The narrow alleyway felt like a wound in the city's architecture. Here, away from the grand white stone of the Cathedral, the air was stagnant and smelled of damp earth and old iron. Atsu Yuta stood in the shadows, his back pressed against the brick. His middle-part curtain wolf cut was damp with sweat, the wavy strands sticking to his forehead and framing his detached, apathetic eyes. He looked down at the cigarette between his lips, then back at his hands.
The pressure hadn't gone away. It was a physical weight now, a heavy, rhythmic thrumming in his veins that made the skin of his forearms itch. It didn't feel like mana—the light, airy energy the mages used. It felt like compressed lead.
He looked at the cross tattoo on his hand. The ink seemed darker, almost pulsing. Near his eye, the "数字" tattoo felt tight against his cheekbone. He was an anomaly, a "world error" as the healer had said, and now the world was starting to push back.
The silence of the alley was broken by the sharp click of boots on stone.
Atsu didn't look up, but he felt the shift in the atmosphere. The "rules" of the space around him didn't just bend; they grew rigid. Three men in reinforced grey tunics stepped into the mouth of the alley. They weren't healers or scholars. They wore the crest of the Guild's Enforcement Division Type 2 Monitors. These were the men sent to handle "unstable" magical occurrences.
"Candidate 402," the man in the lead said. His voice was steady, trained for containment. He held a silver rod etched with suppression runes. "The High Healers reported a massive mana-sink event at the Cathedral. You were the epicenter."
Atsu stayed silent. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, holding it between his fingers. His hands were steady, but the internal pressure was climbing. He could feel his blood responding to the threat, moving faster, pushing against the boundaries of his skin.
"Step forward," the officer commanded. "We need to apply a dampening seal. Your presence is causing structural instability in the local ley lines."
"I'm just standing here," Atsu said. His voice was low, devoid of emotion, but the air around him was beginning to vibrate.
As the officer stepped closer, the silver rod in his hand began to glow a sickly, flickering yellow. The runes didn't just activate; they began to scream. The silver started to pit and corrode, the metal failing as it tried to calculate a counter-measure for an existence that didn't follow magical laws.
"The seal isn't holding!" one of the other men shouted, his hand going to his sword. "He's absorbing the dampening field!"
"I'm not doing anything," Atsu whispered.
But he was. His body was reacting before his mind could. The pressure in his chest reached a breaking point. It felt like a dam bursting behind his eyes. He didn't think of a weapon. He didn't think of a spell. He only felt the desperate, instinctual need to move the weight out of his body.
A sharp, stinging pain flared in his palms.
Hiss.
A spray of dark, compressed red particles erupted from the pores of his hands. It wasn't a liquid flow; it was a high-pressure mist, ejected with the force of a steam vent. It happened so fast the officers didn't have time to chant. The red mist hit the air and instantly expanded, solidifying into a jagged, dense barrier of crystallized blood that slammed into the ground between them.
The alley groaned. The brick walls where the blood-wall anchored itself began to crack, the stone being forcibly rewritten by the material.
"Forbidden magic!" the lead officer yelled, scrambling back as the red mist clouded his vision. "He's using blood! Subdue the anomaly!"
The two men behind him lunged, their blades glowing with elemental fire and ice. They swung at the wall, expecting it to shatter like glass. Instead, the blades thudded into the blood-barrier as if hitting solid iron. The fire didn't burn it; the ice didn't crack it. The blood simply absorbed the energy, turning the elemental spells into dull, useless sparks.
Atsu stared at the barrier he had created. He could feel the connection to it a thin, invisible thread of awareness. The wall was an extension of his own nervous system. He could feel the impact of the swords as if they were hitting his own skin, yet there was no pain. Only a cold, analytical clarity.
If they break through, I die, he thought
The thought wasn't a panic; it was a calculation. As the officers prepared a second, more powerful strike, Atsu felt a new sensation. The blood that had left his body was still his. He didn't need to chant a command. He just needed to want it to move.
He stepped forward and shoved his hand against the flat side of the blood-wall.
Impact.
The wall didn't just fall over. Responding to his touch, the solidified blood reacted like a rebound surface. It launched forward with violent kinetic force, a massive slab of dark red slamming into the three men. The impact wasn't just physical; it was a structural disintegration. As the wall struck them, the light in their tunics died, their protective charms shattered, and they were thrown out of the alley like broken dolls.
Silence returned, heavier than before.
Atsu stood alone in the center of the alley. The blood-wall he had created began to lose its shape, crumbling back into a fine, dark red dust that coated the cobblestones. He looked down at his hands. The pores were closed, the skin unbroken, but the artificial bruises on his face felt hot.
He reached down and picked up a piece of the red dust. It felt like iron filings. He had just defeated three trained mages without casting a single spell. He hadn't used mana. He had used himself.
A shadow moved at the end of the alley. Atsu froze, his apathetic gaze sharpening. It wasn't the officers. A tall figure in a tattered black cloak was watching him from the rooftops, their face hidden by a deep hood.
"You're leaking," the figure said. The voice was like dry leaves skittering over stone. "The world is full of holes, Atsu Yuta. And you're the one tearing them."
The figure vanished before Atsu could speak. He stood in the settling dust, the cigarette still unlit between his lips. The Guild would be coming back. They wouldn't send mages with silver rods next time. They would send executioners.
Atsu turned and walked in the opposite direction, his messy hair shielding his eyes once more. He didn't know where he was going, but for the first time, he understood the numbers on his face. He wasn't a student anymore. He was a countdown.