Dorian Black waited outside Helena’s dorm like he belonged there. Not leaning on the wall, not slouching, not trying to look harmless or charming or anything else that invited strangers to form opinions. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and his shoulders loose, as if he had all the time in the world, as if the tension in his spine wasn’t a permanent part of him. A pair of headphones covered his ears. Anyone walking past would assume he was listening to music.

Nothing was playing. His phone screen was dark. No playlist queued. No notifications. The headphones were a prop, a shield, a simple way to tell the campus he wasn’t open for conversation. A way to reduce the number of eyes that lingered. It didn’t always work. The women’s dorm rose behind him in clean brick and glass, bright with banners and campus pride and photos of smiling students that always looked staged. The courtyard out front smelled like damp leaves and distant cafeteria grease. A line of bikes leaned against a rack, their frames slick from last night’s rain. Students passed in clusters, talking too loudly, laughing too easily, acting like the world was stable.
Dorian watched all of it without really seeing it. He kept his focus shallow, like a man standing in water that could pull him under if he let his thoughts sink too far. Campus life was a mask. Schedules, clubs, lectures, flirting. It all had rules people pretended were fair. He understood rules. He had survived them his entire life. He shifted his weight and glanced at the dorm entrance again. Helena had texted five minutes ago. Two minutes. Promise. He believed her. Helena didn’t lie to him.
Not in the small ways people did when they wanted to be liked. Across the courtyard, three students stood near a bench with a campus map bolted into the concrete. Two guys and a girl. The girl had a long coat and hair that fell in waves, the kind of effortless look that took effort. One of the guys wore a the university’s lacrosse jersey. The other kept his hands tucked under his arms like he was cold or trying to make himself look bigger. They weren’t whispering. Not really. They were talking with the casual volume of people who assumed the subject of their conversation couldn’t hear them, or wouldn’t matter if he did.
Dorian could hear everything. The girl’s voice carried first, sharp with that special brand of cruelty that came from distance, from treating someone else’s life as a story. “Isn’t he that serial killer’s son?” she said, nodding in Dorian’s direction like he was a landmark. “How fucked was that story?” Jersey boy leaned in. “Dude, it was insane. Like, killing your dad because he kept your mother chained in a sex dungeon for, what, fifteen years? Ten? I don’t even know. It was all over the news.”
“Fifteen,” the girl said. She said it like she knew the number the way someone knew a celebrity’s age. “They found him covered in blood with the bat. Like… what kind of person does that?” The other guy snorted. “The kind of person who grows up in a house like that.” She made a face. “Why doesn’t he change his name? Dorian Black sounds like a fucking creep too.” Dorian’s fingers curled tighter in his hoodie pockets. The words didn’t surprise him. The details did. People never remembered the truth, not cleanly. They remembered whatever version made the best headline. Whatever version was easiest to digest at lunch. They remembered his mother as an object. They remembered his father as a monster. They remembered Dorian as the boy with the bat. They didn’t remember that he was sixteen and shaking so hard he couldn’t keep his teeth from chattering when the police pulled him off the body. They didn’t remember that the basement door had been locked from the outside. They didn’t remember the smell when he finally got it open. The girl’s voice again, dismissive. “I don’t know what Helena sees in him. Dude gives me the fucking creeps.” Jersey laughed. “Good thing he’s got headphones on.
If he heard us, I don’t know what he would do.” The other guy puffed his chest out slightly. “I’d kick his ass.” Dorian’s vision narrowed. A familiar heat rose in his chest, moving fast, igniting old wiring in his brain that had been built for survival and violence. His right hand tightened into a fist inside his pocket until the knuckles ached. He imagined crossing the courtyard in three steps, grabbing the guy by his collar, smashing his face into the metal map stand. He imagined the girl’s expression changing from bored cruelty to shock. He imagined jersey boy’s laugh dying in his throat.
He imagined it all in an instant. Then he let it go. Not because he was better than them. Because he’d learned the cost. Violence never ended where you wanted it to. It didn’t satisfy. It escalated. It created new cages. He had escaped one prison. He wasn’t stepping into another because some strangers wanted to poke at a scar and watch him bleed. He inhaled slowly through his nose. Exhaled slower. The heat didn’t leave. It never really did. It settled. It waited. His eyes stayed forward. He didn’t look at them. He didn’t give them the satisfaction of confirming that their words had landed. Let them talk. Let them build their little myths. Dorian’s phone vibrated in his hand. A text preview lit the screen for half a second. Coming. 

He turned his gaze back to the dorm entrance. The doors opened and Helena stepped out like she carried her own warmth with her. She wore a dark coat and a scarf wrapped high around her throat, and her blonde hair was tucked behind one ear. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. When she saw him, her face softened in a way that still surprised him even after months together.
She walked straight to him, no hesitation, no awkward pause like she was worried about being seen with him. She rose onto her toes and kissed him. It was simple. Familiar. Gentle. And it pulled the anger out of him like a plug. Dorian’s fist loosened. His shoulders dropped. He let his eyes close for a breath, just long enough to savor the sensation of being touched without threat. Helena smelled like clean soap and coffee. When she pulled back, she smiled up at him. “Sorry. Our RA decided today was the day she needed to talk to me about my ‘energy’ in the hallways.” Dorian’s mouth twitched. “Your energy?”
“She says I’m too loud in the mornings.” Helena rolled her eyes. “As if anyone in that building is asleep before noon.” Dorian lifted one shoulder. “Maybe she’s jealous.” He said with a slight smile. “Everyone’s jealous.” Helena squeezed his hand like she owned it. Like she wasn’t afraid of what that hand had done in another life. “You’ve been waiting long?” She asked. “A few minutes.” He didn’t look away from her. He didn’t mention the conversation across the courtyard. 

He didn’t feed it. Helena didn’t deserve to carry it. He had enough weight already. She studied his face anyway, like she could feel the edges of his mood. Helena always noticed things. Sometimes it made him uneasy. Most of the time, it felt like being seen by someone who didn’t flinch. “You okay?” she asked softly. Dorian nodded. “Yeah.” Helena didn’t push. She didn’t demand. She just accepted the answer for now, which was another reason he loved her.
She didn’t treat him like something fragile. She treated him like someone with agency. “What’s your day look like?” she asked, looping her arm through his. “I’m free.” Dorian glanced down at her. “I worked out early. Finished my paper. I’ve got nothing until tomorrow.” Helena’s smile widened. “So you’re telling me you’re at my mercy.” Dorian’s lips curved, a real smile. “If you want dinner, we do dinner. If you want to stay in and watch some reality tv trash, we do that. Your call.” She opened her mouth to answer. Then Dorian’s world changed. It started as a pressure behind his eyes, like the onset of a migraine, but sharper, more invasive. A voice filled his head, not heard through ears, but through bone and thought, cold and unmistakably present. He froze. A translucent screen flickered into existence in the air in front of him. It hovered at chest height, perfectly aligned with his gaze. The edges were clean, the text crisp, the glow faint but undeniable. It didn’t reflect sunlight. It didn’t cast a shadow. It existed like it had always been there and reality had simply ignored it until now. Three lines of text appeared, each one pulsing once as if confirming its own authority.

[EARTH HAS BEEN CHOSEN]
[WELCOME TO THE ASCENSION!]
[ASCENSION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[LUCKY FOR YOU]
[PREPARE FOR CLASS SELECTION]

Dorian stared, his pulse suddenly loud in his ears. Helena’s grip tightened on his arm. “Babe,” she whispered, voice strained. “What is this?” Dorian couldn’t answer. Because his phone buzzed again. Not with a text. With an emergency alert, the kind the government sent for storms and shootings. Except the screen didn’t show a weather warning. It showed nothing at all, just a blank glow as if the device had forgotten what it was supposed to do. Around them, the courtyard noise stuttered. Laughter cut off mid-breath. A conversation broke like glass. Someone screamed the word “What?” so sharply it sounded like pain. Then everything went black. Not dark like night. Black like absence.
Like a hand over the universe. Dorian’s breath hitched. The ground was still under his feet, but he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see the dorm. He couldn’t see Helena. The air felt thick and wrong, as if space itself had been turned into a sealed room. “Helena?” he shouted, panic rising fast. “Helena!” No response. The blackness swallowed sound. He reached out blindly, fingers clawing for her sleeve, her hand, anything. He found nothing. His heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted out. The voice returned, louder now, absolute. A new screen ignited in front of him.

[CHOOSE YOUR CLASS]
[TIMER: 10:00]

Dorian stared at the ticking numbers. Ten minutes. His mouth went dry. “What the fuck is this?” he whispered into the dark, but the dark didn’t answer. Only the timer did.

9:59

9:58

Dorian’s hand lifted, trembling slightly as he reached toward the floating screen, because whatever this was, he could feel it in his bones. This wasn’t a dream. This was a rule. And rules, he understood. He swallowed, forced his breathing to slow, forced his mind into the cold, adaptive place it always went when survival was on the line. “Okay,” he muttered, more to himself than anything. “Okay. Fine.” His finger touched the screen. And the System responded.  The darkness shifted. Not away, not yet, but aside, as if something unseen had leaned closer to examine him. The floating screen expanded, its surface rippling once before stabilizing. Lines of text formed with surgical precision, sharp and indifferent. A new panel slid into view.

[PLAYER STATUS: INITIALIZED]

Dorian’s breath slowed despite the pounding in his chest. If this was a dream, it had rules. Dreams never had rules. Another window unfolded beneath it.

[BASE ATTRIBUTES]

Strength: 5

Agility: 5

Vitality: 5

Intelligence: 5

Wisdom: 5

He stared at the numbers. All the same. Balanced. Flat. Like a baseline. Like a body before it had been tested by the world. When he focused on Strength, the stat expanded.

Strength
Governs raw physical power
Increases melee damage
Affects carrying capacity and armor handling
Required for heavy weapon mastery

Nothing about morality. Nothing about restraint. Just output. Agility followed.

Agility
Governs speed, reflexes, balance
Increases crit chance and evasion
Determines stealth effectiveness
Impacts attack speed

That one made something tight in his chest loosen, just a little. Vitality.

Vitality
Governs health pool and stamina
Increases resistance to bleed, poison, exhaustion
Affects recovery speed
Determines survivability during prolonged fights

Survivability. That word stuck. Then Intelligence.

Intelligence
Governs mana capacity and spell complexity
Required for advanced spellcasting
Affects spell damage and control
Influences System interaction speed

And Wisdom.

Wisdom
Governs perception, focus, and mental resistance
Increases mana regeneration
Reduces spell backlash
Affects curse resistance and control effects

Dorian exhaled slowly through his nose. This thing, whatever it was, had reduced existence to inputs and outputs. Strengths. Weaknesses. Costs. No past. No excuses. A new header appeared.

[CLASS SELECTION AVAILABLE]

The screen split cleanly down the center.

MARTIAL CLASSES

Vanguard
Role: Frontline control
Armor: Heavy
Primary Stats: Strength / Vitality

Shield-based defense
Taunts draw enemy aggression
High mitigation, low burst
Excels at holding chokepoints

System Note:
Vanguards survive longer than most, but die slowly when overwhelmed.

Dorian frowned. Stand in front. Take the hits. Die last. He had done enough of that in his life.

Striker
Role: Shock assault
Armor: Medium
Primary Stats: Strength / Vitality

High burst melee damage
Stamina-based abilities
Trades defense for aggression
Thrives in short, brutal engagements

System Note:
Strikers burn bright and fast. Many do not see the end of the Siege.

He’d watched that story play out too many times.

Rogue
Role: Elimination, infiltration
Armor: Light
Primary Stats: Agility / Strength

Stealth and positional damage
High crit multipliers
Assassination-focused skills
Fragile when exposed

System Note:
Rogues do not win fair fights. The System does not reward fairness.

Dorian’s eyes lingered. Not because it sounded glamorous. Because it sounded honest. The list scrolled.

CASTER CLASSES

Arcanist
Role: Elemental damage
Armor: Light
Primary Stats: Intelligence / Wisdom

Elemental spellcasting
High mana dependency
Powerful but fragile
Vulnerable during casting

System Note:
Arcanists die quickly if unprotected. The System considers this acceptable.

Acceptable. That word again.

Hexbinder
Role: Debilitation, entropy
Armor: Medium
Primary Stats: Intelligence / Wisdom

Dark mana manipulation only
Curses, debuffs, decay
Weakens enemies over time
Excels when battles drag on

System Note:
Hexbinders grow stronger the worse things get.

For a moment, Helena’s face flashed through his mind. Her stubborn hope. The way she always pushed forward even when things went bad. The thought twisted in his chest.

HYBRID / UTILITY CLASSES

Sentinel
Role: Support, sustain
Armor: Light
Primary Stats: Intelligence / Wisdom

Aura buffs
Healing and mitigation
Enhances group survivability
Low personal damage

System Note:
Sentinels are valued. They are also targeted first.

Summoner
Role: Battlefield control
Armor: Medium
Primary Stats: Intelligence / Wisdom

Conjures familiars
Controls space through numbers
Requires constant mana upkeep
Vulnerable when summons fall

System Note:
Summoners fight wars they cannot personally survive.

The timer pulsed in the corner of his vision.

[TIME REMAINING: 6:41]