Chapter 2: Choose Before You Bleed Out

The grass drank blood like it had been waiting centuries for the taste.

Miles Venn knelt in it with both knees soaked red, one hand clamped over a stranger’s ruined thigh and the other pressed against the teenager’s abdomen, where something with too many teeth had opened him from hip to rib. Heat pulsed between Miles’s fingers in slippery, panicked waves. Not metaphorical heat. Actual warmth, wet and human, pumping out with every fluttering beat of the kid’s heart.

The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Brown skin gone ashy. Lips trembling. Eyes glassy and fixed on the crimson sky as if he could see through it to wherever he had been ripped from.

“Hey,” Miles said, leaning close enough that the boy’s breath stuttered against his cheek. “Look at me. Not up there. Me.”

The kid’s pupils jerked sideways. Focused. Failed. Focused again.

“What’s your name?” Miles asked.

The boy swallowed. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. “Jay.”

“Jay. Good. That’s good. Jay, I’m Miles. I’m a paramedic.”

“Am I…” Jay’s voice cracked into a wet whisper. “Am I dead?”

Miles almost laughed. It would have come out wrong, ugly and hysterical, so he choked it down. Around them, the field churned with screams, prayers, running feet, and the wet thuds of bodies hitting dirt. The horned scavengers—System had called them Feral Redcaps after one had its skull caved in by a woman with a tire iron—were finally retreating toward the black tree line, dragging strips of meat and stolen limbs behind them.

“Not yet,” Miles said. “And we’re not making it easy.”

Jay’s fingers clawed at Miles’s sleeve. The boy wore a school hoodie with a cracked robotics club logo across the chest. “My mom…”

“We’ll talk about your mom after you keep breathing.” Miles pushed harder over the abdominal wound. Too much blood. Too much exposed tissue. No supplies. No gloves. No tourniquet. No ambulance. No hospital three minutes out. He had two hands, a shredded T-shirt someone had thrown him, and a world that displayed damage numbers over dying people like arcade scores.

A translucent red -8 ticked above Jay’s body.

Then another.

-7.

Jay shuddered.

“No, no, no.” Miles shifted pressure, searching for a vessel he couldn’t see. His training sorted chaos into steps. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. Stop the bleed. Keep them warm. Keep them talking. Don’t think about the subway ceiling falling. Don’t think about crushed fingers reaching from the dark. Don’t think about the stranger whose life he had bought with his own.

He glanced at the thigh wound under his other hand. The man attached to it was unconscious but breathing. The bleeding had slowed. The improvised tourniquet—a belt twisted with a broken spear shaft—held firm.

Jay did not have that kind of wound. Jay had a countdown wearing skin.

A woman crouched across from Miles, both hands pressed over Jay’s ribs. She had a sharp face, tear tracks cutting through dust, and a chef’s apron over her clothes like she’d been snatched mid-shift. “Tell me what to do.”

“Pressure here,” Miles said, guiding her palms. “Hard. Don’t let up unless I tell you.”

She nodded once, jaw locked.

A blade flashed near Miles’s left shoulder.

He jerked.

“Relax, medic.” The voice belonged to the knife-wielding woman from the first attack—the one who had laughed while bleeding from a scalp wound and livestreamed the apocalypse until her phone turned into a useless brick. She was small, wiry, and entirely too comfortable with a curved scavenger knife in her hand. Neon blue hair stuck to one side of her face with blood. Her name, if Miles remembered correctly from the shouting, was Kira.

She dropped to a crouch and used the stolen knife to cut open Jay’s hoodie. “I’m helping.”

“Don’t cut him.”

“I know where the person ends and the cloth starts.” Kira’s hands moved quick and precise. “Mostly.”

“That joke sucked.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

Miles looked up long enough to glare.

Kira’s mouth twitched. “Fine. I won’t cut the dying kid. Happy?”

The air changed before Miles could answer.

It started as a vibration under his teeth. A metallic hum rolled across the field, flattening screams into startled silence. Above them, the crimson sky split open along invisible seams. Lines of gold text descended like falling blades, not written on anything, not projected from anywhere, simply there—etched directly into sight.

INITIAL SURVIVAL PHASE COMPLETE.

Earth Cohort 7,919-B has endured first contact.

Casualty rate: 18.7%.

Performance: Below expected minimum.

A sound passed through the survivors, half sob, half curse.

Someone threw a rock at the sky.

The rock passed through a line of text and vanished with a little white pop.

Kira stared. “Okay. Hate that.”

The System continued without caring.

Class Selection is now available.

Choose before Tutorial Wave Two.

Unclassed entities suffer increased mortality.

Recommended: choose swiftly.

The field erupted.

Menus bloomed in front of every survivor—windows of light, panels of shifting symbols, icons spinning like coins. People stumbled backward, swatted at empty air, cried out as their own private choices filled their vision. Some laughed. Some fell to their knees. Some grabbed for glowing words and found only air. The same red light reflected in thousands of terrified eyes.

Miles’s menu appeared last.

It flickered into being inches from his nose, pale silver bordered in red. Clean. Clinical. Horrifyingly familiar in its organization. Like an electronic patient care report designed by a god with no bedside manner.

CLASS SELECTION

Entity: Miles Venn

Origin: Earth / Non-integrated / Irregular Intake

Status: Dead-Claimed / Tutorial Active

Available Classes Based on Aptitude, Prior Role, Psychological Profile, and First Contact Actions:

Field Medic

Shieldbearer

Bloodletter

Quartermaster

Red Initiate

Wound-Keeper

Miles blinked sweat from his eyes. The options wavered as Jay convulsed under his hands.

-10.

-9.

The chef woman gasped. “He’s getting worse.”

“I can see that,” Miles snapped, then immediately hated himself for it. “Sorry. Keep pressure.”

“I am!”

Jay’s breathing hitched. His eyes rolled.

Miles stared at the menu. “System. If you’re listening, I need medical supplies.”

The menu did not respond.

“Bandages. Clamps. Suture kit. Anything.”

A smaller box unfolded beneath the class list.

Supplies may be purchased with Tutorial Credits.

Current Balance: 0

Recommendation: Select class.

“I need them now.”

Recommendation: Select class.

“He’ll die before I finish reading.”

Unclassed entities suffer increased mortality.

“Thanks, that’s medically insightful.”

Kira leaned toward him, eyes darting as if she had her own menu open. “What are your options?”

“Not now.”

“Mine has Rogue, Duelist, Cutpurse—rude—Bladesinger, and something called Audience Knife.”

“Kira.”

“I’m just saying, one of yours might help him.”

Miles scanned again, forcing his brain to move through panic. Field Medic. Obvious. Shieldbearer, defensive. Bloodletter sounded like the thing that had done this to Jay. Wound-Keeper—maybe. He focused on it.

WOUND-KEEPER

Role: Support / Delayed Recovery / Damage Management

Difficulty: High

Description: Stores a portion of allied pain and distributes recovery over time. Effective in extended engagements. Poor immediate rescue capacity.

Starting Skill: Share Burden

“Poor immediate rescue capacity,” Miles read aloud. “Of course.”

Jay made a thin, animal sound.

The chef woman looked up at Miles with desperate eyes. “Pick something.”

“I’m trying.”

Field Medic.

FIELD MEDIC

Role: Support / Stabilization / Triage

Difficulty: Low

Description: Provides basic non-magical and minor magical healing tools suitable for Tutorial environments. Reliable. Efficient. Recommended for entities with emergency care background.

Starting Skill: Lesser Stabilize

Warning: Ineffective on targets below 10% vitality without additional resources.

Miles looked at Jay.

Another number bloomed above the boy.

-11.

Beside it, a faint bar flickered into visibility.

Jay Arun — Vitality: 4%

Miles’s stomach dropped through the red grass.

“No.” He jabbed at Field Medic anyway. His finger passed through the option and came away tingling.

Confirm selection: FIELD MEDIC?

Starting package will include: Lesser Stabilize, Cleanse Minor Infection, Conjured Gauze x3, Bone Splint x1.

Note: Class selection is irreversible until Ascendant evaluation.

Lesser Stabilize wouldn’t work. Three rolls of gauze wouldn’t replace the blood soaking into the dirt. A splint was an insult.

“Can it save him?” Miles demanded.

Target probability of survival after Field Medic intervention: 12.3%

“What about Wound-Keeper?”

Target probability of survival after Wound-Keeper intervention: 8.1%

“Shieldbearer?”

Target probability of survival after Shieldbearer intervention: 0.8%

“Don’t ask it that,” Kira said, voice strangely tight. “That’s like asking a slot machine if your rent money’s coming back.”

Jay’s fingers loosened on Miles’s sleeve.

Miles grabbed the boy’s hand and pressed it against his own forearm. “Stay with me, Jay.”

Jay’s gaze drifted. “Cold.”

“I know.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for bleeding. Terrible habit.”

Jay’s mouth moved toward a smile and failed.

Miles’s hands were slick to the wrists. He could smell iron, churned earth, fear sweat, and smoke from the scattered patches of burning grass where scavenger bombs had gone off. He knew this moment. Different ceiling, different sky, same precipice. A body sliding out from under him while he counted seconds and lied with a calm voice.

Not yet.

He leaned toward the menu until the glowing words blurred. “Show me all viable options.”

Available Classes Based on Aptitude, Prior Role, Psychological Profile, and First Contact Actions:

Field Medic

Shieldbearer

Bloodletter

Quartermaster

Red Initiate

Wound-Keeper

“All viable options.”

All viable options displayed.

“Bullshit.”

The word cracked louder than he meant it to. The chef woman flinched. Kira stared.

Miles stared back at the menu with the fury of every understaffed night shift, every insurance denial, every locked drug box, every patient lost because the right tool existed somewhere but not in his hands.

“You’re sorting us,” he said. “You’re measuring everything. Heart rate, blood loss, personality, whatever else. You have a class called Bloodletter and a class called Wound-Keeper. Don’t tell me there isn’t something that works with blood.”

The interface flickered.

Only once.

A hairline crack of black cut through the silver panel, then vanished.

Kira whispered, “Uh, Miles?”

He ignored her. “Show me the option you’re hiding.”

All viable options displayed.

“Show me.”

All viable options displayed.

Jay’s chest hitched.

No inhale followed.

The world narrowed to the boy’s gray lips.

Miles took one hand from the wound, pinched Jay’s nose, sealed his mouth over the teenager’s, and breathed for him. Once. Twice. The kid’s chest rose weakly beneath the chef’s shaking hands. Miles pulled back, slapped his bloodied palm against the menu as if he could shove his way through it.

“He’s sixteen,” Miles snarled. “You dragged him here after he already died once, didn’t you? You owe him a second chance.”

The air went silent.

Not quieter. Silent.

The screams, the sobbing, the distant arguments over class choices, the crackle of fire—everything dropped away as though someone had put a glass dome over Miles and Jay. The red grass stopped moving. Kira froze mid-breath, blue hair suspended against her cheek. A bead of blood hung from the tip of the scavenger knife, perfectly still.

The menu glitched.

Silver peeled back from the panel in strips. Beneath it was not darkness, exactly, but depth. Something old and red-black, layered like dried scabs over gold circuitry. Letters surfaced one by one, each character dragging a thread of crimson light behind it.

UNAUTHORIZED QUERY DETECTED.

Cross-referencing: Sacrificial Aptitude / Medical Instinct / Death Resistance / Aberrant Intake Flag.

Hidden lineage resonance: NEGATIVE.

Blood debt threshold: EXCEEDED.

Forbidden support archetype available.

Miles felt something look at him.

Not from above. Not from the field. From behind the words.

An eye without a shape pressed against the interface, vast and patient and cold. His skin crawled. Every cut on his body began to throb in time with a heartbeat that was not his own.

A new option appeared at the bottom of the class list.

It was not silver.

It was written in wet red.

HEMOMANCER

Role: Forbidden Support / Blood Restoration / Sacrificial Casting / Battlefield Attrition

Difficulty: Lethal

Description: Converts blood, pain, wounds, and vitality into healing, binding, damage, and control effects. Capable of preserving allies beyond conventional thresholds. Capable of self-destruction through overuse. Capable of attracting hostile administrative attention.

Starting Skill: Crimson Transfusion

Passive: Bloodsense

Warning: This class has been sealed in standard Tutorial distributions by order of the Red Administration.

Warning: Selection may alter evaluation pathways.

Warning: This option is not recommended for sane entities.

Miles stared.

The last warning pulsed like a dare.

The silence broke around him in tiny pieces. First the crackle of fire. Then someone sobbing. Then Kira, voice hushed and horrified.

“That is absolutely a cursed class.”

The chef woman couldn’t see Miles’s menu, but she saw his face. “Can it save him?”

Miles asked, “Survival probability with Hemomancer intervention?”

The System hesitated.

The hesitation was worse than any answer.

Target probability of survival after Hemomancer intervention: 63.9%

Probability increases with caster willingness to incur permanent or semi-permanent cost.

Kira exhaled through her teeth. “Nope. No. That sentence has teeth.”

Jay’s Vitality flickered.

3%.

Miles’s thumb hovered over the red letters.

He thought of ambulances idling under sodium lights. Of stale coffee. Of blood on cheap linoleum. Of his partner Mara telling him he couldn’t save everyone, and him answering, every time, “Watch me try.” He thought of the subway collapse, the stranger pinned under concrete, the impossible choice that had not felt like a choice at all.

Kira grabbed his wrist.

Her fingers were sticky with drying blood. Her eyes were too bright. “Miles. We met twenty minutes ago, and I already know you’re the kind of idiot who jumps on grenades because someone coughed near one. Read the warnings.”

“I read them.”

“Then read them with your brain.”

“He’s dying.”

“Everyone’s dying! That seems to be the theme park!” She pointed the knife toward the field. “Pick Field Medic. Help the people you can actually help. Don’t let the evil blood menu talk you into becoming a self-harm wizard.”

The words hit harder because they weren’t stupid.

Miles looked past her. Survivors were choosing. Light burst across the field as classes settled into bodies. A broad-shouldered man in a torn business suit lifted a translucent shield that locked over his forearm. A teenage girl in pajamas screamed as sparks crawled through her hands and became a staff. A gray-haired woman touched the word Archer and a bow of bone and red string unfolded in her grip.

Power arrived in flashes.

Jay’s life left in drops.

“If I don’t,” Miles said, “he dies now.”

Kira’s grip tightened. “If you do, you might die with him.”

“Then keep pressure on the next patient.”

“That was not reassuring.”

Miles pulled free and pressed his thumb into the red option.

The class accepted him like a wound accepting a knife.

Pain detonated through his chest.

He folded over Jay, teeth locked, vision going white at the edges. Something hot carved lines under his skin from wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder, shoulder to heart. His pulse became a hammer striking glass. Every bruise from the subway collapse reawakened. Every cut opened. Blood slid from his nose, his gums, the corners of his eyes.

Kira shouted his name from very far away.

The System filled his sight.