In the history of the Grand Awakening, eleven people had received an F Rank before me.
I became the twelfth in front of fifty thousand people, national cameras, and my fiancée.
It would be a lie to say I hadn't seen it coming. Not the F specifically — nobody sees an F coming, it's the kind of thing that happens to other people, to the documented cases in awakening pathology textbooks that you read in class without ever really believing they apply to someone real. But something. A lightness in the prep simulations. Results that were never catastrophic, never brilliant either. The kind of file that exists without taking up space.
I was eighteen years old with a file that took up no space.
Maybe that was the sign.
~~~
The Central Arena of Valdris at seven in the morning smelled like cold sweat and warm hope — a combination I'd recommend to nobody. Fifty thousand people in the stands, the Minister at the podium for his twenty-two minute opening speech that everyone endured on their feet, and us — the candidates — lined up on the synthetic field in standard white uniforms, packed together like too many teeth in too small a jaw.
I stood somewhere in the middle and watched the giant screens cycle through names.
Rank D — polite applause. Rank C — a little warmer. Rank B — people half-rose from their seats. Rank A — the stadium lost its mind, tears in the stands, strangers embracing each other, the kind of collective moment that reminds you humans are capable of their best when it's not their own happiness on the line.
A red-haired girl had gotten an A+ an hour earlier. I'd looked at my shoes through the applause.
Not out of jealousy. Well, not only. It was more that forcing a smile for someone else that morning would have cost something I couldn't afford to spend.
— Ryn Ashvael.
My name through the speakers.
Let's go.
The Awakening Slab looked like a scar in the ground — translucent stone, faint internal glow, three meters across. Seeing it up close for the first time, I thought stupidly that it was smaller than in the official videos. I climbed the three steps. Positioned myself in the center. The vibration rose through my feet immediately — soft at first, then deeper, something searching inside me and taking its time.
I fixed a point straight ahead. Hands behind my back. Sun on the back of my neck.
Three seconds.
Five.
Ten.
The screen stayed blank.
The first murmur swept through the stands at the twelfth second — just curiosity, nothing alarming yet. But the Slab kept vibrating in uneven pulses beneath my feet, irregular, hesitant, like an engine hunting for a frequency it couldn't find. I had the very clear sensation that the System had gone through everything I was, looked in every category, and come back empty-handed.
There's nothing to read. There's nothing there.
Twenty seconds.
The screen lit up.
RANK: FCLASS: —STATUS: CLASSLESSSYSTEM ERROR: INSUFFICIENT OR CORRUPTED DATA
The silence lasted exactly two seconds. I counted them.
Then someone laughed.
Just one laugh at first — involuntary, brief, the kind you try to smother half a second too late. Then another. Then the whispers spread like a match dropped in dry paper — Rank F did you see that, Rank F, he doesn't even have a class, what is that, is it an error, no the screen says it's him — and the laughter swelled, merged, organized itself into something almost festive, that light collective cruelty of crowds when they realize they can.
I was still standing on the Slab.
Eyes on the red F blinking on the giant screen — patient, relentless — thinking in a very calm and very dissociated way that eleven people before me had seen exactly this. Documented pathological cases. Neurological blocks. Congenital anomalies. People with something fundamentally broken on the inside.
Twelfth case.
An official in a grey suit approached with the expression of someone managing an embarrassing emergency within the scope of his duties. He said words — verification, exceptional, personalized follow-up — smooth words designed to wound nobody and help nobody either. I nodded because that was what you did. I walked down the three steps.
The laughter shifted texture as I came back down. Less sharp. A little uncomfortable. Like the crowd was collectively realizing there was an actual human at the end of the joke and that complicated things slightly.
That's when the VIP tribune mic turned on.
I stopped without meaning to.
The VIP tribunes had open broadcast systems — noble tradition, official declarations, nobody ever actually used them, it was considered exhibitionist. In ten years of nationally broadcast Grand Awakenings, not one member of the great families had ever spoken from those tribunes.
— Our arrangement is dissolved.
Four words. Lirien's voice.
Perfectly steady. Perfectly audible throughout the entire stadium. No tremor, no hesitation, not even the effort of a simulated emotion. The same intonation she'd have used to cancel a restaurant reservation — neutral, final, already moving on.
I turned toward the VIP tribunes despite myself.
She'd already put the mic down. She was looking at the screens, not at me — as though the declaration had been filed, archived, handled. White dress, hair pinned up, the cold constructed beauty that went with her name and the three generations of Rank A that preceded her. She wasn't looking at me. Not out of calculated cruelty. Just because looking at me would have been wasted time.
That was the worst part. Not the four words. Not the public breakup. The fact that she hadn't thought it worth looking me in the face to do it.
The laughter in the stands picked back up — fed, delighted, someone shouted a joke about classless fiancés from the general admission section and there were actual applause. I put one foot in front of the other and kept walking toward the side exit with the sound of fifty thousand people at my back.
I was crossing the edge of the field when I saw her.
Block C. Middle row. She wasn't laughing.
That's what hit me first — not her face, not her black hair cut straight at the jaw, not the way she sat slightly forward like someone waiting for something to finally begin. Just that: she wasn't laughing. In fifty thousand people who were laughing, checking their phones, or staying quiet out of calculated discomfort, she was the only one doing something else.
She was watching me.
Not with pity. Not with the morbid curiosity of a bystander at an accident. With precise attention — the kind you give to important things, to things you've been following for a long time. Her hands were flat on her knees, perfectly still. And at the corner of her lips there was something imperceptible — not quite a smile, more the slight tension of someone who's been holding something back for too long and is starting to struggle.
Like she'd been waiting for this moment before I'd even lived it myself.
I held her gaze for two seconds without knowing why I wasn't looking away. Something about that attention unsettled me in a way I couldn't have named — not fear, not ordinary discomfort. The feeling of being read. Not watched. Read. Like a page someone re-reads because they already know how it ends.
I walked past. She disappeared behind me.
Her face stayed.
The ride back took forty minutes.
I stood in the subway car even when seats opened up. I still had the white uniform on — I hadn't thought to bring a change of clothes, I'd thought about the after, the celebration, Lirien. Two fifteen-year-olds at the other end of the car were whispering over their phones and glancing at me. The Awakening screen had probably already made the rounds everywhere. RANK F. CLASSLESS. SYSTEM ERROR. Maybe with Lirien's audio clip as a bonus. Maybe with a catchy headline.
I got off one stop early.
My apartment was on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator that smelled like damp walls and cheap detergent. I climbed the stairs, opened my door, threw my keys on the table without turning on the lights. My bedroom window faced a brick wall. I sat on my bed in the dark and let things land for real.
Rank F. Twelfth case. No fiancée. No prospect of joining a Guild, a squad, anything that required a minimum Rank — which meant practically everything I'd imagined for my life, even in its most modest versions. A door closed cleanly from the other side.
I would have liked a good solid rage with a clear target. Or sadness at least, something you cry out and get through. But it was just the void — that slow fall after missing a step in the dark, when you realize the floor isn't there anymore and you haven't hit the bottom yet.
My phone buzzed on the bed.
I turned it over. Then I realized the light hitting my hand wasn't coming from the screen.
It was coming from the air in front of me.
Twenty centimeters from my face. Faint blue-white. A text window suspended in the dark of my bedroom, translucent and perfectly still, waiting for me to read it.
I reached out. My fingers passed through it without breaking it apart.
VOID SYSTEM — INITIALIZATION IN PROGRESSHOST IDENTIFIED: RYN ASHVAELCOMPATIBILITY: 100.00%
WARNING: THIS SYSTEM DOES NOT EXIST IN THE OFFICIAL DATABASE WARNING: YOU ARE THE FIRST HOST IN 1,247 YEARS
WARNING: NO OTHER USER CAN SEE THIS WINDOW
PROGRESS: 0%AWAITING CONFIRMATION…
I stared at the floating screen for a long time.
Outside, Valdris was getting on with its evening — the stadium finishing its announcements, the internet catching fire, Lirien probably erasing our arrangement from the family records with the same quiet efficiency she put into everything. And I was sitting in the dark of a fourth-floor walkup reading a system warning that nobody else in the world could see.
First host in 1,247 years.
Rank F. Classless. Twelfth case in thirty years. The most humiliating day of my life.
And now this.
A laugh climbed up my throat — small, crooked, the kind that comes when a situation so completely exceeds what you can rationally process that there's nothing left but that. I looked at the floating window, the cursor blinking softly, waiting for my answer.
0%.
I reached toward the text.