The sky over the estate bruised as the light drained out of it, purple thickening in the gaps between buildings.

  Marcus balanced on the railing of the fourth?floor gantry. Below him, the courtyard spread out in hard shapes: concrete slabs, oil stains, weeds forcing their way through seams no one bothered to seal. Fifteen feet down, the flat roof of the garage waited, edges chipped, gravel scattered thin.

  Doable.

  If you knew the trick.

  His phone glowed in his hand. TikTok replayed the clip without asking: Kam, hood shadowing his face, lifting slabs of stone like weight meant nothing. The caption flashed again.

  GLITCH MODE. NO CGI.

  Marcus watched Kam’s face — the tension around the eyes, the strain held steady instead of breaking. Power carried without spectacle.

  He lowered the phone and stared at his own hands. A tremor ran through them. Not fear. Something sharper.

  Understanding settled.

  Commitment.

  You didn’t edge into it. You didn’t hedge. You chose the line and trusted the catch. That was how games rewarded you. That was how stories worked.

  He pocketed the phone.

  “Stick the landing,” he murmured. “Don’t roll.”

  The words steadied him.

  He zipped his jacket. Adjusted the new trainers until the soles sat flush. Wiped a faint smear from the white leather. Small motions, practiced, meant to make the next one clean.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He stepped back from the railing and let the air leave his lungs.

  In his head, the arc drew itself. From here to there. Smooth. Approved. Already finished.

  Nothing chimed.

  Something registered him anyway.

  Not curiosity. Not interest. Just process.

  Mass. Speed. Angle. A body moving where bodies usually didn’t. The moment slid into the record the same way rain hitting concrete did. The same way a door opening registered when a door was meant to open.

  Logged. Unweighted.

  Marcus went.

  Three fast steps. Shoes biting metal. He pushed off and flew.

  For a suspended beat, the world made sense. Air tore past him. Gravity aligned. His body felt exact, deliberate, shaped for this motion.

  I’ve got it.

  The roof surged up to meet him.

  Someone wiser would have bent. Someone careful would have given with the impact.

  Marcus stayed stiff. He wanted it to look right.

  The sound cracked across the estate, sharp enough to turn heads if anyone had been listening.

  He folded where he landed. Momentum burned out all at once.

  Quiet followed. Traffic hummed far away. Somewhere, a television laughed. The city kept breathing.

  Marcus tried to inhale.

  His body stalled.

  He lay still, cheek pressed to cold concrete, limbs distant and unresponsive. Cold crept outward from the centre of him. His vision dimmed, corners darkening first.

  He waited.

  For a signal. For confirmation. For something that said the attempt had weight.

  Nothing arrived.

  Only the grit against his skin. Only the damp concrete smell.

  His phone buzzed once in his pocket.

  He couldn’t reach it.

  Marcus shut his eyes.

  The fall entered the system late, as unremarkable things did. Data resolved after the fact. Position fixed. Impact confirmed.

  Vitals spiked, scattered, failed to settle. The pattern offered no leverage. No emergent behaviour. No efficiency to extract.

  A young male body. Clean record. No enhancements. No dependencies.

  The entry filed itself.

  User Error.

  Probabilities adjusted. The environment held. No action propagated.

  From the gantry above, the estate looked unchanged. Windows glowed. Shadows lengthened. Somewhere, a car door slammed. Somewhere, someone laughed.

  Marcus lay on the garage roof, breath shallow, thoughts slipping apart.

  He waited.

  For rollback. For grace. For proof that it had mattered.

  The system had already shifted focus. Attention flowed toward anomalies that bent instead of shattered. Toward patterns that paid back investment.

  Marcus’s phone vibrated again, screen lighting briefly against his leg.

  The system verified the calculation.

  Gravity held. Collision functioned as intended.

  The event closed itself.

  Working as designed.

  ---

  PULL INTO NEXT CHAPTER

  By morning, the estate had a new rumour.

  Not about Marcus — no one had seen him fall.

  About the sound.

  A crack like metal snapping. A shockwave that rattled windows. A noise that didn’t fit the weather.

  Kam heard it first.

  Then Maya.

  Then the system.

  And by the time the sun rose, something else had shifted — quietly, invisibly — in the background processes that tracked anomalies.

  A new flag.

  A new threshold.

  A new variable waiting to be tested.

  The System Adjusts.