Kael Ardent woke to the sound of gears arguing.
Clink. Clank. Click.
Each noise was precise, irritated, and far too close to his skull. For a confused moment he thought someone had shoved a pocket‑watch into his ear while he slept. That would have been strange enough.
But the stranger part was that he wasn't in his dorm room.
He was lying on cold brass flooring, staring up at a rotating chandelier of pressure gauges and spinning cogs. Every few seconds, steam hissed from one of the pipes overhead, releasing a thin veil of silver fog across the ceiling.
Nocthyr.
The realization hit him like a wrench to the jaw. He knew this room. Or rather, he knew the blueprint. The Hall of Initial Weighing, a minor set piece from Eidolon Archive, the game he'd rage‑quit less than twelve hours before.
"Okay," he whispered. "Nope. Absolutely not. We're not doing the whole 'isekai by concussion' thing."
He sat up. Bad choice. A machine somewhere behind him let out a metallic groan, as if offended by the motion.
Kael rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm, blonde hair falling into his eyes. His pulse hammered. He took a slow breath, then another.
The hall around him looked exactly as it had in the game: a cavernous room filled with brass scaffolds, flickering lamps, and suspended glass chambers that pulsed with faint blue light. Long banners of indigo velvet hung from the rafters, each embroidered with a silver emblem of the Veil.
But unlike the game, everything felt… real. Dust clung to the air. The brass floor hummed faintly beneath him. The chandelier above rotated with a soft rhythmic whirr.
This was not a dream.
Which left two possibilities: either he was catastrophically hallucinating, or reality had decided to speed‑run nonsense.
Footsteps echoed down the hall.
Kael scrambled to his feet. The floor tilted under him—no, he was tilting. He caught onto a railing to steady himself.
A figure emerged through the mist: a thin man in a high‑collared coat, carrying a ledger and an expression that screamed tax auditor.
"Name," the man said briskly.
Kael blinked. "Uh. Kael Ardent."
The man flipped through his ledger. "Ardent… Ardent… ah. Yes. Background attendant. Sequence-less. Assigned to the 7th Observation Wing. Expected expiration: Chapter Two, Event Three."
Kael froze.
He remembered this. In the game, background attendants were flavor NPCs. They existed to carry boxes, sweep corridors, and die in really inconvenient scripted disasters.
Specifically: a mass ritual malfunction that turned the 7th Wing into a fine mist.
"Right," Kael said slowly. "So. Good news: I've read the patch notes." He swallowed. "Bad news: I'm apparently DLC."
The man gave him a bland, bored look. "Proceed through the assessment gate."
Kael exhaled through his nose. "Okay. That's fine. I can work with this. I just need to not die. Easy."
He stepped forward, passing under the chandelier. One of the glass chambers lowered itself toward him with a hiss.
The assessor cleared his throat. "Raise your dominant hand."
Kael raised it.
A droplet of golden liquid detached from the chamber above. It hovered, impossibly, defying gravity. His breath hitched.
In the game, this examination determined your potential affinity. Most background attendants failed and were never assigned a Pathway.
He held out his hand.
The droplet fell.
It struck his palm with the warmth of sunlit honey—then sank into his skin like ink into parchment.
Kael gasped.
A jolt shot through his nervous system. Light burst behind his eyelids. His body jerked, knees buckling, as visions spiraled through him: a golden jester mask splitting in a grin, cards spinning like blades, a coin flipping endlessly in the dark.
When he opened his eyes, the assessor had dropped his ledger.
"Oh," the man whispered. "This is… highly irregular."
Kael didn't like the sound of that.
The assessor backed up. "You have resonance with the Pathway of the Gilded Fool."
Kael's stomach dropped. "That's impossible. That's a late‑game Pathway."
Not only late‑game—barred from early characters. The Fool's Path was absurd, unpredictable, and intentionally unstable. It bent probability in ways the devs once described as "ethically questionable."
The assessor straightened, though his voice trembled. "Sequence Nine: Jester of Minor Probability."
Kael stared at him. "I can nudge chance?"
"A negligible degree, yes."
He tried not to grin. "Neat."
A pipe somewhere above them exploded.
Steam blasted downward, scattering the assessor's papers. A heavy wrench dropped from the rafters—a perfect downward arc aimed directly at Kael's skull.
He didn't think. His new ability flared like a spark in his chest.
The wrench should have caved his head in.
Instead, it clipped a chain midair, ricocheted, struck a hanging lantern, bounced, struck a gear, and finally crashed harmlessly into a nearby crate.
Kael stared. "Okay. That was cool."
The assessor stared at him with growing horror. "You—You must leave at once. This hall is unsafe for someone with your… volatility."
Kael clasped his hands together. "So I'm allergic to infrastructure. Great."
Another crash sounded deeper in the facility. The lights flickered.
Kael's heart pounded. He remembered the next scripted event. The ritual malfunction. The explosion. The casualties.
"I have to get out," he muttered. "I need to survive past Chapter Two. I need allies. I need—"
A whisper passed behind his ear.
"So the anomaly wakes early."
Kael went still.
No one stood behind him. Just empty mist and brasswork.
But the voice had been real. Cold. Intrigued.
"And you choose the Fool again," it breathed.
A shiver crawled up his spine.
Again.
He didn't want to understand what that implied.
A distant alarm began to blare—deep, pulsing, urgent.
The ritual malfunction had begun.
Kael took a step back, breath quickening. "Nope. No thank you. Not dying today."
The chandelier above cracked.
A fissure of golden light split the air.
Kael bolted.
Steam pipes ruptured behind him as he sprinted down the hall. The brass floor shook with oncoming tremors. Sparks rained from overhead wiring. He reached the end of the walkway just as a surge of raw ritual energy detonated behind him, engulfing the hall in blinding blue-white light.
He threw himself through a narrow maintenance door, slammed it shut, and collapsed against the wall, panting.
Metal groaned. Brass warped. The explosion faded.
Silence.
Kael ran a shaking hand through his hair.
"Okay," he whispered hoarsely. "I am officially off‑script."
He swallowed hard.
"Which means… I might actually live."