C05-R11-3448 A.E. — Nighttime
Ashport Inner District SE-2 — Glassmere
5-Star Restaurant — The Verdant Grove
The restaurant was dimly lit, elegant but understated. The ambient glow of enchanted orblights shimmered against the smooth marble walls, casting soft halos of gold across the private booths. The air smelled faintly of citrus and cardamom, the perfume of high society dining.
Kael and Lira stepped through the tall archway, following a sharply dressed hostess to their booth nestled at the far end of the room. The enchanted cushions shifted subtly beneath them, contouring to their frames as they sat. Kael could feel the faint hum of warded magic beneath the table—a low, resonant purr of isolation spells and acoustic dampeners.
“Your waiter will be with you shortly,” the hostess said, and with a practiced smile, she left them alone.
They sat in silence for a moment. Kael glanced at Lira. Her dress was a rich black, edged with metallic threading that caught the light when she moved. She looked composed—sharp, even—but the tension in her posture hadn’t gone unnoticed.
A waiter appeared, took their order, bowed politely, and vanished as quickly as he came.
Only then did Kael lean in slightly and ask, “Who were those people outside? The assholes who insulted you.”
Lira’s expression darkened. Her fingers curled slightly around her glass.
“They’re the children of the families that gutted my life,” she said softly. “Back before everything fell apart, our families were close—mine, theirs. Their parents acted like allies when my mom got sick. But the second she was out of the picture, they tore into my dad like vultures.”
Kael didn’t interrupt. He just listened.
“My father’s company—TarynTech—it was his life’s work. A logistics optimization firm with proprietary enchantment-algorithm sync tech. It was revolutionary at the time. Efficient enough to cut operation costs for freighter companies by thirty percent across major trade cities. That company is now called VandrixCore.” She spat the name like a curse. “The biggest logistics optimization firm in Dravara. Built on his blood and ideas—and stolen out from under us when he was too grief-stricken to fight.”
Kael’s knuckles tightened around his silverware.
“I used to be close to some of those kids,” Lira went on. “Sleepovers, class projects, holiday dinners. But when their parents saw the opportunity to take everything, they turned on us. They taught their children to treat me like a threat. Like I was a walking lawsuit.”
She turned her head, trying to hide the heat in her eyes. “My dream… is to take everything back. Or better yet, build something greater. Make VandrixCore obsolete. Not through anything sneaky, but through being better. I want them to see everything they worked for and every plot they sold their soul for crumble beneath them, and to know it's all because I'm better than them and beat them fair and square.”
Kael leaned forward, voice low and firm. “Then I’ll help you do it. I swear.”
That pulled her eyes back to his. “You say that like you mean it.”
“I do. You're my best friend. Your dream is my dream. And your enemy is my enemy.”
Silence passed between them again—comfortably, this time.
“Now,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “What was that thing you wanted to talk about? You said it was something that had to be just between us.”
Kael looked around. “We’re not alone.”
Lira smirked and gestured lightly with her hand. “Try listening to someone else’s conversation.”
He furrowed his brow and focused. The booth next to them was filled with laughter and the clinking of glasses, but when Kael tried to parse the words, they blurred together—like a language he half-knew but couldn’t quite recall.
“…They’re all… garbled.”
“Exactly,” Lira said. “Places like this encrypt audio through spellwork. Each booth is its own sound bubble. If you’re not inside the enchantment perimeter, it’s all static. No one outside can hear us either, even if it sounds like they can.”
Kael relaxed slightly. He took a breath.
Then he told her everything.
He recounted the night of the predabeast rampage—how his wounds weren’t from the creature but from something inside him, something deeper and far more dangerous. He described the nothingness of that place, the absolute cold that froze his body in an instant, the excruciating pain, and the voice that wasn’t a voice—the pull of a system waking up.
“It called itself my trait,” he said quietly. “And said it's name is Inner Universe Creation. XXX-Rank:”
Lira blinked slowly. “What?”
“XXX-rank. Not listed. It’s not registered with the Talent Authority, and I’m not even sure the scanners can detect it. I only know what it’s called because it shows up in my own personal system that looks like a hybrid between the ArkSeal system and the Throne Wars 2 UI. But… it doesn't have any intelligence. It doesn't tell me or show me anything unless something big is happenin' at the moment or I ask it.”
Lira leaned in, brows furrowed, lips parted in shock.
“I thought it was a talent at first,” Kael said, “but it’s different. It’s not awakening-based. It’s deeper. It seems that I had to activate it by eating a lot of the right stuff. Now that it's active, it's building something inside me—a whole nother world—a copy of Ashport. And I have to keep eating to power it.”
Lira didn’t speak, just stared. Kael continued.
“The night of the attack, I devoured the predabeast—not just its body, but its energy. That was when everything started. That’s when the system came online. I asked it recently to show me when its information logs began, and that’s the earliest entry. That moment. Before that, nothing.”
“…You really did eat the predabeast? I thought you were saying that that night because you were still in shock.”
Kael nodded. “No, I ate it. And that’s the other part. My actual talent—E-Rank Advanced Digestion—is changing. It’s behaving like something it’s not supposed to. I’ve been able to eat everything—wood, metal, even mana. Legendary-grade materials. And I never get full. I ate several full buildings today before picking you up!”
He shook his head. “I knew that my talent had to have evolved. I had it re-tested. Still E-Rank. It hasn’t evolved. Which means it’s being altered by my trait somehow. The trait is mutating the talent.”
Lira leaned back, visibly overwhelmed. Her expression shifted between awe and fear, uncertainty and disbelief.
“…Kael, I’ve never heard of anything like this. Not just the rank, or the name, or the system, but everything. Talents don’t mutate like that. A system in something like a talent? A system is an intelligent design. If your trait is a part of you and it has a system, then who made the system, the trait...you? And why?”
“I don’t know,” Kael admitted. “But I’m learnin'. Piece by piece.”
She rubbed her temple, breathing out slow. “…I need time to process all that.”
Kael gave a faint smile. “I know. It’s a lot.”
She looked at him again—really looked—and her eyes softened.
“But thank you,” she whispered, “for trusting me with it.”
Kael nodded, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. “There’s no one else I’d rather tell.”
