Morning in Grayharbor began with three blasts of the steam horn.
The first woke the core furnace.
The second opened the city gates.
After the third, the Descenders began dropping out of the sky onto the Seventh Dock, one by one.
Mia Greylight stood beside the brass tutorial sign and straightened the lamp-shaped badge on her chest.
The damp wind blew the ends of her slate-blue hair across one shoulder.
There was no water in the sea below, only white vapor vented by the purification furnaces, layer upon layer of it pressed beneath the docks like a bank of clouds that had forgotten how to move.
Pumps meshed somewhere under that false sea with a muffled grinding sound.
The vapor licked the railings and left beads of condensation that tasted of copper and old medicine.
Whenever a dockworker passed through it, they pulled their scarf an inch higher without seeming to notice.
The third blast faded.
A woman fell out of midair.
She rolled twice across the flagstones and came up far too quickly for someone who had just hit the ground.
Black light armor.
Twin narrow blades.
A floating camera-eye over her left shoulder.
Mia knew the outfit.
She also knew the bright lines of text racing beside the camera-eye.
The Descender called OneSlashSkip had visited Grayharbor nine times in the past seven days.
She had failed to complete the beginner tutorial on all eight previous attempts.
“Good morning, honored Descender.” Mia gave her the standard smile.
“Welcome to Grayharbor.
Before you may safely operate lumen equipment, please complete the forty-seven basic—” “Hold it.” He Xinyi raised one hand.
“Tutorial lady, let’s make a deal today.” The colored text beside the camera-eye moved faster.
[Here we go.
Forty-Seven-Step Mom is back.] [Ninth attempt to skip the most criminally boring tutorial in gaming history.] [The biggest boss in Starfall Epoch isn’t Selene.
It’s Mia’s safety quiz.] Mia could not understand most of the messages.
Light like this often swarmed around the Descenders, a cloud of insects only they could hear.
She had learned that when the swarm thickened, they began speaking to empty air and making their gestures larger than necessary.
“Of course we can discuss it,” Mia said.
“First question.
If a starcore canister develops a red fracture, you should—” Xinyi feinted left.
Mia stepped left with her and closed the path.
Xinyi pivoted, dropped low, and tried to roll around the right side of the tutorial sign.
Mia did not even turn her head.
She lowered the ledger in one hand, setting its hard leather cover squarely against Xinyi’s forehead.
“Discontinue use, place it in a quarantine case, and notify the Grayharbor purification works,” Xinyi said, clutching her brow as she got up.
“Correct,” Mia said.
“Can I go now?” Xinyi asked.
“We will proceed to question two,” Mia replied.
The camera-eye erupted in laughing faces.
Xinyi watched Mia for two seconds.
Then she smiled too.
She walked backward as she reached behind her waist and produced a dark red crystal.
It was no larger than a thumb, but something inside it pulsed like a miniature heart, brightening and dimming without any stable rhythm.
Some of the warmth left Mia’s smile.
“Honored Descender, please surrender the overloaded starcore,” Mia said.
“So she does recognize it.” Xinyi held the crystal toward the camera-eye.
“Watch closely, everyone.
This thing can make the starter zone’s collision mesh lag for point-two seconds.
If I sprint, crouch, and swap my off-hand right before it blows, I can clip through the invisible wall behind her.” “It can also turn every ordinary person within eight yards into a collection of parts that Ms.
Rivet would need three days to put back together,” Mia said.
“NPCs don’t actually die,” Xinyi said lightly.
Her eyes stayed on the camera.
Mia had heard the sentence many times.
Descenders who fell from towers walked out of the light again a little later.
When a star-beast tore them apart, they complained about durability loss.
Grayharbor’s residents had no such luck.
The previous year, three dockworkers had died in a Descender’s experiment.
The following morning, another group of Descenders had searched the charred stones for a chest that might have respawned.
Mia lifted her right hand.
Xinyi sprang backward.
The red crystal vanished before her boots touched the ground.
An instant later, it lay quietly inside the quarantine case in Mia’s palm.
The lid snapped shut, and four copper clasps locked at once.
[Tutorial Guide Authority: Temporary Confiscation of Hazardous Beginner Items] Xinyi landed awkwardly, still holding the posture of her retreat, and nearly turned an ankle.
“Wait.
You can confiscate that?” Xinyi blurted.
“Your property will be returned after you complete the safety tutorial.” Mia hung the case from her belt.
“Question three.
When a guide temporarily confiscates a hazardous item, you should—” “Thank her ancestors going back eight generations,” Xinyi said.
“That answer is incomplete,” Mia said.
Xinyi ran two circles around the sign.
More Descenders had begun to gather along the dock.
Some stopped to enjoy the spectacle.
One deliberately threw his newly issued wooden sword into the steam below.
Another tried to slip behind Mia and steal the quarantine case from her belt.
Mia intercepted each of them without raising her voice.
She had worked here for seven years and four months.
She had received 4.62 million Descender arrivals.
Some memorized Grayharbor’s map.
Some wanted nothing except to leave as quickly as possible.
Some asked whether she ever felt cold.
Others threw firebombs at her to test whether her skirt could burn.
Whoever arrived, Mia gave them the same welcome.
It was her job.
At question nine, Xinyi abruptly became cooperative.
Her answers came fast and accurate.
Mia knew it was not surrender.
This Descender always passed through a brief and unnatural spell of good behavior before attempting something disruptive.
Sure enough, the twelfth question had barely ended when Xinyi smashed a vial of blue liquid at her own feet.
Frost burst across the stones.
The other Descenders retreated with delighted shouts.
Ice sealed Mia’s boots to the flagstones.
Xinyi used the recoil to vault onto the tutorial sign, planted one foot on the final brass letter of WELCOME TO GRAYHARBOR, and launched herself toward a wall crusted with salt frost to the right of the dock.
Even without the overloaded starcore, she had stacked a frightening amount of speed.
Sprint.
Crouch.
Off-hand swap.
Her shoulder hit the wall.
There should have been a dull crack of bone against stone.
Instead, the wall caved inward like paper pulled loose from its frame.
Half of Xinyi’s body disappeared into it.
The camera-eye remained outside, and the colored messages around it suddenly flooded Mia’s view.
[She’s stuck!
She got in!] [There’s space behind the wall?] [Don’t back out, streamer.
Keep going!] Xinyi had not expected it to work either.
She froze for a beat, then pushed forward and vanished into the wall.
The camera-eye turned one slow circle before following her through.
The dock fell silent.
Then the crowd cheered louder than the morning horn.
A boy who carried new arrivals’ luggage edged toward the wall.
Someone urged him to try it and tossed a speed potion at his feet.
The boy knew nothing about Descender items.
The moment he picked up the vial, an angry red burn spread across his palm.
Mia raised one hand from eight yards away.
The potion vanished from the boy’s grip and dropped into a second quarantine case.
With the same motion, she lit the safety line in the pavement and forced the spectators behind its yellow glow.
“Using a local resident to test an unidentified item constitutes high-risk conduct,” Mia said.
The Descender who had thrown it laughed.
“He’s got an HP bar, doesn’t he?” “His HP bar tells you how much injury he can survive.
It does not make the injury unreal,” Mia replied.
The boy backed behind her, cradling his hand.
Burn salve would heal the flesh.
It could not make the watching crowd understand why the pain mattered.
Mia dressed his palm, opened her ledger to the accident section, and asked the owner of the potion to give his name.
He refused and stepped over the yellow line.
The system did not authorize Mia to pursue him.
In the field marked Responsible Party, she wrote UNREGISTERED DESCENDER.
Then she asked the boy for his name.
“Cole,” he said.
“Age?” Mia asked.
“Fifteen,” Cole answered.
“Extent of injury?” Mia continued.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore.” Cole looked at the salt-white wall.
“What’s in there?” Mia had no answer.
She gave him the report and asked him to confirm that every word matched what had happened.
Cole pressed his thumbprint to the page.
The sheet entered Grayharbor’s accident archive and, with it, a long-term record that almost no one would ever open.
Mia looked at the print while it was still wet.
The messages around the vanished camera were still asking whether there was treasure behind the wall.
Cole and his bandaged hand had already been crowded out of the frame.
Descenders called unmapped places secrets and danger a challenge.
The blister rising on the boy’s skin had appeared only as a tiny damage number at the edge of the stream.
The red text behind the wall had contained Mia’s name.
She needed to see it with her own eyes.
She looked down at the ice around her boots.
Tutorial protocol required her to remain in position until the status effect expired.
Grayharbor security ordinance required her to notify the patrol and report a missing Descender.
Yet when the wall had buckled, she had seen a point of light behind it.
It had none of the soft fringe of a coal lamp, none of the blue grit shed by burning starcore, none of the violent flare and sudden death of a Descender’s resurrection.
It was a line of red text hanging in darkness.
Her name was in it.
Mia bent, drew the short wrench from her boot, and shattered the ice around her feet.
“Safety question thirteen is suspended,” she told the empty tutorial sign.
For the first time in seven years and four months, the guide left her post before the tutorial was complete.