The ding hangs in the cave like a coin dropped into a very patient well.
I lie there and count my breaths. One, two, three. The dead thing with the zipper for a mouth is still dead. The crack in the ceiling still insists there's a sky somewhere. The puddle still returns a face that belongs to me but looks like it stole my jawline from a younger man who sleeps eight hours and eats breakfast.
On breath four, a translucent blue screen pops into existence a handspan from my nose. It lets the cave show through and follows my eyes when I try to look away, which is rude in a way only rectangles can manage.
"Please do not run," says a voice inside my head, friendly and faintly theatrical. "I would only follow, and then we have a chase scene neither of us is dressed for."
I blink. I consider concussion, morphine, religious visions, and the fact that my kid brother once explained to me at two in the morning, over cold pizza and a sense of mission, that all the proper stories have blue screens, starter guides, and a freebie for people who won't read the manual. He had charts. He had confidence. He had never been punched by a cave.
"What are you?" I ask, because "am I hallucinating flatware" feels like the wrong opening line.
"Second Life Compass," the voice says. "Guide, not game. I point, you walk, later we both pretend it was your idea. I provide directions, gentle scolding, and limited applause. Think of me as a very supportive stage manager who refuses to go onstage."
Words appear on the blue, neat as parade boots.
Primary Desire: Live a fulfilling and happy life. Protect those you choose and who choose you.
That is exactly the sentence I promised myself under hospital lights. Seeing it typed by an overconfident window makes it feel like a contract I signed with a pen I don't remember picking up.
"No levels," the Compass continues, brisk and reassuring. "No experience bars. No daily chores. I do maps, not homework."
"What do you keep track of?" I ask, because if the rectangle is going to talk, we might as well have nouns.
"Four lanes," it says. "Internal Darkflow, External Darkflow, Steel, Bonds. Kept simple so you do not die of reading."
The lines update.
Internal Darkflow: push the current inward to strengthen your body and perform your arts. Hold ground. Steady your hands. Move when you intend to move.
External Darkflow: send the current outward to tame existing undead or build them from monster remains.
Steel: not one style—your catalogue of fighting arts, combined and sharpened. It improves because you train and win well, not because a number goes up.
Bonds: trust and promises that stick. Choose joy on purpose and people open doors instead of closing them.
It is unreasonably tidy for a thing that just crawled out of nowhere. Then again, I woke up with a new face and a dead creature that looks like a wolf designed by committee, so the threshold for unreasonable has shifted.
"Let us see what you brought with you," the Compass says. If a screen could clap its hands briskly, this one does.
New text appears.
Skills Recognized.
From Earth: Close-Quarters Control. Small-Unit Tactics. Field Medicine. Negotiation Under Stress. Survival and Navigation. Marksmanship. Striking Arts: boxing, Muay Thai, savate, a handful of Systema tricks your instructors frown at. Grappling: judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, wrestling, the sort of clinch work you learn in places with bad lighting. Blades: military knife work, sabre and foil, escrima sticks that become knives that become anything to hand. Improvised weapons: yes.
From This Life: Sabre Form I. Basic mana sense. Noble etiquette. Ballroom and court dances. Academy codes.
Darkflow Status: Internal unstable. External untouched.
"Ballroom," I say, because it is the funniest noun on the list.
"You are an eighteen-year-old heir to a dukedom," the Compass says, patient as a butler. "You can dance without injuring anyone, bow in the correct order, and remember which fork is for salad. Please try not to look astonished in public."
My brother would have loved that. See, even the villain can waltz, he would have said, and then he would have given me twenty-seven reasons why a waltz at the end of Act One is the perfect tone shift.
"Steel is all of that," I say, looking at the catalogue. "Not a single school."
"A toolkit," the Compass agrees. "You already turn boxing entries into judo foot sweeps and trade knife angles for sabre economy. Steel grows when you use the right thing at the right time and keep the people around you standing. Not when you count to a number and call yourself taller."
That is so close to something one of my old instructors used to say that I almost laugh. The cave swallows the impulse whole.
Another panel slides in like a shopkeeper nudging a display to the front of the stall.
Compass Store. I sell knowledge and goods. If it exists, and it is for sale, and you can pay, you can buy it. I do not sell instant victories. Prices are coin, monster essence, or, rarely, a task. If something is extremely ill-advised, I will cough loudly. Balance: coins 0, essence 0, tasks owed 0.
"Excellent," I say. "Broke in two lives."
"Starter packs are for people who fill out surveys," the Compass says. "However, I am not without heart. You have one free item for being alive on purpose."
A single line brightens.
Internal Darkflow Primer: Anchor Step — free.
"Just that?" I ask, suspicious of charity.
"Temper expectations," it says. "Accept gifts."
"Fine. Show me."
The screen contracts into a small sheet that feels like a drill you always knew and only forgot because someone replaced your life. Breathe four in through the nose. Hold two. Roll it out on three. Set heel, ball, toes. Do not clutch at the cold; ask it to sit where you need it. Use it; do not admire it.
I follow the cadence. The cave gives me back weight in my legs and steadiness in my hands. There is no lightning, no taste of metal, just the absence of the tiny slip that makes everything maddening. When I slide the sabre a thumb's breadth from its sheath and move on the exhale, the motion runs clean. It is the kind of improvement you only notice because irritation stops.
"Very good," the Compass says, genuinely pleased. "Please resist carving your initials into the wall. The wall will not be impressed."
"What else do you sell," I ask, looking at the shelves I cannot afford.
The store unfolds like a market setting up at dawn. Rope, fifty feet, decent. Torch kit. Map scrap pointing toward a sensible exit. Sabre oil and cloth. Sabre Flowchart One, Earth style; three entries, two exits, one reset. A note hovers to one side as if trying not to brag: larger things appear when you stop being lost and fragile. Harness plans for flight-capable constructs. Accord phrases that won't start wars. Portable workshop chest. Advanced court dances. You are charming; we can sharpen that.
"Coins at zero," I say again.
"You can pay later," the Compass answers. "Dungeons are full of things that turn into money, maps, and regrets. For now, you have a free primer and an alarming amount of training."
I look down at my hands. They look eighteen. They move like thirty years have rented space and laid out their tools. I flex my fingers and feel the little injuries that never quite healed, not as pain, but as memory. The body recognizes the motions like a dog recognizes the leash.
"If this is hypoxia," I say, because someone should argue, "or a better class of fever dream—"
"If it is hypoxia, you would be having trouble reading the fine print," the Compass says, with the air of a teacher who has seen this page in a book a hundred times. "If it is a dream, we should still make good choices. Dreams judge. Also, your younger brother warned you about blue screens."
He did. He warned me about ignoring tutorials, too. He said the system always nudges you toward your first summon like a waiter with bread you didn't order and can't refuse. He also said never to romance the saint first, but that was another lecture.
I sit up. Pebbles complain. The dead beast does not. The crack in the ceiling does its best impression of hope. Somewhere in the distance, water patiently continues being water. My breath evens out. My heart, which has been attempting to escape through my ribs since I woke, finally accepts that it lives here now.
"All right," I say. "Map scrap, rope, torch, oil—later. Primer—now. Steel—always. Bonds—when they let me. External Darkflow—"
"Soon," the Compass says, almost too quickly. It's an interesting choice of word. Soon is not now, but it is also not a year from Tuesday.
"You're hiding something," I say.
"I am saving the surprise," it says, with the satisfied glint of a magician who has already palmed the coin. "Narrative timing."
"Of course you are."
I breathe the primer again, because competence is a habit you grow by watering. The cold sits where I ask. My hands still. The floor agrees to be a friend and not a suggestion. I think about Lila's mouth trying not to smile when she was meant to be serious. I think about Nora's careful, precise braids and Max's dinosaur. I think about a very simple sentence on a very blue page: live well; protect the people you choose and the ones who choose you. None of that happens if I rot quietly in a cave because I was too proud to accept help from a luminous rectangle with opinions.
"Fine," I say. "Show me—"
The Compass interrupts, very gently, with the efficiency of a maître d' placing exactly the plate you were going to order anyway.
The entire screen shutters, once. A new line blooms in the middle as if the rectangle has been waiting for the drum roll and has finally allowed itself one.
Materials recognized.
A second line arrives, even tidier, and for a heartbeat the cave feels smaller because suddenly the story knows where I am.
Would you like to make this beast your first undead summon now.
Begin Quick Forge: Bone Hound — Y / N.