The first thing Cedric felt was the cold. It was a biting, sharp chill that seeped into his skin from the damp earth beneath him. His ears were ringing with a high-pitched hum that drowned out the sounds of the night. He tried to draw a breath, but his lungs felt heavy, as if they were filled with fine dust. He coughed, the movement sending a jolt of sharp pain through his ribs.
He opened his eyes slowly. The world was a blur of dark grays and muted purples. He was lying at the bottom of a shallow basin. The ground around him was scorched black, and thin wisps of smoke still curled up from the dirt. The memory of the light came rushing back. The roar of the wind. The heat. The impact.
He groaned, pushing himself up onto his elbows. His muscles screamed in protest. Every joint felt stiff, like rusted metal grinding together. He looked down at his arms. His hoodie was shredded at the sleeves, and his skin was covered in a layer of fine soot and grime. Surprisingly, there was no blood. His skin was pale and bruised.
'I should be dead,' he thought. 'That thing hit the ridge directly. I shouldn't even be in one piece!'
He shook his head to clear the fog, and that was when he saw it. Floating in the air, right in front of his face, was a semi-transparent screen. It was a pale, ghostly violet color, shimmering softly against the backdrop of the dark park. He blinked, expecting it to disappear like a trick of the light, but it stayed perfectly still. It moved as he moved, staying exactly three feet from his eyes.
"What is this?" he whispered. His voice was hoarse and cracked.
He squinted at the text. It didn't look like the standard interface used by the Awakening Academy. This was different. The font was sharp, almost elegant, and it pulsed with a rhythm that matched his own heartbeat.
[Name: Cedric]
[Race: Human]
[Class: Necromancer]
[Level: 1]
[Exp: 0 / 100]
[Strength: 3.6]
[Agility:2.1]
[Constitution: 0.6]
[Intelligence: 5.3]
[Attribute Points: 0]
[Skills] - Revival (Level 1) - Undead Summoning (Level 1)
[Unique Talent] - Evolution (Passive): You possess the ability to evolve your summons and your skill tree through specific criteria.
Cedric stared at the word 'Necromancer' until his eyes watered. His heart, which had been sluggish from the shock, began to thump wildly against his ribs. Necromancer. It was a class he had only read about in old history books or rare database entries. It was a dark class, one that dealt with the boundary between life and death. More importantly, it was an Awakener class.
"It happened," he breathed. "I actually... I have a class."
He reached out a trembling hand to touch the screen. His fingers passed straight through the light. There was no physical sensation, just a slight tingle of static electricity. He tried to swipe it away, but the window remained fixed in his vision. He felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. He wasn't sure if it was from the impact or the sheer impossibility of what he was seeing.
He looked around the crater. The dark stone that had fallen from the sky was gone. There was only a pile of fine, shimmering ash where it had been. Whatever power had been inside that meteor was now inside him. He felt a strange, cold energy swirling in the pit of his stomach.
He tried to stand up. His legs wobbled, and he had to grab onto a jagged rock to keep from falling back into the dirt. He was exhausted. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, replaced by a deep, bone-weary fatigue. He needed to get out of here. If the authorities saw the impact, they would be here soon. He didn't want to be found in the middle of a crater with a glowing screen only he could see.
He began the long, painful trek back toward his apartment. He kept to the shadows, avoiding the main paths of the park. Every step felt like a marathon. His body ached in places he didn't know could ache. He crossed the rusted gates and moved through the quiet streets of the northern district. The few people he passed didn't even look at him. They just saw a disheveled teenager in a ruined hoodie, likely a vagrant or a drunk.
The walk took twice as long as usual. By the time he reached his building, his vision was tunneling. He climbed the stairs one by one, his hand gripping the railing so hard his knuckles turned white. When he finally reached his door, he fumbled with his keys, his fingers numb and clumsy.
He slipped inside and locked the door behind him. He didn't even bother turning on the lights. He just leaned his back against the wood and slid down until he was sitting on the floor. The purple screen was still there, glowing in the darkness of his entryway.
'It won't go away,' he thought, his breathing ragged. 'Why won't it go away?'
He closed his eyes tight, but he could still see the faint outline of the stats through his eyelids. It was bound to his soul, not his vision. He stayed there for a long time, just listening to the sound of his own breath. Slowly, the panic began to subside. He wasn't a non-awakener anymore.
He remembered reading a news article a few years ago about a "Late Bloomer." It was a man who hadn't awakened during the standard window but had gained a class after a traumatic event. The media called it a Reawakening. It was incredibly rare, something that happened to one in a million people.
'A reawakening,' he mused. A small, shaky laugh escaped his throat. 'Maybe I wasn't just some regular guy after all.'
A sudden spark of joy flared in his chest, cutting through the fatigue and the pain. He had spent years feeling like a failure, now he had something. He didn't know what a Necromancer did in a world of Warriors and Mages, and he didn't know what 'Evolution' meant for a human, but it was a start.
He forced himself to get up. He needed to be careful. If people found out he had awakened a class like this through a meteor strike, he would become a lab rat.
He walked over to his closet and pulled out a fresh black hoodie. It was thick and had a deep hood that could hide his face. He threw it on over his bruised torso, the fabric feeling soft against his battered skin. He didn't feel like sleeping anymore. The energy in his stomach was buzzing, demanding to be used.
He looked at the skill [Revival] on his screen. He needed to know what it did. He needed to know if this was real. He turned toward the door, his hand on the knob. He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, leaving his old life behind in the dim apartment.