Liam had spent most of yesterday's night practicing his new ability. He found sleep elusive, and even when exhaustion finally pushed him into its realms, the sleep came uneasy and restless. His brain was too busy processing all the things that had happened.

Right now he was trying to clear his head on a little stroll through the city.

The streets were touched by the soft gray light of early morning. It was still before the orange of sunrise would tint the sky and before the sweet smell of warm bread would fill the streets from the open bakeries.

The only people Liam encountered were either drunkyards, stumbling through the streets, clinging to the last remains of the previous night, and shift workers whose grumbling about going to work this early was almost palpable.

It was just how he liked his city.

He passed rundown houses, paint was chipped off their facade and missing windows were not a rarity. As he strolled past a few shops he saw half stocked windows and empty shelves. It was during those times, when there wasn’t much going on in the streets, that Liam took in the state of the city the most. He was aware that Charville was a poor city, he himself had called it a pisshole more times then he could’ve counted. But when there was nothing distracting him from taking in the city's full scope, he realized just how poor the city really was.

Of course life looked different in the parts of upper Charville where the nobility resided, but that might as well be a different world. The life of nobility was more elusive to most commoners living in Charville than the life of a bird.

A light drizzle had set in while Liam was walking the impoverished streets. Without intending to, Liam’s thoughts kept turning back to his strange new abilities.

Being blessed by the gods was a rare thing. Actually an unheard of thing in Charville. It was a privilege behold to the nobles who had the pure blood flowing through their veins.

Liam had heard that it was different in other parts of the empire. In the capital for example, being blessed was supposedly common enough that people without any sort of abilities were often viewed as almost handicapped and frowned upon.

Being blessed by a god didn’t just grant you access to some domain specific powers of said god, it also made your body stronger, faster and more durable. How exactly these things worked, Liam didn’t know. It was a secret well kept by most noble houses, and not shared with commoners.

Liam didn’t even know who his god was. He knew more than a handful of gods even outside of the major pantheon ones, and had heard some other names mentioned even more, but Gravitas had never been among them. The name was utterly alien to him.

If he knew who Gravitas was and what domain his powers stood for, maybe he could understand his powers a little better. Liam felt pretty sure that his powers were in the domain of Gravity, a concept not foreign to him, but to what extent he wasn’t sure.

Since he had never heard the name, Liam was pretty sure the god was one of the minor ones though. Despite what the being had said.

That meant its domain powers, and therefore the skills Liam would get, were probably somewhat limited and specialized in their abilities. Like cultivators under Liluntra, a minor goddess of nature, usually had their abilities revolving around communication with plants. For some that meant simply having good indicators of what plant life needed, but others also claimed to be able to talk to them as far as Liam had heard.

That ability was of course utterly useless in an urban city like Charville, and a far cry to some of the flashier powers nobles demonstrated. Usually most of the aristocrats around here were blessed by some of the major gods, and that reflected in their abilities. Like the noble Liam had faced in the alley the day before, he had been able to move with superhuman speed and strength.

Liam’s own skills were nothing compared to that. Another fact that made him believe he was blessed by some obscure minor god. Still, Liam had hope. His skill might be rather plain still, but he knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long if he kept leveling it.

Besides, he now knew he also had a second skill already. And he couldn’t wait to figure out how it worked.

When he passed Alleyston street, he saw a familiar figure sitting on a small rug on the floor at the corner,

“Hello Bird,” Liam said. He had made a habit of greeting the few people he knew closer on the streets.

It never hurt to maintain a level of friendship. There wasn’t much else for people like them.

The boy returned a cheerful smile upon seeing Liam. “Good day Liam.”

Liam peeked over into the small hat in front of Bird, pleasantly surprised to see a few copper pieces in it already at this time of the day.

“Nice to see the morning people are generous today.”

“Aii yes. Today is a lucky one.” Bird started picking around the few belongings he had strewn around his blanket. “Last few days have been a little harsher.”

Liam noticed the boy's sunken cheeks. “I know how that feels. Mind if I sit?”

The boy made an inviting gesture, and Liam probed down next to Bird. He procured a small loaf of bread from his pockets, broke it into two, and offered the bigger half to the boy next to him.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Liam said. “What’s new on the streets?”

The boy shrugged. “Not much. Heard another refugee group came in yesterday.”

“Another one?”

“Yeah, seems like the season is really bad outside. Have been more than last year for sure.”

Liam didn’t say anything. He had never been outside of the city walls. Not that he could remember at least. He knew that he wasn’t born in Charville, sometimes his memories still lightened up with incoherent images from his life before. But he simply had been too young back then. Back before his parents had left him here.

“I don’t mind it, you know,” Bird said.

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“What? The refugees?”

“Yeah, they make it a little harder for us of course. More hands grabbing in the same bucket kind of.” The boy coughed. “But in the end they deserve to be here. I mean their home has just been thrashed by monsters or raiders or pantheon knows what. How could we not take them?”

“You still manage to get by Bird. You always do.”

“More luck and pity,” the boy smiled ruefully. “Welcan’t all be smart and cunning like you Liam, you know?”

“I’m not smart and cunning.”

“Heard about the silverware thing you did.”

Liam shrugged. “That was more luck than anything.”

“Still I’m sure it paid for quite a bit,” the boy cocked his head as if contemplating. “Maybe I should go back to hitting the markets like you do… sometimes I think I should. Old Earl is at it still. At least that’s what they say. It used to be more profitable than begging.”

Liam knew which Old Earl he was talking about. There weren’t too many people past their fiftieth year living the lives they did.

“Begging is safer though,” Liam said.

“That’s true. And well, I ain’t all right since they caught me,” Bird said and thudded where his left leg used to be. “Wish they wouldn’t have let me go some days.”

Liam nodded not knowing what else to say.

“It’s good some people like you still fight Liam, you know?”

They continued chatting for a while. Eventually they finished their bread and Liam left. He felt a little more down afterwards. Liam was used to tragedies on the streets. You couldn’t walk two corners in Charville without seeing another person that has fallen through the cracks. Another Bird or Liam.

Liam hadn’t fallen through the cracks as much as he had been abandoned beneath them. Still Liam knew Bird's backstory, and knew he was lucky compared to the boy.

Guards had caught him stealing from a nobleman's carriage. He hadn’t stopped after the nobles had screamed at him to stop, so as punishment for that, they had cut off both of his legs underneath the knees.

Usually that was a death sentence for most people on the streets. If you weren’t mobile, it was hard to get food, and nobody sheltered you from the gangs or the foul tempered. A cripple like Bird usually didn’t last a week.

All he could do now was sit on the same corner and beg. He got by only by the mercy of people like Liam, people who knew how hard it was to get by on the street. If he weren’t as charismatic, Liam doubted Bird would’ve survived that long.

He shook his head. This day had started dragging him down more than he had hoped for, but that was something Liam was used to. Luckily he knew just the thing that would help.

---‐-------------------------

Wind was soaring past Liam as he stared down into the alley below him. He swallowed.

The gray streets below him were terrifying. People were milling around be, going about their daily lives. They didn't exactly vanish from his height, but five stories did a lot to make people look small, and to set Liams brain to imagine him splattering next to them on the ground.

Liam had never been afraid of heights. But then again, he also had never thought about jumping over a whole street just to force out an ability.

Liam glanced at the gray colossus stretching on in the distance.

With the huge stone walls encircling the city, there was never a gust of wind flowing through the alleys. The air there was always stale, which didn’t help with a naturally smelly city like Charville.

Being on the roofs was a nice change of pace.

Liam always found it surprising how easy it was to get access to most rooftops of the city. Almost every facade was scaled with a good eye and a few quick jumps. And once you were on one rooftop, it wasn’t hard to get to the next one. Most houses in Charville were packed together tightly, like a flock of sheep on a too small square of land.

Liam looked back at the people below him. Only one wrong step forward and he would sail downwards and land with at least a dozen broken bones.

That was if he was lucky.

He swallowed heavily and once again wondered why he was here, and if there was some way around it. But Liam wanted to unlock his other ability. He had a pretty good inkling of what it was, but nothing he had tried had been successful in bringing it forward.

Its name already gave a pretty good indication, but more than that, Liam could still remember the skill that had carried him over the wall when he was escaping the guards. So while he was pretty sure about the ability, he had no idea how to activate it.

Liam tried jumping up and down back in his attic. While flaring his newfound energy and while not using it at all. He had even tried some parkour jumps over his table which had ended with nothing other than him feeling like a silly chicken.

It still went better than his tries of recreating that scenario back in other alleys. When he tried jumping over some small walls in the narrow backstreets, he had been rewarded with nothing but a bruised shoulder and a big hit on his ego.

Still Liam wanted to unlock this ability. And despite his shortcomings, he was confident about what he was about to do. There was a silent whisper telling him he should be here.

As he stood there on the edge of the roof, feeling the energy surge through him and looking at the chasm down from him, Liam got a weird feeling.

He couldn’t help but feel like this was something someone had done before. It felt like he wasn’t the first to try some new superpowers he had gotten in that way. He felt one of his senses tingling.

What a weird thought. He also pushed that away.

He took a few steps back and looked towards the edge. With shaky legs he set off and ran towards it. His first hesitant stumbling turned into a confident sprint as he dashed forwards with building momentum.

Another look at the edge. His feet suddenly stopped, and he came to a panting halt.

Liam cursed at his angst and walked back again. The energy still surging and his heart racing. Not for the first time did he contemplate leaving the rooftop, but after a few breaths he banished those thoughts again.

“This is stupid,” he said in frustration. Then, Liam looked towards the gray behemoth of the wall that rose in the distance, and started running.

He dashed towards the edge of the building with force, leaving the shackles of his self doubt behind him. The inner energy was churning him onwards, and Liam decided to trust it.

The ground blurred beneath him as he put his head down and his thoughts away. Suddenly he was at the edge of the rooftop, pushing himself off with all the force he could muster.

He flew through the air and time seemed to stop. It was about mid-motion when Liam looked at the edge of the other building's rooftop. He realized his trajectory and cold fear flooded him like a dry riverbed.

He wouldn’t make it.

Then something clicked inside of him. He felt the fractal activating, and suddenly a sense of weightlessness overcame him. He felt lighter and instead of slowly falling, he was soaring forwards, his jumps projection reignited again.

All that happened in less than a second, and just as soon as his flight began, it ended again.

Liam’s feet touched the other rooftop and his weight immediately became normal again. A sense of vertigo washed over Liam and he stumbled a few steps, before he fell down face first on the floor.

His knees and elbows were scraped, when he rolled onto his back with a groan, a familiar illuminated box greeted him.

“Congratulations, you have raised your Gravity Jump Skill to Level 1. Thereby activating the ability.”

“That will definitely take some getting used to,” Liam mumbled as he fought back to his feet.

His brain was still trying to make sense of the sudden weight shift that happened in his body, but after a few steps, Liam thought he had it under control again.

He slowly turned to look back at the rooftop he had come from. A smile spread on his lips. Excitement overcame the pain of a scraped elbow, and Liam laughed loudly.

He had conquered that chasm. Rough as it was, it was definitely something.

Then another wave of vertigo made his stomach turn. Liam stumbled a few steps and borrowed a nearby chimney for support while the world was spinning around him.

Yes, his body definitely needed to adjust to that.

His mind spun with all the ideas he had for new applications of his two skills. He already had one very interesting in mind.