The Boy Who Shouldn't Be

The air grew heavier the moment I crossed the boundary into the Lower Strata.

Not just metaphorically.

Literally. The pressure here was denser — the kind of atmospheric instability that suggested old trauma buried deep beneath the earth.

A ripple in the emotional field.

Faint.

But growing.

I adjusted my satchel, pulled my coat tighter, and stepped through the moss-lined path into Merefield.

Another border town.

Another forgotten place.

Another case of uncontrolled Will awakening no one above seemed to care about — until it became inconvenient.

That's when they send people like me.

I'm a Field Auditor.

Unofficial title, of course. My real one is Independent Investigator under the Academy's Division of Will Anomalies, but that's far too long to fit on a pin.

My job is simple:

Trace emotional instability in fringe settlements.

Identify patterns.

Prevent disasters.

Not glamorous. Not popular. But necessary.

Especially now.

Because something's changing.

The Lower Strata's Wills are flaring up faster than they used to. Untrained children, fading anchors, people awakening without triggers. Something was disrupting the balance — or worse, rewriting it.

And yesterday, Merefield lit up on my map like a bruised nerve.

When I arrived, the damage was still fresh: a bakery half-charred, scorch marks across the plaza, and a young boy still unconscious under herbal sedation.

Witness reports were scattered, inconsistent, and predictably dramatic.

"He burst into flames!"

"The outsider boy talked him down!"

"I think the fire was symbolic!"

Small towns love embellishment. You learn to filter it.

But one detail repeated enough to matter:

A non-affiliated youth, with no known Will, walked directly into the center of a surge and stabilized it through verbal contact.

No projection. No aura. No spiritual anchor.

Just… words.

And somehow, it worked.

That didn't make sense.

Even the gentlest Wills need a focus to redirect a surge. A calming influence. A soul tether. You can't neutralize chaotic Will without channeling your own.

Unless…

Unless the person isn't acting as a source or a counter.

But as something else.

I finished my basic survey within the hour. No structural Will rot. The bakery had no lingering presence. The child's aura was stabilizing. That should've been enough for a preliminary report.

But something itched at the back of my skull.

That name.

Riven Solveil.

Not registered. Not recorded. No public guild affiliation. No academy attendance. No bloodline notes. Not even a basic Will awakening filed.

The locals thought he was a vagrant. Some thought he was cursed.

But curses don't interrupt surges.

And they definitely don't go unnoticed on audit scans.

He wasn't just a nobody.

He was absent.

I didn't plan to find him right away. These encounters work better when they happen naturally. People lie less when they don't know they're being observed.

But fate, as it often does, didn't wait for formality.

I was reviewing notes by the town well, mapping residual Will signatures, when the bushes exploded.

Okay — not exploded. Collapsed enthusiastically.

Out rolled a boy who looked like he'd been dragged through an emotional landfill. Dirt on his coat, scratches on his cheek, and the wild, twitching eyes of someone who hadn't mentally adjusted to the concept of gravity.

He knocked my notebook into the well.

I should have been annoyed.

I wasn't.

I was… curious.

He recovered quickly. Joked. Covered his embarrassment with sarcasm. A typical deflection pattern. But not the hollow kind — not the brittle bravado of people desperate to be liked.

His self-deprecation was practiced. Calm. Controlled.

He knew exactly how he looked.

And he chose to lean into it, rather than run from it.

Interesting.

"I'm Riven," he said. "Resident disaster."

I didn't flinch.

"Eline. Vareth."

He blinked like the name meant something, then smiled without meaning it.

Not hostile. Just… tired.

When I mentioned the bakery, he downplayed it.

When I mentioned his lack of Will, he didn't deny it — or apologize.

He just owned it. Like a fact of biology.

That's not normal.

People without Wills in the Lower Strata learn to fake it. They use borrowed anchors, cheap talismans, dramatic scarves. Anything to project value.

But not him.

He didn't posture.

He didn't exaggerate.

He didn't flinch when I looked him in the eyes.

He simply was.

And that made him dangerous.

Or valuable.

Or both.

"You weren't on the list," I told him, before walking away.

It was a test.

And he didn't follow me.

He just stood there, blinking.

Not chasing answers. Not demanding meaning.

Just processing.

Like someone used to being forgotten, but not surprised to be remembered.

That, too, told me more than his words ever could.

As I walked back through the fading glow of the afternoon light, I ran a quiet diagnostic.

No Will signature.

No soul fracture.

No surge residue.

No temporal drift.

And yet…

He'd left an imprint.

Subtle. Unnatural. Uncatalogued.

Like something was wearing the shape of a person.

Or something was missing where a person should be.

This shouldn't have been my problem.

But for reasons I didn't yet understand, I was going to stay in Merefield a little longer.

Just in case.