I woke up to sunlight and a sarcastic window.
[Good morning. Or afternoon. Hard to say, given that you slept for fourteen hours like a man who had somewhere to be and decided against it.]
"What time—"
[2 PM. Your mother left for work an hour ago. She checked on you twice. You slept through both checks, which is impressive given that she is not a quiet person.]
I sat up slowly. My ribs ached. My head felt packed with wet cloth. Otherwise — functional. Technically.
[Body status: Critical. Lung capacity: 31%. General physical condition: a generous F minus.]
"That's not a real grade."
[I made it real just now, You're welcome.]
I swung my legs off the bed and sat on the edge, waiting for the vertigo to pass. It passed faster than yesterday. Small mercy.
On the table beside the stove was a covered bowl — dal, still faintly warm, and a folded note tucked beneath it. My mother's handwriting. Three words:
Eat before anything.
I ate.
She came back at noon to check on me before the afternoon shift.
I heard her key in the lock and straightened instinctively — old habit, the kind that doesn't ask permission. She stopped in the doorway when she saw me sitting upright and awake, spoon in hand, bowl mostly empty.
Something crossed her face. Relief dressed up as irritation.
"You're up."
"I'm up."
She crossed the room, pressed the back of her hand to my forehead — the same check as last night, same hand, same practiced motion. Whatever she found satisfied her enough that she moved to the stove and began heating water without comment.
We sat in the particular silence that families build over years — not uncomfortable, just dense, carrying more than words would.
Then: "Why did you go to the library?"
Not why did you go out. Not why didn't you tell me. Straight to it.
"The Institute examination," I said. "I needed study materials."
She turned from the stove. Looked at me with the expression she used when she was deciding how many things to say out of all the things she was thinking.
"Arin." Her voice was level. "You know what the doctor—"
"I know what the doctor said."
She was quiet. The water began to heat.
"The examination is in seven months," I said. "If I pass it — when I pass it — things change. The Academy provides housing, stipend, Medical facilities."
I held her gaze. "Better ones."
She turned back to the stove. Her shoulders did the thing they did — that small, private adjustment.
"You could have asked me first," she said.
"You would have said no."
A pause. Then, quietly: "Yes, I would have."
She poured the tea, set a cup in front of me. Kept one for herself. Drank it standing up the way she always did when she didn't have time to sit, which was most days.
At the door, dupatta pulled tight, she stopped.
"Eat the rest of the dal," she said. "And don't go anywhere."
"I won't."
She gave me the look that meant she didn't believe me but was choosing to. Then she left. The lock clicked behind her.
The room settled into quiet.
[Touching,] the Archive said. [Ready to proceed?]
I put down the cup.
"Talk."
[Chant 'Stat Window.']
"I'm not chanting anything."
[It doesn't have to be out loud, Think it clearly.]
Stat Window.
The air in front of me folded open like a page, and there it was:
[ STAT WINDOW ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Arin Valen Age: 13
Race: Human Title: None
Health Status:
☠ Terminal Pulmonary Degeneration
☠ Chronic Oxygen Deficiency
☠ Frail Constitution
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
BLOODLINE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
None
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
BLESSINGS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
None
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SKILLS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
None
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SPECIAL TRAITS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Fading Breath]
Every physical action rapidly exhausts the body.
[Unbroken Will]
Mental resistance greatly exceeds physical limitations.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
KARMIC POINTS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Karmic Coins: 1,000]
I stared at the last line for a long moment.
"What is that?"
[It is what it says]
"One thousand."
[Correct.]
"I had zero yesterday?."
[Also correct.]
"What happened."
The Archive paused. Shorter than usual.
[You accrued them.]
"How? I walked across a bridge and fell down."
[Karmic Points are generated by actions that produce meaningful effects on the trajectory of this world's events.] A beat. [The calculation is more complex than it appears. Don't overthink it.]
I looked at the number. Then: "What do I do with them?"
[Two primary functions. First — the Shop.]
A second panel opened beside the first.
[ SHOP ]
Bloodlines | Skills | Blessings | Stat Boosts
Minimum Entry Price: 50,000 Karmic Points
Access Denied (Minimum Narrative Authority Required: 1)
I read it twice.
"Fifty thousand."
[Yes.]
"I have one thousand."
[Yes.]
"So the shop is useless to me."
[At present. Correct.]
I closed that panel and breathed through my nose and said nothing for a moment, because some things deserve a moment of silence out of respect for how badly they've gone.
"So I have a thousand points and nowhere to spend them."
[Not exactly,] the Archive said. [There is one other function.]
Another pause. This one different in texture — if a translucent window could be said to have a texture.
[The Wheel of Fortune. One hundred Karmic Points per spin.]
A new panel appeared. A wheel, segmented, rotating slowly.
"What does it give?"
[Variable. Skills, Arts Fragments. Most recipients don't have access to this function.]
I looked at it. "Most?"
[You are the only current recipient with access to this function,] the Archive said. Its tone was — as close to neutral as it ever managed to be, which meant it was carefully not being something else. [It is not standard.]
I didn't ask why. Not yet.
"Show me what it's given others."
[It hasn't. You are the first.]
I sat with that for a moment.
Then: "Fine, Spin it."