“Oh, Remy.”
Saskia caught him the moment he stepped into the dining room, arms locking tight around his ribs. “I heard about Noah.”
She was smaller than he remembered. Or maybe he’d just grown.
“I’m so sorry.”
For a beat, he didn’t move. His body felt like stone. But her warmth—the clean scent of soap and hair oil—cracked something in him. He folded his arms around her, slow, uncertain, until her heartbeat pressed against his chest. When they parted, she studied him for a moment, as though checking him over, seeing if he’d changed somehow.
“Mom and I got nervous when you didn’t answer our messages,” she said, turning toward the kitchen console. Her tone was calm, but the careful kind of calm—the kind that takes effort. “Dad said you just needed time.”
The house breathed quietly around them—soft-lit panels shifting hue with the morning light, the floor warm beneath his bare feet.
“I was worried you’d do something dramatic.” She tried to laugh, but it came out thin, catching on the edge of a breath.
“Like what?” Rem’s voice scraped dry. “Start a rebel uprising?”
He tugged at the sleeves of his coat—the new one, dark and oversized, the hood deep enough to hide a face. A reward from his last challenge run. Precision-stitched. It felt like armor.
Saskia’s eyes flicked to it. Stayed there for a beat too long. Her fingers worried at the edge of a mug that didn’t need holding. “No. Nothing like that,” she said quietly. “Just… be careful today.”
“Years since the last episode,” Rem blew out a long slow frustrated breath, “and still you think I’m fragile like glass.”
He brushed his hand across the fridge panel. It sighed open, spilling a breath of cold air tinged with citrus cleanser. He took out a hard-boiled egg, its shell already pre-cracked for convenience.
“Mom wants us at mass tonight.”
Rem smirked—half amusement, half exhaustion—and rolled the egg between his palms until pale flakes scattered across the counter. The word felt hollow—ritual without pulse. He nodded anyway. Salt and pepper hissed from the dispenser as he ate in silence, the egg doing nothing to fill the ache behind his ribs.
“What are you doing today?” she asked, voice light but careful, measuring.
“My plan was to wallow in grief and self-recrimination for at least one day.”
No irony in his tone; just the truth.
Saskia hesitated, her gaze brushing the coat again. “New?”
“Challenge reward,” he said. “Today, the vibe suits me.”
She nodded, slow, like she didn’t quite believe it.
When he finished, he dropped the shell fragments into the recycler, their brief crackle swallowed by the hum of the machine.
“Saskia,” he said, trying to breathe the heaviness out—and failing, “I’m fine. Or I will be.”
He pulled up the hood. The world dimmed; sound dulled; his face folded into shadow. As he stepped toward the door, he felt her eyes on him—still, silent, caught between worry and something harder to name. He didn’t look back, but her outline stayed with him as the door sealed shut.
Outside, the air met him cool and sharp. He kept moving—one foot, then another—letting the rhythm of it disguise the emptiness that trailed him through the street.
It was a quiet day. Or maybe it was the hood.
Either way, silence suited him.
Rem walked toward Oldetown while the city moved around him in practiced choreography—commuter bikes whispering past, civil drones angling politely out of his path, crowds parting and reforming as if he were no more than wind. He blended in. The thought of a stealth cloak crossed his mind, briefly fascinated him. It brought no joy now. Just another idea for another day.
Essence destabilization.
He’d read everything he could find. None of it helped.
Every citizen received one challenge pass per day. Complete a run, use your locker, visit a center. Any of those bled off the proto-essence that gathered in your body. That was the real point of Thrive, beneath all its talk of growth and service—it kept the citizens stable. Kept them safe.
Skip a day and you might be fine. Skip two, and the destabilization began.
It shouldn’t have applied to Noah. There were treatments for those who couldn’t reach an arch, but injuries complicated everything. Earth’s medicine hadn’t adapted to essence metabolism—what they called only half-worked, and even when they succeeded, they caused essence destabilization.
Rem crossed the canal and stopped midway. Mist rose from the water, curling in pale ribbons. Three days since he’d last stepped through an arch. No symptoms. No flicker of decay in his vision, no weight in his limbs. Only the same hollow ache in his chest.
If anything, he felt fuller. Denser.
As he’d suspected, his path wasn’t following Thrive’s logic at all. Whatever broken branch of growth he’d been shoved onto didn’t play by the same rules.
He pressed on.
Oldetown unfolded around him in its usual palette of smells and sounds—the chatter of vendors, the perfume of oil and spice. Normally it felt alive. Today it mocked him. A carnival of indulgence, blind to the quiet enslavement they celebrated.
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He stopped at his usual food stall, traded his last healing potion for two skewers and a handful of dull-blue cores.
The meat was perfect. Tender, smoked, seasoned just right. It filled his mouth with warmth that never reached his chest.
Enslavement.
If the Union had the technology to prevent destabilization. To save people like Noah. But they didn’t use it. Then they did it on purpose. They’d chosen instead to enslave the population under the pretense of kindness—to keep the balance, to manage essence safely, to make obedience feel like mercy.
Rem chewed once more, swallowed, and kept walking.
The crowd thinned as he reached the edge of Oldetown, where the canal paths met the older market arcades.
Tessel’s Magic & Wonder.
The bell chimed softly as he entered. The air smelled of dust and oil. Of all the places in Oldetown, Tessel’s fascinated him most. He didn’t understand it—couldn’t. The system locked the magic stat behind class acquisition, something he was permanently barred from. But that only sharpened his curiosity. Magic promised a kind of freedom his path denied.
He stepped to the counter, eyes drifting over the display:
Novice’s Wand of Ember
Charges: 0/5
Fuel: Core (any)
Pattern: Ember Bolt
Warning: Improper use may cause fracture.
Wand of Illumination
Charges: 0/5
Fuel: Core (any)
Pattern: Illumination
Warning: Improper use may cause fracture.
Wand of Silence
Charges: 0/5
Fuel: Core (any)
Pattern: Silence
Warning: Improper use may cause fracture.
Wand of Illusion
Charges: 0/5
Fuel: Core (any)
Pattern: Illusion
Warning: Improper use may cause fracture.
Wands were clever things—spells encoded into rechargeable magical tech that anyone could use. Sort of. Raiding the public boards for everything he could find on it let him piece a few things together.
You either needed a magic class or a skill that skirted the penalty applied to non-magic users.
That penalty was no joke. Almost guaranteed failure—and a high chance of critical failure.
Boom. There goes your wand – and maybe your hand.
But a slim chance wasn't no chance, and that was all Rem needed.
“Do you take credits?” he asked the clerk, voice low beneath his hood.
“Credits?” came Tessel’s familiar bark from the back room. “Who has credits here?”
She parted the curtain, eyes gleaming behind her spectacles. “Rembrandt?”
She pulled off the glasses, wiped them—mostly moving smudges around—and slid them back on.
“You look more like a thief than the scholarly boy I remember,” she said, stepping to the counter.
“One can’t be a scholar a thief?” he asked, a corner of his mouth tilting.
“What’s this about credits?”
He smiled.
Day 15, Challenge Level 3
Spent the day in Oldetown. Alone.
Watched people.
Saw Eva and Mara in line for the arch. Can’t even blame them for going right back in. The system demands it.
Still feel empty. Not from essence drain. Something else.
School tomorrow. Noah’s service after.
Not looking forward to either.
The priest said vengeance belongs to God.
But God feels remarkably absent these days.
His academy uniform felt wrong too—tight, constraining, foreign against his skin.
From time to time he glanced toward the seat where Noah should have been. Each time, the realization hit fresh: he wasn’t there. He would never be there again. And every time, Rem forced himself back to his notes.
The page looked like it belonged to someone else. Lines of nonsense and small, pointless doodles drifted across it, scattered like debris through his usual precise handwriting.
Everything was off. The rhythm of the room, the hum of the vents, even the light filtering through the glass—nothing felt right. He hated it all, minute by minute, counting the seconds until he could leave.
Laughter rippled from the front of the class.
He grit his teeth and ignored it.
When the lesson finally ended and his classmates drifted out, heads low, he didn’t move. He stayed frozen at his desk, the room empty around him. Waiting.
Waiting for what, he didn’t know. Noah? His easy grin? Or just waiting for the world to feel right again.
Only when the room dimmed automatically—shadows stretching over the desks—did Rem close his journal, stand, and walk out.
Down the stairs.
Out into the coldness of the day.
Toward the canal.
He walked for hours, not thinking, just moving—sidewalk, canal, glass, sky, repeating like a broken loop. He told himself he’d stop when it hurt less, but the pain didn’t shift. It just settled lower, like sediment. When the time for Noah’s service came, he found himself standing at the civic center without remembering the last turn he took.
It gleamed under perfect light—white, spotless, serene. A photo of Noah smiled above a wreath of white lilies. Perfect symmetry. Manufactured.
Rem sat near the front. The headmaster was there in full uniform. Beside him, a Union official—a small woman with an unfamiliar badge—watched the room with professional stillness. Noah’s friends filled the first rows: Eva Smit, Mara Jansen, Lars Bakker, Finn van Dijk. Behind him, Lotte Groen and Sophie Brouwer sobbed quietly. His brother and sister sat further back. Noah’s family—his younger brother Cole pale and trembling—occupied the front row.
Other classmates were there. Instructors too. And more people he didn’t know, all gathered to honor Noah.
When the service began, images filled the screen—Noah as a child, laughing in the sun. A dozen memories from a world before the arrival. Rem smiled in spite of himself when he appeared beside his friend in a few of them, two boys immortalized in brief flashes of joy.
Then the Union official rose, her voice calm, confident.
“In the Union, when a citizen falls while pursuing their path, we celebrate their achievements by preserving their best memories for those who remain. Today we celebrate Noah de Wit—a noble soul. He will be missed, but his life and memory strengthen us all.”
The phrase turned in his mind like a blade.
A holograph ignited at the front—Noah, mid-battle, sweat on his face, shield raised as he stepped into the path of a charging wolf. “Fall back!” his voice rang out. The camera circled; his smile caught the light.
Rem stared, hollow. He had never seen his friend like that—a hero, a symbol, edited into perfection. His fingers came up to massage away the beginning of a headache. The image felt like a caricature of his friend. Over simplified, too tidy.
When the projection ended, the speeches began. Finn told a story. Mara recited his performance record. The headmaster said a few words about “promise unfulfilled.”
Rem’s pulse slowed. He stood when it was his turn, almost without realizing it.
“Noah was my friend,” he said. “We met when I was eight. Grew up together. Got into trouble. Tried to build a raft once—sank it before we left the dock.”
A few polite laughs. He let them die out.
“He was kind. Honest. He believed effort mattered—that if you worked hard, that was enough. That was before the arrival.”
His voice didn’t rise; it held steady.
“When the protocols promised fairness, Noah believed them. And now he’s gone. A casualty of their calculated indifference.”
An official shifted. Someone coughed.
“He didn’t die chasing a dream. He didn’t ask for this. Didn’t want this. But he did his best.”
The silence thickened.
No shouting. No theatrics. Just the cold weight of fact.
“You want to honor Noah?” Rem said, voice low, precise. “Then remember what his death proves. If doing your best were enough, he’d still be here.”
He paused. The room held its breath.
“No. The world’s different now—thanks to the Union. Now the only thing that matters is results.”
He stepped down. No one stopped him.
Behind him, the hologram still smiled—Noah, forever brave, forever obedient.
Rem didn’t look back.
