The Weight of Copper
The bell above the shop door didn't just ring; it groaned under the humidity of the Lower Districts. Kaelen scrubbed grease from a copper conduit, his hands trembling. He wasn't supposed to have a Pulse. In the Gilded City, you were either born with a Silver Pulse—marking you for leadership and light—or you were a "Dull," destined to keep the gears turning.
Kaelen was a Dull. Or he was supposed to be.
But as he touched the conduit, the copper didn't just feel cold. it felt hungry. A faint amber spark leapt from the metal into his fingertips. The lights in the shop flickered, then died.
"Kaelen?" his mentor, Old Man Hobb, called from the back. "Did the breakers blow again?"
Kaelen pulled his hand away, the skin searing. "Yeah," he lied, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Just the breakers."
The Inquisition of Waves didn't visit the Lower Districts for tea. They arrived in a carriage of floating glass, led by High Enforcer Vane. Vane was a Silver, his Pulse allowing him to manipulate the very air around him.
Kaelen watched from the shadows as Vane interrogated a neighbor. The air grew thin, the neighbor gasping for breath as Vane demanded to know who had caused the "energy spike" detected in the sector.
"The resonance was... impure," Vane whispered, his voice carrying like a breeze. "Not Silver. Not even Bronze. Something older."
Kaelen tucked his burnt hand into his pocket. He realized then that his spark wasn't a gift. It was a death sentence.
Desperate for answers, Kaelen breaks into the forbidden Archive of the Unclaimed. There, he meets Elara, a disgraced scholar with a hidden "Glass Pulse"—the ability to see through illusions.
"You're not a Dull," Elara says, watching the amber flicker in his eyes. "You're an Amber-Grade. A Pulse thought to be extinct since the Great Quenching. You don't just use energy, Kaelen. You consume the source."
Kaelen's power manifests uncontrollably during a routine repair on a massive city turbine. Instead of fixing it, he accidentally drains the entire district's power grid into his own body. The sensation is euphoric, but the physical toll is devastating. He passes out, waking up in Elara's hidden workshop.
Elara explains the "Tether." Every Pulse in the city is connected to the Spire, a central monolith that filters and monitors all power. Kaelen's Amber Pulse is "Un-Tethered." He is a ghost in the machine, and the Spire's guardians are now hunting him with lethal intent.
To fund their escape, Elara takes Kaelen to a black-market auction where stolen "Remnant Gems"—solidified Pulse energy—are sold. Kaelen realizes he can "smell" the energy in the gems. He accidentally disrupts a sale when he realizes one of the gems is actually a trapped soul of a "missing" Dull.
*To be continue