I awakened the END

Chapter 2: The power he couldn't control

It was a moment of quiet before anything else.

The leader tripped back and looked into his open hand, as if it had betrayed him. No blue light. No shimmer. Just skin. He stopped midway through, "What did you—What are you?"

Ryn didn't answer. He didn't have one.

His trembling hands wouldn't stop. There was something behind his ribs, something that was scratched raw, emptied out, like a wound that had not yet been healed. He wanted to get up off of the stone, but as soon as he moved his weight, it was as if the pain in his chest opened up and started to burn. He gasped and lay on the ground for a second more, waiting until it passed.

Both of the other men had ceased to laugh. One of them, who had been watching the entire fight at the alley mouth, was very quiet, staring at Ryn like he was an explosive.

“He's awakened” The man said quietly, as though to deny the possibility of making it more evident, "He's awakened.”

Both the men stepped back from Ryn. They ran, their boots pounding against the wet stone, they ran around the corner, no looking back, leaving their leader alone on the stone, a Null which shouldn't have been able to touch him.

The leader backed up and pushed himself against the wall. He slapped his palm against the other one trying to wake his concept again. Nothing answered. He went again, grinding his teeth, fear dampened his face.

Ryn observed him doing it and there was a flicker of something in his chest that reacted.

He was going for the man, not knowing what he was doing.

One quick flash, and the blue light came back to life around the man's knuckles — and Ryn pulled his hand back as if it had touched fire. As he did, the light went out once more.

‘Yes, I did,’ Ryn thought. ‘Both times. I did that.’

He had no idea how. He didn't understand why it faded when he pulled back, or why reaching toward someone brought it surging forward again — like something on a leash he couldn't see. This was the first strand of any kind of comprehension, and he hung onto it.

The man scrambled to his feet keeping space between them, as if Ryn were a disease. He said breathlessly, "I don't know what you woke up. You don't understand what you've got, nobody should be able to do that.” He ran back towards the alley mouth. “They'll be coming for you.”

"Who?" Ryn asked.

The man didn't answer. He was already on the run.

Ryn was alone in the alley, blood thick on his lips, the silence for the first time in his life didn't feel safe.

He tried to get up but he was not able to. His ribs screamed. He didn't listen to them, pain was a familiar language and he knew how to survive in it. He put the pouch in his pocket - his Marks, his again - and exited the alley into the lower market, attempting to seem as if nothing had taken place.

It didn't work.

People were staring. Not at his bruises — that was nothing new, nobody in the lower district batted an eye at a beaten Null. Their eyes were fixed as if they were acquainted with it. A man haggling with a woman selling dried fish stopped mid-sentence; she froze, eyes locking onto Ryn, then bolted. Two boys were standing near a stall, whispering to one another; one pointing at the other, who hit him on the hand.

“A Null awakened,” he heard, a broken and fragmenting voice and it passed mouth to mouth, faster than he could walk. “A Concept was stopped by a Null. Beat a man unconscious.”

The story had already gone out the alley before him. It had already outrun him.

With his heart pounding, Ryn ducked into a small gap between two closed buildings, and pressed his back against the wall. He had to find out what he had turned into before anyone else did.

He closed his eyes and turned toward himself, towards that space behind his ribs, where the pressure had resided.

Nothing answered.

He repeated his endeavor, his concentration, his wish — anything — to get a response.

A blade of pain stabbed through his chest between the bones. He doubled, his hand flat against the wall, and made himself stop.

It has a cost. The panic dwindled and left the thought to sink in. It's always draining me out each time I use it.

He had craved power all his life. Now he had a piece of it, and it hurt more than it did when he was given it, it hurt more every time he touched it.

---

Across the city, in a room where the reports were filed and no one talked, a messenger placed a single sheet on Dren's desk.

Dren read it once. Then again, slower.

Newly awakened Null. Caused a disruption of an ongoing Concept manifestation. Twice.

He put the paper down without expression, but there was a tightening in his jaw. He said "seal the district. Find him."

When Eris reached the alley, the blood on the stone had dried black. She knelt down by the wall she knew the attack had come from, closed her eyes and allowed Sight to happen.

The experience she had was puzzling.

A regular awakening, an ordinary awakening left behind a signature, a fingerprint of energy. This resulted in virtually nothing. No surge. There is no evidence of new power formation.

Only an absence. A hole in the fabric of the world, deliberate — as if someone had cut something out rather than built something new.

Eris slowly opened her eyes.

“No, that's not an awakening," she whispered to no one. "That's a removal."

---

A Vanguard patrol — black-and-silver armor catching the last of the daylight — rounded the corner ahead of him before he got two more streets away.

"You. Stop."

Ryn's stomach dropped. He didn't need to ask how they'd found him so fast — word of mouth had probably crossed half the district before he had.

He went to walk the other direction casually, as if there was nowhere else to be.

"I said stop."

Fastening his steps. There was a hand clutched around his shoulder.

Panic was sparked before he could even think, and his Core responded — faster, raw and more powerful than before.

The soldier's activated Concept — a kind of reinforced grip — just dropped in the middle of the action. His hand hung limply on Ryn's shoulder as though it was turned off.

Both of them froze.

The soldier's voice rose in panic, “He's the one. It's the in the report.”

He was surrounded by weapons, all drawn and ready to go, concepts live and bright, steel drawn.

Ryn ran.

He didn't plan, he didn't think, he simply moved: he cut between the stalls, vaulted a low fence, boots pounding the uneven cobblestone while shouts were hurled behind him and the Vanguard ran after him with coordination the alley thugs never possessed.

A blade was thrown at him spinning end over end, too fast to avoid.

Ryn threw out his hand intuitively.

The blade doesn't land in the air. It just fell, its momentum lost, harmlessly clattering against the stone, as though it had forgotten what it was doing.

Ryn was not able to absorb the implications of this. He only knew END hadn't destroyed the weapon or deflected it.

It had ended its motion. Its purpose. What it did, not what it was.

That thought ran faster among the soldiers than it did that thought.

He climbed up a drainpipe, pulled himself onto a roof, and for just one inhalation.

Below the Vanguard units began to scatter throughout the streets, lighting up the dusk in a dozen hues to block every possible avenue he could have gone down.

He went around for another way across the roof tops—

and stopped.

He could see a woman standing on the roof of another house across the street, in shadows, as if she had frozen in place. No armor. No weapon drawn. She simply watched him, no fear at all.

Ryn's Core lunged toward her, END rising in his chest like a held breath releasing.

Nothing happened.

Now the woman didn't flinch. Didn't move.

Calm as still water, she said, "So, you're the one who awakened.”

Ryn's blood ran cold. She was not asking.

She already knew.