Chapter 1: Happy Graduation
The lecture hall doors swung shut behind him for the last time, and Lucas still didn’t feel anything.
Four years... it’s been four years already.
Somewhere in there he was supposed to feel it — the weight of it ending, the nostalgia everyone kept promising would hit eventually.
Instead he just felt tired, and hungry, and mildly annoyed that the Professor had gone ten minutes over on a lecture nobody was going to remember as soon as they left the halls.
"Lucas. Lucas."
Mark caught up to him on the quad, tie already loosened and blazer slung over one shoulder.
Having dark hair and eyes, Mark was the kind of person who was like the funny bone in the group.
Tall and muscular. Easy to misunderstand at first glance...
He had that look — the one that meant he’d made a decision he was proud of and needed an audience.
"What?" Lucas asked.
"Tonight, I’m doing it."
"Doing what?"
"*It*, Lucas. The thing. The main event." He said it with the gravity of a man announcing a moon landing. "Four years of college and I’m leaving this campus a changed man by midnight."
"You’re being weird again."
"I’m finally getting rid of my virginity, Lucas. And I need my best friend there for emotional support. After tonight, I’ll be a man."
"Absolutely not."
"You don’t even know what I’m asking yet."
"I know it ends with me standing outside a door listening to you narrate what you think is dirty talk." Lucas deadpanned.
His phone chimmed. Opening it, he saw it was a message.
"Elle’s waiting for me on the roof."
"Hmm if you say so." He was already backing away toward the dorms, walking backward with his arms spread. "Tell her I said hey. Tell her I’m becoming a man tonight. Tell her—"
"Goodbye, Mark."
He laughed and turned, and Lucas let him go. With a sigh, he walked towards the rooftop.
***
The roof access door stuck like it always did, and Lucas had to put his shoulder into it before it gave way with a groan that echoed down the stairwell.
The evening air hit different up here — cooler, quieter, a special place he’d always like to visit.
Looking forward he spotted her.
Eleanor Reid...
The third addition to their group. And the most reasonable one.
One of the two people who’d somehow become the closest thing he had to family.
Three top-of-the-class overachievers who’d ended up as roommates by accident in freshman year and never left each other’s side since.
She wasn’t dressed up, she just wore a pair of jeans and an oversized cardigan she’d definitely stolen from Mark’s closet at some point and never given back.
Her auburn hair lightly swaying in the cool breeze.
Sharp eyes when she turned, Mesmerizing pair of grey-blue eyes that always seemed to stare directly into your soul.
All in all, she was beautiful. As always...
"You’re late," she said.
"Mark stopped me."
"Let me guess." She said, one eyebrow already up with a small smile on her face. "Tonight’s the night."
"Word for word."
"He’s told me three times this week. I give it a forty percent chance he actually goes through with it."
"Generous."
She smiled, and Lucas crossed the roof to stand beside her at the ledge. Below them, campus was doing its last-day-of-the-semester thing — music drifting up from somewhere, a cluster of underclassmen already too loud for six in the evening, students taking pictures to mark their last days, some making plans for an after party and others confessing to their love interests.
"Feels wrong," Eleanor said after a while. "Doesn’t it? Like it should feel bigger than this."
Lucas shrugged.
"Four years and it just... ends. No music sting. No slow-motion walk out the front doors." She rested her arms on the ledge, chin on her hands. "I thought I’d cry or something. I’ve got nothing."
"What, you think this is some kind of anime?" Lucas snorted.
"Give it time. You’ll probably cry at the airport when Mark tries to hug you for too long." He teased.
"That’s fair." She laughed, and it was familiar, the kind of laugh three years of shared rent, exam panic and late-night junk food runs leaves behind. "I’m gonna miss this. The roof, I mean. Not the stuck door."
Lucas glanced at the door...
"The door builds character."
"The door is a health hazard."
They were in comfortable silence for a moment, just the evening air on their skin and the background noise from below.
Suddenly, the sky cracked open above them.
No sound, No lightning. Just a single line of black tore across the sky like something had reached up and scratched it, and the light spilling out of the tear wasn’t light at all, pale purple hues on its edges.
Eleanor’s breath caught. "Lucas—"
Lucas gritted his teeth. "I see it."
The fracture spread. Slow and deliberate, like it had all the time in the world, and across the campus below the music cut out, the underclassmen went quiet, hundreds of people all realizing at once that something had gone wrong with the sky.
There was loud sound, like thunder booming somewhere in the sky.
Suddenly, light bloomed in front of both of them. twin panels of pale blue text hanging in the air like something out of a game.
On it, several texts started to form.
They read:
[Greetings, mortals.]
[For too long, your world has entertained itself.
Centuries of watching civilizations rise and fall. It all slowly moved in favor of the mortals’ greed and desire.]
[We have grown tired of your silence. Now, it is time you entertained us.]
[Beginning today, mortals across your world will be granted power and with it, the obligation to use it. Periodically, you will be drawn from your lives into arenas beyond your comprehension, where beasts far older and far crueler than yourselves await. You will fight. You will bleed. You will die, if you are unworthy.]
[We find this... Entertaining.]
[To ensure the show does not end too quickly, each of you shall be granted a System, and through it, a gift befitting your soul.]
[Prepare yourselves.]
With that, the text disappeared, leaving nothing but a blank screen floating in front of them.
"Lucas." Elle called. "Was that—"
[Ding!]
[System Link Established.]
[Scanning host...]
[Awakening Gift...]
Eleanor’s window resolved first, and Lucas watched her go pale as it filled in.
[Congratulations Player! You have awakened a gift.]
[Skill Type: Goddess of the Four Elements.]
[Skill Acquired: Sovereign Dominion (Elemental)]
[Description: As the Goddess of the Four Elements, your ability grants you control over Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire.]
"Four elements," she breathed, staring at her own open palm.
She turned to Lucas. "What’d you get?"
He didn’t answer. His own window was still loading, the text stuttering into place one fragment at a time.
[Scanning host...]
[Skill Acquired: Regression]
[Description: The user may return to a previously recorded point in time upon death or activation, carrying memories, combat experience, and selected skills into the new timeline. Reality itself rewinds, but the burden of past failures remains. Every regression strengthens the user’s understanding of fate, allowing them to rewrite outcomes that once led to despair.]
Lucas stared at the word. Regression. No elemental mastery. No sword arts, no monstrous strength, nothing.
Just one skill, and even that one felt less like a gift and more like a consolation prize for something he hadn’t agreed to enter.
"That’s it?" he said. "That’s the whole thing?"
The window flickered again.
[Skill Acquired: Regres—]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
[Sk//—ll Acq|\—ired: R̸e̷g̶r̵e̵s̷s̸i̶o̸n̷]
Lucas raised an eyebrow. The screen just flickered and glitched for a few moments...
[New Skill Acquired: I̶gnition]
[Status: —Un]
[—stable]
The panel snapped back into focus all at once, clean, final, like nothing had happened at all — except now there was a second line underneath [Regression] that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
[Skill Acquired: Ignition — Passive. A fragment of unstable elemental energy, bound improperly to player’s Regression ability. Effects unknown.]
Lucas stared at it, completely dazed.
"Lucas." Eleanor’s voice brought him back.
"What gift did you awaken?"
Lucas stayed silent for a while then answered in a low voice.
"Just a fire ability," he said, "It’s a fire ability..."
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