana-oil. A girl on a lightning bike tried to cook him mid-turn. Kael slid the rear wheel, kissed her tailpipe with his front fender, and watched her spin into the guardrail in a fountain of white-blue fire.
Leap of Faith was exactly what it sounded like: forty meters of nothing where the road had fallen away centuries ago. The makeshift ramp groaned like it was personally offended. Kael hit it at one-ninety. The world went silent except for wind and heartbeat. He landed hard enough to spiderweb the asphalt and kept going.
Only four riders left for the final straight.
Kael killed his lights and disappeared.
The leaders never saw him coming. A love-tap at two hundred kph was all it took—three bikes tangled, flipped, became modern art of twisted metal and screaming. Kael blew past the wreckage and took the flag.
The crowd lost its mind.
Baron vaulted the barrier and nearly tackled him. "You suicidal idiot, I love you!"
Kael laughed—actually laughed—helmet under one arm, blood on his teeth from biting his tongue on the leap. For one perfect minute the hollow place inside him was quiet.
Then the crowd parted.
Darian Korrin walked through like he owned the night. Tall, black coat moving wrong, like it drank the light. No visible runes. No House crest. Just the kind of calm that comes before a massacre.
"Nice relic," Darian said, eyeing the bike. "No core. No glyphs. Runs on spite alone, doesn't it?"
Kael stepped forward, crowd forgotten. "Looking to buy, or just window-shopping?"
Darian smiled with too many teeth. "Word is the Draven heir likes to play in the dirt. I came to see if the stories were true."
"They're not stories," Kael said. "They're warnings. Walk away."
Pressure bloomed in the air—thick, deliberate. Baron's hand lit with golden glyphs, ready. Darian didn't even glance at him.
"Careful, little prince," he murmured. "Some thrones sit over pits. Fall far enough and even dragons forget how to fly."
Then he was gone, melted into the crowd like smoke.
Baron exhaled shakily. "That was Darian Korrin. We have to tell Father—"
"No." Kael's voice left no room for argument. "This one's mine."
They rode home in silence.
They never made it.
Three black vans boxed them on an empty sky-bridge. A sonic pulse flipped the bike like a toy. Kael hit pavement hard, shoulder dislocating with a wet pop. Blood in his mouth. Vision tunneling.
Baron was already down.
Six figures in bone masks. Darian stepped out of the lead van, sleeves rolled, bored.
"Change of plans," he said pleasantly. "Your father's protection ends here."
Baron surged up, glyphs blazing. A lance of gold fire hot enough to melt steel.
Darian flicked two fingers. The spell shattered into harmless sparks.
The backhand that followed sent Baron ten meters through the air into a concrete pillar. He didn't get up.
Something inside Kael snapped—clean, cold, final.
He charged.
The first enforcer swung a rune-baton crackling with killing voltage. Kael ducked under it, came up inside the guard, drove his shoulder through the man's ribs, used the body as a shield while he stole the baton and caved in a second mask with two brutal swings.
A vibro-blade opened his side to the bone. He twisted into the cut, crushed the wielder's windpipe with an elbow, kept moving.
By the time the fifth body hit the ground, Kael was kneeling in a lake of blood—some his, most not—breathing like broken bellows.
Darian hadn't moved.
"Still no spark," he observed, almost kindly. "Must eat you alive, watching the world burn bright while you stay dark."
He raised a hand. Gravity tripled, quadrupled, crushed Kael to the pavement. Bones creaked. Vision blackened at the edges.
Darian crouched, patted his cheek. "I'll send your father the pieces."
His boot rose.
Silver light tore the night apart.
Draven house guards dropped from stealth fields—ebony armor blazing with stellar runes. Spells carved the air into glowing wounds. The last two enforcers lasted three seconds.
Darian sighed theatrically and stepped backward into nothing.
Lord Roderick Draven strode through the smoke, face carved from winter. His gaze took in the carnage, Baron unconscious, Kael on his knees drowning in red.
Father and son stared across ten meters that might as well have been galaxies.
Roderick's voice cut like glaciated steel. "You want the abyss so badly? Stay in it."
He turned his back and left with his guards.
Kael stayed on the bridge until the medics came for Baron, until the blood cooled and the city lights blurred into watercolor.
He looked at his empty, mana-less palms.
Then he looked at the spot where Darian had vanished.
"I swear," he whispered to the night, to the legends, to whatever listened in the dark places between stars.
"One way or another… I awaken.
Or everything burns."
Far below the city, something ancient opened one eye.