The High-District didn't just end; it decayed. As Kaelen descended the gravity-lifts away from the Aura-Tech Tower, the air lost its flowery, artificial sweetness. By the time he reached the transitional layer a sprawling, rusted industrial mezzanine known as 'The Forge' the atmosphere was thick with the scent of scorched copper, recycled grease, and the metallic tang of unshielded Aether-leaks.
This was the city's intestinal tract. Here, the polished white stone of the Sovereigns gave way to corrugated steel and humming steam-pipes that pulsed like the veins of a dying beast. This was the only place in Onyx Prime where a man with a "glitched" signature could breathe without a thousand scanners screaming for his arrest.
Kaelen walked with a hood pulled low over his eyes. Even though his System was currently mimicking a mid-tier green signature, he felt like a wolf walking through a kennel of starved curs. His [Aether-Sight] was dialled to maximum, turning the dark, narrow corridors into a map of glowing heat-signatures.
[NOTIFICATION: PASSIVE SKILL 'THE PREDATOR'S TAX' ACTIVE.]
[SV +0.02 from 'Scavenger 09' (Fear detected: He thinks you're a debt collector.)]
[SV +0.05 from 'Street-Runner Jax' (Envy detected: He covets your high-quality boots.)]
He ignored the small trickles of power. He was hunting for a specific frequency—a low-frequency, rhythmic hum that signaled a "Void-Tapped" shop. He found it behind a massive, rotating cooling fan that threw long, rhythmic shadows across the grimy pavement. The sign above the door was a flickering, violet-tinted neon tube bent into the shape of an Ouroboros the snake eating its own tail.
Kaelen kicked the door open. It didn't chime; it groaned on rusted hinges.
The shop was a graveyard of forbidden technology. Crates of cracked Aether-cores were stacked to the ceiling, leaking a faint blue mist that made the hair on Kaelen's arms stand up. Discarded cybernetic limbs, some still twitching with phantom electrical impulses, hung from the rafters like macabre wind chimes.
"I don't sell to Enforcers, and I don't buy from Snitches," a gravelly voice echoed from the back, accompanied by the hiss of a welding torch. "If you're neither, state your business or get out before the ventilation fans chew up your shadow."
A man emerged from behind a curtain of hanging fiber-optic cables. He was short, his back hunched from decades of leaning over microscopic circuitry. Half his face was replaced by a crude, brass-cased cybernetic eye that whirred and clicked as it focused. His SV score hovered at a pathetic, greyed-out [2.1].
This was Old Man Hix. Once the Chief Surgeon for the Council, he had been "Value-Stripped" and exiled for refusing to harvest the core of a political prisoner. Now, he was the only man who knew how to fix what the System broke.
"I'm not an Enforcer," Kaelen said, his voice sounding like grinding stones in the quiet shop. He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of physical Aether-credits hard currency that didn't require a digital handshake. "And I'm not here for spare parts. I need a weapon that doesn't exist in the database."
Hix didn't look at the credits. His cybernetic eye was locked on Kaelen's chest. The whirring sound intensified, turning into a frantic, high-pitched whine.
"Gods above..." Hix whispered, dropping his welding torch. "You're not a green-tier. That signature... it's violet. It's bleeding through your mask like a solar flare. You're the one who caused the blackout in Sector 4. The 'Violet Ghost'."
"Names are for people with a future, Hix," Kaelen said, stepping closer. The air around him began to warp, the heat from his [Black-Hole Core] causing the nearby mist to swirl into a mini-vortex. "Right now, I'm just a man who needs to kill a Sovereign."
Hix stared at him for a long time, his mechanical eye dilating. Then, a slow, yellow-toothed grin spread across his scarred face. "A Sovereign? Bold. Suicide, but bold. If you want to bypass a 90-plus shield, Aether-bullets are useless. They'll just be absorbed and added to the target's score. You need something that ignores the math."
Hix turned and limped toward a heavy, lead-lined safe. He keyed in a complex sequence of codes, his fingers moving with a surgeon's lingering grace. The safe hissed as the pressure equalized, revealing a single, velvet-lined box.
Inside lay a dagger. It was made of a material that looked like frozen smoke translucent, yet dark as the bottom of the ocean. It didn't reflect the shop's neon lights; it seemed to drink them.
"Void-Glass," Hix said, his voice filled with a strange reverence. "It's a byproduct of a Core-Collapse. It has no Aetheric signature because it is an absence of energy. I call it the [Mono-Molecular Fang]. It won't trigger a scanner, it won't be stopped by a shield, and if it cuts you... the System forgets that part of your body ever existed."
Kaelen reached out and gripped the hilt. It felt cold impossibly cold like holding a shard of the vacuum of space.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: RARE EQUIPMENT DETECTED!]
[ITEM: MONO-MOLECULAR FANG (RANK: B - EVOLVABLE)]
[TRAIT: 'NULL-STRIKE' IGNORES 100% OF AETHER-BASED DEFENSES.]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO BIND THIS WEAPON TO YOUR SOUL-GRID?]
"Bind it," Kaelen thought.
As the bond formed, a jolt of violet electricity snapped from the hilt into Kaelen's arm. The dagger vanished, dissolving into a stream of dark data that flowed under his skin, settling into a phantom sheath in his forearm. With a single thought, he could call it back into his hand.
"How much?" Kaelen asked.
"For that? Every credit you have, plus a favor," Hix said. "One day, when you're standing over the corpse of a Sovereign, I want you to tell them Hix sent you. I want them to know the man they stripped of his life is the one who provided the blade for theirs."
"Deal," Kaelen said.
But as he turned to leave, the System in his mind erupted with a sudden, jagged roar. The violet interface turned blood-red.
[WARNING! WARNING!]
[HIGH-INTENSITY SCANNER OVERRIDE DETECTED!]
[AETHER-FILTRATION UNIT OUTSIDE HAS BEEN COMPROMISED.]
[HOSTILE SV SIGNATURES DETECTED: 52.0, 55.4, 58.9.]
"Hix, get down!" Kaelen roared.
He didn't wait for the door to open. He didn't wait for a parley. He knew the Vanes. They didn't send negotiators; they sent 'The Cleaners'.
The front wall of the shop didn't just break; it vanished in a flash of white-hot plasma. A specialized breaching charge, designed to vaporize reinforced steel, turned the front of Hix's shop into a molten slag-heap.
Through the smoke, three silhouettes appeared. They were clad in heavy, matte-black power armor that lacked any identifying marks. No names, no badges—only the glowing golden numbers above their heads that marked them as the private executioners of the High-District.
[TARGET 1: VANE HUNTER - SV 52.0]
[TARGET 2: VANE HUNTER - SV 55.4]
[TARGET 3: HUNTER CAPTAIN - SV 58.9]
"Kaelen the Null," the Captain's voice boomed through an external speaker, sounding like grinding tectonic plates. "By order of the Vane Family, you have been designated a 'Systemic Error'. We are here to perform a manual deletion. The old man is an acceptable casualty."
Kaelen stood in the center of the wreckage, his cloak fluttering in the wind that now rushed through the hole in the wall. He felt the [Mono-Molecular Fang] pulse in his arm, hungry for the golden light radiating from the three men.
"You call me an error," Kaelen said, his voice dropping into a register that made the loose scraps of metal on the floor vibrate. He let the mask fall. His green [15.5] score shattered like glass, revealing the towering, jagged violet pillar of his true self.
[SV: 32.19 (TRUE FORM UNLEASHED)]
"But a glitch isn't an error," Kaelen continued, his eyes glowing with an intensity that forced the mercenaries to shield their visors. "A glitch is a new rule. And my rule says you don't leave this shop with your Value."
The Captain laughed, a harsh, synthesized sound. "A 32? You think a 32 can stand against three hunters over 50? You Slum-rats really don't understand the math of power, do you? Kill him. Slowly."
The two subordinates stepped forward, their gauntlets hissing as they charged their kinetic amplifiers. They moved with a speed that would have been invisible to Kaelen an hour ago. But now, with his [Void-Eye] overclocked, they looked like they were moving through thick syrup.
The fight for the Forge had begun, and Kaelen was ready to show them that in the Void, numbers don't add up they only subtract.