The Loom of the Last Law

The sky had holes in it.

Cael could see them through the rusted metal above, little tears in the ceiling where rain leaked through like falling needles. He lay flat on a slab of broken concrete, wrapped in a torn plastic sheet he'd found behind a collapsed warehouse two nights ago. The ground was hard. The rain was cold. The air was rotting.

He didn't move.

Didn't wipe the water from his face.Didn't shift to get warm.Didn't flinch when thunder cracked and shook the twisted steel overhead.

He just… lay there. Eyes half-open. Breathing quiet. A shadow in a city that didn't notice its dead anymore.

The city had forgotten people like him.

It remembered the highborn — polished boots, glowing Soul Marks, names engraved on spires and stone. They had birth records and teachers and futures written in gold.

But Cael?He had nothing.

No family name. No record. No birthday. Not even a real memory of where he came from.

And somewhere along the way, the world stopped looking for one.

A gutter rat scurried across his arm. He didn't react. It paused, sniffed his fingers, then darted off again, claws tapping the wet concrete.

He stared blankly at the sagging ceiling above. Gray. Flaking. Ugly.

A steady stream of water leaked down from the corner beam and splattered on the ground nearby. The puddle had grown wide in the last hour. Cold mist hung low, clinging to his skin. His body shook from the inside, not from fear or illness — just the way things shiver when they forget what warmth feels like.

Cael had never been warm. Not really.

He couldn't remember what a bed felt like. Or food that wasn't stolen or thrown out the back of a cart. Or a voice that said his name like it mattered.

If he ever had a mother or father, they were long gone.If he ever had a home, it had been reduced to ash.If he ever had a reason to smile, it hadn't followed him into the slums.

Some said he was cursed.That the Fray had touched him early and left him wrong.Others said he was just quiet, strange, unlucky.

But Cael didn't care what they said.

He didn't hate the slums. He didn't fear the cold. He didn't cry when someone else vanished in the night. He just… existed. Quiet. Still.

Forgotten.

His eyes, dull and storm-colored, drifted across the street — cracked stone, broken carts, a rusted sign that flapped on one hinge. No people. No voices. Just the sound of water, the faint creak of steel, and the echo of a city that didn't know it was dying.

Then something in the air shifted.

He didn't move, but his gaze sharpened.

It wasn't loud. It wasn't bright. Just a faint pressure. A wrongness.

Across the alley wall, something rippled.

For a second — less than that — a thin black line shimmered in the air. Vertical. Almost invisible. Like a slit in the world.

Then it was gone.

Cael exhaled.

Not in relief. Just to breathe again.

Not a Fray.Not yet.

Just a tremor. A shadow of something that hadn't happened — but might. Soon.

That's how it always started.

People thought the Frays were gates, doors, glowing miracles. But they weren't. They were cuts. Wounds in reality. And once the wound opened for you, there were only two choices:

Enter. Or die.

At age seventeen and above, anyone could be Chosen. The Fray could open in front of you at any time — in your home, in the street, in your sleep. And if you refused the call, your soul would slowly unravel. Painfully. Quietly.

Some who entered came back.Twisted. Different. Powerful.

They were called Astrals — survivors of the Vestige Layer, a realm of Trials, monsters, and truth.

But most who went in… never returned.

And when they didn't?

Something else came back in their place.

Cael had seen one. A Hollow.

It wore the face of a merchant boy from Sector 8. He'd been taken by a Fray two weeks earlier. The city whispered prayers for him. Hoped he'd return strong.

But what returned wasn't him.

It was the shape of him. The smile of him.And it tore through a dozen people before it was killed.

Cael had watched it happen from a rooftop, eyes wide open, arms crossed against his ribs. Not frozen. Not afraid. Just silent.

Just watching.

Cael sat up slowly, joints stiff. The tarp slid

off his shoulders. Water clung to his hair. His coat was soaked and smelled like mildew.

He pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, resting his chin on his wrist.

Somewhere far above, the nobles trained. Sword drills. Hollow theory. Soul Core awakening. They studied in towers and prepared for the day a Fray would call them.

But no one prepared kids like Cael.

The system didn't care if someone like him was Chosen.

No one would weep.No one would notice.No one would remember his name.

But fate didn't care about names either.

And Cael…Cael was already marked.

He just didn't know it yet.