The monsters never come all the way to the orphanage.
They get close. Some nights you can hear them: distant roars, the thin metallic scream of raid sirens, the crack of spells hitting barrier wards. Six and a half years since the Shatter tore a hole between our world and ShatterDream Online, and the feeds are still full of dungeon leaks and glitch mobs tearing through neighborhoods that used to only worry about traffic and rent.
But they never quite make it past our block.
We're tucked near the edge of a Yellow zone, under an old ward net that technically expired three budgets ago. The city keeps renewing it anyway, probably out of guilt. St. Mary's Home for Children was here before the Shatter, and someone in an office somewhere still remembers that.
"Celeste!" Sister Marta yells from the kitchen. "You're going to miss your slot!"
"I'm almost done!" I call back. "Two more arms and I'm free."
The arms in question belong to Leo, who is five, sticky, and vibrating with the kind of excitement only sugar and impending System involvement can cause. I wrangle him into his puffy yellow jacket. His hood slips sideways over his eyes. His little elf ears—longer and pointier than human, with soft brown fuzz at the tips—poke through slits someone carefully cut in the fabric.
"You only have two arms, silly," he says, giggling.
"Exactly," I say, tugging his zipper up. "Which means I just used my entire daily arm quota on you. Go show the mirror your battle form."
That does it. He bolts for the cracked mirror in the hallway, wooden sword in hand, bare feet slapping the warped boards because "I run faster without shoes." Three more little kids stampede after him: our baby Dragonborn, with the faint shimmer of scales on her cheeks when she smiles; the Catfolk toddler whose ears twitch whenever someone says "snack"; and a human girl whose only visible power so far is the ability to cry exactly when the social worker arrives.
All of them are five or younger.
Born after the Shatter. Their parents died in raids, or dungeon accidents, or "isolated incidents" that were not supposed to happen in zones marked safe. Somebody, somewhere, checked a box that sent them here instead of anywhere else.
Unlike us older ones, they never "changed." They were born already tagged: [ELF CHILD], [DRAGONBORN CHILD], [CATFOLK CHILD]. For them, long ears and tails and baby scales are normal.
Older kids, the ones my age, still look human. At least on the outside.
When the aurora first came and the System went live, older teens and adults got hit with emergency assignments. Some woke up exactly as they were. Others opened their eyes and realized their bodies had shifted to match whatever race tag appeared over their names. People logged into ShatterDream got the full avatar treatment in one traumatic download. A few non-players had their own surprise morphs when the System decided their shiny new [ELF] or [DRAGONBORN] tags should match reality and reshaped them on the spot.
Some people loved it. Elves on social media posting, "Eternal skincare unlocked, thanks, System." Others spent the next few years muttering, "I did not need scales to run a bakery."
Kids like me and Santo missed that wave by a few months. Too young to get swept up in the first panic patch, too old to be born pre-loaded. Blank HUDs, human bodies, lots of questions.
The common room hums with noise: cartoons on the flickering screen, the hiss of the old space heater, the murmur of half a dozen conversations. It smells like burned toast, cheap soap, and the cocoa I bribed the early risers with.
I stand there for a second, watching it all, and try to download the moment straight into my bones.
Just in case.
"Celeste."
Sister Marta's voice is closer now.
I turn.
She's in her standard uniform: faded gray cardigan, practical slacks, hair mostly gray and scraped back into a bun that will surrender by lunchtime. Age and stress have carved deeper lines around her mouth, but her eyes are the same as when I got dumped here at ten—dark and sharp and too soft for this job.
She gives me a look that is half inspection, half affection. "You're stalling."
"Boot emergency," I say. "Very serious. Life or death."
She snorts. "You said that when Laila went for her ceremony."
"That was different," I say. "Laila's boots had holes."
"So do yours," she says, glancing pointedly at my sneakers. "And Laila still made it to her appointment on time. With a class that came with benefits."
I can't argue with that.
Laila turned eighteen at the Summer Solstice. She came back with [LV 1 HEALER – FIELD MEDIC] floating over her head, a signed apprenticeship in a Green zone, and a smile so wide it hurt to look at. She left three days later with one backpack and a stack of promises to visit.
She hasn't.
"I'll make it," I say.
"You'll make it," Marta echoes, but it sounds like she is trying to convince herself.
Her gaze flicks down over my outfit: black hoodie with a fraying cuff, faded jeans, beat-up sneakers. My hair is in a lazy braid down my back. My eyes are… there. Brown. Tired.
"Do you want to change?" she asks. "It's an important day."
I look at myself, then at her. "Do you have a secret stash of formal wear and a glamor mage in the supply closet?"
"Not yet."
"Then I think this is my final form."
Her mouth twitches. Then she steps in and pulls me into a hug.
For three seconds, I let myself be held. My cheek against her shoulder, arms around her back, breathing in coffee, laundry detergent, and the particular St. Mary's scent of old wood, crayons, and too many kids in too small a space.
"Whatever the crystal says," she murmurs, "you come straight back. Do you hear me? No dungeon detours. No scavenger jobs. No 'I'm just stopping by the market' that somehow turns into escorting a guild run."
"That was one time," I protest into her cardigan.
"Celeste, you came home with ooze in your hair and a bill for 'damaged mop.'"
"In my defense, the posting said 'low-risk cleanup.' It did not mention that the slimes had cousins."
"Promise me."
I pull back enough to look at her. The circles under her eyes are darker than ever. The orphanage budget hasn't hit "comfortable" once since the Shatter, and the last two older kids besides me Classed into things that pulled them straight into Orange zones. She is tired of watching her kids walk toward danger and call it opportunity.
"I promise," I say. "Touch crystal, get whatever boring class the System spits out, come home. No side quests."
"Good." She reaches into her pocket and presses my ID card into my hand. "Keep this where they can see it."
I look down.
The picture's from when I was twelve. My hair is a dark, frizzy cloud; my cheeks are still soft. I remember that day. The social worker told me to smile and I forgot how.
NAME: CELESTE REYES
STATUS: WARD OF STATE
SPECIES: HUMAN (UNASSIGNED)
ADDRESS: ST. MARY'S HOME FOR CHILDREN – ZONE YELLOW
I tuck it into the inside pocket of my hoodie.
Behind Marta, a voice says, "Hey, Reyes."
I don't need to turn to know who it is. My shoulders tighten anyway.
Santo lounges in the doorway like this is all a joke and he is just here for the snacks. He is technically my age, maybe two months older, but he moves like he has already outgrown this place. Dark hair, smug smile, a jacket two sizes too big so he can hide whatever he has stolen today.
He gives me a slow once-over. "You ready to finally stop being a tutorial NPC?"
Santo was twelve when the Shatter hit. So was I. We were both just a little too young to get swept up in the emergency assignments and just old enough to understand what we missed. A whole generation of "glitch kids," stuck in the gap while the System figured out what to do with us.
"Are you ready to stop being a pain in my ass?" I say, too sweet.
He grins. "Never. I'm thinking I roll Rogue. Or Duelist. Something with style."
"You know you don't get to pick," I say.
"Please. The crystal sees potential." He taps his chest. "This is at least mid-tier protagonist energy."
Marta claps her hands once, sharp. "Enough. Both of you, out. You're in the same group. If you miss your slot, they push you to the end."
"It's not like the crystal's going anywhere," Santo mutters.
"Santo."
He throws up his hands. "Fine, fine. Come on, Reyes. Let's go let a rock judge our worth."
Leo tugs at my sleeve. "Celeste," he whispers. "What class do you want?"
The honest answer rises in my throat: something big, something shiny. Sorcerer, maybe. Paladin. Something that makes people look at me and actually see me for once. Something that matters.
I swallow it.
"Something boring," I say. "Guardian, maybe. Or Ward Technician. Something with steady work in a Green zone."
He wrinkles his nose. "That's lame."
"That's rent," I say. "Rent is the coolest. Rent means I get a door that locks and your slime cousins can't just barge in."
Leo considers that with the solemnity of a tiny general. "Okay," he says finally. "Get a rent class. But also one that can do cool magic. Just a little."
"Got it," I say. "Boring magic only."
He beams and throws his skinny arms around my waist. "Good luck."
Santo salutes with two fingers. "Try not to explode."
"Try not to fail spectacularly in front of everyone you've ever met," I fire back.
"There's like ten of them," he says. "I'll manage."
"Out," Marta says again, softer this time.
I squeeze Leo one more time, let go, and follow Santo out into the bright, chilly LA winter morning.
---
The sky is clear, a pale washed-out blue that has nothing to do with snow and everything to do with smog and wind patterns. The air has a bite to it—not cold like snow, just the kind that will make you regret not bringing a second layer by noon.
From the orphanage steps, the city stretches in weird layers.
Old LA sits underneath: low apartment buildings with peeling paint, chain-link fences, a bus line that never quite makes its schedule. On top of that, in the distance, Aurelia perches wherever it wants. White towers grafted onto concrete. Floating bridges that go nowhere unless you have the right permissions. Streets that dead-end in glowing dungeon gates.
And on the horizon, cutting the skyline like a blade, the Dormant Citadel.
The walls are white stone, too clean to be any kind of local construction, inlaid with thin gold lines that catch the sun. Spires rise behind them, pale and impossible. The outer city has mixed a little with LA—shops and training grounds and an inn or two—but the central palace remains sealed.
Whenever you look at it too directly, your HUD helpfully tags it:
[ZONE: DORMANT CITADEL]
[STATUS: LOCKED]
[SOVEREIGN: N/A]
It has been that way as long as I can remember.
I tear my eyes away and head for the bus stop with Santo at my side.
"You nervous?" he asks after a minute.
"No," I lie.
He snorts. "You're doing that jaw thing."
I unclench. "What jaw thing?"
"The one you do right before you do something heroic and stupid, like taking a slime cleanup job because 'we need the money' and 'I checked the stats.'"
"That was one time," I say automatically.
"Three," he says.
"Do you have to count everything?"
"Someone has to. You're always too busy worrying about everyone else."
I don't answer that.
The bus wheezes up a minute later. The driver's HUD tag reads [LV 2 HUMAN DRIVER – TRANSIT GUILD]. There is a lucky charm ward dangling from the rearview mirror, the kind they give to public employees in mixed zones.
We tap our IDs and shuffle on.
The bus smells like it always does: slightly burnt, slightly stale, very human. The biggest differences now are the faint shimmer of the barrier on the windows and the constant low-level scroll of System info at the edges of my vision.
[ENTERING YELLOW ZONE: Y-4 – ST. MARY'S / SHARD SCAR 17B]
[MONSTER THREAT: MODERATE]
[LAST INCIDENT: 12 DAYS AGO]
Santo drops into the seat across from me, turning it sideways so he can watch both me and the city.
"So," he says. "What do you think I'll get?"
"Plague," I say.
He laughs. "You wish."
"Seriously?" I tilt my head. "Rogue? Duelist? Professional Menace?"
"That last one isn't a class," he says. Then, thoughtful, "Probably."
We fall into an easy silence as the bus rumbles deeper into the city.
We pass a Shard scar where the asphalt has sagged into a low-level dungeon. A translucent barrier shimmers over the entrance, city wards pulsing slow and steady. Behind it, I catch flashes of movement: slimes, glitch wolves, something with too many teeth and not enough skin.
Two teens in patched-up armor lean against the barrier stanchions. One is a Catfolk girl with a greatsword almost as tall as she is. The other is an elf kid, all wiry limbs and nervous energy. Their tags hover clear as we pass:
[LV 3 ELF RANGER – STREET URCHIN]
[LV 4 CATFOLK FIGHTER – DUNGEON SCAVENGER]
The elf's ears twitch when the bus hisses by. The Catfolk's tail swishes once, annoyed.
They are like a lot of older teens now. Some had their races because, before the Shatter, they played ShatterDream as elves or dragonborn and got synced into their avatars in one horrific burst of sensory overload. Others were normal adults when the System decided their new [ELF] or [DRAGONBORN] tags should match reality and reshaped them on the spot. I remember the forums that first year: threads full of "I love my new horns" and just as many full of "why do I have a tail, I work in accounting."
"See?" Santo nudges my foot. "That's the life. Little dungeon runs, quick loot, no curfew."
"Yeah," I say. "Assuming you don't get eaten."
"You worry too much."
"Someone has to," I say again.
We cross into a Green zone and my HUD pings a gentler color.
[ENTERING GREEN ZONE: G-3 – CIVIC CORE / SOLSTICE HALL]
[MONSTER THREAT: LOW]
The buildings get taller, cleaner, more official. The graffiti gives way to guild logos and city seals. The Solstice Hall comes into view: a big, ugly concrete box from one angle and a beautiful fantasy atrium from another, the two mashed together in an architectural argument nobody won.
People flood the plaza in front of it.
Parents clutch their kids' shoulders. Kids check their HUDs compulsively, even though nothing will change until they touch the crystal. Almost everyone our age here is like us, part of the blank cohort. The Solstice ceremonies exist exactly for this: to catch the kids who slipped past the first patch.
A few ex-players lounge at the edges, their non-human features impossible to hide. Elves with long ears and faintly luminous skin. Dragonborn in business casual. An Orc woman in a sharp suit taking a call in three languages at once.
We get off with the crowd.
"You sure you don't want Marta to come?" Santo asks.
"She can't," I say. "Someone has to hold down the orphanage."
"You say that like you're not going to be back in three hours."
"That's the plan," I say.
He gives me a sideways look. "You sound like you don't believe it."
I shrug. "System's weird. Plans don't matter much to it."
The line up the Solstice Hall steps inches forward.
Guards in hybrid armor and city uniforms scan IDs, check for obvious weapons, and keep the flow moving. A city mage in a blue and gold robe stands off to the side, sipping coffee, eyes glowing softly with some kind of detection spell.
When it is our turn, the elf guard who has seen the words "St. Mary's" on forms a hundred times looks from me to Santo.
"ID cards," he says.
We pass them over.
He scans Santo's first. "Santo Morales. Age eighteen. Ward of state. Yellow zone. No prior Class or Background." He flicks his eyes up. "Ward kids. Got a lot of you on the roster today."
"Gotta keep the brand strong," Santo says, flashing him a grin.
The guard doesn't smile, but something like understanding passes through his eyes. "Just go in, follow the instructions, don't try to impress anyone. The crystal doesn't care how cool you think you are."
"It will when it sees this," Santo says, pointing at himself.
The guard deadpans, "Sure," and hands his card back.
He scans mine next. "Celeste Reyes," he reads. "Same file. Same address. Same orphanage."
"Buy one, get one free," Santo says.
"Good luck," the guard says, actually looking at me this time. "You'll be fine. And don't lick the crystal."
"Why does everyone keep saying that?" I mutter as we shuffle forward.
"Because some idiot licked the crystal," Santo says.
We step inside.
---
The atrium swallows sound and throws it back amplified.
The Solstice crystal stands in the center of the hall like a chunk of aurora trapped in glass. It is taller than I am, multi-faceted, light swirling slowly inside it like something alive. HUD text floats around it in translucent rings:
[WELCOME TO LOS ANGELES–AURELIA SOLSTICE HALL]
[FORM ORDERLY LINE]
[ONE PERSON AT A TIME]
[DO NOT ATTEMPT TO HACK OR LICK THE CRYSTAL]
Plastic chairs line the walls. Clerks in city blue sit behind folding tables, checking names off digital lists. A bored woman with a microphone near the dais recites the same script on loop.
"Step forward when your name is called. Place your dominant hand on the crystal. Keep your mind calm. Do not attempt to channel spells or mana. Do not attempt to bias the System. Do not—Twitch, I swear, if your chat spams 'lick it' one more time…"
The cluster of kids she is glaring at bursts into muffled laughter.
Santo and I find seats near the back. He slouches immediately, stretching his legs out. I sit on the edge of my chair, hoodie sleeves pulled over my hands, heart doing its best impression of a bass drum.
Kids go up. Kids come back.
"Alvarez, Diego!"
He gets [LV 1 BARRIER TECH – SUPPORT ROUTE] and [HOSPITAL BRAT]. His mom sobs into his shoulder.
"Chang, Mei!"
She saunters up with dyed-blue hair and human-round ears, chewing gum like she owns the place. She slaps her hand onto the crystal. Light flares.
A beat later, her HUD updates: [LV 1 ELF RANGER – URBAN SCOUT], [STREET URCHIN].
Her ears sharpen in real time, stretching into points as the race tag settles, skin tightening along new angles. I remember her mom on the news a few years back, one of the early ShatterDream players whose avatar race stuck. Looks like the System just decided to sync the kid to match her elf mom at last.
Mei grins, flicks her new ears experimentally, then fist-pumps and dabs on the crystal while her friends cheer.
"Dunham, Tyler!"
[LV 1 ASSISTANT MANAGER – RETAIL ROUTE]. The clerk assures him managers run the world. His phone pings with a text that makes his face do something complicated.
Sometimes the changes are just text. Sometimes they are not. Every ceremony has at least one kid who walks in looking human and walks out with horns or a tail or new eyes. Some of them laugh. Some stare at their reflections like strangers. Once, a boy burst into tears because he had spent five years making fun of Catfolk and now he was one.
The line inches forward.
I watch, and I count.
How many kids have gone. How many got combat classes. How many got support or civilian. How many walked back with their shoulders high, and how many folded inward like they had been punched.
"Reyes," Santo says at one point, low. "If you get something crazy, you have to cut me in."
"In what?"
"Your future guild," he says. "Your royalty. Your loot. Whatever."
"I'm aiming for 'can pay utilities on time,'" I say.
"Boring," he groans. "That's not a class."
"It should be."
He nudges my knee. "What do you actually want?"
I stare at the crystal.
"Guardian," I say finally. "Or Ward Tech. Maybe Support Healer. Something that gets me a job in a Green zone. Night shifts, hazard pay, boring repeats."
"That's it?" he says. "No big dreams? No 'chosen one'? No Legendary Elf Badass?"
I laugh, a little sharp. "Santo, look at me. Do I look like a chosen one to you?"
He opens his mouth, then pauses. For a second, he actually sees me: the years of double shifts, the circles under my eyes, the permanent tension in my shoulders.
"You look like someone who gets everyone else out alive," he says quietly.
It hits harder than I expect.
"Morales, Santo!" the clerk calls.
He jumps up. "Watch and learn, Reyes. This is how you roll main character."
"Don't lick the crystal!" I yell after him.
"Not helping!" he mutters, but he is grinning.
I watch as he climbs the steps.
He plants his hand on the facet like he owns the place. The crystal hums, light pooling under his palm. His HUD flares bright enough to leak into mine at the edges.
[RACE: ORC]
[CLASS: LV 1 ROGUE – STREET DUELIST]
[BACKGROUND: ORPHANAGE TROUBLEMAKER]
His shoulders bulk under his too-big jacket, muscles filling it out like it finally makes sense. His skin deepens to a warm olive-green; his jaw broadens, and two small tusks nudge his lower lip as he breaks into a delighted grin.
"Oh," he says, voice coming out a little deeper. "Oh, I look incredible."
Someone in the chairs whistles. "Nice pull!"
He bares his new tusks in a bigger grin and jogs back down the steps, still flexing his fingers like he is getting used to the strength in them.
"Called it," I say under my breath. "Professional Menace."
The clerk shakes his head and moves to the next name.
"Reyes, Celeste!"
My stomach drops.
Everything else goes quiet.
I stand. My legs feel like they are made of the cheap canned jelly we sometimes get in donation boxes. The walk from my chair to the dais is maybe twenty steps, but it stretches out like a loading screen.
Eyes follow me. Not all, but enough. I can feel them on my back, on my braid, on the way my hands tuck into my sleeves.
I pass Santo on the way down. He flashes me a thumbs-up, his new tusks peeking when he smiles.
"Rent class, remember," I mutter.
"Or legendary badass," he mutters back. "I'm not picky."
The clerk at the base of the dais looks up from his tablet as I approach.
"Reyes, Celeste," he says. His voice has the flat affect of someone who has read too many names today. "ID?"
I pull my card from my hoodie and pass it over.
He scans it. "Age eighteen. Ward of state. Yellow zone. No prior Class or Background." He nods. "All right, Reyes. Step up, place your dominant hand on the crystal, keep your mind calm. Don't try to force anything. The System already knows what it's doing."
"That's what worries me," I say before I can stop myself.
He snorts. "You and me both. You'll be fine." Then, louder, "Next in line, have your IDs ready!"
I climb the last few steps.
Up close, the crystal hums loud, a low thrumming vibration that I feel in my teeth. The light inside it shifts slowly, like clouds of color moving under glass: gold, silver, blue, green.
I wipe my palm on my jeans. My hand is shaking.
Okay, I tell myself. You touch it. It zaps you. It prints something like [LV 1 GUARDIAN – ZONE WARD] on your HUD. You go home and start applying for boring, safe-adjacent jobs. You get a studio apartment somewhere far from Shard scars. Maybe a plant that you definitely forget to water.
I reach out.
My fingers brush cold, flawless surface.
"Just breathe," the clerk calls.
I press my hand flat against the crystal.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then the System looks at me.
I don't have better words for it. There is no physical grip, no voice. Just a feeling like something very large and very old has turned its attention in my direction for the first time ever.
My HUD flares.
[INITIALIZING SOLSTICE ASSESSMENT…]
[SCANNING SOUL SIGNATURE]
[SCANNING… SCANNING…]
Light surges under my palm, racing up my arm and spiderwebbing through the crystal in branching lines. The hum deepens until I can feel it in my ribs.
I try to pull back. My hand does not move.
"Uh," I say.
The clerk glances up, sees the crystal's glow, and his expression shifts from bored to alert. "It's okay," he says quickly. "Sometimes it just takes a little—"
[MATCH FOUND]
The words slam across my vision.
The light inside the crystal snaps from multicolor to a focused gold-silver. The whole shard goes from aurora swirl to something sharp and deliberate, like it just chose a color scheme and committed.
Gasps ripple through the hall.
"Why is it doing that color—"
"That was the palace ring, right—"
"Get Central on the line now—"
"What even is a Realmweaver—"
I swallow, hard.
My ears are the first to change.
They tingle, then burn, then stretch. My hearing sharpens. The scrape of chair legs on tile, the shuffle of shoes, the whisper of fabric, all of it spikes in clarity. I feel my ears lengthen, cartilage shifting, skin reshaping into points.
My reflection in the nearest facet shows my hair starting to change next.
The dark brown at the roots leaches out, replaced by molten gold, then brightening further into almost white. The color races down the braid in a wave, bleaching everything it touches. In seconds, my hair is a fall of platinum-white, strands slipping loose around my face in soft waves that catch and throw the crystal's light.
Someone swears softly.
My eyes blaze.
For a second, I can't see anything but light—hot, searing gold pouring through my skull, then cool, endless silver. When it clears, the girl staring back at me in the crystal's reflection looks like she has stepped out of someone else's character creation screen.
Same nose. Same mouth. But the thin old scar over my left eyebrow, the one from when I fell off the roof at twelve, is gone. The skin there is smooth and perfect, as if the System decided that mark did not fit whatever race template it just loaded.
Where my eyes used to be brown, they are now mismatched. One molten gold, one bright silver, both pupils narrowing and widening like they are recalibrating to a different spectrum.
My skin prickles along my forehead.
I feel tiny points pushing up under the surface, pressing and then breaking through without pain. It is like a pattern emerging from beneath a thin sheet of ice.
Scales.
Small, overlapping scales bloom across my brow, rich gold at the center of my forehead, fanning out in a crown pattern. They curve along my temples, tracing down my cheekbones, the color fading lighter and lighter until, by the time they reach the point of my chin, they are a soft, shimmering silver.
I look like someone took a sun and a moon and tried to paint them onto my face.
The hall is dead silent now.
My HUD chimes.
Lines of text appear in crisp System font.
[RACE: AURELIAN ELF (CROWNDRAGON LINEAGE) – REALMBOUND]
[BACKGROUND UNLOCKED: SHATTERED HEIR (PRINCESS)]
[CLASS ASSIGNED: REALMWEAVER – SOVEREIGN ROUTE]
[BLOODLINE UNLOCKED: CROWNDRAGON DESCENT – REALM ASPECT]
[BOUND REALM: AURELIA – DORMANT → AWAKENING]
The last line pulses.
For a fraction of a heartbeat, I am not entirely in my body.
Stone. That is what it feels like. Cold, immense, patient stone waking up. Doors unsealing. Windows that have been dark for years flickering with light. Empty halls remembering the weight of footsteps.
Far away, on the horizon, the Dormant Citadel hums like someone just plugged it in.
Voices rise around me.
"Did you see the inner lights—"
"That was the palace ring, right—"
"Get Central on the line now—"
"What even is a Realmweaver—"
My hand finally comes free from the crystal. I stagger back a step. The scales on my face tingle; my new ears catch every whisper whether I want them to or not.
More text scrolls across my HUD.
[SOVEREIGN SIGNATURE VERIFIED]
[ACCESS LEVEL: REALM ADMIN – LIMITED (LV 1)]
[NEW QUESTLINE UNLOCKED: SOVEREIGN OF AURELIA]
A smaller line appears at the bottom, almost delicate.
[WELCOME HOME, YOUR HIGHNESS]
I stare at it.
Home?
Behind me, the clerk is muttering something that sounds like, "Oh, absolutely not," as his tablet dumps error boxes and priority flags into his lap.
The city mage is already hustling toward the dais, robes swishing, eyes lit up like full diagnostics mode. Guards are shifting positions around the room. Santo is halfway out of his seat, mouth hanging open above his new tusks, his Rogue tag and [ORC] race marker flickering over his head.
None of it feels entirely real.
I drop my gaze to my updated status, because at least text is solid.
CELESTE REYES
RACE: AURELIAN ELF (CROWNDRAGON LINEAGE)
CLASS: LV 1 REALMWEAVER – SOVEREIGN ROUTE
BACKGROUND: SHATTERED HEIR (PRINCESS)
BLOODLINE: CROWNDRAGON DESCENT – REALM ASPECT
BOUND REALM: AURELIA (DORMANT → AWAKENING)
There is a tiny blinking icon in the corner.
[STATUS UPDATE AVAILABLE]
Not long ago, my biggest hope was "something boring that pays rent."
Now my HUD is screaming princess at me. Sovereign. Realmweaver. Dragon bloodline. Bound realm that just went from "locked" to "awakening."
For my whole life, I have been the girl no one remembers properly. The one teachers forget to call on, the one cashiers do not look in the eye, the one whose birthday blows past unless I bake my own cake.
I built my whole plan around that. Be small. Be safe. Slide under the radar.
The System has just looked at all of that and gone, No thanks, how about a kingdom instead?
Heat floods my face. My new scales catch the light.
Very quietly, very clearly, in the middle of the Solstice Hall with half the city staring at me, I say the only thing that feels accurate.
"…What the fuck."