The woman behind the desk didn't look up right away.
She sat with one foot tucked under her, stylus in hand, tapping at a screen half-filled with unread flags. Her badge said Rescan Admin with her name being K. Nelar in peeling black print.
Lucen stepped inside and let the door close behind him.
The air in Room 2B smelled like old paper and cheap mana toner. A fan in the corner clicked every time it rotated.
"You're Lucen Ivara?" the woman asked, eyes still on her screen.
"Yeah."
"Sit."
He did.
The chair was plastic. Slightly crooked. One of the legs wobbled.
Her fingers tapped a final command and the screen shifted to a flat blue display.
"Your initial scan flagged for undeclared talent. Which means you didn't let the system assign a public class. Is that right?"
Lucen nodded once. "I wanted to review the details first."
"Uh-huh."
She dragged a window onto the screen. It hovered in place, plain and gray.
"Let's make this easy. Tell me what the system gave you. Class and rank."
Lucen looked at the floating input box.
Then back at her.
She waited.
Her stylus clicked once against the desk.
'Can't say nothing. That'll make it worse. Too strong and they double-check. Too weak and it doesn't match my mana level.'
He cleared his throat. "Spell Tracer. Rank C."
Her eyes narrowed a little. Not much. Just enough to tell him that wasn't what she expected.
"Spell Tracer?" she repeated.
Lucen nodded.
"Support class?"
"Yeah."
"No combat alignment?"
"Not directly."
She leaned back slightly. The fan clicked again. Her expression didn't change.
"System version?"
Lucen blinked. "What?"
"Interface type. You said you were reviewing the details. Is it standard format?"
He hesitated. "Looks standard."
She tapped again.
A new box opened. Manual override submission.
"Fine. I'll flag it for delayed sync. Sometimes the interface updates slower on new activations."
Lucen didn't answer.
"Any symptoms? Vision blur, vertigo, uncontrolled mana emissions?"
"No."
"No inherited modifiers?"
"No."
She paused. Looked at him.
"You're kind of calm about this."
Lucen kept his expression blank. "Is that a problem?"
She shrugged. "Not my business."
He watched her finish the form. Each field filled automatically once the first few were entered. His fake class. His fake rank. The system reading still hovered behind her screen, blinking yellow.
[Sync Pending – Manual Confirmation: Spell Tracer – C]
She clicked submit.
"Okay. You're cleared."
Lucen nodded once and stood.
"Don't skip system orientation," she added without looking up again. "They run them every three days down the hall. You'll get a ping."
He didn't say thanks.
Just opened the door and stepped back into the hallway.
The girl with the gum was gone.
The vending machine made a low clunk as someone inside reset its rune core. Lights flickered.
Lucen walked past the next two doors and out the side exit.
Back into the street.
The door shut behind him with a hiss that didn't match the age of the building.
Outside, the sidewalk felt colder. Too much shade from the rail bridge overhead. Cracks along the concrete were filled with runoff and half-frozen gum. A stray dog lay curled in the alley across the street, tail twitching.
Lucen zipped his coat and started walking.
The wind caught the back of his hood and tugged it sideways.
Fleura City stretched in both directions. Wide, low, slightly decayed. Built in layers over itself. Industrial bones underneath, newer glass fronts pretending they belonged somewhere else. No one actually believed the skyline. They just lived under it.
He crossed at the faded crosswalk and passed a bus shelter where two teenagers were arguing over stat builds. One had a printout of a sword skill tree, complete with red marker circles.
"You maxed mobility first? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen."
Lucen didn't look at them.
A guild ad flared on the digital board behind them. Glowing silver logo. A tagline that read Your Talent Deserves Better.
He kept walking.
A patrol unit hovered overhead. Not military. Civil. Light-armor chassis with a dormant siren node and a half-functioning voice line. It repeated the same phrase every block.
"Report rogue systems. Guild-unauthorized magic is a felony under Union Law."
Lucen watched it drift past.
'Right. Let me get right on that.'
He turned down a side street.
Smaller shops here. Boards over a few windows. Old talisman paper still stuck to the gutters from last year's mana storm. The red ink was washed out. Most people didn't bother replacing them.
Farther down, a rune anchor hummed against a corner pole. City maintenance had tied it into the grid last winter, meant to stabilize minor spatial drift. It clicked once every eight seconds.
Lucen passed under it.
The light shimmered on his jacket for a moment.
'Still working. That's something.'
At the edge of the block, a bulletin board had been posted outside a tea shop. Physical paper, which meant urgent.
Dungeon breach markers. Red tags meant live gates. Orange meant potential drift. Yellow was cleanup assistance.
Today's board had three reds, five oranges, two yellows.
Most were in the outskirts.
One was in the west underground.
Lucen stopped and looked.
The red one at the bottom was handwritten.
Crackgate Detected
Zone: North Latch
Type: Unstable
Confirmation: Pending
Entry Reward: 120 credits
Exit bonus: 30 per sigil sample
He stared at it.
Just long enough to memorize the code.
Then kept walking.
The street bent slightly toward the train station. Mana lines ran overhead like veins. Some pulsed green, others dimmed and sparked at random. A few spots had anchors patched with scrap cables. Someone had added a sticker near one.
"Veilen Union infrastructure: held together with prayer…"
Lucen snorted.
The Veilen Union wasn't the worst place to be born. It wasn't the best either. You got your system at sixteen. You declared your class within a week. You registered with a local guild, or you didn't.
If you didn't, you worked contracts, courier shifts, or scouted the city's outskirts for low-risk sigil hunts.
If you were lucky, your class was combat rated.
If you weren't, you learned to smile when people called you support.
Lucen reached into his pocket and pulled out the small tablet clipped to his ID.
The screen was smudged. Still loaded from earlier.
He opened his system again. Quiet. Private. Unlinked to any external registry.
[Class Rank: SSS]
[Talent: Spellcraft Sovereign]
[System Mode: Adaptive Spell Designer Interface]
[Status: Awakened – Undocumented]
[Sync: Disabled]
He shut it with one tap.
His reflection hovered in the dark glass behind it.
Seventeen. City-trained. System-awakened. Fully out of options.
And somehow, still ahead of the curve.