The Class Allocation Ceremony was supposed to be the beginning of everything. For Kai Ardent, it was the end.
He stood near the back of the line in the stone-floored auditorium, watching as one by one, each student stepped forward, touched the System Core, and burst into light. Cheers rang out every few seconds. Friends slapped backs. New Class titles flashed across glowing blue interfaces — visible to all, like floating achievement banners.
[Class Acquired: Stormcaller]
[Class Acquired: Shadow Monk]
[Class Acquired: Aether Knight]
Kai tried not to fidget. His palms were slick, and his heart thundered beneath his ribcage. One minute closer. One student closer.
"Still nervous?"
The voice came from beside him. He turned — and there she was. Lyra Vale.
Sharp-eyed. Always confident. And always just a little ahead of him, in everything.
She wore her hair pulled back today, the soft auburn curls tied into a combat braid. The sleeves of her cadet jacket were rolled up, revealing toned arms and the guild-emblem tattoo she'd designed herself. Her golden-brown eyes sparkled in the Core's pulsing light.
Kai tried to sound casual. "Not nervous. Just… calculating failure probabilities."
She smirked. "Still doing those simulations in your head?"
"Gotta do something while I wait for fate to decide my entire future."
Lyra leaned in, lowering her voice. "You're going to get a great class, Kai. I've seen you train. You deserve something elite."
"Same to you," he said, hesitating. Then added, "You always had the instincts. Way better than mine."
She gave him a sideways look. "You know, most guys would try to impress a girl before the big ceremony. You're over here self-deprecating like it's a sport."
Kai coughed. "I thought brutal honesty was attractive."
"To masochists, maybe."
They both laughed. For a moment, it felt like old times — back in the public sim-rooms, running drills long after the sponsored kids had left.
Kai glanced at her, then away. The Core's glow cast golden patterns on her cheekbones.
He remembered the first day she walked into the sim-room two years ago, all elbows and fire, demanding a rematch after losing to a ranker. Everyone laughed — until she beat the guy in thirty seconds flat, no weapon, just speed and leverage. She'd limped away bleeding from the knee and grinning like she'd won a championship.
Later, she shared her only energy bar with him when the vending unit jammed.
"You train solo?" she asked that night, as they patched up scrapes in the medbay.
He'd nodded. "No credits for a coach."
"Same." She smiled. "Guess we'll teach each other, then."
That was the start.
Over months, they became a team — unofficial but tight. Lyra was always the better fighter, more instinctive. Kai was the planner, the thinker. When she got too reckless, he pulled her back. When he froze in analysis loops, she shoved him forward.
There were nights they sat under broken neon lights eating cheap noodles, talking about which rare classes they'd kill for. Days when she covered for him when he glitched a training sim. Times he held her while she cried after losing her little brother to a guild raid gone wrong.
Kai had never told her how he felt. But she must've known. He thought she cared, too.
"I've been thinking," Lyra said, voice softening. "After we get our classes, maybe we team up for the tutorial? Just until we get our bearings."
Kai blinked. "You want to party up? With me?"
She shrugged. "Why not? You're good in pressure zones. And you don't show off like those other idiots."
Something shifted in his chest. Hope, maybe. He nodded. "Yeah. I'd like that."
A moment passed. Kai glanced at the stage ahead — still three students away. He turned back to Lyra.
"Lyra… if I— If something goes wrong today, and I don't get anything fancy, I just want to say... I'm glad I got to know you before all this."
Her smile faltered, just a bit. "Kai, don't talk like that. Nothing's going to go wrong."
"I know. Just... figured I'd say it, in case things change after this."
"They won't."
She said it like a promise.
When her name was called, Lyra winked at him before stepping forward. The System Core pulsed with a brighter light than it had all morning. Everyone could feel it.
[Class Acquired: Dawn Valkyrie]
Gasps spread through the auditorium. A rare class. No—a mythic-ranked hybrid. Only a handful existed globally.
Lyra stood still as her interface lit up. Wings of light fanned out behind her for a moment, then faded. Even the Guild officials seemed stunned.
When she walked back, the other students parted for her like she was royalty. Kai stepped toward her, smiling.
But she didn't meet his eyes.
Her gaze slid past him. A step, then another. She rejoined the line... three feet away from where she'd been.
Kai's stomach tightened. Maybe she didn't see him. Or maybe she did.
"Next: Kai Ardent," the announcer called. Bored. Dismissive. Like he already knew this would be a waste of time.
Kai stepped forward. The System Core pulsed once. Then again. His fingers brushed its surface — warm, humming with raw code.
[Initializing Class Allocation...]
[Analyzing soul signature...]
[Processing...]
He closed his eyes. This was it. His shot. His future.
[Error: Class Not Found.]
Silence. Then laughter.
The announcer blinked. "Uh… must be a mistake. Run it again."
[Reprocessing...]
[Error: Undefined Class ID.]
[Recommended Action: Report anomaly to System Admin.]
Kai turned slowly, scanning the crowd. Dozens of students. Instructors. Guards. And Lyra.
She looked at him—just for a second. And then looked away. As if she didn't know him. As if she'd never promised a damn thing.
That night, Kai sat alone in his pod room, the air stale and the light too white to feel real.
No messages. No pings. No knock at the door. The silence buzzed louder than any system alert.
Everyone else had received their onboarding packets the moment they left the ceremony. Class briefings. Group invites. Starter gear. Some had already posted screenshots of their Class Trees and builds to the Academy's public channels.
Kai?
He got an error message. And silence.
He checked his contacts list.
Lyra: Last online 2 minutes ago.
He stared at it. Typed. Deleted. Typed again:
"Hey. I guess the system bugged out. But if you're still up for the tutorial party, I can meet you at the hub."
He hovered over Send.
What are you doing? She didn't even look at you.
She walked right past you like you were nothing.
She got her wings, Kai. She's flying now. You're still crawling.
He hit Send anyway. It vanished into the message buffer. Seconds passed. Then minutes.
Nothing.
At first, he told himself she was probably overwhelmed. Everyone wanted a Dawn Valkyrie on their team. She was likely fielding a thousand invites a second. But then he saw it.
Lyra has joined Party [Elite Vanguard Cadets (EVC)]
His chest tightened. He opened the party info out of reflex. Full roster. Five out of five slots filled. She hadn't even left a space. He wasn't even an afterthought.
Still, some stupid part of him held onto hope. He walked the campus for hours.
Past the tutorial gates. Past the party hubs. Through the training arenas lit by midnight-blue lamps.
Everywhere he went, he saw teams. Laughing. Practicing. Competing.
He even spotted Lyra once.
She stood beside her new party — surrounded by upper-tier elites already wearing advanced gear. A Valkyrie spear shimmered on her back, and her wings glowed faintly with a gold-silver radiance.
She didn't see him. Or if she did, she didn't react. Didn't nod. Didn't wave. Not even a glance. She was already someone else now.
Someone who didn't know a Kai Ardent had ever existed.
He ended up back in the pod chamber. Not because he wanted to sleep — he couldn't. But because there was nowhere else to go.
His HUD blinked in the dark, dull blue — a ghost of what it should've been. No starter quests. No path guidance. No ability list.
Not even a "You are ready" message.
You don't matter enough to fail.
You're not even a glitch worth patching.
You're invisible.
He stared at his reflection in the glass — pale, drained, a little too sharp around the eyes. This wasn't what he'd trained for. This wasn't how the system was supposed to work.
So he left. No one stopped him. No one noticed.
But that was fine. He didn't want witnesses. He wanted answers. And maybe — if the system wasn't going to give him a path — he'd make one.
The forest was still. The air was too quiet for a training zone. No music cues. No tutorial prompts. Just static-laced birdsong and the mechanical whirring of the environmental renderer failing to fully sync in the distance.
Kai walked deeper along the gravel path, his boots crunching softly. Other players roamed nearby — some alone, others in parties. Glowing swords, class-linked abilities, and floating XP counters surrounded them like blessings.
None of them saw him. Or maybe they did. But when you're Unclassed, you might as well be a ghost.
Kai turned off the trail, brushing past ferns. He ignored the blinking:
[WARNING: You are leaving the tutorial safe path]
…and pushed into denser trees.
If the system couldn't give him a path, then he'd make one.
The deeper he went, the darker it got. The lighting shaders failed to load correctly here — flickering between dawn, dusk, and full daylight every few steps. Then he heard it.
A low growl.
From behind the brush, a quadruped beast crept out — smaller than a wolf, leaner than a dog. It looked like something halfway between a jackal and a lizard. Tufts of mossy fur covered patches of bone-exposed skin. Its eyes glowed with fractured red lines, like corrupted pixels.
[Scarred Bark Wolf – Lv. 3]
Aggression Level: Moderate
Behavior: Erratic / Glitched
Normally, players would get a popup prompt: "Engage or Retreat? Kai got nothing.
The wolf snarled and lunged.
Kai dove left, hitting the forest floor hard. Pain bloomed in his ribs. His interface flickered as the wolf's claws missed by inches.
No weapon.
No skills.
He grabbed a stick — a thick branch — and swung as the creature leapt again.
It caught the beast in the snout. The wood cracked. The wolf yelped, circling fast.
Kai raised his fists.
This thing was fast. And it wasn't like a sim fight with timing indicators and parry prompts. This was raw. Ugly.
The wolf came again. Kai ducked under its leap, slammed his shoulder into it mid-air, and rolled. The beast crashed into a log.
Kai reached for a stone and hurled it. It struck the creature in the side of the head.
The wolf shook it off. Blood ran from its ear, but it was still standing.
It growled, lower now — angrier.
And it charged.
Kai braced himself—but the ground beneath him cracked. Too late to jump. Too late to move.
The earth collapsed.
He fell. Not far — maybe fifteen feet. But he hit hard, knocking the wind out of his lungs.
Above, the Bark Wolf screeched — and vanished as the broken forest sealed itself with a flicker of light and dust.
Everything went black.
Then:
[Hidden Zone Discovered: ???]
[Warning: No System Permissions for This Area]
Kai groaned, rolling to his side. Dirt fell from above. His interface glitched — half the HUD unreadable, blinking in strange angles.
He activated his wristlight.
What he saw made him freeze.
The space around him wasn't natural. It wasn't even fully rendered. Jagged geometry jutted from the floor — stone pillars that ended mid-air, floating like broken code. Textures were mismatched, stretching into each other. Some were black-and-white placeholder images. Others glitched between stone, flesh, and metal.
There were symbols on the walls. Not written in any human language — but lines of raw code.
One of them pulsed red.
[Unauthorized Presence Detected.]
[You are not supposed to be here.]
Kai stood, limping toward the pulsing code etched into the wall. His wristlight flickered, casting uneven shadows on the warped geometry.
His foot hesitated at the edge of the symbol.
This was stupid. Suicidal.
He wasn't a hacker. He wasn't a rebel or a code-diver. He was a cadet. A nobody cadet — yeah — but he still believed in the system, didn't he?
Until today. Until they erased him. His breath came slow.
He could still walk away. Submit a support ticket. Beg for a second scan. Maybe they'd fix it. Maybe Lyra would change her mind.
Maybe she'd remember what they were.
But another voice, quieter, older, broke through that hope:
If she cared, she wouldn't have walked away.
If the system worked, it wouldn't have let you vanish.
His HUD blinked. No path. No class. There was no place left for him in their world. But this place — this glitch — didn't reject him.
It noticed him.
And maybe, just maybe… it had been waiting.
His hand hovered over the code.
"This is probably going to kill me," he whispered.
Then: "Or worse."
He closed his eyes—
And touched it.
A black pane opened — cracked and bleeding light.
[Accessing Root Directory...]
[Permission Denied.]
[Overriding.]
[Glitch Protocol Unlocked.]
Something broke open in his mind. Not a sound. A presence.
[Skill Gained: Reality Rewrite (Alpha)]
[Warning: Unauthorized Code Manipulation Detected.]
[Devs have been notified.]
A glowing string of code appeared in front of him:
0x47-6C-69-74-63-68
It hovered, spinning slowly, humming with energy.
Kai's breath caught. He reached out—and touched it.
It was like breathing fire.
His vision exploded in red light. The world blinked out, and back in again — differently. The glitched geometry shifted, stabilizing for a moment, as if the environment was acknowledging him.
And his HUD rebuilt itself. No more blue. Only black and red. Fractured. Raw.
At its center:
CLASS: [ERROR]
TITLE UNLOCKED: Glitchwalker
SKILL: Reality Rewrite (Alpha)
Bend system rules. Rewrite physical states. Inject or delete basic world elements. Limited range. May corrupt the environment or self.
Underneath, a single message:
You are no longer bound by the System.
Kai looked at his hand. Flickers of red code ran across his skin — like veins made of fire.
And somewhere deep inside him… the pain was gone. Not just the pain of falling. But the pain of being forgotten. Ignored. Left behind.
Lyra wouldn't look at him? The Guilds didn't want him? The System cast him out?
Fine. Then he'd become something it couldn't control.