The screen hanging in the corner of the tavern flickered beneath layers of static, but the image fighting its way through was clear enough to make the whole place watch.
A dragon burned across the ruined skyline on the other side of the glass, vast enough to dwarf the towers crumbling beneath it. Fire rolled from its jaws in waves that turned the sky red, only to break apart under the strike of an Awakened wrapped in golden light. Another cut through the air in a streak of steel, and a third raised one hand and split the beast’s wing open with a torrent of ice bright enough to stain the whole screen pale blue.
Nobody in the tavern spoke.
They only watched.
Watched the way starving people watched soone else eat.
Neo stood near the wall with his hands in his pockets and his stomach twisting so hard it felt like sothing alive had made a nest inside him. He hated the screen for showing him that kind of power. He hated himself a little for staring.
’Tomorrow I awaken.’
Tomorrow he turned sixteen. Tomorrow his class would appear, and with it, whatever shape the rest of his life had been waiting to take. Maybe it would be enough to drag him out of Zone 0. Maybe it would be another joke the world threw at people born in places like this.
The dragon on the screen ca crashing down through half a tower before one of the Awakeneds drove a spear of light through its throat. The tavern let out one long breath it had been holding without knowing it.
Neo clicked his tongue and turned away.
Watching other people live never fed anyone.
His stomach growled again, low and ugly.
That decided it.
He crossed the tavern and stopped at the counter, where the old man sat on his usual stool like he had been rooted there years ago and had simply refused to die out of spite.
"Morning, Kneehead."
The old man raised his head and clicked his tongue. "Neo, one day you’ll learn respect for your elders."
Neo leaned one arm on the counter. "And destroy all this warmth between us? I wouldn’t dream of it."
"You little dickhead."
That earned the faintest curve at Neo’s mouth. There were not many people in Zone 0 he could speak to like this. Most would either try to rob him, lie to him, or stab him if the day had gone badly enough. The old man was one of the few who fit into none of those categories.
The old man’s attention dropped to the ring hanging from Neo’s necklace.
That never happened by accident.
"If you sold that thing," he said, "you could eat like a king for a while."
Neo snorted. "You say that every ti."
"And every ti I’m right."
"It’s not for sale."
The old man gave a rough grunt. "Still clinging to what your mother told you?"
Neo’s fingers brushed the ring before dropping away.
’One day, it will change your life.’
"Soone has to," he said.
The old man held him there with that old, difficult face of his, and so of the mockery drained out of it.
"Tomorrow’s the day."
Neo gave a small shrug that did not fool either of them. "Yeah."
"If luck rembers your na, you might actually crawl out of this shithole."
"That would be nice." His stomach pulled tight again, hard enough to wrinkle his expression. "But tomorrow doesn’t help eat today. Co on, baldy. Help a future legend survive long enough to awaken."
The old man clicked his tongue again, but bent down beneath the counter anyway. A mont later he ca back up with a folded note and tossed it across.
Neo caught it and opened it at once.
Courier work.
His expression flattened as he read the address.
"Seriously? That place?"
"It’s the safest thing I’ve got." The old man’s voice lost the dry humor this ti. "You take the box, bring it where the note says, get paid, and co back alive. Try not to make regret basic charity."
Neo folded the note and slipped it away. "You’d miss ."
"I’d miss having soone around stupid enough to work for this little."
That almost made Neo laugh.
The old man’s attention stayed on him one beat longer. "Be careful, kiddo."
Neo lifted one hand and left through the side door.
The storage shed was exactly what it had always been. Crooked wood, warped hinges, a flower pot cracked down the middle, and the key where it was always hidden because nobody in Zone 0 respected secrets unless they could sell them. Inside waited a small crate with enough weight to tell him what was in it before he opened it.
Low-grade Soul Cores.
Neo picked it up and headed out.
When he ca back, the folded money in his pocket felt far lighter than it should have for everything it cost him to earn it. One hundred and five Creds. A few als, a little ti, and the sa old life waiting on the other side of them.
’A few more scraps. That’s all.’
Zone 0 had a way of reducing everything to that in the end.
Food into scraps. Hope into scraps. A future into scraps small enough to fit in the palm and vanish between one day and the next.
Neo walked with one hand in his pocket, his fingers pressed against the money as if checking whether it had changed into sothing more useful on the way back.
It had not.
’I’m not staying like this forever.’
He had no intention of spending the rest of his life carrying other people’s dirt for enough money to postpone hunger by a few days. Tomorrow, he would awaken. Tomorrow, maybe this place stopped owning him.
By the ti the old man’s tavern ca back into view, the irritation had already worn smooth across his face.
Then he stopped.
Sothing was wrong.
The building looked the sa. The air didn’t.
A sll drifted faintly from inside.
Blood.
Neo stood still for half a second, reading the place the way Zone 0 had taught him to read danger. The door was shut. The walls still stood. No broken glass. No noise.
Only that sll.
He moved at once.
The door swung open under his hand and he stepped inside.
The tavern looked the sa as always.
But the old man was not there.
Neo stopped just past the entrance. No insult ca from the back.
Even the usual grumbling silence of the place felt wrong now, stretched thin over sothing ugly.
He closed the door behind him and walked farther in, slower this ti.
Nothing.
His attention moved toward the back.
Then he saw it.
A dark red line creeping from beneath the door behind the counter.
Neo’s body went cold.
He crossed the distance in two steps and slamd his shoulder into the door hard enough to force it open.
The sll inside hit harder.
The old man was sprawled on the floor, dragging himself toward the doorway through a dark red sar.
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