Chapter 1 — The Boy Who Glitched
In the lowest layer of Neon District Seven—beneath the floating highways and mirrored towers—lived a protogen boy who wasn't supposed to exist.
His name was Cael.
Not registered. Not upgraded. Not optimized.
Just patched together.
Protogens were rare in the city of Virexon—half-biological, half-synthetic beings born from ancient biotech called Starveil. Most lived in the Upper Strata, funded by corporations, polished and powerful.
Cael was none of those things.
His visor had a crack across the right lens. His arm servos jittered when he was hungry. His power core flickered whenever the electricity grid failed—which was often in the Undersink.
His mother sorted scrap circuits. His father repaired discarded drone limbs for food credits. Some nights, they ate. Some nights, they pretended not to be hungry.
But Cael had something no one else had.
A glitch.
The first time it happened, he was thirteen.
A gang from the Rust Ring cornered him in an alley between coolant pipes. Three enhanced humans, metal-plated knuckles, smug smiles.
"Scrap-mask," one of them said. "Give us your core."
Cael's visor dimmed.
He felt it again—that silent pressure behind his processor. Not heat. Not electricity.
Absence.
The world slowed.
Not like time stopped.
More like reality hesitated.
He raised his shaking hand—
—and space bent inward like someone pressing a thumb into glass.
The alley collapsed into a silent, colorless void.
For three seconds, everything was erased.
Sound. Light. Air.
Then it snapped back.
The gang was gone.
Not dead.
Not vaporized.
Gone.
Removed.
As if they had never stepped into that alley.
Cael collapsed.
Above him, the stars flickered.
Chapter 2 — The Girl Who Owned the Sky
Her name was Lyra Valencrest.
Daughter of the Valencrest Dynasty. Owners of the floating citadel. Controllers of seventy percent of Virexon's power grid. The family that funded the creation of modern protogens.
She trained every dawn atop a levitating platform above the clouds.
Her weapon was a gravity lance—a weapon that could fold buildings like paper. Her reflexes were augmented. Her neural implants linked to orbital satellites. She could calculate battlefield trajectories faster than military AI.
At seventeen, she had already won three sanctioned duels. She had never lost.
And she was bored.
Power came easy when the world knelt for you.
But Lyra had a secret.
She could feel distortions.
Ripples in the Starveil network that powered all advanced tech.
Three nights ago, she felt something impossible.
A distortion that wasn't external.
Not a weapon. Not an explosion. Not an experiment.
It felt like the universe blinking.
And it came from the Undersink.
Chapter 3 — When Rich Meets Glitch
Lyra descended without escort.
If her family found out, they would have shut down the entire district for "inspection."
She wore plain black combat gear, her silver hair tied back, her lance compacted into bracelet form.
The Undersink smelled like rainwater and rust.
That's when she saw him.
A protogen boy on top of a scrap heap, trying to repair a broken drone with mismatched parts.
His visor flickered blue and gold.
Unstable.
Interesting.
She stepped closer.
"You're leaking Starveil signatures," she said casually.
He nearly fell off the scrap pile.
"I'm leaking what?"
She scanned him discreetly through her implant HUD.
Then her heart skipped.
He wasn't drawing power from the Starveil grid.
The grid was drawing from him.
Impossible.
She jumped up beside him effortlessly.
"Who modified your core?"
"No one," he muttered. "It's broken."
"It's not broken," she whispered.
"It's rewriting local physics."
He stared at her.
"…What?"
Behind her calm expression, Lyra's pulse accelerated.
Because she realized something terrifying.
If her family discovered him, they wouldn't recruit him.
They would dissect him.
Chapter 4 — The Power That Eats Reality
Cael didn't control his ability.
It activated when he felt extreme emotion: fear, rage, despair.
And it didn't blast energy.
It erased certainty.
The ability wasn't destruction.
It was "Unwriting."
A power older than the Starveil network.
Older than the protogen race.
When Cael glitched, reality entered a state of correction.
And correction meant removal.
Not death.
But deletion from the current timeline.
The universe would reassign those erased somewhere else.
Where?
No one knew.
Not even Cael.
Especially not Cael.
Chapter 5 — The Weight of a Dynasty
Lyra brought him food the next day.
Real food.
Not nutrient paste.
He stared at the wrapped meal like it was treasure.
"Why?" he asked.
She hesitated.
Because she didn't know.
Maybe because she had everything and he had nothing.
Maybe because for the first time, she had found something stronger than her.
Or maybe because when he looked confused, he looked human.
"My family hunts anomalies," she said quietly.
"You are the biggest anomaly I've ever seen."
"That doesn't sound comforting."
"It isn't."
Chapter 6 — When the Sky Falls
The Valencrest satellites detected a distortion spike.
Location locked.
Undersink.
Deployment authorized.
Lyra felt it before the alarms reached her.
They had found him.
Armored drones descended like silver rain.
The sky turned mechanical.
Cael panicked.
His visor glitched violently.
"Don't," Lyra warned.
Too late.
The air tore open.
Buildings folded inward like paper collapsing into a black hole.
The drones froze mid-air.
Not destroyed.
Paused.
Reality buffering.
Lyra planted her gravity lance into the ground and expanded a field to protect civilians.
She looked at him—standing in the eye of a colorless storm.
Not angry.
Not raging.
Terrified.
And the world was responding.
She ran toward him through collapsing space.
"CAEL!"
He looked at her.
And for the first time—
He didn't feel alone.
The distortion stabilized.
The erasure stopped.
The drones dropped harmlessly to the ground.
The sky restored.
Lyra exhaled slowly.
"You're not a weapon," she said firmly.
"You're a reset."
Core Concept Twist (For Future Chapters)
Cael is not a product of the Starveil network.
He is its failsafe.
When civilizations grow too powerful and destabilize reality—
He activates.
His poverty was not accident.
It was camouflage by the universe itself.
And Lyra?
Her bloodline created the imbalance triggering the failsafe.
Which means—
The girl who owns the sky and The boy who can erase it
Were destined to collide.