The Weave was gone.

  Above the City of Cities, Null drifted in slow, deliberate arcs through the sky, like a shark circling a sinking ship. The magic was gone, and with it went every defense that could’ve stopped him. Runes were dark. Sigils dead. Floating towers toppled like kicked-over candles.

  Except one man still glowed.

  Eugene Calhoun stood on a broken walkway two dozen stories up, lantern-staff raised in shaking hands. The Jennies burned within.

  Null saw him and laughed. A dry, metallic crackle that echoed across the empty sky.

  “Still clinging to borrowed light, warlock?” Null’s voice was smooth and cold. “Let’s see what it gets you.”

  He launched.

  The first blow shattered the concrete beneath Eugene’s feet. The second split a tower behind him. Eugene didn’t block. He invited.

  Hospitality flared. A shimmering dome of warm light unfolded from Eugene’s chest, catching the next strike like a soft mother’s arm. It rippled like honey and held.

  Null frowned. He flickered and disappeared, reappearing mid-air behind Eugene.

  But Eugene was already moving.

  Potential surged. Time buckled around him. For half a second, he was older, wiser, stronger. He sidestepped the blow with practiced grace he didn’t yet possess. His foot caught a loose stone—he should’ve fallen—but a coincidental gust of wind nudged him upright.

  Coincidence smiled.

  A banner detached from a nearby rooftop and snapped into Null’s face, blinding him for just a beat. Long enough.

  Eugene struck.

  He didn’t have spells, but he had momentum. He drove the lantern-staff forward, smashing it into Null’s side. It didn’t hurt him, but it surprised him.

  And surprise was everything.

  Below, the city was tearing itself apart. Arcane elevators had crashed. Bridges had collapsed. The magical rail lines sparked and screamed as inertia overtook enchantment. People were screaming, hiding, running. Dying.

  Eugene didn’t run.

  He leapt from the broken walkway, slamming into another rooftop with a roll. Jennie-light flared around him, cushioning the landing.

  A woman screamed nearby. Her son was trapped beneath a beam.

  Hospitality surged. A shield formed over them both just as the building behind them collapsed in a cloud of dust and debris.

  Potential lent him strength. He lifted the beam—impossibly, briefly. The boy crawled free.

  Coincidence sent a chunk of falling rubble just wide of his head.

  Eugene turned, breathing hard. Null was above him again.

  “Cute,” Null said, his eyes glowing with hateful gold. “But you’re only delaying the inevitable.”

  Eugene squared his shoulders. “So what? That’s what hospitality does. It delays. It defends. It keeps the door open, even when the wolves are already chewing through the floorboards.”

  Eugene could feel Cozimia warm up considerably inside the lantern.

  Null snarled and descended.

  They clashed again.

  Eugene began weaving offensive bursts into his otherwise defensive fighting. The first time Null recoiled from a radiant backblast of Hospitality—what Cozimia had dubbed Hospitable Rebuke—he blinked, surprised.

  Eugene smirked, pain flaring across his ribs. “Guess I do have a little bite.”

  Null’s expression sharpened. He had underestimated his fellow warlock.

  More bursts followed—moments when Potential sharpened his strikes, when Coincidence helped his lantern-staff catch the exact angle to knock Null off balance.

  Eugene was improvising damage, not just delaying. And for the first time, Null started to take him seriously.

  Meanwhile, far below, Krungus was elbow-deep in runes.

  He stood in the oldest part of the city—the Foundation Chamber, the control room, of sorts, for the City of Cities. Here, beneath stone and time, the first thread of the Weave had ever been tied. The place throbbed faintly with the memory of power, a hum beneath the silence, as though the machinery of magic had once been alive here.

  On the far wall, etched into soot-streaked stone and half-covered by dust, was an old limerick—one Krungus himself had scratched there more than 9,000 years ago (oh, how he had loved rhymes then):

  “A thread once tied but never sewn, / Connects the brick, the spell, the bone. / It flows unseen yet shapes the air, / In every thought, it whispers there. / But tug too hard—it comes undone alone.”

  It was a riddle. A warning. And maybe, now, a clue.

  Krungus was swearing. Loudly.

  “This should work,” he snapped, pouring magical essence into the broken lattice. “I bound it myself! I awoke this whole thing! I know it's not mine, but I understood it! I felt the flow, back when the city was just bricks and hopeful attitudes!”

  The Weave didn’t answer.

  It was broken. Not jammed. Not disrupted. Severed.

  He slumped to his knees, bones aching. Dust stirred around him.

  And for the first time in a time longer than most people live, Krungus whispered, “I don’t know what to do.”

  But above, Eugene did.

  The warlock fought like a question without an answer—wild, improvised, uncertain—and barely holding on. Every movement was a gamble. Every dodge a whisper of luck. He wasn’t dominating the fight; he was surviving it, one unpredictable breath at a time.

  And then Null struck him.

  The blow came fast—faster than Eugene thought possible. It cracked through his defenses, sent him flying through a wall and into a pile of shattered stone. Agony bloomed across his chest like a sunburst of fire, his ribs screaming with every breath. Splinters of stone bit into his back, and a jagged edge had torn through his side. His ears rang, bones throbbed, and his thoughts scattered like broken glass. For a second, he didn’t move.

  He thought he was dead.

  But the Jennies didn’t let go.

  A thread of warmth from Hospitality steadied his heart. A flicker of Potential rewound just enough pain to let him breathe. Coincidence let the rubble fall around, not on him.

  He gasped, then stood.

  And standing hurt more than anything else had ever hurt.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  But he was standing.

  Eugene blinked dust from his eyes and laughed—raw, defiant. Null had hit him like the wrath of the gods, and he’d survived.

  He didn’t know he could.

  That changed something deep inside. He tried to pump himself up, muttering under his breath, "I'm a level..."

  But nothing came.

  His void interface was silent. Gone, maybe. Severed with the Weave.

  Eugene froze for half a second, gut clenching. He hadn’t realized how much he’d depended on that little voice—how much comfort he'd taken in the tidy numbers, the dinging progress, the sense of trajectory.

  Krungus never had an interface until he was centuries old. He had earned for himself raw instinct, staggering power, and millennia of priceless knowledge. What use was an interface if Eugene couldn’t even keep his cool in a real fight?

  Bahumbus had designed the thing. A genius, sure—but no warrior. No warlock.

  Maybe Eugene never needed it. Maybe it never understood him anyway. It had always fumbled with his Jennie powers, mislabeling and miscategorizing, endlessly confused by his mishmash of magics. It had warned him, again and again, that he was growing in ways it didn’t recognize. That his strength was anomalous. Unquantifiable.

  So what?

  He wasn’t a wizard. He wasn’t Krungus. He wasn’t supposed to be.

  He was a warlock. And warlocks improvise.

  From the lantern, Cozimia’s voice cut in, breathless with awe. “Eugene? What in all the lamps and legends are you doing? You’re... synthesizin' or somethin'. I can feel it. The Jennies are workin' together.”

  Her voice dropped a note, half-concerned, half-wowed. “Potential is way too excited right now. She’s practically spinnin' in circles.”

  Eugene exhaled through grit teeth, steadying his grip. “Good. Let her spin. I’m not done yet.”

  Null came crashing down like a meteor.

  Eugene didn’t dodge—he dove into the chaos.

  He stopped trying to plan. Stopped trying to calculate. The fight wasn’t something to win on logic.

  He had to let go.

  Jennie-light surged.

  Coincidence twisted the battlefield. Broken glass bounced into Null’s eyes. A slipping flagstone tilted just right to ruin his footing. Potential tugged Eugene forward at odd, impossible angles. Time bent, decisions pre-answered. He saw glimpses of where to strike a moment before he knew he was going to strike.

  His movements stopped making sense.

  They just worked.

  But as the seconds passed, Eugene realized something crucial—he was holding Null off, yes, but not defeating him. Every blow was a stall. Every dodge a delay. He had no finishing strike, no deathblow. Null wasn’t tiring. He was enjoying this.

  Eugene's breath caught in his throat. This wasn’t sustainable.

  So he did something wild.

  He stopped.

  Staff lowered slightly, lantern flickering, Eugene called out over the sound of falling stone and magical residue.

  “Null! This doesn’t end unless we end it. I can’t kill you, and maybe you can’t kill me—not like this. So what’s the point?”

  Null slowed mid-air, curiosity furrowing the lines around his glowing eyes.

  “I’m not here to win,” Eugene continued, voice hoarse. “I’m here to live. And maybe that means we talk instead of tearing the rest of the city apart.”

  As Null hovered, considering, something crinkled at Eugene’s feet. An opportunity?

  He glanced down—a scroll, beaten and torn, lay half-unfurled in the dust. Probably one of Krungus’. The lettering shimmered faintly, incomprehensible without his interface.

  Eugene bent down and picked it up.

  “I can’t read this,” he muttered, eyes scanning the arcane glyphs. “Not without the interface...”

  He hesitated, then tapped the lantern. “Cozimia? You in there?”

  “Always,” came her voice, warm and slightly teasing. “What’s that in your hand, sugar?”

  “Scroll. Can’t read it.”

  There was a pause. “Hmm. Hold it closer... yes, I see. I can sound it out for you. Ready?”

  Eugene nodded.

  Cozimia began slowly, syllable by syllable, as Eugene repeated the incantation aloud. The scroll shimmered brighter, heat pulsing through his fingers.

  Null began to advance on Eugene, talking be damned.

  As the magic rose around Eugene, Cozimia chuckled.

  “Oh. Convenient. It's Banish. Aim it at the bad guy, Eugene.”

  But the scroll didn’t behave the way it should have. With the Weave severed, there was no ambient magic to draw from—no reservoir to fuel the casting.

  It pulled from Eugene instead.

  His veins lit with pain. The scroll drank deep—his strength, his energy, his very breath feeding the ancient spell structure. Cozimia's voice flickered with worry as she felt it too, the drain, the burn, the unraveling.

  “Eugene, that scroll’s drinking you like a droughted spring—”

  He gritted his teeth, eyes locked on Null as the spell’s glyphs lifted from the parchment in glowing arcs.

  The air cracked.

  A surge of impossible pressure formed around Null, space rippling like a heatwave. He tried to retreat, but it was already too late. The light bent inward.

  Then—

  With a thunderclap and a sudden void of presence—Null was gone.

  Eugene dropped to his knees, smoke curling from the ends of his hair. The scroll turned to ash in his hand.

  For a moment, the world went quiet.

  He couldn’t feel his arms. Couldn’t tell if his heart was still beating or if it had simply stopped. The pain had gone beyond sensation—he was past it now, floating somewhere on the edge of unbeing. There was only emptiness, the aftertaste of magic, and the hollow echo of something vast leaving his body.

  He thought he was dead.

  Not in theory. Not in panic. He believed it. That he'd gone too far, burned too brightly, and now the wick was gone.

  He waited for the lantern to go dark.

  But it didn’t.

  A thread of warmth lingered. Distant. Dim. But there.

  The magic hadn't killed him, but it had gotten close.

  He didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

  He had nothing left to give.

  The world tore away from him, and something ancient waited in the void.

  Eugene walked through Cincinnati.

  It was the Cincinnati he remembered—grimy, humid, and baked in the kind of sunlight that made the sidewalks smell like warm rubber. He recognized the neighborhood instantly. Columbia Parkway. Not far from the Ohio River. He could hear the distant drone of boat engines and the occasional seagull making the mistake of thinking it was near a coast.

  Everything felt sharper than a dream. Too sharp. He could feel the unevenness of the pavement beneath his shoes, the sweat collecting at the back of his neck. Even the air had a texture to it. For a moment, he wondered if he had woken up.

  Maybe the City, the Jennies, the war—maybe all of it had been some wild hallucination. A coma. A fugue. This place felt real.

  And that thought bummed him out more than he expected. Because Cincinnati—safe, familiar, predictable—suddenly felt too small. Too quiet. The City of Cities had been dangerous, yes. But it had mattered.

  But then he looked down.

  He wasn’t wearing what he should’ve been wearing.

  He was wearing the strange, formal Victorian-style outfit Krungus had helped him pick out long ago—frilled collar, velvet vest, tailored coat with odd runic embroidery. But the fabric didn’t quite match itself, as if it had been misremembered. The boots were mismatched too—one leather and polished, the other soft and wet like it had just stepped out of a bog. Something in his coat pocket sloshed unnervingly with each step.

  Nope.

  Just a dream.

  Still not quite anywhere.

  He turned a corner, passing the old gas station that had been closed since he was a kid. The street ahead shimmered with summer heat and distant sirens, and then—

  A platypus crossed the road.

  It wasn’t running. It wasn’t confused. It waddled slowly, confidently, right into the crosswalk.

  Cars stopped. Drivers stared. One horn bleated indignantly.

  Eugene blinked.

  The platypus reached the middle of the street and stopped.

  Then it turned.

  And it looked straight at him.

  Eugene froze.

  The honking continued behind the creature, but the sound faded into meaningless noise. The world narrowed, shrank, tunnel-visioning down to one absurd, impossible focal point: a platypus making prolonged eye contact.

  Then it spoke.

  "If you'd been anyone else, then this would've been the end."

  The voice wasn’t vocal. It was logical. Pure conditional reasoning folded into his mind like origami.

  The platypus blinked slowly, and then its eyes shifted—no longer focused on Eugene.

  They looked above and behind him.

  Its duck-bill twitched. Something about the creature changed, subtly. A stiffness. A wince. Not fear exactly, but awareness. Disturbance.

  Eugene turned to follow its gaze.

  Nothing.

  Just the street. The sky. The old city under its veil of heat.

  When he turned back, the platypus was gone.

  A horn blared. Another joined it. Then a third. The city exhaled all at once, as if the pause had never happened.

  The honking blurred together—grew louder, sharper—until it wasn't car horns anymore.

  It was Krungus.

  “EUGENE! WAKE UP, YOU GREAT BAG OF BONES! Someone find me a scroll—any kind of restoration!”