Lucen pulled on his coat and slung his bag over one shoulder.
He didn't grab anything else. No scrolls. No coins. Not even the snack bar on the counter.
He figured if this turned into a disaster, he'd rather die slightly hungry than full of regrets and protein powder.
The hallway outside his door was quiet.
Lights buzzed faintly overhead, and Mrs. Higa's cat was stretched out on its back by the stairwell like it paid rent and didn't care about fire codes.
Lucen stepped past it.
Down the stairs. Slow.
The banister wobbled under his hand on the second floor. The smell of burnt coffee and old tile cleaner drifted up from the lobby.
By the time he reached the bottom step, someone was already waiting.
Lucen stopped mid-step.
Gen stood by the door like he'd always been there.
Same long coat. Same tired, too-relaxed posture. His hands were in his pockets, and his expression was halfway between smug and bored.
Lucen frowned.
"I didn't say yes."
Gen tilted his head. "No. You said you'd think about it."
"Still thinking."
"You've had time."
Lucen looked at the wall clock. It was frozen at 3:11. Who knows when it froze.
He looked back at Gen.
Gen smiled. "I don't like waiting."
Lucen sighed and stepped down the last stair.
He stopped just short of the door.
"You live around here?" he asked.
"No."
"You follow me home?"
"Technically I followed your shadow. You left a trail so obvious, I thought you were trying to get jumped."
Lucen didn't answer.
He pushed open the front door and stepped outside. The metal frame groaned behind him.
Gen followed, hands still in his pockets.
"You walk fast for someone who pretends not to care," Gen said.
Lucen said, "You talk too much for someone with zero charm."
Gen laughed once, soft.
Then said, "We're not going far."
Lucen turned his head. "Define far."
"East line. Off the main rail. It's dead-zoned, but we'll get there in twenty."
Lucen narrowed his eyes. "And this is the part where I ask what I'm walking into, and you give me a vague, dramatic answer."
Gen stepped closer.
The streetlamp overhead flickered once.
"No drama. Just opportunity."
Lucen rolled his shoulder. The bag strap dug into his collarbone.
"Is it a drift?"
"Yes."
"Registered?"
Gen didn't answer.
Lucen nodded slowly. "Cool. So illegal."
"Unlisted," Gen corrected. "Not illegal. Just… not managed."
Lucen stared at him for a long second.
'Right. This is where I say no. This is where I go back upstairs and eat dry noodles and forget about cryptic notes and surveillance-friendly phone calls.'
He pulled the collar of his coat tighter.
Then said, "Fine. But if this is a trap, I'm taking your teeth with me."
Gen grinned. "I like you already."
Lucen looked up at the sky.
Gray. Flat. The kind of light that made everything feel slightly wrong, even if nothing had happened yet.
He muttered, "This is gonna be so dumb."
And followed him into the street.
—
The rail line cut through old city blocks like someone drew it with a dull knife.
The station they reached wasn't even a real station. Just a slab of reinforced concrete, half-gutted walls, and an old terminal kiosk that hadn't lit up in years. A flickering sensor above the gate scanned them as they walked past.
Lucen glanced up.
It didn't beep.
He frowned. "This thing's not active."
Gen said, "City doesn't care about this sector."
Lucen stepped over a bent railing. "You said twenty minutes. That was forty."
Gen shrugged. "You're not being charged for my time."
They walked across the next block in silence. The street was narrow, broken up with weeds and broken tile. Two feral mana cats darted into a pile of trash as they passed.
Lucen looked around.
Dead storefronts. A closed-off corner post office. Walls covered in peeling glyph posters advertising expired booster tonics and pure drift-filtered oxygen, 98% clean.
"Is this even still part of Kyrel?"
Gen gave him a look. "Yeah. Technically."
Lucen raised a brow. "And technically means?"
"It means we're inside city borders, but nobody funds patrols out here. No surveys. No mana law enforcement. Even the district map calls this zone 'restructure pending.'"
Lucen kicked a loose rock off the curb.
It bounced into the gutter with a faint click.
He muttered, "Great. Middle of nowhere with fancy branding."
Gen laughed. "That's pretty much Kyrel's whole deal."
Lucen glanced sideways. "So this is what? The back lot of the continent?"
"Kinda," Gen said. "Kyrel's the fourth-largest city in the eastern hemisphere, but it's built like a patchwork. You've got tower districts with twenty-year-old drift cores jammed next to blocks with no working plumbing."
Lucen rubbed the side of his neck. "And we're the ones getting in trouble for throwing spells too close to vending machines."
"You ever been outside Kyrel?"
Lucen shook his head. "No license. No guild. No money."
Gen nodded. "Figures."
They turned onto another street. This one dipped lower, like the ground hadn't agreed on what height it wanted to be. Broken lights buzzed above doorways. A group of guys leaned against a closed shopfront, smoking something Lucen didn't want to guess at.
They didn't look up as Gen and Lucen passed.
Lucen kept his voice low. "Other cities this bad?"
Gen said, "Some are worse. Eastbridge is stricter about gates, but they've got black market dungeon farming under the schools. Thornveil's clean on paper, but their government funds half the drift laundering in the interior zones. And Yelthorn?"
He paused.
Lucen waited.
Gen said, "Yelthorn runs on ghost gates. They've got drifts that open, disappear, and come back weeks later. No core. No exit. Just mana traces and corpses."
Lucen blinked. "That's not in the database."
"Nope."
"And we're walking toward one of these unlisted ones. For fun."
Gen smirked. "It pays well."
Lucen looked at him flatly. "That's not the reassurance you think it is."
They walked for a few more seconds.
Lucen said, "Why is the whole planet like this? Thirty years ago, no one even had a system. Now we've got slinging fireballs in high school gym classes and twenty people dying every day in low-tier gates."
Gen's voice was even. "Because the world didn't have a plan. Gates started showing up. The first few were small. Contained. Then they spread. Faster than anyone thought. Half the governments collapsed trying to regulate mana before they understood what it was."
Lucen kicked a bottle down the street. It rolled, hit a lamp post, and stopped.
"So now everyone just pretends it's normal."
"Pretty much."
They crossed under a rusted overpass. A broken security drone hung from the support beam, its lens dark.
Lucen pulled his coat tighter. "And Kyrel's just one more patched-up zone trying not to fall in."
"Kyrel's better than most," Gen said. "At least here, when people disappear in drifts, someone still pretends to file the paperwork."
They stepped out of the shade.
Lucen squinted.
The street ahead ended in a low wall, and behind it… something shimmered.
A ripple.
Not like heat. Not like air distortion.
Like the space beyond it didn't know if it wanted to stay real.
Lucen slowed.
"That's the gate?"
Gen nodded. "Unregistered. Unnamed. No official marker. Been open six days. No core spike."
Lucen's fingers twitched.
"I can feel it from here," he said. "It's bleeding mana."
Gen said, "It's not the kind you're used to."
Lucen looked at him.
Then at the gate.
It was pulsing.
Slow. Deep.
Like something inside was breathing in reverse.