Jason stretched out on his small old bed, hearing the muffled sounds of the alarm clock on his phone. He set it for 6:30 a.m. as usual, but he couldn't fall asleep the night before and didn't feel rested. He slowly lifted his head, trying to turn off the sound of the alarm. The movement was slow, as if against his own will — still sleepy, he slipped his hand out from under the covers and turned off the device.
The panels in the room looked a little dusty, and there were posters of my favorite games and movies on the walls. Jason looked at them as something that might remind him of what he had dreamed last night. He remembered as if through a fog that he was running through the forest and running away from something, but the details of this dream quickly escaped him, in a few hours he probably wouldn't be and he wouldn't remember it.
He got out of bed slowly, pulling up his jeans, and put on his usual T-shirt—a little too faded, threadbare in places. He almost never paid much attention to what he wore, he came from a fairly poor family, they did not lack money for food, but he usually wore his clothes until they were worn out.
After a quick breakfast, which he ate with his father and mother in a small kitchen corner, he left the house. The day was sunny, though rather cold—the sky was a shade of gray that promised rain would come soon. Jason walked towards the school, walking slowly and involuntarily looking around. In fact, he always felt a bit like a stranger in this town—Sunnybrook wasn't small, but it was never a metropolis either. He had a few friends, but he felt he was avoiding them more than befriending them, except perhaps Lucas, who was his only close friend.
The school stood at the end of the main street, with a large parking lot and an old building, the history of which dates back to the times when the town was founded. Jason stopped for a moment under a tree that cast a shadow on the pavement. He remembered snippets of what he had dreamed tonight, but he still couldn't remember why he had run and what he was running from.
When he entered the classroom, he began to feel like he was in another world. The desks, the bell ringing, the teacher's voice—it was all ordinary, but to Jason, it was all like a scene that had been repeated for years, a tiresome routine from which he could not escape.
He had imagined many times that he was leaving Sunnybrook, but in the situation of his family, he could hardly count on going to college. They usually cost a fortune, and apart from his studies, he would have to pay for living in another city. Jason was a very good student, so the thought of not being able to continue his education after high school put him in a sad mood.
He pulled out a notebook, but his friend, Emma, immediately appeared. She smiled at him tenderly.
"Hey, Jason! How's it today?" she asked gently, adjusting her glasses on her nose.
"Well, it's going somehow," he replied timidly. "Maybe a little too much studying, as usual."
Emma smiled and began to unpack her things on the desk behind Jason. Jason quickly unpacked his things, after a while Lucas, his best friend, entered the classroom and sat down in the seat next to him.
"Hey, Jason! Ready for the April's Challenge test?" he asked with a carefree smile.
April's Challenge is an annual competition that took place at the school that Jason and Lucas attended. The boys did not like it because it consisted mainly of sports competitions, in which, none of them was very good. After the lessons, all students gathered on the school playground. Teachers of sports activities have previously prepared a special fitness track. Each student had to take part in running an obstacle course, even if they were unable to complete it.
This year, the track consisted of a 1-mile run, swimming a specially prepared water reservoir – about 25 meters, lifting a specially prepared weight of 15 kilograms and jumping over a makeshift abyss about 1.5 meters wide. The gymnastics from each competition were summed up and on this basis the school prepared a fitness ranking of all students.
After an hour from the start of the Arpil Challange, it was the turn of Jason and Lucas. The boys set off at once, they barely managed to run the distance of the run. In a makeshift hole with water, the boys barely reached the shore. Jason only managed to lift the weight twice, while Lucas managed to lift five. Both of them, on the other hand, managed to jump over a makeshift hole 1.5 meters wide. The maximum score that could be obtained was 100 points, with Jason receiving 27 and Lucas 31. However, the results obtained were not enough to rank higher than in the 20% of the worst students.
"It's good that at least we can do science, otherwise my parents would kick me out of the house," Jason said.
"Exactly, although this time at least we finished all the assignments, it's still better than last year" – Lucas recalled the last year when they were the only ones who did not finish the April Challenge, they then became the laughing stock of the whole school.
In the present times, when there was a lot of uncertainty in the world, all countries attached great importance to the physical condition of their citizens, and encouraged them to join the ranks of the army. Although the Satnas were united, they did not take part in any war, they had very poor relations with other countries, especially China. Everyone agreed that conflict was in the air.
Boys were rather marginalized due to their poor physical condition, and they were not rich enough to continue their education in college and get well-paid jobs in corporations or the government and military.
Jason would probably help his father with the plumbing work, and his mother was a teacher at the local kindergarten. Lucas's parents worked in a local grocery store, but they did not own it. None of the boys belonged to the wealthy ones, and their poor condition practically from the very beginning condemned them to each other's company at school.
After the April's Challenge, the students slowly went to the locker room, tired and soaked. Jason and Lucas sat down for a moment on the edge of the pitch, in the shadow of the old stand, to catch their breath.
"Why do you think they are so concerned about it?" Jason asked, looking at the sports teachers, who were eagerly typing the results into their tablets.
Lucas shrugged, "Maybe this is their only chance to feel like they're in control.
They sat in silence for a while. Jason stared up at the sky—the dark clouds that had been far away in the morning were now hanging low over the town. A sudden, cool wind blew.
"Let's go," he said quietly. "Before he pours down."
They were gathering their bags when suddenly Jason felt something strange. The ground beneath his feet seemed to tremble. It was not a strong quake, more... short, barely perceptible pulsation. He looked to the side, but Lucas didn't seem to notice.
"Did you feel it?" He asked quietly.
"What?" Lucas looked anxiously. "I didn't feel anything.
Jason was about to answer when something else caught his eye. In the grass, next to the obstacle course, something flashed. The tiny light, like the reflection of the sun on a metal surface, didn't match anything in the area. He walked a few steps and saw a small metallic object lying between the blades. It looked like a piece of some kind of device, but it was nothing familiar at all—smooth, dark, as if organic, with delicate blue lines pulsing on its surface.
"What is this...?" he muttered.
Before Lucas could answer, a bright flash of lightning sliced through the sky, followed by an instant thunder. The wind picked up violently, as if the world had just taken a deep breath. Jason looked up and for a split second would have sworn that somewhere above the woods, behind the school, the sky... Snapped.
No, it is impossible. It must have been an illusion.
"Jason!" Pouring! Lucas grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the locker room.
Jason took one last look at where the mysterious object lay, but this... Disappeared.
He said nothing, but he couldn't stop thinking about the subject.
Jason glanced once more at the spot where he had seen the strange, flickering object earlier. Now there was nothing there. Maybe it's because of fatigue. Maybe because of the rain that was starting to drum on the asphalt. He shrugged and went with Lucas to the locker room.
Soon after the break, the teachers ordered the last competition — a repetition of swimming for those who achieved the weakest result. Jason and Lucas, of course, were on the list.
"Really?" Once again? Lucas groaned, looking at the rain-drenched surface of the artificial reservoir. The water was murky and cold as ice.
"Come in," the coach called with hope in his voice, as if he really believed that the boys would discover the Olympians in themselves in this moment. Although the boys suspected that it was a punishment and a kind of sadistic desire to motivate them to work harder and perform better in subsequent school events.
Jason looked at his friend and sighed.
They jumped into the water at the same time. The cold hit Jason like a wall. He dived deeper, trying to break through to the other shore, but the water was strangely heavy, as if not only cool but also thick. He began to lose his breath rapidly.
"What's going on..." crossed his mind when suddenly something jerked him. Not physically, not by Lucas's hand—something else. As if the space around him had bent. He tried with all his might to swim to the surface and catch his breath, but unfortunately he did not succeed.
Before he could react, the darkness engulfed him.
When he opened his eyes, he was lying on damp, soft moss. The air smelled different—not like chlorinated water and wet asphalt, but resin and something sweet, like fruit.
"Lucas?" He croaked.
"Here," he heard next to him. The boy was getting up from the ground, dripping with water, although... The tank was nowhere to be found.
Around them stretched the forest. Not the one they knew from the Sunnybrook area. The trees here were enormous—some of them more than fifty meters high. The trunk of the nearest one had a diameter like a water tower. The dense forest floor muffled the sounds and light. The greenery had nothing to do with the pleasant summer shade known from city parks. It was deep, heavy and almost foreign. The trees grew so close to each other that their branches intertwined tens of meters above their heads, creating a natural vault resembling the dome of a huge cathedral. The sun's rays pierced only in spots, like single streams of light cutting through the darkness of an old cinema.
The ground was soft, overgrown with mosses that bent under the pressure of the hands. Here and there protruded massive, winding roots, thick as human arms, covered with a layer of slippery lichen. There was a smell of dampness and resin in the air—thick, almost suffocating, yet strangely refreshing.
Unknown sounds were coming from everywhere. A chirp that did not belong to any known bird. The creaking of branches that sounded like something big was moving in the distance, yet too light to be a human. Or maybe it's just imagination?
Jason couldn't take his eyes off the canopy of the tree, over which something resembling a dragonfly was flying—but it was the size of a falcon and had translucent, fluorescent wings that left a blue streak in the air.
"'It can't be Earth...'" he said at last, in a whisper.
Lucas nodded, but didn't answer right away. He was staring at something to his left. In the depths of the forest, where the light barely reached, there were huge mushrooms with gray, spreading caps. One of them pulsed with a soft light, as if he were breathing.
The boys felt... Mali. It was as if suddenly the world was scaled and they were thrown into an alien space, where no familiar rules were in force anymore.
"It can't be real," Lucas whispered.
Jason wanted to say something, but then something flashed before his eyes—a translucent, greenish interface, like a computer game.
Character sheet: Jason
Basic Information
• Name: Jason• Age: 13 Years• Race: Human• Origin: Sunnybrook, USA
Class: Summoner (Tier 1)
"The one who awakens beasts that sleep in the shadows."
Stats
• Strength: 1
• Dexterity: 1
• Intelligence: 2
• Vitality: 1
• Life: 5
• Mana: 5
Class Skills
• Shadow Swarm – summon a swarm of insects. Commands: attack, weapon, stalk, scout.• Summoning ritual – 10 seconds of focus.• Telepathy – basic communication with the summoned creature.
Equipment
• No weapons• Soggy Sunnybrook High sweatshirt
"'Do you see that, too?'" he asked in a whisper, barely moving.
Lucas stared ahead, eyes wide. "Yes. Damn, yes."
An interface also opened in front of Lucas, showing the following information:
📜 Character sheet: Lucas
Basic Information
• Name: Lucas• Age: 13 Years• Race: Human• Origin: Sunnybrook, USA
Class: Learned Cleric (Level 1)
"He who examines the world and protects against its wrath."
Stats
• Strength: 1
• Dexterity: 1
• Intelligence: 2
• Vitality: 1
• Life: 5
• Mana: 5
Class Skills
• First Circle Shield – an energy barrier against light attacks.
• Knowledge: Magic runes, energy structure, basics of spell analysis (blocked – needs further development).
Equipment
Soggy Sunnybrook High sweatshirt, No weapons• Notebook with physics notes (possible analysis of magical phenomena)
The boys looked at each other. Jason's voice was quiet, almost absent:"This is... game? Hallucination? Where.. are we really?"
Lucas took the damp moss beneath him with his fingers. He looked up at the mighty branches.— "I don't know. But if it's a game... I don't know any where you feel the cold air and the weight in your legs. And... I feel something different.
For a long moment, the boys didn't know what was going on, they didn't talk to each other, they just stared blankly at their personal interfaces.
- "Jason, maybe it's like in a computer game, it looks exactly the same"
- "I don't know, you are a game expert"
- "I see information about an available skill, maybe I should use it somehow? But how am I supposed to do that," Jason wondered
- "Yes, I also have a skill"
Jason nodded slowly. He focused without knowing why, and felt something awaken — inside him and around him. He focused on his only available skill and said its name in his mind.
- "Swarm of Shadows" – A small, yellow portal surrounded by swirling runes opened in front of the boys, as soon as it disappeared, a swarm of wasps flew in the air, but not like the boys they saw in the fields surrounding their town. There were only a dozen or so wasps, each of them the size of a large sparrow.
And then he understood one thing: it was not a dream.
Suddenly, he was quite tired and saw a message in front of him:
"Cast Shadow Swarm, mana cost 5, mana remaining 0. The summoning will be active until the familiars are recalled or they die."
Jason swallowed, still seeing the figure's translucent window hanging in the air in front of him. One moment he was just a boy from an uninteresting school, with no plans or prospects. Now he was somebody—someone who could summon beings from the shadows. And although he felt fear, it was not a paralyzing fear. It was a fear full of... possibilities.
Lucas, on the other hand, looked at his hands, as if he were looking for confirmation that his body was still his. His lips were slightly parted, and his face had an expression of concentration that usually appeared only when solving difficult puzzles.
"This is... logical," he said at last. "I mean, in a strange way. If it's a game, then maybe a world with a structure... magical, but system-based. Interface, resources, classes. But I can feel it. It works."
Jason nodded, though he barely understood.
Somewhere in the distance, a sound resembling a cross between an owl and a machine clattered. The sound bounced off the trees, and then everything fell silent again.
The boys looked at each other. Without words, they knew one thing—they couldn't sit here for too long. This world may have worked like a game, but it might not be fun.