[EN] Chapter 1: The Grey Void

# Chapter 1: The Grey Void

The city of Oracle Shell did not breathe; it computed.

It was a colossal, spherical megalopolis where physical space was not a constant, but a variable, reconfiguring itself in real-time according to the whims of the Zenith. To those who lived in the upper spires, the city was a shimmering paradise of crystalline light and seamless integration. But for those cast down into the depths, the city was a suffocating labyrinth of rusted steel and leaking data.

Zero lived in the latter—The Rust.

He sat on the edge of a crumbling skyscraper, his legs dangling over a void filled with drifting neon smog. Zero was a smudge of grey in a world of violent color. His coat was the color of ash, his skin the shade of a winter morning in a dead city, and his eyes… his eyes were the most unsettling part. They were colorless. Not white, not black, but a transparent void that seemed to reflect everything and hold nothing.

He was a "Blank." A ghost in the machine.

In Oracle Shell, memory was the only currency that mattered. People didn't trade in credits or gold; they traded in moments. A first kiss, the smell of rain on hot asphalt, the agonizing grief of a lost parent—all of it could be extracted, digitized into a memory chip, and sold to the highest bidder. The wealthy in the Zenith bought these memories to experience emotions they were too numb to feel, while the desperate in the Rust sold their most precious recollections just to afford another day of synthetic oxygen.

Zero didn't have any memories to sell. He didn't even have a childhood. He was simply *there*, a void waiting to be filled.

But Zero had a gift—or perhaps a curse. He was a sponge for the discarded.

As he walked through the crowded slums of the Rust, he could feel them: the "Memory Leaks." Fragments of deleted data, emotional residue discarded by the city's inhabitants, drifted through the air like iridescent snowflakes. To anyone else, they were mere static, visual noise. To Zero, they were whispers.

He reached out and caught a drifting shard of pale blue light.

*Sizzle—*

The moment the shard touched his skin, a surge of foreign electricity bolted through his spine.

[Data Input: A fragment of a lullaby. A mother's warmth. The feeling of being safe. The smell of old paper and lavender.]

For a fleeting second, Zero felt it. A warmth that didn't belong to him, a tenderness that felt like a knife to his empty chest. His grey world flared with a sudden, heartbreaking blue. He could almost see a face, hear a voice calling a name that wasn't his.

Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the memory dissolved. It was digested by the void within him, leaving behind nothing but a deeper, more aching emptiness.

He closed his hand, grasping at the air where the blue light had been.

"Empty," he whispered. His voice was flat, devoid of cadence, like a recording played at the wrong speed.

He didn't know who he was, where he came from, or why he existed. He only knew that the hunger inside him was growing. The more he absorbed, the more he realized how vast the hole in his soul truly was.

He was a vessel designed for everything, yet containing nothing.

As Zero turned to leave the ledge, he didn't notice the figure watching him from the shadows of a nearby ventilation shaft. The figure wore a coat of deep, predatory crimson, and eyes that gleamed with a calculated, fox-like intensity.

"Found you," the man murmured, a thin, dangerous smile curving his lips. "The perfect vessel. The ultimate void."

Zero continued his walk through the neon rain, unaware that he had just become the most valuable asset in the memory market.