Two years had passed.
The village woke and slept unaware, a tapestry of mundane rhythms stitched together by the invisible hands of a child no one had ever noticed.
I was no longer ten. I was twelve, and the body had finally caught up to the mind—slightly taller, slightly stronger, but still unassuming. The world saw a boy. I saw a kingdom of pawns, threads, and opportunities.
Two years. Twenty-four months of observation, experimentation, and subtle manipulation. Two years of the System trying—and failing—to contain me.
I had learned its anatomy, dissected its limitations, and repurposed its bones for my own ends. Drones, anchors, logs, telemetry, perception fragments—they were mine now, humming in silent obedience, cataloged in my mind like a library of secrets. Every attempt to cage me had been disassembled, rewritten, and integrated into tools. The System was no longer a tutor or jailer. It was a quarry, harvested for parts.
And from the scattered threads of influence, I had built my organization. Pawns matured into lieutenants, scouts, and whisperers. The blacksmith's apprentice became a tracker, the gossiping woman a herald of rumors, the boy a courier of secrets. Their loyalty was quiet, efficient, and unbroken. They acted in patterns I wove; they solved problems I designed before they even realized they were problems.
A scout from the Academy passed through the village last harvest. The boy, guided by a thread, delivered a statement so precise it could have been scripted. The gossiping woman spread a rumor just nuanced enough to spark curiosity without revealing its source. The blacksmith's apprentice staged a minor act of bravery that caught the scout's fleeting attention. By the time he left, the seed had been planted. The Academy's web had stretched a tendril into my control.
And the System? It noticed, of course. Always.
[
It blinked and hummed, frustrated by anomalies it could neither measure nor punish fully. I let it stew. Its penalty buffers flared when I reached too far, jabbing at my temple with hot reminders. Pain was a variable. A cost I could pay, a pulse of calibration that taught me limits without bounding me.
I touched the coin humming with the harvested telemetry of dead drones. One small pulse, and a pattern was reinforced: a courier moved, a rumor spread, a rival misstepped—all according to design. My network hummed in silent synchronization, a web built from stolen code, whispers, and human predictability.
Two years of quiet work, and the Academy's gates loomed on the horizon like a prize already preordained. I had prepared contingencies: early recognition for myself, proxies to pave a path, distractions for rivals. Every angle calculated, every possibility accounted for. The world could offer only variables; I commanded constants.
I surveyed the village from the roof at dusk. The pawns slept, oblivious to the web in which they moved. The System pulsed at the edges of perception, hungry and confused. Its attempts to reclaim nodes, drones, and logs were feeble against the lattice I had woven.
I was Zeryth Malakar now. Not ten, not background, not forgotten. Twelve years of body, infinite years of thought. My organization of shadows and whispers stretched across the village and beyond. My stolen fragments of the System hummed with readiness, my pawns moved in synchrony, and the threads I had planted in the Academy's orbit were beginning to weave reality around me.
Two years. Ten fingers. A thousand threads.
The Academy awaited. The world had a stage, and I held the map, the tools, and the invisible levers. When the gates opened, the story would bend. The heroes would arrive, the main plot would march, and I would cut through it all with a precision only a background character turned god could wield.
I smiled. The smile was quiet, cold, and complete.
I was no longer waiting for fate.
I was writing it.