Even if it meant his mouth turning into a quite literal hotbed of pain.
‘Not like it'll last.’
Arden looked up with weary eyes, pleasantly surprised that it was still dark out. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but it seemed he still had time to grab some food to eat with his sister. Before he left the alley, he had to look presentable. As much as a slum rat could be.
No one would care if he was wandering around with ragged clothes, but they’d start asking questions if they saw his destroyed face. Arden crawled slowly to one of the walls in the alley, and propped himself up against it. Arden didn't like the feeling of his back against the dank, cold, and worryingly moist wall. He shuddered for a moment and got to work.
‘Status.’
Less than a second later, Arden’s Status appeared in front of him. Unlike Yaan’s orange screen, Arden’s was white. A telltale sign that he had not awakened as a Starborn. All Statuses are white until an awakening, where they take on the color representative of their Constellation and powers.
For all that Arden liked the idea of Starborn, he never really liked the terminology. Why did the Status prefer the term “Constellation” over “Class?” Especially when all of the stars had disappeared long ago. Arden shook his head, dismissing his thoughts. He would have time for weird tangents later.
For the moment, Constellations didn’t matter to Arden. The color of the Status was of far greater importance to him. The color meant he was a mundane human, which was reflected by his Starborn rank of mundane. No powers, no hope, nothing.
Or at least that should have been the case.
Name: Arden
Starborn Tier: Mundane
Starborn Rank: Mundane
Constellation: Mundane
Legacy Ability: Beyond (Sealed)
- Rank: ?
- Description: Hidden
Arden had had the power since he and Sya came to the slums several years ago, and still had almost no information on it, beyond its effects. To his knowledge, Legacy Abilities didn’t exist. There were no records of them anywhere.
When Arden first obtained the power, he thought his life would be a cavalcade of fortune and success. He hoped that having a unique power would give him a privileged life among the Starborn. That hope was poison. All it did was give him unrealistic expectations.
He didn’t think he was wrong to hope for a better life, but looking back, he put too much hope in the unknown ability. The incident that gave him the ability killed his parents and turned Sya into a Blight Walker. He clung to that hope, as it was the only thing he had.
Arden wondered what the description of the Legacy Ability would be, but sadly, because he was no Starborn, he could not figure it out. All he knew was that awakening would reveal the unseen, according to one of druggies he had found in one of the alleys. Arden still wasn't sure if the guy told the truth, or was trying to get Arden to test one of the products.
Arden shook his head. He needed to get food, not worry about the enigma of mysterious abilities or druggies. He glanced at the Legacy Ability on his Status and closed his eyes with a sigh.
‘This is gonna suck.’
With a thought, he activated the mysterious ability.
The pain returned at full force as he activated the ability. Yaan's burning hand had hurt quite a lot, but it was still just physical pain. The pain Arden felt now was on another level, like it was a part of his existence.
A pale white light glowed in his mouth, his fingers, and his head. Everywhere he had been hurt. As Arden glowed, the blood covering him began to flow back into his wounds. Once the blood returned to the inside of Arden, the damaged flesh fixed itself in its correct position. Two of his fingers made a popping noise, and they were fixed.
When the pain stopped, Arden wiped the sweat that was pouring from his forehead. He took in a deep breath and took a deep breath.
“If I never have to use that again, it would be too soon,” he muttered quietly to himself.
This wasn’t the first time he had used the ability, but it was one of the more necessary times. Yes, he could have just kept his mouth shut, or pretended to submit to Yaan at least once, but doing that would be tantamount to not being himself. And being himself was one of few things he was in control of.
As a person who had no powers, his mouth was the only thing that made him feel like he could stand up against those with powers. Admittedly, most times that Arden did use his primary weapon, it led to him getting ruined. Like tonight.
Remembering that he still had to grab food for his sister, he got moving. He wanted to be back home before his sister woke up.
Arden walked deeper into the alley. Considering how often he had to hide from people aching to beat him, the back alleys between buildings became his primary avenue of travel. To him, the back alleys were more street-like than the streets.
It was true that the alleys were smaller, and less well maintained. And it was also true that from an architectural standpoint, it was safer to walk the broken streets, lest a collapsing building cut another life short.
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Arden wondered if those were the only reasons. Maybe it was a social thing. Maybe the others flocked to the streets where everyone else was so they couldn’t be easily singled out by someone like Yaan. Not that Arden would know. He was always singled out.
After a solid hour of walking, Arden spotted a familiar landmark signaling his approach to the municipal building: a graffitied wall with an artful expression of human lust, that is to say, spray painted porn. He found it more amusing than arousing, especially when compounded with the phone number above it.
Arden remembered one of the many times he had been beaten by Yaan. He was brought here where Yaan had been distracted by the porn graffiti. He saw the phone number and called the number, only to be answered by a masculine voice claiming to be “Big Hank.”
Arden had been beaten pretty badly for his hysterical laughter at Yaan. Staz tried to hide his snickering, while Dest was the only one to keep a straight face. Arden could tell by Dest’s eyes that he was laughing internally at Yaan. Arden chuckled at the memory and realized it was likely the best memory he had of Yaan. Probably the only good one he had of Yaan actually.
He turned left and continued. From here, it was a straight shot to the municipal building. All he had to do was exit the alley and cross the street. He didn’t even have to hide his presence upon leaving the alley, as no one was dumb enough to start a fight right in front of the building. No one except Yaan, but Arden was sure he returned home to get his fingers reattached before doing anything else. Arden chuckled again.
He exited the alley and looked up. While on the wide street, Arden’s view of the sky was mostly unimpaired. In the night sky, only the moon gave off light. After all, the stars had disappeared from the sky almost a century earlier. Every star except for the sun, for some reason. This event became known as the StarFall.
The StarFall was one of four great changes to humanity. Compared to the other three, it didn’t affect humanity directly, but acted more of a signal for things to come.
The other changes had much greater effects than the StarFall. Shortly after the StarFall, the first of the Starborn were created by the Starborn System. All mundane humans had access to the system, in the form of the Status. At the same time, portals, designated by the system as “stargates,” that led to pocket dimensions started opening, releasing monstrosities called Celestials onto Earth.
While some of the mundane humans could fight back against the lowest ranked Celestials, the majority of mundane humans fled, leaving the newly-evolved Starborn to fight the majority of the Celestials. Starborn would enter the Stargates and clear out the Celestials, obtaining loot in the process.
Starborn and Celestials were similar in design. Once something evolved into one of the two, their evolution didn’t stop there. They evolved further, with each subsequent stage corresponding to a stage in a star’s life cycle. The difference between the two was that Starborn followed the evolution of low and medium mass stars, while Celestials followed the track of high mass stars, as Celestials were inherently stronger than Starborn of the same rank.
Starborn and Celestials both began as Protostars, then evolved into Main Sequence. From there, they diverged. Starborn became a Giant, then a Planetary Nebula, then a Dwarf. From Main Sequence, Celestials evolved into Supergiants, then Supernovas, and then either a Neutron or Black Hole. Arden wasn't really clear on what the difference was between the two pinnacles of Celestial rank.
Once a Starborn or Celestial was born, they began to passively generate Stellar Essence. Every Starborn generated their own unique Stellar Essence that fueled their abilities. After either a Starborn or Celestial was killed, they left behind a physical manifestation of their powers called star cores, which held trace amounts of Stellar Essence that was used to strengthen the user.
As a result of the frequent clashes between Starborn and Celestial, the fourth and final great change began to spread. At the time, no one knew what the Blight was, other than a disease that changed the appearances of those afflicted. It didn’t take humanity long to learn that the incurable disease only affected mundane humans, preventing them from evolving into a Starborn.
The Blight’s spread was unique among diseases. Of the two types of Blight carriers, only one of them could spread the Blight. Only the Blight Walkers. Like Sya. Normal Blighted were just unfortunate victims unable to awaken.
There were some telltale differences between the two types of Blight carriers, aside from who was capable of spreading the contagion. While both types had the silver veins, silver hair streaks, and silver eyes, Blight Walker eyes were different. Blighted eyes still looked normal, just having their normal eye color turned silver. Blight walker eyes had the whites of their eyes turn black, but still maintained the silver iris. They even glowed a little bit.
For a long time, people thought that Blight Walkers just randomly appeared, but that wasn't the case. People weren't randomly chosen like becoming a Starborn. A decade ago, it was learned that mundanes who go through extreme stress and trauma end up becoming Blight Walkers, as if the Blight was some strange variant of Marie Antoinette syndrome. It was thanks to this revelation that mental healthcare was revitalized and taken much more seriously than before.
“Well, at least one good thing came out of the Blight,” Arden muttered to himself as he crossed the street.
As he thought about the Blight, he noted, not for the first time, that he was lucky in regards to its spread. The spread of the Blight was inconsistent to say the least. It could affect a new person every day, or once a year. There was no predicting it. It was one of the reasons why Blight Walkers were so widely feared.
However, Arden hadn’t been infected even after several years of spending time with his sister. Whether it was luck or the anomalous nature of his Status with a Legacy Ability, he didn’t know. He was just thankful.
He stopped in front of the municipal building. To Arden, it looked like a thought police headquarters made of marble. It was like the architect was worried that dystopian gray concrete looked uninviting, so he decided it would be made out of marble instead for the roadside value. The most attention grabbing aspect of it was the size. It demanded attention, especially when compared to the monotonous gray concrete buildings on each side
When he pushed through the revolving doors into the lobby of the municipal building, he noted the look everyone gave him. The other slum rats gave him looks of wary fear, while the workers glanced at him for a moment before returning to what they were doing. Naturally, the workers didn’t care about him. They were Starborn, so they had no fear of his association with a Blight Walker, unlike the others.
Arden had never been in a hotel, but he thought that the lobby of the municipal building was as close as he was ever going to get to experiencing one. He suspected that a Starborn with spatial abilities played a role in the construction, as the inside seemed bigger than outside.
Furnishing the building had definitely been prioritized over the look of the building itself. Tables surrounded with chairs and couches were a common sight. Several rugs covered the hardwood floors, on which sat the furniture.
Soft music played throughout the lobby, easing the tension of everyone there. Some people sitting on the furniture throughout the lobby were nodding off. Arden envied their ability to fall asleep.
Knowing how sacred sleep was to the people in the slums, Arden moved quietly so as not to disturb them. This was one of few rules of the slums that everyone followed.
He approached the reception desk, joining the line with several people in front of him. There was also a hooded figure sitting on the ground next to the desk, hugging their knees. Arden didn’t pay the person any mind.
He could hear the hushed conversations of the receptionist with the people in front of him. Most of the conversations were about directions to a separate part of the building, with the majority of those asking about the doctor or the police. A few asked about the hooded person, but the receptionist deflected the question.
When the last person in front of Arden had been helped, Arden stepped up to reception, eager to go home already.