Night wrapped the underground city in dimmed, muted, calm. The lamps along the stone walls flickered softly; the groan of the huge pipes sounded like slow breathing.
The steam cloud device worked at half power; only a thin stream of smoke was released through the underground to the surface. Enough to keep monsters above confused. Enough to keep the people here asleep without the full roar shaking their dreams.
Ash finally reached home.
He dropped the bag onto the floor, sat at the small table, and tore a piece off the black bread. Dry. Bitter. Coarse texture adhering to the teeth. Still, he ate it fast, in a couple of bites.
He leaned back, letting out his breath.
Too many things happened today.
More than he was ready for.
His hands came to rest on the table and then tightened. His mind would not stay quiet. Pictures from that day kept flashing, like pieces of another person's memory were being pushed into his brain, exactly how he felt when he just got here.
He looked at his palm.
First things first, he had to understand his powers.
An illusion… that one felt familiar as he discovered it first before he dreamed.
Something like warm water running through old pipes that remembered the flow. He guessed it came from his mother-her presence in the dream, her voice, the way the ability responded almost gently to him.
But the second ability.
It felt sharp. Hidden, like a blade wrapped in cloth, just waiting to be unwrapped like a gift.
Ash narrowed his eyes.
"Maybe…"
He lifted his hand.
Teleport.
Nothing.
He tried again.
Space refraction.
Space slice.
Displacement technique of some sort.
Still nothing.
"What space ability can I even do?" He rubbed his forehead. "Did I miss something… in the dream?"
He closed his eyes and replayed it again.
The moment the siren screamed.
Father pushes the door toward the exit.
The shaking hall.
Father's hand was empty. no weapon.
But when Father stepped out.
Something changed.
The weapon seemed to appear from nowhere.
Ash's heart skipped.
That detail…he repeated it...
He didn't imagine it.
He turned toward the wooden chair against the wall. He got up and raised his palm in the direction of the chair and whispered:
"Store."
The chair vanished in an instant, sucked into a black, silent space.
Ash froze.
Then he smiled, exactly as he guessed.
"Yessssss…I really have two rare powers…"
It struck him like a bolt of excitement. He almost jumped in place.
He faced the empty spot.
"Place."
In an instant, the chair reappeared to its exact previous position, facing the same direction, its legs planted perfectly.
Ash touched it to confirm. Solid. Real.
His mind was reeling. As he had stored the chair, he had felt something. A weird dimension, black, empty, weighty, like closing one's eyes deep underwater.
A void?. A space?. A dimension?.
He swallowed, staring at his own chest.
Another idea came into being.
A dumb one.
Stupid enough to be tempting.
He raised his hand and pointed to his body.
"Store."
Darkness.
He felt himself fall into something bottomless. No air. No sound. No form. No direction. It crushed his lungs in an instant.
He panicked.
"Pl-Place!"
Light exploded back into his vision, and he landed on the floor of his room, choking and coughing, every muscle in his body trembling.
He gasped hard, his chest rose sharply, and there was sweat on his forehead.
"Horrible," he groaned. "I'm not going back in there unless I have light and oxygen… that place is death."
The void said nothing.
Experiments over.
For now.
He sat on the bed and let the adrenaline wear off. But the moment he was calm, another thought pulled him right back to the fight earlier.
At that moment, he got stabbed. It was not merely an illusion of invisibility, but far more layered and clever.
Instead of covering himself with illusion energy, he created a static image, like a thin transparent sheet of reality, and placed it in front of him. A viewer would see what the scene ought to look like.
A wall of false reality.
As long as the enemy didn't walk behind it or pass through the boundary of the illusion, they wouldn't notice something was wrong.
But still...
One step.
One angle.
And the blade reached him.
Ash rubbed his side.
"I can't just depend on this… I need better fighting skills. Better senses. More tricks. I need to grow faster."
He looked at his hand and flexed his fingers slowly.
"I have to be stronger… to know what's going on, and find out the truth of it all."
His voice softened.
He fell back onto his bed.
His head hit the pillow.
His body just shut down.
He didn't even realize he fell asleep.
…
Sometime in the dead of night, subterranean pipes groaned.
Chilly mist slithered through the narrow tunnels leading to the surface.
The steam cloud device continued to send out light smoke, nothing more than just what was sufficient to maintain the mist outside.
On the surface, the monsters moved around dazed in the white mist generated out of smoke converted by siphons. This misled them and distorted their perception.
It completely masked the underground's entrance.
It was this system that kept the city alive.
Down here, the air was warm, and the people slept safely.
By morning…
Everything changed.
The steam cloud device sprang to full power promptly at 5:00 AM. It sent underground pipes violently shaking, thick smoke welling upward, flooding the surface with heavy mist, blocking the monsters' vision.
The sound blasted through the walls—
BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM—
A rumble, like thunder, shook the whole town.
Ash's body jerked awake.
"AAAHHH—my ears!" he clutched his head, the hair sticking up crazily. Ringing inside his skull drilled into his mind.
He sat on the edge of his bed for a moment, blinking away the dizziness.
He dragged himself to the wash area and splashed cold water on his face. His reflection stared back at him-pale, tired, hair disheveled, eyes slightly swollen from lack of sleep.
But alive.
Yawn.
He cleaned his room, then picked up the shirt that had fallen off, straightened the chair, and folded the blanket roughly. He moved slowly, automatically, allowing his brain to warm up after the rude awakening.
He was about to step out when something tapped in his memory.
A small detail.
A thing forgotten.
His eyes widened.
"…the dumbphone."
He looked around the room.
Where did he put it?
He searched the table, the bed, and the drawer. He finally found it under the blanket, a beat-up, ancient phone, cracked on one corner, back panel missing, battery taped so it would not fall out.
He did this very carefully.
Yesterday, he'd forgotten that this thing even existed. The fight, the shock, the new powers; it drove everything else from his mind. But now that he held it, something strange pulsed inside his chest, in the same place where his storage ability reacted.
The phone felt… warm.
And the moment he pressed the power button—
It flickered weakly.
A flickering light.
Then dark. Ash frowned. "That's strange. It wasn't this hot before."
He opened the back to check.
The battery wasn't leaking.
No damaged circuit.
Nothing explained the warmth.
But something inside of him felt it was connected.
Like the void space in his chest reacted faintly to it: a tiny pull, a thread. He didn't comprehend it just yet.
He didn't know this little dumbphone would become important later. But his gut feeling told him to keep it close.
Ash pocketed the phone and swung his jacket over his shoulder. He stretched and took a deep breath before pushing out of his humble abode into the morning, steam-filled, smelling of rust-air.
People walked to their routines slowly, while children sat on pipes, warming their hands on heated metal. Workers yawned their way to the morning line.
Ash threw his head back toward the far ceiling, where dim lights mimicked sunrise.
A new day.
A new chance to train.
To grow.
To understand himself.
Everything was changing, and he would have to be ready for it.