The Sequence Devourer

In the 997th year of the Sequence Calendar, humanity turned the page beneath the genome—the instruction manual. Those who turned it were called Evolvers, ranked in nine tiers by their sequence chains. Above the ninth tier stands the Tower, where people live above the clouds and rule the city. Mu Ze never turned that page. At fifteen, he went for a gene scan. The report had only one line: Sequence chain not detected. Recommended registration as a Ruins Dweller. That night, the technician who did the scan looked at him a moment longer and said something cryptic— "It's not that you have no sequence. It's that someone ate it." At nineteen, he found a core module in the dead city. The spiral on its back was identical to the birthmark on his own back. He didn't know what it was, only that from then on, he no longer saw faces—he could see the knot turning beneath everyone's skin. Kill you, and that knot becomes mine. But carved into him was a rule even he couldn't change: only one at a time. To take a new one, he must first discard the one in hand. And fifteen years ago, the one the Sequence Bureau called the "Sequence Devourer" carried seventeen at once. Seventeen, against one. Mu Ze stood in the dead city's ninety-seventh sunset and thought for a long time, only to realize one thing— Either that rule is a lie, or he is not the first to have been eaten. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: The Sequence Devourer — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠