Chapter 1: chapter 1

He woke with a scream trapped in his throat.

Cold air knifed into lungs that actually worked. A ceiling of damp stone pressed close enough to sweat on. The smell—wet earth, old bones, something musky—crawled down his nostrils and lit every nerve like a fuse.

His heart sprinted. His hands—too small, too thin—scrabbled at grit. Claws skittered on rock.

Claws.

He jerked, looked down.

Scaled fingers. Rust-red, narrow, wiry. A tail twitched behind him like a question mark someone had stabbed into his spine.

Panic surged back twice as hard.

“Nonononono—” He curled, gasping. The world blurred; tears squeezed out by reflex. He tried to brace for the familiar collapse—dizziness, black snow, the heavy blanket of a body that never kept up.

It didn’t come.

Breath went in. Breath came out. Chest didn’t stab. Vision steadied.

Alive. Stronger than he’d ever been.

He laughed once, a sharp wet bark, and clapped both hands to his face. The claws were cold on warm scales. “Get a grip,” he hissed. He slapped his forehead. “Wake up. Think.”

The echo went thin and mean through the little cave.

Think. Right. He was—he had been—sick. Always sick. Hospitals and hallways. Shoes squeaking, pitying eyes, voices a level lower like grief had volume controls. On good days, he made it to the window. On bad days, he measured the ceiling tiles and memorized the cracks.

He died, didn’t he?

He flexed his fingers. Tendons responded. Muscles answered. The sheer competence of his own body made his eyes sting.

“Okay,” he said to the dark. “Okay. You’re not broken. Yet. Where are we? What are we?”

A tiny glow woke in the corner of his vision.

He flinched. The glow flinched with him, clinging to the top-left of his view no matter how he turned. A rectangle, faintly blue, like moonlight trapped under glass.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“...No way.”

He lifted a clawed hand. The rectangle tingled when he touched it—like static on old TV glass—but his finger passed through.

Another box slid in, brighter, impatient.

> NEW ENTITY DETECTED.

> BOOTSTRAP INTERFACE AVAILABLE.

> SAY OR THINK: OPEN

His throat worked. “Open.”

The world folded a layer back.

A page—no, a panel—hung in the air. Text arranged itself with the self-confidence of a menu that had existed long before him and would exist long after.

He blinked. The panic had to wait its turn. This… this was order. This was a manual for reality.

“Right,” he whispered, and felt something old and ugly in his chest—envy, hunger, stubbornness—pull itself taller. “Let’s see what I’ve got.”

[STATUS]

Name: —

Species: Kobold (Unranked)

Level: 1

EXP: 26 / 100

Class: Unassigned

Health: 200 / 200

Stamina: 157 / 200

Mana: 200 / 200

Attributes

Strength: 10 (+)

Recovery: 10 (+)

Endurance: 10 (+)

Vigor: 10 (+)

Focus: 10 (+)

Clarity: 10 (+)

Unspent Stat Points: 20

Unlocked

• Analyze Lv. 1

• Interface: Basic

Locked

• Inventory — Requirement Not Met

• Skill Advancement — Requirement Not Met

• Evolution Tree — Requirement Not Met

[OPTIONS]

Control Schemes

• Tactile:      OFF   (Gestures…)

• Mental:       ON    (Keywords…)

• Verbal:       ON    (Keywords…)

Display

• HUD:          OFF   [Configure]

• Notifications: Minimal

• Transparency: 70%

• Anchor:       Top-Left

Apply Changes? [YES] [NO]

“HUD on,” he said, because saying it made it feel real. He tapped YES.

Nothing happened.

He frowned. “Apply.”

The menu snapped closed like a smug book. A tiny cyan box took up residence in the top-left of the world. When he shifted his eyes, it drifted with him. No matter where he looked—stone, shadows, the jagged hole of a tunnel—the box stayed there, patient.

Health ticked, steady. Stamina crept down one point while he breathed harder. Mana hummed at full.

He touched the box. That soft static again. “Good,” he said. “I can work with this.”

He eased to his feet—feet, not legs like they used to be; the angles had changed and the world had more floor in it—and leaned against the cave wall until the tail that was definitely his stopped counterbalancing like a drunk tightrope walker.

“Analyze,” he tried, looking at the wall.

A pinprick of light traced the stone, then spat a mean little line of text.

> Stone — Wet. Sedimentary. Brittle seams present.

> (Accuracy: Low. Range: 1 meter. Cooldown: 10 seconds.)

“Basic, but alive,” he muttered. He turned his head, focused on a scatter of bones near the tunnel mouth.

> Rodent Bones — Old. Picked clean. Harmless.

> (Accuracy: Low.)

He swallowed. His mouth was dry. “Water,” he said to no one. His HUD didn’t have an opinion.

The tunnel breathed a cold draft on his face. Something dripped, deeper in. His stomach answered with a hollow, gnawing ache he’d only read about in novels, because hunger had been a concept, not a sensation, when even swallowing was labor.

He bared small teeth he didn’t recognize and tried on a smile that felt like a warning.

“All right,” he said. He lifted his chin at the darkness, at the game, at whatever god had decided to deal him a second hand with shorter cards. “You gave me numbers. I’ll earn the rest.”

He took one step. The HUD whispered: Stamina —156/200.

Another step. —155.

He couldn’t help it. He grinned like a thief at a counting house.

“Level One, huh?” he whispered to the stone. “Watch me.”