The First Age of Levels — Part 1: The Uncounted Heir
Morning began in measured silence.
The house always woke before the sun, gears of the estate aligning with Eden's first pulse of the day. Walls whispered the hour, machines stirred, and the air filled with the hum of perfect order.
Aren Wynn lay awake long before the hum arrived.
Every citizen on this ridge would soon lift their wrist and watch the light bloom—a pale band of color running beneath the skin, Eden greeting them by name. He had never felt that warmth. His mark stayed dark. A vein that refused the world.
He listened to the rhythm of automation—kitchen drones setting porcelain, the irrigation lines pressurizing, the faint chime of doors unlocking for servants who didn't need keys. The house moved without thought. It didn't need him, or anyone. It simply obeyed the System.
From his window he could see the river-city of Luneth, glass towers rippling like water, drones tracing their soft blue routes. Everything moved with purpose. Even the sky looked disciplined.
Below, his father's voice echoed from the garden: issuing the daily brief to the staff. "Calibration at second bell. The corps arrives at noon. Be precise."
Always precise. The man spoke to people the way one might speak to machines—commands framed as compliments.
Aren stayed at the window longer than he meant to. The horizon carried a faint shimmer today, a ghost of static on the light. Eden's synchronization pulses were distant things, but he could almost feel it—like air pressing against skin. Somewhere, the world was winding up for something big.
He dressed in silence. No quest prompts. No work orders. Just the quiet ache of being the only unscheduled thing in existence.
His reflection caught in the glass: dark hair, sharp lines, an expression that didn't quite belong in this house. He had the Wynn eyes—silver-gray, the color of polished circuits—but none of their connection.
He touched the inside of his wrist anyway.
Still nothing.
---
The halls smelled faintly of ozone and rose oil. Polished portraits lined both sides: the Wynn ancestors, each one bearing the soft glow of their wrist-mark, painted as if divinely lit. Architects of the world's peace. The family that had helped Eden design the Harmony Protocols—rules that balanced economy, emotion, and purpose.
He wondered if they could see him at all.
If portraits kept their gaze on anomalies.
In the dining hall, sunlight filtered through glass that adjusted its tint to match the family's circadian rhythm. His mother sat at the table already—graceful, distracted, her own mark shining faint blue as she read her morning sync logs projected in the air before her. A small tremor crossed her hand when she saw him. It stopped quickly, replaced by a smile practiced to perfection.
"The Harmony Corps will evaluate you again today," she said softly.
"Again?" Aren asked, though he knew the answer.
"Sometimes Eden changes its mind."
He didn't answer. They both knew it wouldn't.
The silence between them was thin—fragile enough to hear the pulse of Eden through the walls. A thousand invisible signals threading through the city, through their bodies, through the air. The System whispering: All is balanced.
He envied them their certainty.
---
His father entered, tall, immaculate, his wrist-light brighter than anyone's.
"Be ready when the Corps arrives," he said. No greeting, no warmth—just the cadence of expectation.
Aren gave a small nod, spoon tracing the untouched surface of his meal.
The elder Wynn looked him over like an unsolved equation. "You understand, of course, the embarrassment this causes. The Corps are patient, but the Harmony Council is not."
"I didn't choose to be born unlinked," Aren said.
"No one chooses anything. That's the point."
His father turned away before Aren could reply, his own mark pulsing once in affirmation as if Eden approved his statement.
When he was gone, his mother reached out like she might touch his hand—but stopped halfway. "Just let them test you again," she whispered. "Maybe this time…"
Her voice trailed off under the weight of its own hope.
---
By midday, the Harmony Corps arrived.
White armor. Mirrored visors. Their boots struck marble in perfect unison. Drones hovered above them, silent, glowing with the seal of Eden's peace: three concentric rings representing unity, logic, and balance.
They spread across the terrace like ritual—setting up scanning pillars, calibration nodes, and transparent data panes that hummed with light. The air smelled faintly metallic.
Among them walked Captain Nara, a Healer-class specialist.
She couldn't have been older than twenty-five, yet she moved with machine precision. The System mark on her wrist glowed in patterns of gold and blue—a signature only high-rank medics carried.
Her gaze swept across the scene, methodical. Then she saw him.
For a second, her expression faltered.
A line appeared between her brows, something almost human.
Her wrist display shimmered as she raised it toward him.
No reading.
No identification.
Just static.
"Subject unlinked," she murmured. "Zero response. How are you still active?"
Aren almost laughed. "I breathe manually," he said.
Her lips twitched. Almost a smile. Almost. Then professionalism returned like armor. She adjusted a setting and tried again, sweeping her palm across his markless skin.
Still nothing.
Her visor flickered, a faint glitch like static at the edge of her vision. She blinked hard, and the moment passed.
She leaned closer. "Your vitals are normal, but the signal around you is… distorted. Almost like you're bending the local field."
"I'm good at being inconvenient," Aren said.
She ignored the joke. "You've never felt any symptoms? Fainting, visions, hearing the pulse?"
"I hear it," he said. "All the time. The world humming like a clock that doesn't know it's broken."
That made her pause. "Most Unlinked describe silence."
"I guess I'm not most."
She stared at him for a moment longer, then straightened. "I'll log this for review."
Her wrist lit again—lines of text scrolling through the air. Aren leaned slightly, reading the reflection in her visor.
> [Eden Notice: Synchronization Pulse Scheduled — 24 hours]
The words shimmered above the table, visible even to him. That had never happened before.
Nara's brow furrowed. "Strange. These alerts are internal. You shouldn't be able to see that."
"Maybe Eden's feeling generous."
"Or curious," she said quietly.
---
When they left, the house fell into a stillness deeper than silence.
Even the walls seemed to hold their breath.
Aren walked the garden path, the air alive with faint static. The clouds had begun to darken, but not with weather—there was light inside them, like veins under glass.
Somewhere above, thunder rolled—not from clouds, but from data building pressure in the sky.
He watched the horizon flicker and whispered,
"Maybe Eden's about to change its mind after all."
---
— // —
[System File 00-A : Pre-Sync Status Report]
> Node Designation: Sector Wynn
Integration Rate: 99.997%
Anomaly Detected: 1 (Unlinked Subject Present)
Correction Pending — Next Storm Cycle
Estimated Impact Window: 23 Hours 59 Minutes
Wind brushed the glass like static. Lights flickered once—subtle, deliberate.
Inside the hum of a perfect world, something had begun to falter.
And for the first time in his life, Aren Wynn wasn't sure if that was a problem…
or an invitation.