"I'm going to try it," Kai said.
His mother's smile trembled. "Now?"
Kai nodded. "Now!"
At that moment, the room changed. It wasn't spectacular. It was worse. More subtle. The sounds of the house faded away, as if someone had placed their hand over the world. The air thickened and the light stopped traveling and began to wait. Kai's stomach tightened. He knew about this sensation. The time just froze, and behind his parents and his brother, a figure stood. A hood. A silhouette cut from the shadows. Just a person-shaped absence, calm and still, like it was there from the beginning.
Kai didn't scream. He felt something colder than fear.
Ah. Like in the journal.
He'd built his plan around a book that shouldn't have survived. A small journal with a cracked spine and pages warped by rain, the ink smeared in places like the writer's hand had shaken. Kai didn't even know where it had come from. His parents must have found it one day, half-hidden in an alleyway, tossed among the trash, as misfortune and useful knowledge often were. And they'd brought it home the same way they brought home every pamphlet, every scrap of notes, every rumor that might keep their sons alive.
The journal didn't describe the dream-Presence the way everyone else did. With Thalior's Blessing, it said, the Presence was different: closer, more active. And it spoke, responded, and listened to mouths as much as hands.
Do not speak names carelessly, the author had warned.
A voice came, not through the air, but inside his head, clear, too clear.
Thank you for choosing this Blessing.
"Who are you?" Kai said.
The dream-space didn't take him this time.
It unfolded in his own room, between his mother's clasped hands and Ken's half-step forward. It settled into his bones like a rule being stamped into wet clay. In front of him, names surfaced, they appeared in the air itself, clean as thought, hovering at chest height. Lines of meaning formed beneath some of them, tidy and merciless, as if the world had a clerk's handwriting.
They arranged themselves with the same respectful distance he remembered, but the room made it obscene. Options floated over the kitchen table. A few hung near his mother's shoulder while another hovered just in front of Ken's face. His father didn't move at all, eyes fixed on the empty space where words now lived.
Kai turned his head slowly, tracking them the way you tracked knives.
Choose again.
There were too many to read. Too many lives compressed into single terms. Some names made his skin prickle in warning. They looked dangerous, sharp, hungry. Some felt light, almost playful, like bait dressed up as hope. Some carried no feeling at all. He didn't need labels to know their tier. The air told him.
And then it appeared again.
[Common] Providence: Renewal.
Kai's breath caught. "Wait… what?"
The voice in his head stayed calm.
Names count as choices.
Kai's pulse spiked.
A Providence? Here?
His mind raced, and his mouth betrayed him.
"Renewal? Even that is available?"
Silence. But the Presence did not wait.
Alright.
The choice locked.
Kai felt the world grab him, not gently, not like sleep. Like a hand closing around his entire life. He tried to answer, but couldn't. The room stretched. The light tore. The house vanished. He was pulled far, far away. And the last thing he saw was his mother's face, the very moment before she could scream.
⸻
Years before the Presence ever pulled him out of his modest world, home had already taught him what survival cost.
Kai learned the shape of hunger the same way he learned the shape of warmth.
Hunger lived in the pantry when it echoed a little too loudly. In the soup that tasted like water. In the way his father often "forgot" to take a second bowl.
Warmth lived everywhere else. You could see it first in their hair: a dark copper-red shared by the father and both sons. Their mother was the exception, with long brown hair that she somehow always made look beautiful just by the way she braided it, tied it, or pinned it back.
But more than that, warmth lived in his father's whistle when he repaired a hinge that should have been replaced years ago. In his brother's laugh, bright enough to make the whole house feel bigger than its two rooms and thin hallway. In their mother's smile when she came home between her two part-time jobs.
Kai used to think that all families were like that. He was now old enough to know that this was not the case.
Outside their house, the town had a different main focus. It was only one word, but this word was on everyone's lips.
Skills.
Everyone, without exception, has to choose Skills at 10, 20 and 30. To say these choices were important would be a huge understatement.
A Skill could put food on your table. A Skill could open the door to the best jobs. A Skill could get you into a guild. A Skill could keep a knife out of your ribs when the wrong job went wrong. A Skill could decide whether your life was allowed to grow.
At home, his parents never spoke about it like that. They spoke carefully, like Skills were fire and they were trying to warm the room without burning their children.
They read pamphlets they should not have been able to afford. They borrowed notes from neighbors who pretended not to notice the missing pages when the papers came back. They asked questions at the guild hall and smiled through the answers that were designed to discourage the poor.
"Ken, Kai, whatever you pick," their mother said, "make it yours."
"Do not chase what looks impressive," his father added. "Chase what keeps you alive."
It sounded like freedom. Kai understood what it really meant: We cannot afford mistakes.
Ken's tenth year came first, and it came like a storm the house tried to pretend was only weather.
Ken was not the kind of boy who bragged. He didn't strut around other kids or rehearse speeches for imaginary crowds. He simply reached for things, the way some people reached for the sun without realizing they might burn. He reached for knowledge, for the faint pull of mana in the air, for the future. The night before Ken turned ten, Kai woke to find his brother sitting upright on his mattress, hands clenched in his lap.
"You can't sleep?" Kai whispered.
Ken shook his head once, then gave him a grin that looked too sharp for a child's face.
"I feel like tomorrow, I'll be a different person," Ken said, like it was exciting and terrifying in equal measure.
Kai had no answer. He only watched his brother lie back down, still smiling, still trembling. The next day, Ken chose. In their town, the adults called it a selection, a rite or an official step. Most children called it a dream.
Because the truth was strange and simple. When you turned ten, the world took you somewhere you could not describe properly afterward, and it said just one word.
Choose.
No one really knew what made the dream happen. No one agreed on what the Presence in the dream truly was. Some said it was the world itself, while others said it was an old system left behind by gods who had forgotten the people living under it. The guilds used safer words and called it a mechanism.
Whatever it was, it did not care whether you were rich or poor. It only cared about your choice. When Ken woke that morning, he stared at his hands like he expected them to be different already. He kept flexing his fingers, as if to check that they still belonged to him.
When they saw him wake up, everyone stopped. Their mother's hands froze mid-motion while kneading dough. Their father, who had been adjusting a loose nail by the window, turned immediately. For a heartbeat the house was silent, as if it was holding its breath with them.
Then their mother smiled, and it was a real smile, not the kind she wore for guests.
"What did you choose?" she asked.
Ken swallowed. He looked proud, but also careful, like he knew the name was heavier than it looked.
"Enchantment," he said. Then, as if that was not complete enough: "I can become an adventurer, I can be useful!"
Their father exhaled like he had been underwater, and their mother made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a prayer. Just like that, the future moved closer to their doorstep.
⸻
The first weeks were full of small miracles. Not Providences. Just the kind of changes that happen when someone in a poor house becomes valuable to the outside world.
A guild instructor began visiting Ken twice a week, for cheap, because enchanters were worth investing in. A neighbor "found" a book on basic conductor patterns. Someone from the academy district stopped by one afternoon and looked at Ken's hands with open interest.
Ken practiced in the courtyard behind the house, not with flashy bursts of mana, but with intense concentration. He held his palm above a cheap iron rod. At first, nothing happened. Then the metal heated up, and a faint red glow spread across it at the same speed that Ken's face lit up.
Then the equipment arrived. It was a real kit, neither borrowed nor patched together from kindness. Not a collection of tools that belonged to three different dead men. A belt with conductor stones that clicked softly when Ken moved. Gloves with reinforced seams. Even the case that held everything smelled like proper leather.
Kai stared at it like it was a chest full of gold. Ken stared at it like it was proof his dream had not lied.
Their mother laughed and said, "It's nothing. Just a few things."
Their father said, "We found a good deal."
Kai was nine. He knew better.
Because the next month had fewer meals that made you feel full. Less oil. Less firewood too. Their father came home later, shoulders more tired. Their mother's humming disappeared for a while, replaced by a quiet that sat on her like a heavy cloth.
But mostly, because two nights later, he heard his parents speaking in the kitchen. He had woken thirsty. He padded toward the water jug, careful not to wake Ken. Moonlight made the room silver. The floorboard beneath his foot creaked once. His parents' voices stopped.
"The leather needs to be thicker," his father said quieter. His voice sounded tired in a way it never did when he spoke to them. "If he joins a team and someone slips through…"
"Stop talking like he's already gone."
"I talk like the world is what it is," his father replied. A pause, then the scrape of coin on wood. "I can take another job. I can do more repairs."
"We already spent so much," his mother said. "We already…"
Her voice broke, just a little. Then, smaller: "Do you think they'll take him? A team. The good kind."
"They'll take him," his father said immediately. "They'd be fools not to."
"Everyone wants an enchanter," he added. "They say it like it means he'll be safe."
He let out a breath that sounded more like a laugh than relief.
"But wanting him doesn't stop a monster."
His father went on, softer, like it hurt to admit:
"If Ken ever stands behind the wrong people… he won't get a second chance."
Silence followed, long enough for Kai to hear his own heartbeat. Kai went back to bed without drinking.
Ken was asleep, face turned toward the wall. There was still a faint line of ink on his hand from practice. Kai stared at it and tried not to imagine his brother behind strangers, trusting them to be strong enough.
After that, the world became simpler and harsher in Kai's mind. If a Skill could make a family bleed quietly, then a bad choice could do worse than ruin a child's future. It could ruin everyone's.
That realization did not make him angry, but focused. Kai began to study like his life depended on it, because it did, but not only his own. His parents did not push him toward a specific path. They never asked for anything. They never compared him to Ken. They never made him feel small.
They simply made sure he could see the world for what it was, early enough to navigate it. Kai listened, asked questions, remembered everything. He read everything he could, listened to rumors the way other children listened to songs, watched which Skills made people confident and which Skills made people desperate.
He learned the rarity tiers as everyone did.
Common. Uncommon. Rare. Epic. Legendary.
He learned the types of Skills too.
Power, Mastery, Augment, Blessing and Providence.
Everyone had opinions. Everyone had a plan. Kai was no different. Except, he just did not talk about it. Because his plan did not sound like a child's plan, it sounded like a vow. Then the night finally came. Kai stood in the dark. Like sound itself had been asked to leave. The air was still, and yet it pressed against him with quiet attention.
Something was there. Not a person. Not an animal. Not a shadow.
A Presence.
Choose.
The word arrived whole, undeniable, and it settled in his bones like a rule. Around him, names appeared, a lot of names. Not carved. Not written. Not spoken.
They floated like pale constellations, circling him at a respectful distance. Some flickered gently. Others burned with a heaviness that made his stomach knot up. A few felt far away, blurred, like doors locked from the other side.
He sensed rarities too, though the dream did not need to label them in the way the town did. Weight had its own scale. The choices hung in the air, some like feathers, some like stones, some like mountains.
Far away, something pulsed with a pressure so intense he did not look at it for long.
The Presence waited. It did not tempt him, encourage him or warn him. It simply allowed the moment to exist. Then he found it. It hovered closer than he expected, letters steady, unshowy, and yet heavy with promise.
Kai's fingers trembled once, then he touched the name.
[Rare] Mastery: Materialization.
The moment he did, the air changed. Not with light. Not with celebration. Not with voices singing his destiny. But with understanding. A pathway opened in his mind. The Presence acknowledged the selection in a way Kai could not describe. He could still choose more. He felt it. The dream was still offering. The Presence did not hurry him.
Kai stared at the nearby names. Light ones. Useful ones. Tempting ones.
Then he thought of Ken's kit, the smell of leather, the way his mother's humming had disappeared for weeks. The way his father's boots were patched at the heel, again and again. He thought of the sentence that had carved itself into his mind.
"He won't get a second chance."
He withdrew his hand. This decision did not feel like loss. The Presence accepted it without comment, and the dream began to dissolve.
But Kai wasn't finished. There was one more part of his plan, but for that, he needed to be twenty. Not because twenty was a magic number, but because twenty was the age when the gods began to answer. Blessings were unlocked at twenty. A different kind of choice. The dream started to fold inward and the names faded like lanterns going out one by one. Kai woke with a strange new weight in his bones that felt like a muscle he had not known existed.
Ken was already awake, sitting at the edge of his bed, hair messy, eyes bright. He looked like he had been waiting behind his own excitement all morning.
"Finally, you're awake! So? So? How was it?"
Kai sat up, blinking, then grinned so hard his cheeks hurt. Ken laughed, loud and relieved, as if that grin was the only confirmation he needed.
"Tell me you got something good."
Kai swung his legs off the bed and stood, stretching his arms like he was warming up for a race.
Ken leaned in, practically bouncing. "What did you take? How many?"
Kai lifted his hand and wiggled his fingers like a magician about to pull a rabbit out of a sleeve. Ken's eyes narrowed, trying to read a secret that wasn't written anywhere. Kai's grin widened and he raised a single finger.
Ken's eyes widened. "No way. Don't tell me you grabbed a Legendary."
Kai let the silence hang. Then he tugged Ken's sleeve. "Come on."
"Come on where?"
"Outside," Kai said, already pulling him toward the door. "If I tell you, you'll talk. If we test it, you'll shut up."
Ken's mouth opened. Kai was halfway down the hallway. Ken chased him, laughing. "Hey! That's not fair!"
Kai didn't slow down. They burst into the cold morning together, two kids sprinting into a courtyard that suddenly felt like a stage. Kai stopped, turned, and held his palm out like he'd seen Ken do a hundred times. Ken skidded to a halt beside him, breathing fast, eyes shining.
"Alright," Ken said, voice dropping into something almost respectful. "Show me."
Kai's fingers curled, and the air around his hand trembled, just slightly, like a page about to turn. Kai's smile didn't fade. It sharpened.
"Watch this."
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the air above his palm tightened, almost imperceptibly, like a thread being pulled taut. Ken leaned in. A small shape formed, clumsy and dull, as if reality itself was still deciding whether to cooperate. A cube, barely the size of dice. It held for two seconds, trembling, then collapsed into mist.
Ken blinked. "That's…"
Kai didn't react. He tried again. This time it was a spoon. Ugly. Too thick at the handle, warped like soft metal. It lasted longer before unraveling. Ken's mouth opened, then closed. His grin had vanished, replaced by something sharper: attention.
"Kai," Ken said slowly. "What is that?"
Kai flexed his fingers, feeling the strain like a new muscle being forced awake.
"Materialization," he answered.
Ken took a step closer, voice dropping. "That's not a toy Skill."
Kai didn't look at him. "I'll make it useful."
Ken swallowed, then the real question hit him.
"How many did you take?" Ken asked. "What else?"
Kai exhaled. He lowered his hand.
"Just one. I told you."
Ken froze. "Only one?" His eyebrows shot up. "A Rare… and nothing else?"
Kai finally met his eyes. Ken's expression shifted fast, cycling through disbelief, frustration, and something that looked almost like fear.
"What are you planning for? Why are you saving your Skills at ten?"
Kai didn't give him the whole truth. Not yet. He gave him the part that mattered.
"I just need to make it to twenty," Kai said. His voice didn't shake. "I just need to survive."