Kael ducked under a sagging beam, the air thick with the tang of rust and oil. The Rust Slums sprawled like a corpse beneath the weaver's floating city, it's jagged skyline glinting a thousand meters above. At seventeen, Kael knew every crevice of this junkyard maze-knew which pipes hissed steam, which wires sparked death. He was a scavenger, born to claw scraps from the world's bones.
Today, though, the slums felt wrong. The ground trembled faintly, like a heartbeat skipping. Kael paused, his scavenged satchel clinking with bolts and wire. "You feel that, Ryn?" he called.
Ryn,his wiry best friend, poked her head from a pile of scrap, her goggles smudged. "Feel what? Your stomach whining again?" She tossed him a rusted gear, grinning.
Kael caught it, but his eyes flicked to the horizon. The loom's tower-a monolithic spire piercing the slums-hummed louder than usual, its threads of light pulsing erratically. The looms wove reality, the weavers said. Kept the world from unraveling. Kael didn't trust their sermons, but he'd seen the threads. Shimmering strands that held up bridges or mended broken machines.
"Something's off", he muttered, slinging his satchel over his shoulder. Let's hit the outer piles before enforcers sweep".
They wove through the slums, past shacks of corrugated metal and families cooking over chemical fires. Kael's boots crunched on ash, his mind on the rumors: Looms malfunctioning, threads snapping, voidborn sightings beyond the slums. He shook it off. Stories didn't fill bellies.
At the outer piles-mounds of discarded tech from the weaver city-Kael spotted a glint. A shard of black metal, no bigger than his palm, etched with faint, glowing lines. It wasn't scrap. It felt alive, warm against his fingers.
"Ryn look at this, "he whispered, holding it up. The lines pulsed, and the air around it shimmered, like heat off pavement.
Ryn's eyes widened. "That's Loom-tech.
Forbidden. Drop it, Kael".
Before he could,the shard flared. Pain seared his palm, and the world glitched . Time slowed-Ryn's mouth froze mid-shout, a falling gear hung midair. Kael's vision fractured, threads of light weaving through everything: the ground, the sky, Ryn. He reached out, instinctively, and tugged a thread.
Reality snapped back. The gear hit the ground.
Ryn stumbled, gasping. "What the hell was that?"
Kael's hand burned, the shard now dull but seared into his skin. His heart raced. "I… I don't know".
Above the loom's hum turned to a screech. Enforcer drones whirred from the tower, their red eyes locking onto the piles. "Intruder detected", a drone blared. "Surrender the artifact".
Ryn grabbed his arm. "Kael, run!"
But Kael's eyes were on the shard, his mind replaying the glitch. Whatever this was, it wasn't just tech. It was power. And it was his.
To be continued…