EPISODE 1 – “The One Who Wasn’t Chosen”

❖ The Boy at the Edge of the Gate

The sky never changed in the Slums of the Lower Ring. It was always grey.

Even when the great Ascension Ceremony began and blinding light split through the heavens, casting brilliant halos across the countless towers that clawed toward the impossible sky, down here—beneath the Ring's filth and metal bones—Kael saw only murk. Light couldn't reach those who didn't exist. Not truly.

He sat alone on the edge of the rusted rail, legs dangling above the abyss, watching the last of the candidates march toward the Gate of Light far above. Each of them bore glowing seals on their wrists—glyphs of permission, of divine choice. The Ascendants.

Some wept in awe. Others shouted in arrogance. All of them were leaving. And none had looked back.

Kael stared at them through narrowed eyes. He wasn't bitter. He wasn't angry. He wasn't even sad anymore. He had passed beyond all that years ago. This was just routine. Watch them go. Wonder what made them worthy. Wonder what made him nothing.

He reached down and ran his fingers across his own wrist. Smooth. Empty. No glyph. No light.

He had never even been evaluated.

Not even once.

"Kael." A voice echoed from behind—a soft, worn whisper. Old Man Riva, the scrap-hauler who had taken Kael in after the plague. "They're gone. You don't have to keep watching."

"I wasn't watching," Kael replied quietly, eyes still fixed upward. "I was waiting."

"For what?"

Kael hesitated. "…I don't know."

❖ The Tower Above the Sky

The Tower was alive.

Not the Ring, not the Machine Cities, not the Bioluminal Skies. The Tower—the central spire that stretched far beyond cloud or reason—was different. It breathed. It moved.

At night, Kael could see it shimmer. Sometimes it pulsed, as though its very stone had veins. And on rare nights, it would sing—a low, mournful hum like whale-song bleeding through concrete.

Everyone knew the Tower chose who could enter.

It whispered into the minds of those it deemed "worthy," pulling them upward. Those people were blessed. Ascended. Important.

Kael never heard a single word.

He often wondered if that meant he didn't exist. Maybe he was a dream someone forgot to wake from. Maybe his heart was just an echo of someone else's.

Sometimes he pressed his hands to his chest, hoping he would feel nothing.

Disappointment followed.

❖ Dream of a Wingless Bird

That night, as the Ring went dark and power rationing kicked in, Kael sat alone in the abandoned watchtower at the edge of Sector 9. Wind howled through the broken shutters. The stench of rust, oil, and soot clung to everything.

The others had gone back into the slum-cores, into warmth, into sleep.

Kael stayed, watching the Tower again.

He imagined wings. Not bright, holy ones like the Ascendants had in the murals—but ragged ones, soot-stained and jagged. Wings of broken machines and unraveling dreams. Wings that wouldn't let him fly, but might let him fall further.

"Just once," he whispered. "Just once, I want the Tower to look at me. Even if it's to say no. At least I'd know it saw me."

Silence answered.

Then—

Click.

Something shifted in the air.

A sound not belonging to machine or wind echoed behind him. Slow. Hollow. Like metal hinges opening for the first time in centuries. He turned.

Where there had once been a rusted wall… now stood a door.

It did not shine. It did not glow.

It was pitch black. Obsidian. Veins of dull red pulsed across its surface like dying embers. It looked wrong, as though it wasn't part of reality at all. As if it were leaking from another place.

And at its center, etched in reversed script Kael could somehow still understand, were three simple words:

"We Remember You."

Kael stepped back, heart hammering. His breath came in short gasps, like something inside him had cracked open and wasn't sure what would spill out.

Then he heard it.

A voice. Not from behind the door. From inside his skull.

"Kael."

One word.

A name no one ever said with meaning. Not Riva. Not the slum kids. Not even Kael himself.

But this voice… this voice spoke it like it mattered.

Like it was real.

❖ The Fall Inward

The door creaked open.

Not outward. Not inward.

Downward.

Reality folded. Stone and rust peeled away like paper, revealing only blackness. Kael's legs moved before his brain caught up. One step. Two. Three.

The wind died.

So did gravity.

He fell.

There was no wind in this fall. No sense of movement. Just dissolution—like he was unweaving. Every second, he forgot something else. The way his mother's eyes looked when she smiled. The sound of Old Man Riva's stories. The taste of burned bread.

Memories fled him like rats leaving a sinking ship.

Then—

He hit the ground.

❖ The Chamber of the Chronicler

It wasn't a ground made of stone or earth.

It was glass, suspended in void. Beneath it floated an ocean of dreams—shimmering fragments of lives and stories, all drifting in the dark like jellyfish of thought.

A vast library made of floating pages.

And in the center, seated upon a throne of ink and bone, was a figure.

The Chronicler.

No face. No voice. No body. Just presence. Cloaked in tattered script and holding a quill longer than a spear.

Kael stared, unable to speak.

"You were not chosen," the Chronicler said, its voice echoing in Kael's ribs, not his ears.

"You were remembered."

Kael opened his mouth, but no sound came.

The Chronicler continued.

"The Tower denied you. That was its mistake. Or perhaps… its defense."

"You are not a dream. You are a paradox."

Words burned themselves into Kael's skin. His arms glowed with symbols. Not glyphs of glory. Not marks of Ascension. Marks of Contradiction.

The Chronicler gestured, and a second door formed behind him.

"The Labyrinth opens. Not to those who were called… but to those who should never have been."

Kael looked back toward the void above.

Back toward the world that had never seen him.

Then he stepped forward, and passed through the second gate.

❖ The Dreamless Awakened

Kael awoke on a floor of black stone, inside a chamber lit by violet fire.

Before him, etched in molten gold, were the words:

"Test 0 – The Dream That Drowns."

And below it:

"Survive Yourself."

Kael blinked, breath shaking.

Then he smiled.

Not because he understood.

But because, for the first time…

Something saw him.

And that was enough.