The alarm went off at 5:40 AM like it always did, and Adam hit dismiss without opening his eyes.
He lay there for a few seconds, staring at the same crack in the ceiling he'd memorized months ago. The checklist ran itself — morning run, stretches, shower, breakfast, study.
Tomorrow he turned sixteen. In this world, that changed everything.
He got up.
The room was small. Guest bedroom in his uncle's house in Greyhill — single bed, a desk, a shelf of books half his and half left over from his cousin Marc. Gray light through the curtains. He dressed, laced his shoes, and went downstairs without making noise.
Outside, cold air and silence. Greyhill was a small town, thirty minutes by train from Kerenth, sitting at the base of the Varen Ridge. He ran his usual loop — down Feldweg Street, along the canal path, up the hill past the old brewery. Three kilometers. Not far, but he kept the pace honest.
A year ago he'd barely managed two. His body was catching up. Slowly.
Not fast enough. The thought came in like it always did, somewhere around the second kilometer. One more day and you're still just a kid who can run three kilometers.
The thing about being fifteen for the second time was that you knew exactly how little fifteen-year-old legs could do. His first life, he'd never run anywhere. Thirty years of sitting at desks, and then he was dead.
He pushed the thought away and focused on breathing.
The house smelled like coffee and toast when he got back. Aunt Lena was in the kitchen, buttering toast in her bathrobe.
"You're up early," she said without looking up. "Again."
"Morning."
"There's coffee. Sit."
Adam poured a cup and sat. The coffee was too hot. Aunt Lena put a plate in front of him — two slices, already buttered. She'd learned years ago that he'd skip breakfast if she let him.
"Your uncle's driving you to Kerenth this afternoon. He wants to leave by two."
"I can take the train."
"He wants to drive you." Her tone closed the discussion. "It's the day before your birthday, Adam. Let the man drive his nephew."
He bit into his toast. "Okay."
Aunt Lena sat across from him. "Sophie's been asking about tomorrow."
"What about it?"
"Whether you're going to do it. Accept the Bazaar."
"She knows I am."
"She knows. She wants to hear you say it." Lena sipped her coffee. "She looks up to you. More than you realize."
Adam didn't say anything to that. Sophie was fourteen. In two years she'd face the same choice. The Explorer mortality statistics were public — by law, any sixteen-year-old could look up the numbers before deciding.
The numbers were bad.
"I'll talk to her," Adam said.
"Thank you." Lena paused. "Are you nervous? About tomorrow?"
"A little," he said.
She squeezed his hand. Her eyes were wet. She stood up and went back to the counter before he could say anything about it.
"More toast?"
"I'm good. Thanks, Aunt Lena."
He found Sophie in the backyard after breakfast, sitting on the low wall at the edge of the garden. She was reading something on her tablet — an Explorer forum, from the look of it. She minimized it when she saw him, which was obvious and endearing.
"Hey," Adam said, sitting next to her.
"Hey."
"Your mom says you wanted to ask me something."
Sophie scrunched her nose. "She makes everything sound so dramatic. I was just wondering if you'd thought about it more."
"About accepting?"
"Yeah."
"I have. I'm going to."
She nodded, looking out at the mountains. The Varen Ridge — gray-blue peaks, snow on the highest ones. Early spring, everything still half-winter.
"Marc thinks you're crazy," she said.
"Marc thinks anyone who doesn't want to be an engineer is crazy."
That got a small smile. "He said the survival rates for first-year Explorers are—"
"I know the statistics."
"—eleven percent reach Level 5. Less than two percent reach Level 6. And Level 8? You can count them on one hand. Globally."
She'd memorized the numbers. Fourteen years old.
"Those are aggregate," he said. "They include everyone — people who accept on a dare, people with no training, no plan. The survival rate for academy graduates is higher. Westfall specifically, it's—"
"Thirty-one percent reach Level 5. I know." She looked at him sideways. "You've been studying too."
"Occupational habit."
She was quiet for a moment. "Do you think I should do it? When I'm sixteen?"
Adam thought about it.
"Spend the next two years getting as strong and smart as you can. Then decide based on who you are at that point. Not who you are now."
She considered this. "That's not really an answer."
"It's the only honest one I've got."
They sat for a while. Wind off the ridge, cold and clean. Somewhere in the valley, a train.
"I should go pack," he said, standing. "Heading to Kerenth this afternoon."
"For the birthday?"
"For the Bazaar."
Sophie nodded. Then, quietly: "Be careful."
"Always."
The drive took forty minutes. Uncle Henrik didn't talk much, which was fine — neither did Adam. Henrik drove an older car, clean and maintained. He wasn't the type to replace something that still worked.
"Apartment's stocked," Henrik said eventually. "Went by yesterday. Fridge, pantry, the usual."
"You didn't have to—"
"It's done."
Greyhill dissolved into farmland, then suburbs, then Kerenth proper. The Velden river appeared, wide and flat. Apartment buildings clustered along the banks. The city was maybe three hundred thousand people — not huge, but it felt like a lot after Greyhill.
Halfway through the drive, Henrik said: "Your parents would have been proud."
His jaw was set, eyes straight ahead. This had been building the whole ride.
"Your father especially. He had this way of committing to things once he'd decided. Didn't talk about it. Just did it. You're like that."
Adam didn't remember them. He had photographs and stories. That was it. Sometimes he felt guilty about how little he felt — but the parents he actually remembered were from another life entirely, and he'd stopped trying to untangle that a long time ago.
"Thanks, Uncle Henrik."
Henrik nodded. The rest of the drive was quiet.
The apartment in Northbank was government-subsidized, academy-adjacent, functional. One bedroom, bathroom, kitchen-slash-living-space. Adam had been here two years and added three personal touches — a desk lamp, a corkboard with his study schedule, a photograph of Henrik's family on the nightstand.
Henrik set Adam's bag on the bed and looked around like he wanted to fix something.
"You'll call tomorrow."
"I'll call."
"After."
"After."
Henrik stood there, hands in his pockets. Then he hugged Adam. Quick, tight, one-armed at first before the other arm came up.
"Be smart," he said. Then he let go, nodded, and left.
Adam listened to the car pull away. Then he sat on the bed in the quiet.
Tomorrow it begins. Two lifetimes of preparation — one wasted, one not. He knew things about the Bazaar that nobody else on this planet could. About the worlds. About what was coming. The stories he'd watched on screens in his old life were real here, and he'd memorized all of them.
None of it mattered until tomorrow.
Reinforced Physiology first. Then Accelerated Cognition. Then—
He'd been over the build a thousand times. He stopped himself, turned over, closed his eyes.
Sleep took a while. It usually did.