I
The line moved slowly…
the Great Sage’s judgment of each new soul seemed to take a considerable stretch of time, as if he were carefully reading through some impossibly dense file, cross-referencing details no living person could see.
Calvin found himself wondering, idly, whether there was some invisible customer satisfaction score attached to each of these judgments: a thought that struck him as darkly funny, given the circumstances.
He’d have given a great deal, in that moment, for a queue number and an estimated wait time; old habits, apparently, didn’t care that he was dead.
Calvin stood partway back in the queue, watching the judgments unfold ahead of him with genuine interest.
Three places ahead was a broad-shouldered young man, built like he’d spent his life hauling things twice his size.
The instant his judgment completed, the pillar of light around him erupted into golden flame, and he nearly leapt off the ground with excitement.
“Warrior!
I’m a Warrior!”
A ripple of good-natured laughter and applause spread through the surrounding crowd.
Apparently, the thrill of starting a new life translated across worlds just fine.
II
First in line ahead of him had been a woman with a quiet, studious air.
When her result came through, pale blue runes rose and spun gently around her, light shifting through them with an almost scholarly elegance.
“Mage,” the Great Sage’s voice intoned.
“Keeper of knowledge, strategy, and creation.”
She turned her hands over, examining them again and again, her expression caught somewhere between disbelief and pure delight, as though she half-expected the runes to vanish the moment she looked away.
Watching the scene unfold, Calvin felt a strange sense of detachment settle over him, he was suddenly reminded of livestreams he used to half-watch back in his old life, the ones where gacha-game streamers pulled some rare, high-tier character and lost their composure on camera.
The joy looked identical, whichever world it happened in.
So fate, he thought, is basically just a loot system with better production values.
III
Just before his own turn, the mood shifted subtly.
The man directly ahead of him was older, carrying himself with a settled, grounded steadiness.
The kind of presence that made you assume, correctly or not, that he’d already survived worse than whatever was coming.
When his judgment was announced, the Great Sage’s tone took on a rare note of gravity.
“Tank,” he said.
“Protector, bearer of burdens, keeper of stability.
May you become the sturdiest shelter for those who stand behind you.”
Unlike the two before him, the man didn’t cheer or celebrate.
He simply bowed, deep and solemn, toward the Great Sage, then turned and stepped quietly aside, disappearing into the edge of the crowd without another word.
That restraint, so at odds with the scattered whoops and cheers still echoing through the hall, struck Calvin as oddly admirable — some instinct told him this was the kind of person who carried things without complaint, the sort who’d hold a door, or a line, or a falling ceiling, without expecting anyone to notice, let alone thank him for it.
IV
“Next.”
The system official’s voice cut through, and only then did Calvin register, with a small jolt, that the line had finally reached him.
He stepped toward the pillar of light.
His feet still cast no shadow, that same weightless, floating unreality carrying him through these final steps.
An elderly man in flowing white robes stood waiting before the pillar, his beard long enough to be neatly braided…
the unmistakable aura of someone whose every word was treated as gospel, the kind of figure who’d never once in his existence been asked to repeat himself.
“The Great Sage?” Calvin ventured.
“Indeed.” The old man stroked his beard, closing his eyes for a long moment, as though reading some invisible, flowing stream of data only he could perceive, his expression giving away nothing at all.
Calvin stood there, and for no reason he could immediately name, felt a small, unfamiliar knot of tension tighten in his chest, as if some significant threshold, one he didn’t yet have the context to understand, was quietly, inexorably closing in on him.
He found himself straightening his back, the way he might have once done before stepping into a difficult call, some old professional instinct rising to meet whatever was coming, whether he was ready for it or not.
Whatever this old man was about to say, Calvin had the distinct, prickling sense that it would matter more than anything a customer had ever shouted into his headset and that no script in the world was going to help him handle it.