The scythe whispered through the wheat, a clean, familiar sound. Elias Thorne straightened up, wiping sweat from his brow with a dusty sleeve. Three more rows. Just three, and maybe his father would let him slip into the village before supper.

  “You’re leaving a trail.”

  Elias turned. His father, Marcus, stood at the field’s edge, arms crossed over his worn linen shirt. His expression was that familiar blend of sternness and fondness.

  “I’m keeping a steady pace,” Elias protested, knowing full well he was rushing.

  “A steady pace doesn’t leave half-cut stalks behind you.” Marcus raised an eyebrow, a gesture Elias had spent seventeen years trying and failing to copy. “Look there. And there.”

  Elias followed his father’s pointed finger. A scattering of wheat lay in his wake, golden stalks fallen beside their severed stems. Accusations.

  “Right. I’ll get them.”

  “See that you do.” Marcus crunched across the dry earth and stopped beside him. The afternoon sun baked the fields, turning everything to gold. “Hard to focus on the work in hand when your mind’s on the work to come, I suppose.”

  Elias shrugged, a half-smile tugging his lips. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Son, you’ve been counting down the days on the barn wall since harvest moon.” Marcus clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “One more dawn. Try not to vibrate out of your skin before then.”

  Tomorrow. The word thrummed in Elias’s chest. Tomorrow he’d be fifteen by the old village count—seventeen in the common years—and the System would finally see him. He’d choose a class. He’d become something.

  “What did you pick again?” Elias asked, though he knew the answer. He needed to hear it.

  “Farmer,” Marcus said, without a hint of regret. He swept a calloused hand over the swaying sea of wheat. “Your grandfather grinned for a week. Took Carpenter later, when the farm could run itself a little. Two classes is plenty for most.”

  “For most,” Elias echoed.

  “For most,” his father agreed, and something knowing flickered in his eyes. “Not for adventurers. They stack classes like your mother stacks recipe scrolls.”

  “I heard that!” Anna Thorne’s voice carried from the porch of their stone-and-timber house. She stood with hands on her hips, backlit by the lowering sun. Even at this distance, Elias could see her smile. “And my collection is perfectly curated!”

  “Seventeen ways to cook a potato is curated, is it?”

  “Eighteen! I found a new one just last week!”

  Marcus shook his head, but his smile was pure affection. “See what I live with?”

  Elias did see. He saw his father, rooted to this land by choice and contentment. He saw his mother, whose [Cook] and [Herbalist] classes filled their home with warmth and flavour. He saw the life they’d built, sturdy and good.

  And he saw the road winding past the last field, disappearing into the wooded hills, leading to places whose names he’d only ever spoken in whispers.

  “I’m going to miss this,” he said, the words quiet in the vastness of the field.

  Marcus’s grip tightened on his shoulder. “We’ll miss you. But—” He paused, his voice growing rough. “But you’re meant for more than this, Elias. Always were. Your mother and I knew it when you were seven, climbing the big oak to ‘scout for monsters’.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I was helping!”

  “You near stopped your mother’s heart and gave me my first grey hair.” Marcus ruffled Elias’s already-tousled brown hair. “But you did spot Old Man Hemmel’s lost cow from up there, so I suppose it counted.”

  They stood in comfortable silence for a moment, looking out over the land that had shaped them both.

  “Finish clean,” Marcus said. “Then get washed up. Your mother’s making honeyed bread. Be late, and Lily will claim your share. She’s been ‘practicing her arcane focus’ all afternoon and claims it’s starving work.”

  Elias’s stomach growled on cue. “On it.”

  He returned to the wheat, this time with his mind on the swing, the cut, the gather. The rhythm was a meditation. He’d done this ten thousand times.

  After tomorrow, he might never do it again.

  The thought sent a twin thrill of excitement and fear straight through his heart.

  ---

  Dinner was a small feast. Honeyed bread, still warm from the oven. Herb-roasted carrots and parsnips from their garden. A chicken stew so rich and savoury it made Elias wonder if [Cook] was a secret combat class.

  “So?” Lily demanded, around a mouthful of bread. “Decided yet?”

  “Lily,” their mother chided softly. “Mouth closed, please.”

  Lily swallowed dramatically. “Well? Have you?”

  Elias speared a piece of chicken. “Scout, I think.”

  “Scout!” Lily’s eyes, the same hazel as his, lit up. “You’ll get to see everything! Find secret paths and track wyverns and—”

  “It’s also practical,” Marcus interjected. “Good movement, sharp senses, pathfinding. Useful skills, whether you’re adventuring or… not.”

  “But it’s boring,” Lily groaned.

  “Boring keeps you breathing,” Anna said, her tone gentle but firm. She looked at Elias, and he saw the worry she tried to mask behind a smile. “It’s a wise choice, sweetling. A good foundation.”

  “Since when have I been wise?” Elias joked, but it fell flat in the warm kitchen air.

  Anna reached across the wooden table and took his hand. Her fingers, scarred from knives and herbs, were warm. “You’re wise where it counts. That’s what matters.” She squeezed. “And this will always be your home. No matter how far you go.”

  Elias’s throat tightened. “I know, Ma.”

  “Good.” She released him and tapped his bowl. “Now eat. You’ll need your strength.”

  Lily, whose attention span was that of a joyful puppy, had already moved on. “Elias, do you think you’ll meet a dragon?”

  “There are no dragons near Millbrook, Lil.”

  “But there are in the world! Master Edwin says there are seven continents and dragons live on at least three! Maybe four, if you count the drakes of the Shattered Isles, but he says they’re more like arrogant lizards with pretensions—”

  “Lily,” Marcus said, laughter in his voice. “Breathe.”

  She took an exaggerated breath. “I’m just saying! He might see one!”

  “Or he might see a lot of mud, bad food, and things that want to make him their dinner,” Elias said. “From what the adventurers say, it’s mostly walking, camping, and running.”

  “Don’t forget the pay,” Marcus added. “Seems to be the main appeal.”

  Elias thought of the few gold coins hidden in his room, saved from years of odd jobs. The last adventurers who’d passed through—lean, hard-eyed people with gear that gleamed—had mentioned their swords alone cost more than his family’s entire homestead.

  The gulf between Millbrook and the wider world was a chasm.

  “I’ll start small,” Elias said, aiming the words at his mother. “Easy jobs. Work my way up.”

  “That’s my boy,” Anna said. “Slow and steady.”

  “Boring and steady,” Lily muttered, earning a twin look from her parents.

  The talk drifted then—to village news, to Lily’s fledgling [Mage] skills (she could make sparks, and had nearly set the curtains alight proving it), to the coming harvest festival. Normal talk. Family talk.

  Elias tried to fix every detail in his memory: the feel of the worn table, the smell of bread and herbs, the sound of his sister’s laughter.

  ---

  That night, lying in the dark, Elias stared at the familiar cracks in the ceiling beams. Tomorrow, everything changed. Tomorrow, the invisible machinery of the world—the System—would acknowledge him. He’d see the screens, the numbers, the proof of becoming more.

  He’d dreamt of it for years. Literally. Waking up to no soft blue glow had become its own kind of disappointment.

  Tomorrow, that ended.

  Scout. It was the sensible path. Movement, perception, tracking—useful anywhere. Safe. Approved.

  It was the right choice.

  Then why are you still thinking about it? his own mind asked, in Lily’s know-it-all voice.

  Because it was forever, he argued back. Your first class was your foundation. Everything else built on it.

  No pressure.

  He rolled over, punching his thin pillow. Through the small window, stars lay scattered across the black like flung diamonds. Out there were Zenthara’s martial monasteries, Noctheim’s ice-hewn cities, the thousand mysteries of the Shattered Isles.

  And here was Millbrook, where the month’s great excitement had been Old Man Hemmel’s infernal cow getting loose again.

  Tomorrow, he thought, and the anticipation fluttered in his chest like a trapped bird. Tomorrow.

  Sleep was a stubborn fugitive. He lay awake for hours, running through class lists he’d long since memorised.

  When sleep finally took him, he dreamt of endless roads, foreign skies, and cool blue screens that read Level 1 in everything. And that was alright. Everyone started somewhere.

  He dreamt of becoming.

  ---

  The rooster’s cry shattered the darkness. Elias’s eyes flew open, his heart hammering against his ribs.

  Today.

  He scrambled from bed, his feet tangling in the blanket, and stumbled to the window. Dawn was just a blush on the horizon, painting the eastern fields in rose and gold. It looked the same as ever.

  It felt entirely different.

  A knock. “Elias? You awake?”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  “Breakfast in ten. And wear your good tunic. It’s an Awakening, not a barn-raising.”

  Elias looked down at the work clothes in his hands. “Right. Good tunic.”

  He pulled the one set of fine clothes from his small cupboard: brown linen, sewn by his mother for feast days. It was clean, sturdy, and faintly itchy.

  Dressing, he caught his reflection in the small, polished metal mirror. Same messy hair. Same hazel eyes. Same thin scar on his forearm from a seven-year-old’s fall from an oak.

  Same Elias.

  Would he still be, by tonight? Or would the System reshape him?

  One way to know.

  He walked downstairs, where his family was gathering for the last breakfast of his childhood.

  Tomorrow had arrived.

  Elias Thorne was ready.