"My turn," Astor said, settling back against his pillow as moonlight filtered through their small window. The town had grown quiet outside, just the distant sound of the fountain and occasional footsteps on cobblestones. "You want to know what class I got?"
James nodded, curious. He'd been wondering since Astor's return, but hadn't wanted to push after everything his friend had missed.
"Enigma," Astor said, his voice carrying a note of uncertainty. "F rank, like everyone started. I have two abilities. Puzzle Sight, which lets me see patterns and connections in complex situations, and Phase Step, which lets me briefly become incorporeal to pass through obstacles."
"Enigma," James repeated, trying to recall what he'd heard about the class. "That was one of the ones the Overseer mentioned back in the cube. Something about riddles and puzzles?"
"Riddle Voids," Astor confirmed, pulling up what must be his class description. "Solving puzzle dimensions to avoid entrapment. Sounds cheerful, right?" He paused, then added something that caught James off guard. "But here's the interesting part. Unlike most class challenges, mine allows me to bring allies. Up to two people can enter the void with me."
James felt his pulse quicken. "Allies? That's strange. I thought all challenges were supposed to be solo affairs."
"Exactly. Makes me wonder if it's because Enigma challenges are supposed to be particularly difficult, or if there's something else going on." Astor's blue eyes reflected the moonlight as he studied James. "What about your Healer challenge? You mentioned Oracle has those nightmare visions, but Healer's different, right?"
James hesitated. He hadn't told Astor that as Healer was an innate class, it came with no daily challenge. The deception felt wrong, but revealing it might lead to questions about why he'd gotten such an unusual combination of abilities. "My challenge is pretty straightforward," he said carefully. "Quick, always solo, only takes a few minutes in the real world. Mental stuff, like the nightmares but different. Since yours allows allies and sounds more complex, maybe you should face your first trial. I can handle mine afterward."
Astor nodded, accepting the explanation. "Makes sense. Better to tackle the unknown quantity first, especially if I can bring backup." He settled deeper into his bed, hands behind his head. "Strange though, isn't it? The whole setup. Ten people pulled from... where? We don't even remember our lives before waking up in that ocean."
"Memory wipe," James agreed. "Has to be. Though sometimes I get impulses, like when I healed your cut. The knowledge was instinctive."
"Maybe you were some kind of Healer before entering the Domain" Astor yawned, exhaustion finally catching up with him. "We'll figure it out. Tomorrow, after we survive whatever that maze throws at us."
James watched his friend's breathing slow and deepen as sleep claimed him. The room settled into comfortable quiet, just the soft sounds of Astor's steady breathing and the distant fountain outside. James felt his own eyelids growing heavy, the day's trials and emotional weight finally pulling him toward rest.
He closed his eyes, expecting the familiar transition into Oracle's nightmare visions. The warning about prophetic death creatures, the mental battles that yielded essence shards. Instead, something went wrong.
A sharp ping echoed in his mind, followed by blue text that seemed to stutter and flicker:
[System Error]: Class Challenge Protocol Disruption Initiating Backup Sequence...
[Warning]: Temporal Anomaly Detected Displaying Alternative Timeline...
The room dissolved around him, but instead of a nightmare landscape, James found himself standing on familiar pale sand. The beach. The same beach where he'd first awakened, and the same beach he fought the Drowning Specter. But something was different once more.
He was observing, not participating. Like watching through someone else's eyes, but with perfect clarity. The churning sea stretched before him, waves crashing with relentless force. Other figures emerged from the water, coughing and struggling toward shore, but James's attention focused on one specific person.
Astor.
His friend thrashed through the waves exactly as James remembered from their first meeting, blonde hair plastered to his head, blue eyes wide with determination. But this time, James wasn't in the water with him. This time, only Astor made the desperate swim to shore.
The massive tidal wave loomed on the horizon, a wall of water defying reason. Astor reached the beach and spotted the ten walkways leading to the ginormous mansion. James watched, transfixed, as his friend ran straight for the fourth walkway, the same one James had chosen in their original timeline.
But here, Astor ran alone.
The walkway groaned under his weight as he sprinted across the weathered planks. Halfway across, he stumbled into the same invisible figure James had encountered. The same metallic key clattered onto the wood, but this time it melted into Astor's hand instead.
James watched Astor reach the mansion's platform, yank the locked door handle, then smash through the window with the same desperate efficiency. The same room full of farming relics, the same rusty scythes and warped plows. But when the second figure crashed through the window, bleeding from glass cuts, it wasn't Astor.
It was some random girl.
He watched as she tumbled into the room, watched Astor rush forward, and his hands glowing as he mended the wound. Astor had unlocked an innate Healer class instead.
The vision continued, showing Astor with the Oracle's Key. They escaped the flooding room through the locked door, using the key's power.
This anomaly showed him a timeline where everything had unfolded differently but somehow led to the same results.
What did this mean? Was this showing him what could have been? What should have been? Were events manipulated or did something cause a different timeline to happen?
The Oracle's Key was central to everything. In both timelines, whoever received it became the Oracle class and unlocked an innate Healer. As if the key itself determined their roles, not some random assignment by the system.
But why was he seeing this now? The system had mentioned a temporal anomaly, a disruption in his class challenge. Was this glitch showing him hidden truths about how the Domain operated? About the manipulation behind their circumstances?
The vision began to fragment, edges dissolving into static. James felt himself being pulled back, consciousness returning to the quiet inn room. But the implications of what he'd seen burned in his mind. The Oracle's Key wasn't just a powerful artifact. It was a catalyst, determining who would bear the burden of the Oracle class with its cursed visions and dangerous knowledge.
In their timeline, James had received it by chance, by choosing the fourth walkway. But the vision suggested that choice might not have been as random as it seemed. The figure who'd given him the key, the invisible presence that had vanished after the collision, who or what had that been? A Domain construct ensuring the proper distribution of power? A previous participant somehow still influencing events?
James's eyes snapped open in the inn room, heart pounding. Astor slept peacefully in the next bed, unaware of the fractured vision his friend had experienced. The system timer showed [Time until Maze 1 Challenge: 12:18:45 hours], but James's mind was locked on the implications of what he'd witnessed.
Time manipulation. Alternate timelines. The Oracle's Key as a determining factor in their class assignments. His Oracle abilities weren't random chance; they were the result of whoever the Domain wanted to burden with those particular powers.
But why me instead of Astor? What made the difference?
He lay back down, staring at the ceiling, but sleep wouldn't come. The vision had revealed too much and not enough simultaneously. Questions multiplied in his mind like fractures in glass, each answer revealing new uncertainties.
The Domain's games were far more complex than he'd realized, and he had the unsettling feeling that he'd only glimpsed the edge of a much larger manipulation.