Yellow Jacket

The battlefield had frozen once again. Rain hung in the air like shattered glass suspended in oil. Rubble and flechettes, smoke trails and falling dust, all held in perfect stillness. Time itself had stopped moving, held in place not by Warren's will, but by something greater.

He stood with Styll in the aftermath. The Warlord was dead, truly this time. The gods were silent. The Youth had said the words:

"Take your time."

So Warren did.

He opened his hand.

The fragment was gone. Absorbed. The nanites still coiled through his nerves like wire catching on bone, but the process was complete. He could feel it, settled now. Heavy. Alive. And the System responded.

[Skill Gained: Mobile Sun]
Generates a compact gravitational core of nanites. Anything that enters contact is drawn in and torn apart by extreme force. The field exerts constant vacuum pressure in all directions. Control is manual. Activation carries physical risk.
Warning: The user is not exempt. Contact with the core will result in severe damage or death.
This Skill does not stabilize itself. It will consume whatever it touches, intended or not.

Warren stared at the message, then blinked it away. The weight of the new Skill hadn't settled in his body yet, but he could feel the potential. Like holding a blade with no hilt, powerful, but always ready to cut the wrong way.

This wasn't just something he could use. It was something that could destroy him, if he let it.

He wouldn't.

He flexed his fingers, slow and careful. Nothing triggered. No feedback loop. Just gravity waiting to misbehave.

The air was still too quiet.

He looked around at the paused ruin, at the scorched earth and the unfallen rain. Then down at his hand.

"You're mine now," he said. Not a threat. A fact.

It was the beginning of something brutal.

And Warren intended to learn its shape before making it his own.

He turned slightly, eyes drawn to the only other thing in the world still capable of motion.

The Silvered Maiden stood in front of him.

She was motionless for a moment longer, her wings edged in steel, her gaze fixed on Warren, not in judgment, but in recognition. The battlefield around them remained paused, a world held mid-collapse.

She stepped forward. One step only. It made no sound. Her voice, when it came, was low and clear, the sound of quicksilver evaporating.

"Three times you broke him. Once when you killed the first, the one he called his contender. Again, when you struck down the second. And a third, when you ended what he returned as."

She extended a hand, not to offer, but to mark.

"Three victories. Three failures of his faith. Three levels."

The Nanites responded before Warren could speak.

[You have reached level 15]

The pressure came fast. Too fast.

Warren staggered, knees flexing, breath catching as something inside him lurched sideways, like his bones were trying to remember new weight before it existed. A grinding heat pushed through his chest, up his spine, behind his eyes.

A ragged breath slipped from his teeth as he caught himself against Grix's shoulder. She steadied him without a sound.

"Stop," Warren muttered. "Take it back. That's, too much. I'll break."

Another voice answered, youthful but older than infinity.

"You won't."

The Youth appeared beside the Maiden, barefoot and grinning, his coat flickering with light like first sun rise.

"You're not alone in this moment. I'm still holding it. Time's not moving. Pain doesn't live here."

Warren looked up, jaw tight. "That's not how pain works."

The Youth shrugged, cheerful. "It is when I say it is."

He looked down at Warren like a child examining a cracked toy with interest, then nodded. "You've earned it. The world can wait."

The System waited too. Instability stat prompts. Just the level gains, sitting in Warren's blood like coals refusing to cool.

The Silvered Maiden did not speak again. She simply watched him bear it.

And for a moment, Warren stood at the edge of something deeper than power.

He had not asked for this. But he would carry it anyway.

Warren looked at his stats.

Warren Smith — Level 15

(Second threshold requirements met)

Class: Drift Walker

Alignment: Aberrant

Unallocated Stat Points: 13

Attributes:

Strength: 15

Perception: 16

Intelligence: 32

Dexterity: 26

Endurance: 15

Resolve: 29

Thirteen unspent stats, four from each level before fifteen, five from fifteen itself.

No warning message.

Warren didn't hesitate.

He slammed the points in hard, like setting bone. Expected it to hurt. Expected the nanites to bite deep, to burn and reshape.

He waited.

But no pain came.

No tearing. No spike of heat. No slow, awful crawl beneath the skin.

Just stillness.

He blinked once, then again. Warier now than when the fire had come.

The Youth stood nearby, grinning like he'd swallowed the sun. "Told you."

Warren didn't respond.

He didn't trust it. Not yet.

But the silence inside held.

The world remained paused, and for once, the machinery in his blood stayed quiet.

He didn't feel stronger. Not yet.

But he didn't feel broken either.

That would do, for now.

The stillness held, just a moment longer.

Then Umdar stepped forward.

His form wavered like paper near a flame, but his voice came sharp. Not loud. Not angry. Just final.

"You have taken what was mine. You have ended what I gave life to. So now you will receive what he once did."

He raised one hand, not in threat, but in decree.

"Your first boon: the erasure of death. One life. When your end comes, it will not take. Once. Only once. Use it poorly and the next will be final."

The words settled into the world like rust falling into wet stone. The other gods did not object. Not yet.

Warren said nothing. Just watched.

And then the silence cracked, not with motion, but with voice.

Grix snarled, arms thrown wide, fire in her throat. "That's all fine and dandy, but shouldn't he get to choose? You tried to cheat him, Dumdar!"

The name echoed wrong in the divine air. Several of the watching gods stiffened.

The Spitter laughed, wet and vicious. He leaned forward, spit hissing between his teeth and vanishing before it touched the ground. "She's right. You spat your terms in bad faith. He should choose his boons."

Umdar did not move, but his face pulled tight like old paper soaked in hate. His hollow eyes settled on Warren.

Warren, for his part, said nothing at first. Then he nodded once, sharp.

"I accept the first."

The gods leaned in.

Umdar tilted his head. "You accept?"

"Your boon," Warren said. "The first one. I take it."

It wasn't gratitude. It was a knife laid flat.

Umdar blinked, long and slow, as if recalculating something. His posture changed, not quite softer, but less ready to strike.

"What do you want for the second?" he asked. The words felt like ash.

Warren looked directly at him. "I want the right to shape my own Skill upgrades. No System-generated evolutions. I choose how they grow."

Umdar's jaw tensed. "That can be granted. But only to one. You will need to pick a different third boon."

Warren nodded in agreement.
Before Warren could speak, the Silvered Maiden stepped forward. Her voice came soft and clear, the edge of steel in mourning.

"Warren," she said, not as god to mortal, but as one maker to another. "May I ask for your third boon? You would choose well, but there is something you would not know to name."

Umdar's sneer returned. He shifted, eyes narrow with distaste.

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Warren saw it. Watched the flicker of disdain coil behind the old god's expression. He turned back to the Maiden.

"Yes," he said. "Lady, you may choose."

She did not smile. Did not bow. She only turned to face Umdar, and when she spoke, it was with the full weight of her forge-bound presence.

"For his third boon," she said, "He will have the Veil of Souls."

The reaction was instant.

Grix leaned forward. "The what?"

The Spitter barked a laugh and spat to the side, nodding. "That's not something we give. That's something no one gets unless someone asks. And damn, she actually found a way."

The youth cut across the rising murmur. His voice was soft, but final. "This is not the time for that."

Grix raised both brows. "So I'm guessing no one gets it… If no one knows it exists?"

The Spitter didn't answer. He just spat her with pride.

Styll looked up from beside Warren, head tilted. "Wah bale o' sol?"

The Silvered Maiden spoke with sparks of gold. "It will allow him to be seen when he needs to be seen. And hidden when he must be hidden."

Warren considered this. Then asked the question that had been sitting like stone in his throat.

"What does it mean, benefactor?"

Umdar's voice came dry, stripped of power, but not of venom.

"It means," he said slowly, "that I must stand by your side in all things. Even if I hate it. You and I, slumrat, are now tied."

None of the Gods spoke after that.

But all of them looked at Warren differently.

The gods began to pull away.

Not vanish. They simply stepped out of presence, out of immediacy, like hands being withdrawn from a wound that could not be stitched. One by one, their forms dimmed. Folded. Retreated into whatever place watched the world without touching it.

But not all at once.

The Youth was first to go, his smile fading last, like a sunrise rolling back into night. The Forest followed, heavy with silence, trees dissolving into vapor as his form returned to root and shadow. The Divine Beast turned with a single look toward Warren and vanished in a blur of movement that belonged to neither predator nor prey.

The Twin shifted through all his shapes before blinking out.

The Mirror fell dark. Reflections scattered.

But one presence remained.

It had not spoken. It had not shown a face. It had not claimed a name.

It made a sound.

A presence that scraped against the edge of the moment. The sound came like millions of crystal hammers falling in rhythmic pattern, layered beneath the roar of a forge made fluid. Like something ancient stirring beneath the bones of silence.

All the gods froze.

Even the departing ones halted mid-fold. Their half-gone forms caught in hesitation, tension crawling across their divine outlines like static.

Except one.

The Silvered Maiden did not freeze. She straightened.

Her wings folded closer, not in retreat, but in focus. Her gaze fixed not on the unseen presence, but on Warren.

She was not shaken. She was steadied.

Whatever this thing was, it fortified her.

Warren felt it too.

Not as a threat. Not as a weight. But as something that watched him with interest. The kind of interest that didn't blink.

And then it was gone.

No fade. No exit. Just the absence of presence.

The remaining gods resumed their withdrawal. The air thinned. Reality returned.

Divinity left the moment.

And then Grix exploded.

"You sidelined me and I get nothing? What in the hells is that toadshit?"

Her voice shattered the reverent silence like a thrown bottle. She stormed forward, boots crunching over divine frost and phantom dust. Her fists were clenched, but her expression was worse, betrayal dressed in fury.

The Spitter paused mid-turn.

He looked at her.

Then stepped back toward her, casual. Intimate. Dangerous.

And spit in her eyes.

The divine spit didn't sizzle. Didn't burn. It dispersed, immediately, as if it had never touched air. Like it had gone directly into her.

Grix screamed.

"I'm going to kill you!"

The Spitter spat again. Not at her. This one came with a sound.

Like a flechette flying.

It cut the air sideways, curving in sound, but not space.

Grix's eyes went wide. Something hungry and wild behind her rage snapped into place.

She bent down, grabbed a rock from the half-broken ground, and hurled it at his face.

The rock stopped an inch from his forehead.

Frozen. Perfect. Mid-air.

She smiled.

The Spitter looked at the stone. Looked at her. Nodded once.

And evaporated.

Grix stood there breathing hard. Eyes red. Hands twitching. But no longer screaming.

She turned away from the stone, still hovering in midair.

Styll, from below, muttered, "...wah dat?"

Warren didn't answer. He was watching the space where the presence had been.

The Silvered Maiden stepped past him, her form already beginning to fade. Her armor made no sound. But her eyes locked on him a final time.

She looked at him and said, "My name is Steel." Quiet. Absolute. Like it had always been part of the world.

Warren dropped to his knees. His voice cracked in the silence.

"My god. I bow..."

She didn't let him.

She moved faster than thought, one gauntleted hand catching his shoulder before his knees touched the ground.

Steel lifted him, not roughly but firmly. The motion held weight without cruelty. Authority without force.

He met her eyes, startled, but she gave no explanation.

She did not need to.

And then she was gone.

Only mortal breath remained.

Warren looked at Grix. She met his eyes.

"I still want to kill him, but I suppose it's kinda cool." she muttered.

Warren nodded.

Umdar was the last god standing.

The divine court had emptied. Even the Maiden was gone. But Umdar remained, as if weighed down by something heavier than obligation. His form flickered like brittle smoke refusing to collapse.

He turned to Warren.

"You ruined every single plan I have made," he said, voice hoarse with age and fury. "And yet... I think I see what she sees in you now."

He raised one hand.

"This is the Veil of Souls."

He held up nothing.

At least, it looked like nothing.

Grix scoffed. "Dumdar, are you fucking kidding? You're gonna try to cheat him now that the others have left?"

Umdar's voice snapped like rusted wire. "No. I am not. This is the Veil of Souls."

Warren narrowed his eyes. He focused. For a moment, he saw it.

A spark. Small. Flickering in the center of Umdar's outstretched hand. Barely there. Almost imagined.

He tried to examine it but nothing responded.

He pointed. "Grix. There. Do you see it?"

Grix squinted. "That's it? That little flicker? That's this Veil of Souls?"

Umdar didn't answer. He lowered his hand slightly and stepped forward.

"I must bind it to you. This will hurt. But when it's done, you will carry a gift not granted to any other. Not ever. It must be asked for."

"Wah it do?" Styll asked, her head tilted, voice soft and curious.

Umdar looked down at her, gaze flickering but not cruel.

"It grants him the ability to take a person... and make them his Veil."

Grix raised a hand. "What in the hells does that even mean?"

Umdar inhaled, steadying himself. "It means he will still be Warren. But he can be someone else as well. The System will see him as the person he wears, the one veiled over his own soul."

Warren frowned. "What's a soul?"

Umdar answered without pause. "Your Skill is your Soul."

Grix blinked. "So you're telling me he gets a second Skill?"

"No," Umdar said. "He will be that soul. In every way. Until he chooses to remove the Veil. He will have the body, the class, the Skills of the person he takes on. The System will treat him as them. He will and won't be them. His mind will hold power. His instincts will be his own. But the rest... will belong to the Veil."

He turned to Warren, slower now.

"The soul must be lesser than yours. But I don't think that will be an issue. Not anymore."

Umdar stepped closer, the flickering spark now dancing like a dying star between his fingers.

"The world will see the Veil. But beneath it, you will remain. The change will be instinctual. You may take it on and off at will."

"You will not be copying. You will be wearing."

Then he extended his hand.

"Do you accept this?"
Warren nodded.

Umdar moved in the absence of movement, one moment distant, the next behind Warren, and drove his hand like a blade into Warren's back. Not figuratively. Not metaphorically. A hole tore open in Warren's spine, precise and absolute, cutting through skin, chip, and the housing of his fragment. It didn't bleed. It screamed.

And into that place, Umdar planted the Veil.

The pain didn't build. It erupted. An eternity of agony compressed into an instant. Warren dropped to his knees, choking on a soundless cry, and then, just as suddenly, it ended.

He heard the rain.

The world unfroze.

They were back in the courtyard of the compound. The duel never happened, not as the gods had seen it. Not in frozen time. Not in divine stillness.

The Warlord's body lay headless on the ground, blood-matted and spit-covered. A corpse with no audience. A scene untouched.

Except Warren now carried something else.

The Veil of Souls burned behind his skull, silent, waiting.

Warren was standing.

The rain fell soft around him. Styll slipped silently up to his shoulder, her small weight barely noticeable. Grix stood to his right, truncheon tapping his shoulder, face unreadable.

They were back.

The woman who had spat on the Warlord's corpse looked up.

Her expression went from confusion to suspicion to fury in a heartbeat. She drew her lance with a sharp click and pointed it directly at Warren.

Before anyone could speak, Cassian's voice crackled over the comms.

"Warren? What the fuck is happening?"

The woman blinked at the sound. Just a moment.

Grix moved in that moment.

Her arm lashed out. The lance spun from the woman's grip and clattered to the stone. Grix caught it before it hit the ground and held it casually like she might use it or snap it in half.

"Easy," she muttered. "We're not dead. You're welcome."

The courtyard stared.

Nobody breathed.

Warren's voice cut through the silence.

"All teams: advance."

He didn't raise his voice, didn't need to. The comms carried it, and his presence filled the rest.

He touched the side of his neck, barely a whisper in the channel.

"Wren. I'm safe."

A pause. Then softer: "I'm here."

Far away, a breath caught. Then everything began to move again.

Warren Smith — Level 15

(Second threshold requirements met)

Class: Drift Walker

Alignment: Aberrant

Unallocated Stat Points: 0

Attributes:

Strength: 19

Perception: 21

Intelligence: 32

Dexterity: 26

Endurance: 19

Resolve: 29

(Two skill upgrades available)

Skills at Level 15:

Soft Flicker (Active):

A refined evolution of Flicker Steps. Allows the user to disperse into a controlled nanite mist and reconstitute nearby within visual range, without noise, shimmer, or static trail. Movement is no longer disruptive, no longer a visual stutter: it simply happens, like a blink that no one notices.

Requires direct line of sight, The reformation process has been stabilized, smoothed into seamless reintegration. There is no burst, no flash, no displacement wake, just a change in position, clean and surgical.

Echo Vision (Passive):

An advanced extension of Scavenger's Eye. Retains the passive enhancement of visual pattern recognition and environmental scanning, sharpening Warren's ability to detect irregularities, hidden salvage, and useful out-of-place elements even in chaotic or cluttered terrain. His brain remains trained to catalog structural logic and deviation without conscious effort, every frame of vision filtered, indexed, and weighed.

But now, Echo Vision does more.

It records short-term visual sequences in real time, leaving behind memory echoes that can be mentally replayed. Movements, layout shifts, enemy paths, anything witnessed becomes retraceable, reviewable, and perfectly clear when needed most. Useful for backtracking, identifying inconsistencies, or remembering the exact placement of an item or threat that was seen for only a moment.

Examine (Active): Allows close, precise inspection of physical items. Identifies structural materials, mechanical condition, origin markers, manufacturing details, and utility potential. Does not reveal hidden properties.

Quick Reflexes (Passive): Improves startle-response timing and intramuscular coordination. Allows the body to instinctively respond to fast-changing movement or proximity without conscious input, evasive steps, and reflexive tensing when startled. Reflexes that fire before thought, clean, automatic, almost predictive. As if the body, when trained long enough, starts to anticipate motion before it registers. like instinct honed into something sharp.

Crafting (Active): Activates a system-assisted overlay that highlights structural stress points, compatible materials, and assembly pathways in real time. Enhances focus and spatial awareness, allowing rapid assessment and execution of mechanical or structural tasks. Used to repurpose materials into tools, stabilizers, or functioning devices with heightened efficiency and minimal error.

(New) Mobile Sun (Active):

Generates a compact gravitational core of nanites. Anything that enters contact is drawn in and torn apart by extreme force. The field exerts constant vacuum pressure in all directions. Control is manual. Activation carries physical risk.
Warning: The user is not exempt. Contact with the core will result in severe damage or death.
This Skill does not stabilize itself. It will consume whatever it touches, intended or not.

Warren's Skill – Rain Dancer

Stage Two

Core Effect – Phase Slip

Environmental moisture, rain, mist, blood, steam, no longer reacts to Warren. It aligns with him. He is not moving through the storm. He is the storm's chosen vector.

Water flows with him, not around him.

Raindrops spiral to his motion.

Mist forms his silhouette before he steps into it.

Visibility itself becomes distorted in his presence.

Passive – Micro-Evasion Boost

Every movement Warren makes is adjusted, not just spatially, but meteorologically.
Wind pressure shifts around his path. Microcurrents redirect trajectories.

Flechettes miss by millimeters.

Melee swings veer away as air density warps.

Objects moving toward him may deflect subtly, as though pushed by sudden wind shear.

To observers, it looks like supernatural instinct.
To the System, it's a behavior it cannot fully explain.

Attack Sync Effect – Kinetic Surge

When Warren strikes mid-motion, the environment becomes a weapon.

A swing of his truncheon may bring a concussive burst of pressure, water, or mist.

Rain compacts and detonates on impact.

Mist lashes like a coiled whip.

Droplets act as accelerants, increasing momentum and range.

His blows land with the violence of hurricanes.
His movement leaves behind impact craters, gouged stone, or collapsing structures, not from strength, but from the mass of motion given form.

Visual Signature

Rain doesn't fall, it follows.
Mist doesn't obscure, it shapes him.

Each movement trails spirals, rings, and pulses of moisture that react before contact.

Lightning sometimes arcs around him, not to strike, but to avoid him.

The storm bends toward him, not in service, but in recognition.

Growth Conditions:

Rain Dancer evolves through high-risk engagements in poor visibility conditions.

Rain, smoke, fog, blood mist, steam, any atmosphere with distortion potential increases adaptation.

Direct kills made immediately following an evasion spike increase psychological effect range.

The more he endures, the more the storm learns him.

Known Limitations:

Less effective in arid, dry, or open-sky environments.
More moisture decreases its limitations.

Stage Two Upgrades:

Function (Path of Clarity):
Controlled Precipitation: Rainfall within the field thins to preserve sightlines, airflow, and coordination. Peripheral zones retain full density for concealment and misdirection.
Steam Dispersal: Heated mist is redirected outward or downward, creating breathable corridors even in high-temperature vapor zones. Visibility stabilizes.
Pressure Equilibrium: Localized fluctuations in atmospheric pressure are neutralized. This reduces disorientation and strain, allowing full function even in hostile weather environments.

Notable Effects:
Rain falls as needed: soft over breath, heavy where silence must hold.
Mist shapes passage instead of shrouding it.
Steam thins without vanishing.
The field does not clear the storm, it harmonizes with it.
Relief without weakness. Shelter without retreat.

Switch Conditions:
The Skill responds without voice or motion.
Intent defines function.
Desire for clarity calms the storm.
Need for sight, for breath, for balance, these shape the field.
There is no surge. Just space to endure.

Resonant Field Memory:
Each encounter with distorted air sharpens the field's response.
Areas previously traversed will adapt faster in future returns.
Steam, rain, and fog alter more intuitively in zones where the Skill has learned to listen.