The Null Zones were a world apart. Streets ended abruptly, swallowed by voided alleys and abandoned blocks where even the wind seemed hesitant to tread. Here, in the spaces forgotten by the city, Kael could breathe or at least pretend to.
The fragment in his hand throbbed. The Seed's pulse was irregular, hungry, unrestrained. Each heartbeat felt like the ticking of a bomb beneath his ribs. The boy. The merchant. Their deaths haunted him. Not just in memory he could feel the Seed remembering. It did not forgive.
Kael pressed himself against a crumbling wall, every sense straining. The Null Zone was lawless, but it was predictable in its chaos. Here, reality's rules were frayed but steady. He had survived the city's judgment, and here he would hide from its gaze.
Shadows moved differently here. Shapes bent unnaturally. The Seed flinched. Kael swallowed, forcing himself to slow his ragged breathing.
Then he felt it: a presence.
Not close, not threatening, but deliberate. Watching. Calculating.
He turned, expecting an agent, a soldier, or some other instrument of the city-state's punishment. Instead, he saw a figure at the edge of the alleys, partially hidden by the flickering light of a broken lantern.
A girl. She was young, unremarkable at first glance, but there was a calm in her gaze that froze him. Eyes sharp, observant, unblinking.
Her presence… stabilized the Seed.
Kael didn't know how he knew, but he felt it. The Seed's pulsing slowed, almost obedient, though just slightly.
"Who… are you?" he whispered, voice hoarse.
She did not answer. Only observed. A subtle shift in the air, a bending of shadows around her feet, suggested some power at work. A minor Authority partial, controlled, precise.
Then came the whisper, not in words, but in sensation: Conclusion.
Kael did not understand, yet the meaning was clear. Her presence affirmed his actions, constrained the Seed, prevented further accidents, however briefly.
He sank to the ground, chest heaving. Reality around him trembled, as if it too were exhausted. His own hands shook, blood from scratches lining the alley smeared across his palms. Survival was a constant negotiation: with himself, with the Seed, with the world.
The Null Zone had rules, but they were cruel. Every corner was a trap. A falling beam here, a loose stone there—small hazards that could kill or maim. Kael navigated them as best he could, training himself to anticipate instability. Survival mechanics, he realized, were as much mental as physical.
The girl Iria, though Kael did not yet know her name remained at the edge of vision. She did not interfere, not yet. She merely observed, a stabilizing presence, testing the boy she had found, waiting for him to understand something he did not yet grasp: power must be contained, even if only partially.
Kael rested against the wall, eyes wide, heart racing, the fragment pulsing faintly in his pocket. He had survived. The city did not see him. The Seed had not killed again. And yet… he knew this was only the beginning.
Somewhere in the Null Zones, shadows whispered, and unseen eyes recorded. Kael was learning the rules of survival but the world's indifference remained absolute.
And in that indifference, the first glimmer of a dangerous truth took root: to wield a Seed was to accept the cost of existence itself.