The prosecutor was halfway through his opening statement when the floor started to glow.
Kuroda Ren saw it first, because he'd been staring at the floor for forty minutes. Looking anywhere else meant looking at someone. The three judges on the bench. The six lay judges in their row, ordinary people who'd been picked to decide the rest of his life. Saionji Takeru, sitting behind the prosecution in a suit that cost more than Ren's car had.
And Hasegawa Tetsuo at the gallery rail. A year of hearings, and the man had never once looked away from him.
So Ren looked at the floor.
Thin white lines were spreading across the tiles. They crawled out from under the defense table and joined up, curving, crossing, forming circles inside circles. Ren watched one slide under his own shoes and thought, very calmly, that he'd finally cracked.
"The defendant, knowing he was intoxicated, took the wheel of his vehicle," Prosecutor Kanzaki said. "At 2:14 in the morning, he ran a red light at..."
Someone gasped.
Kanzaki stopped. The bailiff took a step forward, one hand out like he could hold the light back. One of the lay judges stood up so fast her chair fell over. The lines climbed the walls now, up past the clock, across the ceiling, and Ren's lawyer grabbed his sleeve.
"Kuroda-kun," Ogawa said. "What is this?"
He didn't have an answer. The light swallowed the room.
There was no falling. No wind. One second Ren was sitting on a hard wooden bench. The next he was on his knees on cold stone, and the air smelled like incense and candle smoke.
He stayed down.
Around him, people were screaming. Ishida Rina was the loudest, a high thin sound that didn't stop for breath. Fujii Kenta was swearing over and over. Somebody was crying. Somebody else was being sick.
Ren lifted his head and looked.
A hall. Huge, round, white stone rising into a dome so high the top was lost in gold light from the windows. Rows of people in white robes trimmed with gold stood along the walls, hands folded, watching. Between them stood knights. Real ones, in silver armor, with long poles topped by axe blades. There had to be a hundred of them.
At the far end, up a long run of steps, a gray haired man sat on a throne.
The gold circle under Ren's knees was fading. He counted the people inside it. Judges, lay judges, the bailiff, Kanzaki, Ogawa. Tetsuo, who had somehow come over the gallery rail with the rest of them. The six friends. Twenty people, all from the same room.
He counted the doors next. Two big ones behind them. A smaller one by the throne. Knights at every one.
Then he waited.
It was strange how easy it was. He should have been panicking like everyone else. But Ren had spent a year being stared at by people who hated him. Strangers on the train. Neighbors. His own father. This was just a new room, full of new people, staring.
"Where the hell are we?" Takeru was on his feet, brushing off his suit. "Hey! Who's in charge here?"
A woman stepped out from the rows of robes. She was tall and pale, with silver hair pinned under a gold circlet, and she smiled like she'd been waiting her whole life for this exact moment.
"Welcome," she said.
Ren understood her. He knew, the way you know you're dreaming, that she wasn't speaking Japanese. The words went into his ears strange and came out in his head plain.
"I am Ilvane, High Seraph of the Church of Radiance," the woman said. "You stand in the Hall of Radiance, in Solenne, the holy city of Varenhal. For eighty years, our kingdom has bled in a war against the Ardent Empire. We have prayed for salvation. And the light has answered." She spread her hands. "It has answered with you."
Nobody said anything.
"You have been called to this world as heroes," Ilvane went on. "Each of you carries a gift you have not yet seen. Soon you will."
"Send us back," said Judge Moriyama. He was an old man with a deep, steady voice, the kind people listened to without thinking. "Whatever this is, we have obligations. Families."
"I'm afraid the Calling only opens one way, Your Honor."
The crying got louder.
Takeru laughed. It was the same laugh Ren had heard a hundred times, the one he used when a waiter brought the wrong drink or a professor gave him a bad grade. "Do you know who my father is?"
Ilvane tilted her head. "Here, young lord," she said, "it only matters who you are."
Ren almost smiled.
Takeru turned around then, the way he always did when he'd been embarrassed and needed somewhere to put it. His eyes found Ren. The old look came over his face. The one from high school hallways and club rooms and the night of the party.
Aoyama Yui moved to Takeru's side and slid her hand into his. Mori Daiki stood behind them both and looked at the floor, the way Ren had been doing all morning.
And from the edge of the circle, Hasegawa Tetsuo looked at Ren and nothing else.
***
The Crystal of Calling sat on a white pedestal at the foot of the throne steps. It was about the size of a man's head, clear as water, and it hummed so low Ren felt it in his teeth more than he heard it.
"Place your hand upon it," Ilvane said, "and the light will show you what you are."
Takeru went first. Nobody had to tell him to.
The second his palm touched the crystal, it lit up gold. Not a soft glow, either. It blazed, throwing long shadows across the hall, and a square of pale light snapped open in the air in front of Takeru's face.
Name: Saionji Takeru Level: 1 Class: Sword Saint (Legendary)
The hall exploded. The robed priests along the walls started cheering. A few of the knights banged their poles on the stone. Up on the throne, the gray haired king leaned forward and said something to the man beside him, and both of them were smiling.
Takeru turned around and grinned at everyone like he'd won a prize at a festival.
Yui went next. Gold again. Holy Maiden (Legendary). This time the priests didn't cheer. They bowed, all at once, so deep their foreheads nearly touched their knees, and Yui put a hand over her mouth and laughed in surprise.
Then the rest of them, one by one.
Daiki got violet. Sage (Epic). He stared at his screen like it was an exam he hadn't studied for. Kanzaki got violet too, Inquisitor (Epic), and Ilvane watched him very closely after that. Tetsuo touched the crystal without any expression at all, got Guardian (Epic), and walked back to the circle without reading the rest. Kenta got Berserker and pumped his fist. Rina and Sho both got blue. Ogawa got blue, an Arbiter class she squinted at through her glasses like a contract with bad terms. Judge Moriyama got violet, a Lawgiver, which seemed to embarrass him.
The bailiff. The two associate judges. The six lay judges, one after another, most of them shaking.
Then it was only Ren.
He walked up. The whispering started before he got halfway there, and it wasn't the court. It was his own people.
"That one's a criminal," Takeru said loudly. He didn't even bother to whisper. "You should know that. He killed a woman. That's why we were in court."
Heads turned. Priests looked at each other. A few of the knights shifted their grip.
Ren didn't stop walking.
"The Calling does not choose wrongly," Ilvane said, but she was watching him differently now. Measuring. "Go on."
Ren put his hand on the crystal.
It was cold. Much colder than it looked. For a second nothing happened at all, and somebody behind him snorted.
Then the crystal went black.
Not dark. Black. Like ink dropped in water, it spread from his palm out through the whole stone until there was nothing clear left in it. And the light in the hall went with it. The gold glow from the windows dimmed. The candles along the walls bent toward the pedestal and shrank. For one long breath, the Hall of Radiance felt like the inside of a cave.
The screen opened in front of him.
Name: Kuroda Ren Level: 1 Class: Hero of Dominion (Mythic) STR 14 · AGI 16 · VIT 12 · INT 13 · WIL18 · AUT 25
Nobody cheered.
A priest near the front dropped his staff. The clatter went all the way up into the dome. Up on the throne, the king had stopped smiling. The man next to him had gone pale.
Somewhere in the rows of white robes, someone whispered two words. Ren couldn't make out the first one. The second one was crown.
Ilvane's smile didn't move at all. Her eyes did.
Ren ignored all of it, because something else was happening, and it was much more interesting.
He could feel the System.
That was the only way to put it. It sat inside him like a second heartbeat, slow and steady under his ribs. Behind him, he could hear Kenta jabbing at the air and yelling, "How do you close this thing? Hey! How do I close it?" He could hear Rina reading her stats out loud in a shaky voice, trying to make sense of them.
Ren thought close, and his screen closed.
He thought skills, and a list opened instead.
Sovereign's Instinct (Passive): Any weapon, stance or skill you use is understood as if mastered. Kneel (Active): Authority against Will. A weaker target cannot rise. Read the Field (Active): See the strength of all within sight.
He understood them the way he understood his own hands. Nobody had to explain anything. He didn't have to read the descriptions twice.
He tried the last one, quietly, just to see.
The hall changed. Small lines of text hung over every head in the room like name tags. The knights at the doors were all in the high twenties and low thirties. The king was a 19. The priests were scattered, some high, some barely double digits. His own people were all 1s.
Over Ilvane's head, almost everything was blurred out. Her name. A level that wouldn't hold still. And one more line, clear enough to read.
Title: Hidden
Ren closed it and turned around.
Takeru was staring at him. So was everyone. But Takeru's face had something new in it, under the anger. Ren had seen it exactly once before. It was the night of the crash, right after the impact, right before Takeru reached across the seat for him.
Fear.
***
The training grounds sat behind the palace, a wide yard of packed sand ringed by stone walls and covered walkways. The afternoon sun was hot. Priests and nobles had gathered on the balconies above to watch, and Ilvane stood in the middle of them in white and gold.
Ser Brannoc ran the yard. He was a thick, gray bearded knight with a scar through one eyebrow and a voice like a bad mood. Ren liked him immediately, because he was the only person in Varenhal who hadn't smiled at them yet.
"Your classes mean nothing until you use them," Brannoc said. "Today you learn what your bodies can do now. Pick up a practice weapon. Find a partner. Try your skills. Nobody gets hurt." He looked at Kenta. "Nobody."
The practice weapons were blunted steel, edges ground round, points filed flat. Ren picked up a sword. It had no balance to speak of and a grip wrapped in old leather, and the moment his fingers closed around it, he knew it.
Not just how to hold it. Everything. How it would move. Where its weight wanted to go. How far he could swing before his wrist turned the wrong way. It was like picking up a shinai again after a year away, except he'd never touched this sword before in his life.
Sovereign's Instinct.
He moved through a few cuts by himself at the edge of the yard. Basic kendo forms, the ones he'd done ten thousand times as a kid. They came out cleaner than they ever had. Faster too. His body did exactly what he told it, and nothing it didn't.
The others were having a harder time.
Kenta swung an axe twice his size, overbalanced, and landed on his back. Rina called up a gust of wind that blew her own hair into her face and knocked over a weapon rack. Daiki stood in the corner mouthing the names of spells and getting nothing. Tetsuo picked up a tower shield, planted it, and let a knight hit it over and over without moving an inch. He never looked tired. He just kept looking at Ren over the top of it.
Then Takeru drew his first real skill, and the yard went quiet.
His practice sword lit up with a thin line of white light along the blunted edge. He cut at a wooden post, and the top half of the post slid off and hit the sand. The knights whistled. Up on the balcony, someone started clapping.
Takeru looked around, breathing hard, flushed and grinning. Then he pointed his glowing sword across the yard.
"Him," he said. "I want him."
Brannoc frowned. "Pick someone your own level, boy."
"We're all Level 1."
Brannoc looked up at the balcony. Ilvane nodded once.
The knight sighed through his nose. "Practice rules," he said. "I call stop, you stop. Understood?"
"Sure," said Takeru.
Ren walked out to the middle of the yard. People drifted back to give them room. He could feel them all watching. Yui up near the walkway. Daiki behind her. Ogawa with her arms folded tight across her chest, like she was cold.
Takeru stepped close before Brannoc started them. Close enough that only Ren could hear.
"Same as always, Kuroda," he said. "You go down. I walk away." He smiled. "You should've stayed asleep in that car."
Ren didn't answer.
"Begin," said Brannoc.
Takeru came in fast. Much faster than he'd ever been on Earth, the Sword Saint class pouring speed into his legs, the glowing blade high over his head. He swung for Ren's collarbone with everything he had.
That wasn't a spar. That was meant to kill.
Ren watched it come.
The strangest part was that it didn't feel fast. He could see the swing start in Takeru's hips. He could see where it was going before it got there. His feet moved on their own, half a step left and back, the way they'd moved in a thousand kendo matches, and the glowing edge went past his shoulder close enough to feel the heat.
His own sword snapped down on Takeru's wrist.
Kote.
Takeru yelped and almost dropped his blade. The yard went dead silent for a second. Then somebody laughed, and that was worse for Takeru than the hit.
His face went red. He came again, swinging wild now, three cuts, four, the light along his edge getting brighter and uglier. Ren slipped the first three. The fourth caught his left arm just above the elbow. He felt the burn of it, then the warm wet of blood running down to his fingers.
"Stop!" Brannoc shouted. "Stop, that's enough!"
Takeru didn't stop. He was past hearing it. He pulled back for a cut at Ren's neck.
Ren looked him in the eyes and spoke one word.
"Kneel."
It came out of him like it had been waiting. He felt something leave his chest and land on Takeru like a hand the size of the sky.
Takeru's legs folded.
He hit the sand on both knees, hard. His glowing sword fell out of his hands and the light along its edge flickered and went out. He tried to get up. Ren watched him try. His arms shook and his face strained and his knees stayed exactly where they were, pressed into the dirt, like they'd been nailed there.
Nobody in the yard moved.
Ren turned and walked to Ser Brannoc.
The knight commander had a real sword on his hip. Ren knew it the way he'd known the practice blade, without having to think. He reached out and drew it. Brannoc was a Level 31 knight with forty years of combat behind him, and he didn't even get his hand to the hilt before the steel was out.
It was a good sword. The weight sat right.
Ren dropped the practice blade in the sand and walked back.
Takeru's eyes went to the real steel and something in him broke open. "Wait," he said. "Wait, wait. Ren. Hey. Come on." His voice cracked. "We can talk about this. My dad can fix it. Whatever you want, okay? Money, a lawyer, my dad can make the whole case go away. He can..."
"Your dad isn't here," Ren said.
Takeru stared up at him.
Ren thought about a name on a charge sheet. Hasegawa Emi, 34, nurse. He thought about waking up behind a steering wheel he'd never touched. About Daiki on the witness stand. About his mother crying through the glass. About every person in that courtroom who'd known, and every one who'd believed it.
He could stop. He knew that. He could drop the sword and let the knights take him and wait for someone in this world to be fair.
Nobody here knew what Takeru had done. Nobody here would ever make him pay for it.
The pressure on Takeru's knees was fading. Ren could feel it slipping, like a held breath running out. Takeru felt it too. His hand twitched toward his fallen sword.
Ren swung.
It was one clean cut. Sovereign's Instinct made sure of that.
For a moment the whole yard was frozen. Then Yui screamed, and everything came apart at once. Knights shouting. Steel coming out of scabbards all along the walls. Rina sobbing. Kenta yelling something nobody could understand. Daiki backing away until he hit the wall and slid down it.
Ren stood still and let them come. Knights circled him with their blades up. Nobody got close.
He looked for Tetsuo and found him at the edge of the yard, the tower shield still in his hand. The man's face was white.
"He was driving," Ren said.
He said it quietly. He didn't know if Tetsuo heard. It didn't matter yet.
Up on the balcony, the nobles were shouting and the priests were praying out loud. Only one person up there was calm. High Seraph Ilvane stood with her hands folded in front of her and looked down at the body in the sand.
For the first time since they'd arrived, she looked pleased.
Ren let the sword fall from his hand.
The screen opened in front of him on its own.