The Scriptorium hid under the aqueduct, where the city's water sang in a steady four-count and the air smelled like ink and limestone. It wasn't a grand hall. It was a long room with low shelves, paper strung on lines to dry, lamps that hummed instead of flickered, and a clerk who looked like a scarecrow had apprenticed as a librarian.
"Archivist Oryn," he said, before Goose could ask. He wore ink-stained gloves and spectacles with one cracked lens he had never cared to replace. "You must be the Undeclared."
Goose considered correcting him with "Goose," then decided Undeclared was a mood and let it stand. Freedom peered from his shoulder, sniffed the ink, and stole Oryn's quill in one quick, scandalized-snort motion.
"Put that down," Oryn told the dragon, not unkindly.
Freedom put it down. The tip now had teeth.
Oryn sighed like a man who kept a drawer of spare tips just for this.
"You missed intake," he said to Goose, already moving down the shelves. "Not your fault. Something filed you under Administration: No, the system had some glitch and dumped you in the Barrens. Happens to one in ten thousand never. Do you prefer 'son' or 'citizen' or 'do not address'?"
"Goose," Goose said. His voice still felt like a borrowed tool that fit his hand.
"Goose," Oryn echoed, approving a word that didn't fight its consonants. "Right. You'll need an orientation, or you'll wander into a temple and sign up to be a god by accident. Follow me."
Goose followed, but he wondered if it was too late for that.
They stopped before five floor lamps arranged in a half circle. They weren't electric—they were… awake. Each globe held a different color of light, and the hum each made braided into the aqueduct's rhythm without arguing with it.
"Five Lamps," Oryn said. "Sixty seconds in each. Sip, do not swallow. You'll get an honest taste of the power systems without marrying any of them. Not much is known about the game creators, but they crafted a magnificently detailed product. If you feel like bleeding from the eyes, step backward."
He pointed with a capped quill at the first lamp. Its light was a soft green shot through with gold dust, and the air around it smelled like wet stone after summer rain. Goose finally noticed the transluscent prompt hovering in space before him.
[System]
🧘♂️ IMMORTAL PATH – Qi Refiner Class
Class Name: ✦ Mystic Disciple
Core Playstyle: Balanced cultivation through environment attunement, energy flow, and spiritual breakthroughs.
Primary Resource: Qi (Natural Mana)
"Immortal Path. Qi refiners. Build a qifu—Mana Palace—in the body, climb realms by cultivating essence, insight, and spine. Pass through tribulations the way adults pass through midlife. At the end, if you behave and the sky is in a giving mood, Void Immortal and beyond. Breathing matters. Pride matters more than it should." Oryn explained.
If one could call it an explanation.
Goose stepped into the lamp's circle.
The world narrowed to breath. Not a trick: the room receded until all that existed was inhale, hold, exhale, and the little silk thread between them. His awareness sank inside his ribs; he felt an emptiness in his belly that wasn't hunger so much as unclaimed room. When he breathed right, the space warmed. A seed. He saw—no, felt—the outline of a palace where nothing stood yet: eaves like crescent moons, a courtyard with no stones, a gate refusing to be named. He reached for it—sixty seconds ended. The light clicked off with the politeness of a teacher rescuing a student from a good mistake.
Oryn's eyebrows tipped. "You did not try to force the gate. That bodes. Most boys see a palace and kick it."
Goose stepped out, cheeks cool, pulse slow.
"The second, Divine Wonder." The lamp burned white-blue, steady as a held note.
[System]
💪 DIVINE WONDER – Body Refiner Class
Class Name: ✦ Titanblood Acolyte
Core Playstyle: Brute-force regeneration, divine strikes, and internal core cultivation.
Primary Resource: Vital Might (refined essence)
"Divine Wonder. Body refiners. Forge a Divine Core. Punch through philosophy. Yeah, awaken your bones' old memories, negotiate with your blood. Heal from parts. Strongest late-game in straight lines. Also, the path most likely to produce insufferable poetry about 'the body as a star-forge.'"
Goose entered the light.
His hearing sharpened until he could pick the hum of each lamp apart from the aqueduct. Under his breastbone, something primal answered a question it had been waiting centuries to hear. His heart didn't beat harder. It beat… wiser. An afterimpression of heat rolled down his spine, stopping at places that felt like locks. His right hand tingled where he'd bled on the altar. He didn't get power; he got a sense of where it could live, if he built the furnace for it.
Sixty seconds. The lamp dimmed.
"Steady," Oryn murmured, ink-smile thin. "You didn't flex."
"Is that a thing?" Goose asked, confused.
"People do push-ups at the scent of a weight room," Oryn said. "Third lamp."
This one was a cool violet with hair-thin gold threads flickering inside it like lightning that had learned manners.
[System]
🧠 ARCANE VOCATION – Force Formulator Class
Class Name: ✦ Rune Architect
Core Playstyle: Puzzle-based power scaling via custom force formulas and logic chains.
Primary Resource: Mental Strain + Mana
"Force Formulators. Mind Refiners. Dissect the cosmos, they say. Arcanists etch formulae—runes, if you're unsophisticated—into the pineal center and other willing tissues. Force calculus with a side of austerity. You'll feel lines. Resist the urge to draw them on me."
Goose stepped in, and the room turned to vectors. Lines revealed themselves: the stress arc inside the aqueduct stone, the coherent field shivering between lamps, the way Oryn's spectacles pulled light into a focal knot. A geometric kindness drew itself over his skin—if this, then that—as if his pores had learned to solve for x. He saw how a circle drawn at a certain wrist angle would cancel a shove, how a sigil stitched into a cloak hem would throw rain off like oil. He itched for chalk.
He suddenly had a better understanding of the denizens of Azurehaven. Hollow Bridge, at the very least, was a haven for arcanists. Maybe Khalid was a cultivator? He couldn't be sure. What, then, was he? Did everyone else pick a class at game start?
Goose suddenly felt he had been a puppet who didn't know he needed someone's hand to move.
Freedom made a small, disgruntled chirp; the formulas had no place to seat a dragon's opinion.
Time.
"Fourth," Oryn said, and his tone softened a hair. "Dream Weaving."
[System]
🧵 DREAM WEAVING – Reality Shaper Class
Class Name: ✦ Threadcaller
Core Playstyle: Illusionist/controller who manipulates perception, probability, and timelines.
Primary Resource: Thread Count (limited per weave). Reality is a mutable construct.
The light was not a color. It was a remembered lullaby. It smelled like old paper and clean linen, like the moment after laughter before grief remembers itself again.
"This one is rare. You weave memory, emotion, and intent. Edit small fate. Pull echoes. It is also the path most likely to ruin you if you lie to yourself. Problem is, no one can pull it off. Out of the millions of players worldwide, only three are weavers."
Goose stepped into the lamp and didn't step anywhere. The Scriptorium stayed. The aqueduct kept time. Threads slipped into visibility like spider silk in morning mist. One ran from Freedom's chest to something far above the lamps; another ran from Goose's pocket—the Ashen Memory Fragment—back to the Barrens and forward to a place with ash-cold air. He heard music that wasn't in the room and realized, with a slight shock, it was his. He plucked one thread with a thought—not pulling, just tasting—and Aria's street phrase answered from somewhere in the city, amused.
Sixty seconds rang like a bell.
Oryn's eyes warmed behind cracked glass. "Yes. That one likes you. What a treat. Be careful who you invite to tea in there."
"The fifth," he added, voice back to dry. The lamp was a red so dark it had gone black at the edges. Something about it was hungry.
[System]
👹 DEMONIC PATH – Evolutionist Class
Class Name: ✦ Flesh Adversary
Core Playstyle: Chaotic, self-mutating tank/DPS with incredible adaptability.
Primary Resource: Hunger Meter + Biomass
"Demonic Path. Eat, evolve, break, repeat. Explosive growth, monstrous costs. This is a city; I am me; you are you. You do not have to step into that light."
Goose looked. Freedom bared tiny teeth. The lamp hummed in a key that made the aqueduct water sound foul. Goose stepped beside its circle and bowed a little, like acknowledging a dangerous neighbor through a shared fence. The lamp's hum did not grow louder. It did not need to.
"Wise," Oryn said simply. He clapped dust from his gloves. "That's the tasting spoon. Now, because you missed intake, you also missed the lesson on the Dream Codex. Let's fix that before you mistake it for a diary."
He led Goose to a lectern with a book that wasn't a book—thin as a palm, cover like woven light, edges that refused to get smudged. When Goose put his hand to it, it opened itself to a blank page that already remembered him.
"The Codex is soul-bound," Oryn said. "It writes you, not tasks. It records Thread Trials—moral architecture in story shape. When you solve one, it gives a small, permanent Thread Boon that suits how you solved it. Not a loot lottery. A mirror."
Words appeared where Goose's fingers rested, not letters so much as phrasing: Nameless Mercy (prepared); Heretic's Flame (prologue); Bridge Cadence (learned). Underneath, a tiny line of music wrote itself and paused, waiting to be finished later.
"It also holds Song Shards," Oryn continued. "Fragments of places' rhythms. Socket them into instruments or gear, and the world humors you. You'll want a satchel. And you'll want not to open the Memory Pages when you're bleeding."
"What are Memory Pages?"
"The Codex sometimes… returns things," Oryn said delicately. "A page might show you something you'd forgotten on purpose. Or something you never lived and still ought to remember. If one appears, sit down before you read it."
Goose nodded, throat tight. The piano room trembled at the edge of his mind like a hand reaching through water.
"Two last things," Oryn said, brisk again. "The system tips you see in the air can be toggled down by severity. You have them on 'polite.' I recommend keeping them that way. And because your intake flagged you as Undeclared (Threadbearer), I can grant a Provisional Dual-Study Waiver. This allows you to choose another class without exp penalty."
"What's the cost?"
"Experience grows slower if you greedily try to be everyone," Oryn said. "But you're not trying to be everyone. You're letting Dream Weaving breathe while sampling either Immortal or Arcane fundamentals. The waiver expires at Second Sky ascension; you'll need to declare a primary path then, or accept steeper penalties and social consequences."
He slid a small brass stamp across the lectern. "Put your thumb here if you accept the terms that you don't fully understand and won't pretend to."
Goose smiled despite himself and touched the stamp. It warmed and left a clean circle on his skin that didn't smear. [Dual-Study Waiver: Active] chimed in his peripheral with a merciful lack of fanfare.
"Time dilation," Oryn added, almost as an afterthought. "You look like someone with a sister who worries, and the kind of face that says you'll be gentle with her worry. The First Sky runs… let's call it fifteen days to her one hour, give or take, depending on whose clock you believe. You have time to explore before she pries open the pod and feeds you soup."
Goose's stomach made a quiet, traitorous sound at the word soup. Freedom echoed it, far less quiet.
"Pocket these," Oryn said, handing over a thin booklet and a small, rune-stamped tin. "Pocket Primer—Codex shortcuts, emergency breathing patterns, five pages of my sarcasm. The tin has nerve-salve for when you commit to learning too fast. Also, a card for Joram, who will sell you things for too much money and then feel guilty and throw in thread."
He hesitated, then pulled one more item from a drawer: a charm the size of a coin, etched with three radiating lines. "And this. System Tips toggle. Tap it when the world is loud and you prefer your own voice."
Goose tucked the primer, the tin, the charm into his satchel. The Codex warmed under his palm, pleased to be treated like a tool and not a relic.
"Questions?" Oryn asked.
"A hundred," Goose said. He didn't even know why it seemed like Oryn had been expecting him. "And none you can answer with a pamphlet."
"Good." Oryn dusted his hands. "Good questions take walking. Two final advisories. One: If you hear someone try to sell you tribulation insurance, kick them in the shins. Two: Any time you're tempted to 'tap the rhythm' of a place to see what lives there, listen first. If the floor taps back—"
"Don't tap," Goose finished.
"Remember, dying in the game has a risk of stroke or something. Live a long time," Oryn agreed. He tilted his head. "Unless you insist on being interesting."
"Working on it," Goose replied, but then had a thought.
"Mm." Oryn's mouth did the ghost of a smile. "Go on then, Undeclared Goose. The bridge wants your hands today. The market wants your coin. And the city wants to decide whether to like you."
Freedom leaned forward and deposited the chewed quill back into Oryn's palm with the solemnity of an apology. Oryn accepted it as if it were a formal offering from a foreign court.
"Welcome to Azurehaven," he said. "Try not to sign any long-term contracts with mirrors."
As Goose turned to go, the Dream Codex fluttered—just a page, just a breath—and revealed, on a corner only he could see, a half-inked staff with a bar of notes waiting to be finished. He hummed under his breath without meaning to. The aqueduct answered in the old four-count, practical and steady as a heartbeat with a job.
Outside, the Hollow Bridge was calling, and Aria's etudes sounded like a dare.
And if he cut sideways through the market on the way, Joram would pretend not to notice him buying a better drum skin and a cheaper shirt. A wall would gain a new chalk line somewhere—a dragon with one eye open, a child with two fingers on its scales, drawn by a hand that remembered old banners.
There were arcanists. There were blacksmiths. There were musicians and hunters, oh my!
But more importantly:
He had time.
He had a map.
He had a book that would not lie to him, unless he asked it to.
Stepping foot on the lift, the south terraces fell away into light.