The ceremony wasn't anything special.
It was held in a large hall with rows of folding chairs, a registration desk at the front with two bored looking officials behind it.
The walls were bare concrete and the lighting made everyone look slightly ill.
William had passed this building a hundred times growing up and never once thought he would be sitting inside it.
He looked around.
The hall was maybe half full with other seventeen year olds from the district, some were with family members sitting beside them, while others alone.
A few were already talking loudly about what talent they hoped to get. One kid near the front kept saying S-rank like a prayer. His mother was nodding along, already proud of something that hadn't happened yet.
William sat alone near the back and said nothing.
Mira had wanted to come. He had told her no because it was a school day and he wasn't missing a ceremony worth missing yet.
She had hit his arm and called him an idiot but he handed her lunch money and left before she could argue further.
Sena had found out anyway.
She was sitting three seats to his left with her arms crossed, pretending she hadn't specifically rearranged her morning to be here.
Her guild registration was already done, she awakened an A-rank spatial talent which came with a big ceremony and opportunities. She had no reason to be at a district awakening hall for unranked candidates.
"You didn't have to come," William said without looking at her.
"I was passing by."
"This building isn't on the way to anything."
She turned to look out the window. "The weather's nice."
William let it go.
---
The process was straightforward. One by one they called names, candidates walked to the front, pressed their hand against the system crystal, and the talent registered. Some got applause. A girl two rows ahead awakened a B-rank fire affinity and half the room cheered. A boy got F-rank enhancement and sat back down to silence. His mother hugged him anyway. He looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him.
William watched all of it without expression.
He wasn't nervous because he didn't have any expectations and he stopped having those a long time ago. Whatever the system gave him he would work with. Whatever it didn't give him he would find another way. That was the only philosophy that had ever kept him and Mira fed and it wasn't going to stop working now.
"William Verso."
He stood up and walked to the front.
The crystal was about the size of a human head, mounted on a plain pedestal, glowing faintly blue. The examiner gestured at it without looking up from his clipboard.
William pressed his hand flat against the surface.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then the crystal pulsed once, The light shifted like something behind it had stirred and was deciding whether to bother. The examiner glanced up, looked back down at his board and made a note.
"Absorb," he said flatly. "Rank F. Step aside please."
William lifted his hand and looked at his palm for a second. Then he stepped aside.
That was it.
There was no applause or reaction from the room. The boy behind him was already moving toward the crystal before William had fully cleared the space. Sena was watching him from her seat with an expression he couldn't quite read. He walked back and sat down.
"Well?" she said quietly.
"Absorb. F-rank."
She was quiet for a moment. Then — "That's fine. F-rank doesn't mean anything."
"I know."
"Seriously, plenty of hunters started at F and—"
"Sena." He looked at her. "I know."
She closed her mouth and looked forward. After a second she reached into her bag and put a wrapped rice ball on his knee without a word. He picked it up and ate it.
On the stage the ceremony continued. Names were called and talents were registered. The S-rank kid near the front got C-rank barrier generation. His mother's smile didn't waver but her eyes went somewhere far away.
William finished the rice ball and stared at the ceiling.
Absorb
He turned the word over in his head. The examiner had moved on in under three seconds. Nobody in the room cared for F-rank utility talent with no combat descriptor, on paper it was the kind of awakening people politely said "something will come of it" about and then privately forgot.
But something had happened when he touched that crystal.
He pressed his fingers together slowly but they felt the same and looked the same, nothing had visibly changed.
He didn't know what his talent could do or how far it could go or what it would eventually become. He just knew one thing he had told himself since he was six years old, standing outside a collapsed building with Mira on his back.
He was going to kill every monster alive.
F-rank or not, the direction hadn't changed. It never would.
---
The ceremony ended an hour later. People filed out in clusters, the excited ones were already calling guild contacts, while the quiet ones had their heads down. William walked out into the afternoon light with his hands in his pockets.
Sena fell into step beside him.
"So what now?" she asked.
"I'm going to for a hunter registration. Then find a dungeon."
"You're going straight to a dungeon? Today?"
"Tomorrow. Mira needs dinner first."
Sena stared at him. "You just awakened an hour ago."
"And?"
She hit his arm hard making him rub the sore spot."And you should maybe take a day before throwing yourself into a rift with an F-rank talent nobody's ever heard of!"
"I've been waiting seventeen years." He glanced at her. "I'm not taking a day."
She opened her mouth then closed it. The argument she wanted to make clearly existed but she couldn't find the angle. He watched her cycle through three different expressions before she settled on something that looked like resigned fury.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm coming with you tomorrow."
"You have guild duties."
"I'll move them."
"Sena—"
"I'll move them, William."
He looked at her for a moment. She was staring straight ahead with her arms crossed, radiating the specific energy of someone who had already decided and was just waiting for him to stop arguing.
He looked forward again.
"Okay," he said.
She said nothing. But some of the tension left her shoulders.
They walked the rest of the way in silence down through the district roads, past the market stalls closing for the afternoon and past the old breach wall that had never been fully repaired. William looked at the cracks in it as he passed. They had been there his whole life. Fifteen feet of reinforced concrete and something had still torn through it like paper twenty years ago.
He didn't look away from it until it was behind him.
By the time he got home Mira was already back from school, sitting at the table with her homework spread out in front of her. She looked up the second he walked in.
"Well?"
He dropped onto the chair across from her. "It's an F-rank talent."
She stared at him. Then she got up, walked around the table and hugged him from behind without a word. He was shocked for a second before he put his hand over hers.
"It's fine," he said.
"I know it's fine." Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. "I'm not hugging you because I'm worried. I'm hugging you because I want to."
He didn't say anything to that.