Systemiccorruption Stories

By day, Kallen Onyx is just another invisible nineteen-year-old trying to survive the Second Shift District. By night, he is the city's unacknowledged safety net. When the bridges shake and the buses stall, Kallen steps in. He doesn't fly, and he doesn't wear a cape. He turns his skin into unyielding mineral stone to hold up the infrastructure the city refuses to fix. He saves lives. The system logs it as "Operational Variance." He breaks his back. The system calls it "Maintenance." But after years of being a human column for a crumbling city, Kallen feels something new. A delay. A stutter. A lag between his will and his power. The weight is getting heavier. The "Lag" is getting longer. And the city just updated its benchmarks to demand even more. Kallen has to decide: Does he keep holding up a world that treats him like a spare part? Or does he let it fall?