Dorian Black waited outside Helena's dorm like he belonged there. Not leaning on the wall, not slouching, not trying to look harmless or charming or anything else that invited strangers to form opinions. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and his shoulders loose, as if he had all the time in the world, as if the tension in his spine wasn't a permanent part of him. A pair of headphones covered his ears. Anyone walking past would assume he was listening to music.
Nothing was playing. His phone screen was dark. No playlist queued. No notifications. The headphones were a prop, a shield, a simple way to tell the campus he wasn't open for conversation. A way to reduce the number of eyes that lingered. It didn't always work. The women's dorm rose behind him in clean brick and glass, bright with banners and campus pride and photos of smiling students that always looked staged. The courtyard out front smelled like damp leaves and distant cafeteria grease. A line of bikes leaned against a rack, their frames slick from last night's rain. Students passed in clusters, talking too loudly, laughing too easily, acting like the world was stable.
Dorian watched all of it without really seeing it. He kept his focus shallow, like a man standing in water that could pull him under if he let his thoughts sink too far. Campus life was a mask. Schedules, clubs, lectures, flirting. It all had rules people pretended were fair. He understood rules. He had survived them his entire life. He shifted his weight and glanced at the dorm entrance again. Helena had texted five minutes ago. Two minutes. Promise. He believed her. Helena didn't lie to him.
Not in the small ways people did when they wanted to be liked. Across the courtyard, three students stood near a bench with a campus map bolted into the concrete. Two guys and a girl. The girl had a long coat and hair that fell in waves, the kind of effortless look that took effort. One of the guys wore a the university's lacrosse jersey. The other kept his hands tucked under his arms like he was cold or trying to make himself look bigger. They weren't whispering. Not really. They were talking with the casual volume of people who assumed the subject of their conversation couldn't hear them, or wouldn't matter if he did.
Dorian could hear everything. The girl's voice carried first, sharp with that special brand of cruelty that came from distance, from treating someone else's life as a story. "Isn't he that serial killer's son?" she said, nodding in Dorian's direction like he was a landmark. "How fucked was that story?" Jersey boy leaned in. "Dude, it was insane. Like, killing your dad because he kept your mother chained in a sex dungeon for, what, fifteen years? Ten? I don't even know. It was all over the news."
"Fifteen," the girl said. She said it like she knew the number the way someone knew a celebrity's age. "They found him covered in blood with the bat. Like… what kind of person does that?" The other guy snorted. "The kind of person who grows up in a house like that." She made a face. "Why doesn't he change his name? Dorian Black sounds like a fucking creep too." Dorian's fingers curled tighter in his hoodie pockets. The words didn't surprise him. The details did. People never remembered the truth, not cleanly. They remembered whatever version made the best headline. Whatever version was easiest to digest at lunch. They remembered his mother as an object. They remembered his father as a monster. They remembered Dorian as the boy with the bat. They didn't remember that he was sixteen and shaking so hard he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering when the police pulled him off the body. They didn't remember that the basement door had been locked from the outside. They didn't remember the smell when he finally got it open. The girl's voice again, dismissive. "I don't know what Helena sees in him. Dude gives me the fucking creeps." Jersey laughed. "Good thing he's got headphones on.
If he heard us, I don't know what he would do." The other guy puffed his chest out slightly. "I'd kick his ass." Dorian's vision narrowed. A familiar heat rose in his chest, moving fast, igniting old wiring in his brain that had been built for survival and violence. His right hand tightened into a fist inside his pocket until the knuckles ached. He imagined crossing the courtyard in three steps, grabbing the guy by his collar, smashing his face into the metal map stand. He imagined the girl's expression changing from bored cruelty to shock. He imagined jersey boy's laugh dying in his throat.
He imagined it all in an instant. Then he let it go. Not because he was better than them. Because he'd learned the cost. Violence never ended where you wanted it to. It didn't satisfy. It escalated. It created new cages. He had escaped one prison. He wasn't stepping into another because some strangers wanted to poke at a scar and watch him bleed. He inhaled slowly through his nose. Exhaled slower. The heat didn't leave. It never really did. It settled. It waited. His eyes stayed forward. He didn't look at them. He didn't give them the satisfaction of confirming that their words had landed. Let them talk. Let them build their little myths. Dorian's phone vibrated in his hand. A text preview lit the screen for half a second. Coming.
He turned his gaze back to the dorm entrance. The doors opened and Helena stepped out like she carried her own warmth with her. She wore a dark coat and a scarf wrapped high around her throat, and her blonde hair was tucked behind one ear. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. When she saw him, her face softened in a way that still surprised him even after months together.
She walked straight to him, no hesitation, no awkward pause like she was worried about being seen with him. She rose onto her toes and kissed him. It was simple. Familiar. Gentle. And it pulled the anger out of him like a plug. Dorian's fist loosened. His shoulders dropped. He let his eyes close for a breath, just long enough to savor the sensation of being touched without threat. Helena smelled like clean soap and coffee. When she pulled back, she smiled up at him. "Sorry. Our RA decided today was the day she needed to talk to me about my 'energy' in the hallways." Dorian's mouth twitched. "Your energy?"
"She says I'm too loud in the mornings." Helena rolled her eyes. "As if anyone in that building is asleep before noon." Dorian lifted one shoulder. "Maybe she's jealous." He said with a slight smile. "Everyone's jealous." Helena squeezed his hand like she owned it. Like she wasn't afraid of what that hand had done in another life. "You've been waiting long?" She asked. "A few minutes." He didn't look away from her. He didn't mention the conversation across the courtyard.
He didn't feed it. Helena didn't deserve to carry it. He had enough weight already. She studied his face anyway, like she could feel the edges of his mood. Helena always noticed things. Sometimes it made him uneasy. Most of the time, it felt like being seen by someone who didn't flinch. "You okay?" she asked softly. Dorian nodded. "Yeah." Helena didn't push. She didn't demand. She just accepted the answer for now, which was another reason he loved her.
She didn't treat him like something fragile. She treated him like someone with agency. "What's your day look like?" she asked, looping her arm through his. "I'm free." Dorian glanced down at her. "I worked out early. Finished my paper. I've got nothing until tomorrow." Helena's smile widened. "So you're telling me you're at my mercy." Dorian's lips curved, a real smile. "If you want dinner, we do dinner. If you want to stay in and watch some reality tv trash, we do that. Your call." She opened her mouth to answer. Then Dorian's world changed. It started as a pressure behind his eyes, like the onset of a migraine, but sharper, more invasive. A voice filled his head, not heard through ears, but through bone and thought, cold and unmistakably present. He froze. A translucent screen flickered into existence in the air in front of him. It hovered at chest height, perfectly aligned with his gaze. The edges were clean, the text crisp, the glow faint but undeniable. It didn't reflect sunlight. It didn't cast a shadow. It existed like it had always been there and reality had simply ignored it until now. Three lines of text appeared, each one pulsing once as if confirming its own authority.
[EARTH HAS BEEN CHOSEN]
[WELCOME TO THE ASCENSION!]
[ASCENSION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[LUCKY FOR YOU]
[PREPARE FOR CLASS SELECTION]
Dorian stared, his pulse suddenly loud in his ears. Helena's grip tightened on his arm. "Babe," she whispered, voice strained. "What is this?" Dorian couldn't answer. Because his phone buzzed again. Not with a text. With an emergency alert, the kind the government sent for storms and shootings. Except the screen didn't show a weather warning. It showed nothing at all, just a blank glow as if the device had forgotten what it was supposed to do. Around them, the courtyard noise stuttered. Laughter cut off mid-breath. A conversation broke like glass. Someone screamed the word "What?" so sharply it sounded like pain. Then everything went black. Not dark like night. Black like absence.
Like a hand over the universe. Dorian's breath hitched. The ground was still under his feet, but he couldn't see it. He couldn't see the dorm. He couldn't see Helena. The air felt thick and wrong, as if space itself had been turned into a sealed room. "Helena?" he shouted, panic rising fast. "Helena!" No response. The blackness swallowed sound. He reached out blindly, fingers clawing for her sleeve, her hand, anything. He found nothing. His heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted out. The voice returned, louder now, absolute. A new screen ignited in front of him.
[CHOOSE YOUR CLASS]
[TIMER: 10:00]
Dorian stared at the ticking numbers. Ten minutes. His mouth went dry. "What the fuck is this?" he whispered into the dark, but the dark didn't answer. Only the timer did.
9:59
9:58
Dorian's hand lifted, trembling slightly as he reached toward the floating screen, because whatever this was, he could feel it in his bones. This wasn't a dream. This was a rule. And rules, he understood. He swallowed, forced his breathing to slow, forced his mind into the cold, adaptive place it always went when survival was on the line. "Okay," he muttered, more to himself than anything. "Okay. Fine." His finger touched the screen. And the System responded. The darkness shifted. Not away, not yet, but aside, as if something unseen had leaned closer to examine him. The floating screen expanded, its surface rippling once before stabilizing. Lines of text formed with surgical precision, sharp and indifferent. A new panel slid into view.
[PLAYER STATUS: INITIALIZED]
Dorian's breath slowed despite the pounding in his chest. If this was a dream, it had rules. Dreams never had rules. Another window unfolded beneath it.
[BASE ATTRIBUTES]
Strength: 5
Agility: 5
Vitality: 5
Intelligence: 5
Wisdom: 5
He stared at the numbers. All the same. Balanced. Flat. Like a baseline. Like a body before it had been tested by the world. When he focused on Strength, the stat expanded.
Strength
Governs raw physical power
Increases melee damage
Affects carrying capacity and armor handling
Required for heavy weapon mastery
Nothing about morality. Nothing about restraint. Just output. Agility followed.
Agility
Governs speed, reflexes, balance
Increases crit chance and evasion
Determines stealth effectiveness
Impacts attack speed
That one made something tight in his chest loosen, just a little. Vitality.
Vitality
Governs health pool and stamina
Increases resistance to bleed, poison, exhaustion
Affects recovery speed
Determines survivability during prolonged fights
Survivability. That word stuck. Then Intelligence.
Intelligence
Governs mana capacity and spell complexity
Required for advanced spellcasting
Affects spell damage and control
Influences System interaction speed
And Wisdom.
Wisdom
Governs perception, focus, and mental resistance
Increases mana regeneration
Reduces spell backlash
Affects curse resistance and control effects
Dorian exhaled slowly through his nose. This thing, whatever it was, had reduced existence to inputs and outputs. Strengths. Weaknesses. Costs. No past. No excuses. A new header appeared.
[CLASS SELECTION AVAILABLE]
The screen split cleanly down the center.
MARTIAL CLASSES
Vanguard
Role: Frontline control
Armor: Heavy
Primary Stats: Strength / Vitality
Shield-based defense
Taunts draw enemy aggression
High mitigation, low burst
Excels at holding chokepoints
System Note:
Vanguards survive longer than most, but die slowly when overwhelmed.
Dorian frowned. Stand in front. Take the hits. Die last. He had done enough of that in his life.
Striker
Role: Shock assault
Armor: Medium
Primary Stats: Strength / Vitality
High burst melee damage
Stamina-based abilities
Trades defense for aggression
Thrives in short, brutal engagements
System Note:
Strikers burn bright and fast. Many do not see the end of the Siege.
He'd watched that story play out too many times.
Rogue
Role: Elimination, infiltration
Armor: Light
Primary Stats: Agility / Strength
Stealth and positional damage
High crit multipliers
Assassination-focused skills
Fragile when exposed
System Note:
Rogues do not win fair fights. The System does not reward fairness.
Dorian's eyes lingered. Not because it sounded glamorous. Because it sounded honest. The list scrolled.
CASTER CLASSES
Arcanist
Role: Elemental damage
Armor: Light
Primary Stats: Intelligence / Wisdom
Elemental spellcasting
High mana dependency
Powerful but fragile
Vulnerable during casting
System Note:
Arcanists die quickly if unprotected. The System considers this acceptable.
Acceptable. That word again.
Hexbinder
Role: Debilitation, entropy
Armor: Medium
Primary Stats: Intelligence / Wisdom
Dark mana manipulation only
Curses, debuffs, decay
Weakens enemies over time
Excels when battles drag on
System Note:
Hexbinders grow stronger the worse things get.
For a moment, Helena's face flashed through his mind. Her stubborn hope. The way she always pushed forward even when things went bad. The thought twisted in his chest.
HYBRID / UTILITY CLASSES
Sentinel
Role: Support, sustain
Armor: Light
Primary Stats: Intelligence / Wisdom
Aura buffs
Healing and mitigation
Enhances group survivability
Low personal damage
System Note:
Sentinels are valued. They are also targeted first.
Summoner
Role: Battlefield control
Armor: Medium
Primary Stats: Intelligence / Wisdom
Conjures familiars
Controls space through numbers
Requires constant mana upkeep
Vulnerable when summons fall
System Note:
Summoners fight wars they cannot personally survive.
The timer pulsed in the corner of his vision.
[TIME REMAINING: 6:41]
Dorian swallowed. "This is insane," he muttered, voice swallowed by the void. "This has to be some kind of lucid nightmare." But his heart didn't believe that. Nightmares didn't explain themselves this clearly. He scrolled back up. Rogue. The description didn't promise safety. It didn't offer power without consequence. It didn't pretend he would be protected. It assumed he would be alone. That he would strike first or not at all. That if he was seen, he would probably die. Dorian felt his hand tremble. A memory flickered unbidden. Steel in his grip. The weight of a bat. The sound of bone giving way. He touched his face, grounding himself. Calm down. He forced a breath in. Out. "I've always had quick reflexes," he whispered. "I know how to stay quiet." He tapped the Rogue icon. The screen dimmed for a fraction of a second. Then confirmed.
[CLASS SELECTED: ROGUE]
[PRIMARY ATTRIBUTES CONFIRMED]
[STARTER EQUIPMENT REGISTERED]
A final line appeared beneath it, stark and unforgiving.
[PREPARE FOR BATTLE]
[Oh I hope you are ready!]
Dorian's eyes widened. "Battle?" he breathed. "Oh shit." The darkness around him began to fracture. Light seeped back in, thin and cold. And somewhere, very close, something was already hunting. Darkness did not lift all at once. It thinned. Sound returned first, distant and warped, like Dorian's head was underwater.
A scream cut through the black, then another. Panic bled back into the world in broken pieces, overlapping voices and sharp, animal fear. Light followed slowly, dim and wrong, as if dusk had been poured over reality and left there to congeal. The courtyard snapped back into existence. Dorian staggered, boots scraping against stone.
His balance corrected automatically, knees bending just enough to keep him upright. His heart was hammering, each beat heavy and fast, like it was trying to outrun whatever rule had just rewritten the world. Helena was there. Alive. Right behind him. She grabbed the back of his hoodie with shaking fingers, her breath shallow and uneven. "Dorian," she whispered, his name breaking. "What… what just happened?" He didn't answer. He stepped forward instead, placing himself between her and the open courtyard without thinking. It wasn't a decision. It was reflex, old and ingrained. His body had learned long ago where it belonged when danger surfaced. All around them, students were scattered across the stone plaza. Some were crying openly, curled in on themselves. Others stood frozen, eyes wide, staring at nothing. A few shouted questions into the air, demanding explanations from a sky that no longer cared enough to answer.
Dorian's gaze swept the crowd, cataloging movement, spacing, exits. The dorm doors behind them were sealed, the glass dark and unresponsive. The paths leading away from the courtyard blurred at their edges, like distance itself had become uncertain. And directly in front of him, no more than twenty feet away, stood the three from earlier. The two guys and the girl. Recognition struck them all at once. The girl's face drained of color when she saw him. Her mouth opened like she wanted to say something, an apology or an insult or a joke to make this less real. Nothing came out. The guy in the jersey swallowed hard.
The other one, the one who had puffed out his chest and talked about kicking Dorian's ass, looked suddenly very small. The temperature dropped. Not gradually. Abruptly. Dorian felt it on his skin, a cold that cut through fabric and settled into muscle. The courtyard lights flickered overhead, one by one, buzzing before going dark. Shadows pooled along the edges of the space, thickening, stretching. A sound rolled through the night. Low. Resonant. Not quite a growl. Not quite a howl. Something older. From the darkness beyond the courtyard, shapes began to move. At first, Dorian thought they were shadows slipping free of the walls. Then they stepped into the dying light, and the truth settled like lead in his gut. Wolves. Too large. Too lean.
Their fur was blank and inky, not black so much as empty, like it swallowed the light around it. Their bodies seemed half-formed at the edges, outlines blurring as if reality itself didn't quite agree they should exist. Their eyes were wrong. Pale. Hollow. They moved in silence, paws striking stone without sound. One after another, they emerged from the dark, forming a loose crescent around the courtyard. A pack. At the front, the largest wolf lowered its head.
The pack leader. Its breath fogged the air, each exhale slow and deliberate. It wasn't rushed. It wasn't hungry in the way animals were hungry. It was assessing. Someone screamed. Then another. Panic detonated. Students bolted in every direction, some slipping on the stone, others colliding and dragging each other down. A few froze entirely, minds snapping under the weight of disbelief. The three in front of Dorian hesitated. Just for a heartbeat. The pack leader charged. It crossed the distance in a blur of motion, too fast, too fluid. Mr. Lacrosse reacted on pure instinct. He shoved the girl. Hard.
She stumbled forward, arms windmilling, a short, strangled sound tearing from her throat as she fell directly into the wolf's path. "No," the other guy screamed, reaching for her too late. The wolf leapt. Its jaws closed around her neck with a wet, cracking sound. Blood sprayed across the stone, hot and bright against the dark. The girl's scream cut off instantly, her body jerking as the wolf tore into her, shaking its head violently. Flesh ripped. Bone snapped. The pack surged forward. They descended on her in a frenzy of teeth and claws, ripping her apart in seconds. What remained of her was unrecognizable. Flesh and fabric lay scattered across the courtyard, torn apart so completely that Dorian couldn't tell where one piece ended and another began. Blood steamed in the cold air, dark rivulets running between the cracks in the stone like veins opened to the night. The two guys broke. One turned and ran, screaming, feet slipping on gore as he bolted blindly into the dark. A shape detached from the shadows to his left. Another wolf. Its jaws snapped shut around his torso, lifting him clean off the ground as his scream cut short in a wet crunch. The other dropped to his knees. The one in the lacrosse jersey. He sobbed openly now, hands slick with blood that wasn't his, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he stared at what he'd done. "I didn't mean to," he choked, rocking back and forth. "I didn't mean to." The world did not care. A translucent screen flashed into existence in front of him, visible to everyone nearby.
[KILL CONFIRMED]
CONTRIBUTION: ASSIST (FORCED DISPLACEMENT)
TARGET: PLAYER – FEMALE
CAUSE OF DEATH: MONSTER (WOLF)
XP AWARDED: 50%
LEVEL UP!
The jersey guy froze. His sob caught halfway through, eyes snapping to the screen. The panic on his face twisted, confusion bleeding into something else. Something sharper. His chest rose and fell hard as the notification faded. Dorian saw it happen.
Saw the moment the fear didn't disappear, but changed shape. The jersey guy's hands clenched slowly, fingers curling as if around an invisible prize. His breathing steadied, just a little. He looked down at the blood on his palms, then up at the wolves tearing into the remains of the girl. And he smiled. Just for a second. Dorian felt something cold settle in his gut. The System had spoken. It had rewarded him. Not for killing her. For using her. And somewhere in the darkness of the courtyard, something far worse than the wolves had just been born. Dorian didn't look away.
Helena made a broken sound behind him, half sob, half gasp, her fingers digging into his hoodie like she might tear through the fabric. He felt her shaking against his back. He stayed still. Watched. Learned. Something shifted in him, cold and precise, the same mental space he'd entered the night he broke open the basement door. Fear was there, sharp and real, but it didn't control him. It sharpened his focus instead. He reached behind his hip. His hand closed around something solid. Dorian's breath caught for a split second. He pulled it free. A dagger. Short. Dark. The blade caught the faint light and drank it in. The grip fit his palm perfectly, textured in a way that anchored his hold. Balanced. Familiar in a way that made his stomach twist.
This had not been there before. His fingers tightened around it anyway. "Dorian," Helena whispered again, voice cracking. "What do we do?" He didn't answer her either. He stepped forward. Just one step, placing himself fully between her and the pack. His knees bent, weight shifting to the balls of his feet. His shoulders relaxed. The dagger came up naturally, held low and ready. His body settled into a stance he did not remember learning. But it felt right. Natural. Necessary. The pack leader lifted its head from the carnage.
Blood dripped from its muzzle, thick and dark, splattering onto the stone between them. Its pale eyes locked onto Dorian Black. The wolf's lips peeled back, exposing teeth stained red. Dorian tightened his grip on the dagger. And waited.