By the time Olena left the parlour, with promises of returning in a few hours, Tanya could barely keep her eyes open. However, she had one more thing left to do before she slept.

She pulled up her Interface, sinking further into the sofa to rest her head on the back.

A Notification came through that she'd missed from earlier.

• • •

Alert!

Through your efforts, you have increased the following Attributes:

Dexterity +1

Strength +1

Concentration +2

• • •

Huh, this must've been from the scavengin' an' chattin' about System stuff.

She double-checked if there were any more but wasn't surprised when she came up empty. Between the subtle ache in her legs and arms from carrying everything and being on her feet all day, and the flurry of new tattoo ideas and Ability awareness she had from all their talking the last couple of days, Tanya felt like she'd grown a lot. It just wasn't in the Class department. That was about to change.

Tanya pulled up the Ability Merge menu again, but this time condensed the Ability options down so she could see them all without scrolling.

• • •

The Abilities you can choose from are as follows:

More than Meets the Eye (4), The Power of Intention (7), An Inkling of Control (9), The Blink of an Eye (1) Mnemonic Etching (1)

• • •

Her favourite option before had been combining More than Meets the Eye with The Power of Intention, and her night with Olena had just solidified it. She could get some flashy new Ability by combining two of the others, but what she wanted was more control over her bread and butter.

Olena's ideas were still dancing through her head and she felt more at peace than she had since this all started, well maybe even longer.

This was the first day in years she didn't have to worry where her bills were coming from—where she'd stayed up late even when she was exhausted just because she loved tattooing. It had taken a new form with this System, but it actually felt more true to how she used to be than a few days ago.

She wasn't kidding herself. Losing her levels in it would be difficult—but what would she be capable of when she got this new Ability back up again? Her core Ability—the one that allowed her to bring her tattoos to life—would now be intertwined with her intentions.

Her hand reached into the air before her, fingers traipsing down the words in her vision. She couldn't feel anything there and the letters rippled like they were pressed onto water.

Am I sure I wanna do this?

The excitement in her chest was the only yes she needed.

She chose More than Meets the Eye and The Power of Intention.

Are you certain of this choice? Ability Merging can not be undone

Yes/ No

Yes.

Abilities Merging…

Her entire perspective shifted. For a moment, it felt like she could see her own body, like she was floating outside of it. Her spectral form pulsed and she was slammed back into the body. It took a moment to realise it wasn't hers. Looking down at her arm she saw a twine of thorn around a teapot. She'd done that tattoo on a woman earlier that month in memory of her mother. She blinked and it was a new tattoo, a new body. They flickered in and out, somewhere between a dream and something more magical. The force pulled her further into her mind and she saw the ghosts of moments she'd never experienced. A man holding a wok lid with a knife against a thrashing lion summon. A small woman clutching a dog summon to her chest, sobbing tears of joy as she was reunited with her lost pet. Pulsing footsteps as someone ran from a monster. She could feel their fear—feel how it heightened as their body changed. Everything felt wrong. Tanya knew that feeling but this person didn't. The Legend of Zelda master sword on his wrist wriggled and pulsed under the skin and he keeled over. It flashed to him brandishing it towards the beast.

Tanya's head ached as the powers combined. It was too vivid and the constant lurching of the world's shifting broiled the sickness in her stomach. She couldn't look away.

These weren't her intentions, but they were the intentions of The System or maybe of the people with her tattoos.

The feeling faded and with each blink, her parlour reformed before her eyes as if it was never gone. In retrospect, she could tell she hadn't left. The memory felt more like it was in her mind's eye than she was teleported. It barely even felt like a vision, more like the people's intentions had swirled around within her as she became more aware of what her tattoos were capable of.

• • •

The Magic Touch

Level 1

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Your tattoos are more than art—they are execution. By shaping intent at the point of creation, you ensure your tattoos manifest exactly as imagined. Effects created this way scale with the clarity of the Wielder's purpose, and your own attunement to their need.

• • •

Tanya sat there for a long moment, her head tipped back against the couch, the last flickers of those other intentions ghosting across the inside of her skull like afterimages from staring too long at the sun. Every breath felt like it carried too much weight like the air had to be sifted through layers of something not quite real.

She exhaled slowly and sat forward, elbows on her knees, hands limp. Her fingers twitched—her body begging to move, to do something—but her mind didn't know what yet.

Eventually, she stood. Her legs were stiff like she'd been in that state for hours instead of minutes. The parlour was still dim and familiar, the smell of antiseptic, ink, and distant street grime seeping in under the door. She moved with mechanical slowness, stepping around the clutter without really seeing it, and opened the bottom drawer beneath the counter.

There it was. Her tattoo gun, nestled in its foam cradle, waiting like a loaded memory.

Her fingers hovered over it for a second longer than they should've. When she picked it up, the metal felt a little too warm. A little too light. It buzzed faintly under her skin, even without power. But it wasn't moving? She realised that was just the ringing in her ears of how much noise she'd heard as the Abilities combined.

Everything about this moment felt uncanny, out of joint. Not wrong exactly, but untethered.

The buzzing in her skull wasn't fear or nerves. It was awareness—like every part of her had been set to a higher sensitivity. Her breath was in her lungs. The tightness in her shoulders. The placement of every object in the room. Her own pulse thudded behind her teeth.

She glanced to the side, toward the heavy-duty bin bags lined up by the back door. She'd been meaning to toss them out, but now… she crossed the room, peeled one open, and reached inside. Her hand closed around a lump of dense, rubbery monster flesh—black with tightly stretched skin, marbled with glistening black veins. Not exactly fresh, but still viable.

She had to wipe the excess sludge off. The monsters seemed to break down far quicker than people did, turning into this inky sludge like their blood. However, as she thought about it, she realised maybe people had broken down faster too. Dreadlocks' body was ripe within a couple of days. She didn't have any way of searching how quickly corpses began to smell, but that felt too fast.

She lugged it back to her workspace, setting it on the stainless-steel tray like it was no different from a practice skin. She tied her hair back, slipped on gloves, and prepped the station.

The first contact of needle to flesh was a relief. The noise, the familiar resistance, the vibration through her fingers—it all anchored her back in something solid. She wasn't trying to bring anything to life yet, just testing the line work. Muscle memory took over.

Tight lines. Consistent weight. Flow, not force.

Just like always.

And yet, with every line, Tanya expected something to rupture—some visible flare, some surge of magic, some whisper in the back of her head.

Nothing happened.

Each stroke was immaculate but it was like nothing had changed. Like everything she'd seen—the visions, the swirl of others' intentions, that soul-deep fusion—was just a vivid dream.

She was too tired and out of it to feel frustrated.

Pausing, she rested the machine to one side. Her fingers drummed on the metal tray.

Was this it? Was the new Ability just... smoother interface? More seamless transitions? Did she trade her experience levels for a cleaner UI?

She wiped sweat from her temple and shook her head. No. No, there was more. She could feel it, just out of reach, coiled like a muscle she hadn't figured out how to flex. So she changed tactics. She rolled her shoulders and flipped to a clean section of the meat. It didn't matter what the design was. She needed to test the full thing—to summon. To command.

Tanya closed her eyes and reached inward.

There was a design she used to doodle over and over—a fragmented deer skull blooming into crow wings, pieces breaking apart and reforming mid-air. She let her hands fall into that rhythm, sketching the layout directly onto the skin in one continuous flow.

The moment the first real line began, something shifted.

A sudden, staggering flood of overlays hit her vision—spidery diagrams and swirling sketches stacked over each other like someone turned her creative brain inside out. It wasn't the normal System overlay she activated with The Power of Intention. This was deeper. It was her imagination, her design overlay that had never fully integrated, and her Tattoos Menu—all fused into one blazing multidimensional HUD.

She hadn't thought about it until now. The Tattoos menu had come from More than Meets the Eye and had been merged with it.

Designs flickered past her mind's eye: past tattoos, potential summons, component pieces, alternate versions.

A sketch of a koi fish she'd done on a travelling merchant—now plated with organic armour and spewing fog from its gills.

A dragon spine she'd inked onto a woman two years ago—now exploding with customisable segments, each tied to movement options she didn't even know she'd imagined.

Each thought spun out further permutations. She wasn't just seeing what she'd done—she was seeing what could have been, and what could be now.

Her breath caught. It was overwhelming—like drowning in possibility.

Words floated through the chaos. System breakdowns. Labels. Percentages. Strategy suggestions.

Ink Core Integration: Potential Paths – 64% Biomechanical Adaptation – 32% Flight Surge – 4% Rejection

Every instinct in her screamed to back off, to breathe, but she pressed in instead.

Her hand moved almost of its own volition now, pulled by intention as much as thought. She wasn't just drawing the deer anymore—she was speaking it into the System. Not with words, but with meaning.

As she reached the midpoint of the design, the meat beneath her needle twitched.

Not just a surface tremor, it was an actual muscular contraction, like it was trying to breathe. Then the surface buckled, and a jagged tear bloomed open, something half-formed pressing up against the barrier of ink and meat.

She pulled the needle back.

There was a tear down the centre of the skin and the ink bled out of it.

Did I break it?

She sat there staring at it, unsure what had even happened. Even when she was just starting and her pressure was all wrong, she'd never damaged skin like this. Sure, it was easy to cut someone or overwork a section so it scabbed badly, but this was more like a jagged knife wound. Running her fingers over the slit, she could feel the slimeyness of it through her gloves

Her attention moved to the hand tattoo on her arm. She'd needed to merge these alone, but now she needed her assistant.

Looking down at her arm, she willed Assistant out. Her head spun from the effort. She glanced at her Attributes.

• • •

Attributes

Strength: 3/17

Dexterity: 6/ 30

Vitality: 3/ 22

Concentration: 4/16

Will: 13/ 25

• • •

Holy shit.

No wonder she was tired if they were falling that low, but also she'd hit a 30 in Dexterity. She felt an intense urge to test it out and see what she was now capable of, but the world spun as she sat up straighter to move and she gave up on it very quickly.

She stared at Assistant on her arm again. This was the second time she had intentionally stopped summoning it because of her stats. It felt strange knowing that she couldn't speak to it yet and it was a very different experience knowing it was okay. The last time she'd been worried it would die, or whatever Summons did, so this one was more of a numb disappointment.

Maybe that's me cue to sleep.

She rubbed her eyes and felt herself growing more and more tired as the willpower that had kept her going seemed to be through sheer momentum. Laying down on the sofa, she told herself she'd just take a moment to get the energy to go upstairs. She fell asleep there, curled up on the sofa for the rest of the night.

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