Legacy Code

Chapter 1: The Unseen Code

Azura Zephira squatted beside a discarded motherboard in the alley, her fingers tracing circuits and checking connectors by habit. The hum of the city outside the alleyway was constant, a reminder that the world above her was full of wealth, technology, and untold secrets. But here, in the Lower Grid, the air was thick with grime, the streets full of shadows. It had been her home for nineteen years—between the cracked streets, the fading neon lights, and the forgotten corners of Veridion's sprawling underbelly. She wasn't a stranger to this harsh world, the one that the upper echelons of the city chose to ignore, or forget. In the towering spires of the Upper Grid, the latest tech updates were the ultimate currency—an ever-advancing world with gleaming skyscrapers that pulsed with holographic advertisements. But down here, there was a different currency: survival.

She'd learned early that to survive, you needed to be adaptable. To see what others couldn't. To scavenge.

Her fingers expertly moved along the motherboard, fingers grazing the delicate wiring, her eyes narrowing in on the potential of the discarded parts. Tech wasn't just tools for her—it was a language, a code. Each broken piece held a secret, a story, and Azura was the one who would uncover it. People would call it junk, but she knew better. These old machines, the forgotten relics, were pieces of a puzzle—pieces of a world long past. A world she was determined to piece together, one scrap at a time.

As she shifted a rusted steel sheet, the corner of something caught her eye—a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer under the dirt. Her hand froze mid-motion, instinctively drawn to the anomaly. There, half-buried beneath the detritus, was something that didn't belong. An old scroll. Its edges were frayed with age, but the parchment gleamed with an otherworldly light, almost as if it was alive. Her heart skipped a beat.

Azura knelt down, brushing away the dirt and rust to reveal the scroll in full. Her breath caught in her throat. It wasn't just paper—it shimmered with an ethereal, shifting pattern that seemed to pulse with an unnatural energy. The symbols on the parchment were faint, almost indecipherable, but Azura could see the unmistakable flow of intricate lines and curves, like a web of interlocking symbols that danced in the dim alley light.

She stared at the scroll, her mind racing. The markings. The cypher.

Cyphers. The stuff of legends. Stories whispered in the darkest corners of Veridion. They weren't just ancient writings—they were keys to untold power. They could manipulate reality itself, twisting the laws of nature, bending time, even rewriting the very fabric of existence. But only the elite, the shadowy figures who controlled the pulse of the city, knew how to use them. They were dangerous, their power a double-edged sword. And those who sought them out often disappeared, consumed by forces they couldn't hope to control.

Azura leaned closer, her fingers hovering over the delicate parchment. It pulsed with energy, as if responding to her proximity, as if it was alive. She murmured to herself, almost involuntarily, her voice soft in the quiet alley. "What are you?"

The moment the words left her lips, the symbols on the scroll shifted. Twisting and reshaping, they responded to her question, warping in ways that made her pulse quicken. The cypher was reacting to her.

Azura froze. She had heard the warnings all her life. People who tampered with cyphers—who tried to unlock their secrets without understanding their true power—didn't come back. The stories told of people who vanished, lost in a whirlwind of energy, their bodies and minds consumed by the raw power they unleashed.

But curiosity, that old and familiar burn, overpowered the whispers of caution in her head. The thrill of discovery, the possibility of unlocking something that no one else had, was too much to resist. The cypher was there, calling to her.