Chapter 3: Choose Your Class, Criminal

The road to Bellwether smelled like rain, horse dung, and the kind of bread Rowan would have murdered a man for.

Not a serious murder, probably. More of a shove-into-a-ditch-and-apologize-later situation. But after twelve hours of berries that had tasted like sour pennies, monster meat that the System had labeled Questionable Slime Protein, and a creek that might or might not have contained microscopic fantasy parasites, the warm yeasty breath drifting over the low hills hit him harder than any goblin ambush.

Bellwether sat in a shallow valley below him, cupped between fields of gold-green grain and orchards sparkling with last night’s rain. Its walls were not the black stone fortress walls he had expected from a world with levels and monsters. They were timber and packed earth, braced with pale limestone, patched in places with newer boards. Watchtowers rose at intervals, each crowned with blue pennants embroidered with a silver bell. Smoke lifted from chimneys. Somewhere beyond the gate, someone was frying onions.

Rowan stopped on the crest of the hill and pressed one hand to his stomach.

“If this is a trap,” he rasped, “it has excellent catering.”

The System did not respond. It had been sulking for the last two miles.

Or maybe he had broken it.

Faint translucent panels clung to the edges of his vision like stubborn cobwebs. Health. Stamina. Mana, still a dignified zero. Experience bar, half filled with a sickly blue that flickered whenever he blinked. And beneath it, where no sane game would put diagnostics in front of a player, lines of tiny red text crawled and dissolved.

WARNING: Unsanctioned variable access detected.

MEMORY INTEGRITY: 91.4%

PATCH LAYER: Unknown

USER TAG: null

He had tried not looking at it. That had worked for approximately four seconds before a translucent box had opened over a bush and informed him that the bush was decorative foliage, non-harvestable, collision disabled unless observed by hostile entity.

He had then spent ten minutes throwing pebbles at bushes to test collision states, because he was Rowan Vale and apparently death had not cured him of being insufferable.

Now the town gate waited below, and so did people. Real people, or convincing enough imitations to be indistinguishable from real. Farmers drove carts. A woman with sleeves rolled to her elbows argued with a guard over a basket of turnips. Two children chased a dog through mud puddles, shrieking when the dog shook itself and splattered them.

Rowan touched the dried blood crusted at his temple. His borrowed clothes—if “borrowed” counted when he had taken them from an abandoned scarecrow—were stiff with meadow dust and slime residue. His shoes were still his own, black city sneakers that looked absurd against the rutted dirt road. His stomach clenched again, this time with something sharper than hunger.

Walk in. Be normal. Find food. Find information. Do not mention you can see patch notes on people’s cows.

He started downhill.

The gate line crawled. Farmers paid tolls in copper bits. Travelers submitted to quick inspections. A pair of hunters in leather jerkins carried a boar the size of a compact car slung between them on a pole. Its tusks glowed faintly blue, and every few steps, sparks snapped from its bristling hide.

Rowan stood behind a hay cart and tried to look like someone who belonged in a world where electric pigs were a logistical nuisance.

A guard at the gate glanced over. She wore a kettle helm pushed back to reveal a freckled face and a nose that had been broken at least once. Her spearhead was polished bright. Above her head hovered a neat label the System supplied without being asked.

Talia Brent
Town Watch Spearwoman – Level 7
Disposition: Wary
Hidden Trait: Left knee weakness from old wolfbite

Rowan’s gaze snagged on the final line.

“No,” he whispered. “Bad interface.”

The words were low, but the hay cart mule heard him. It turned its long face and stared with wet, judgmental eyes.

He looked away.

“Next!” called the freckled guard.

The farmer with the turnips grumbled through. The hay cart rolled forward. Rowan stepped into the shadow of the gatehouse.

The guard’s eyes traveled from his sneakers to his scarecrow trousers to the dried blood on his head. Her hand tightened on her spear.

“Name and business.”

“Rowan Vale,” he said. “Business is… not dying.”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“Seeking work,” he amended quickly. “Food. Shelter. Possibly someone who can explain why the rabbits have health bars.”

The guard stared at him.

Behind her, another guard snorted into his glove.

“You touched a mushroom, didn’t you?” the woman said.

“I wish.”

“Class?”

Rowan’s stomach sank. “Currently undecided.”

The guard’s expression changed.

It was a small thing, a tightening around the eyes, but Rowan had spent his adult life watching playtesters frown at broken UI and executives pretend not to panic. He knew the look. A missing Class was not quirky. It was a medical condition, a legal problem, or a reason to reach for weapons.

“Age?” she asked.

“Thirty-two.”

The second guard stopped smiling.

“Thirty-two,” the woman repeated. “And unclassed.”

“Late bloomer?” Rowan offered.

Her spear angled half an inch toward his chest.

“Hands where I can see them.”

Rowan raised his hands. A dozen different excuses sprinted through his mind and tripped over one another. Amnesia. Foreign custom. Religious vow. Experimental theater. None of them looked sturdy enough to hold his weight.

Then his interface chose that exact moment to scream.

LOCAL NODE DETECTED: Bellwether Civic Registry

ATTEMPTING SYNCHRONIZATION…

ERROR: User does not exist.

ERROR: User exists.

ERROR: Contradiction unresolved.

The messages did not stay politely inside his vision.

Red light fractured outward in front of his face. Floating panes opened in the air, sharp-edged and translucent, spinning like panes of broken glass. Text bled across them in languages he could not read and one he could.

UNREGISTERED SOUL SIGNATURE

ILLEGAL ENTRY POINT

REPORT TO NEAREST SYSTEM AUTHORITY

The mule screamed.

Someone dropped a basket. Turnips bounced across the mud.

Every guard at the gate lowered a weapon.

Rowan held perfectly still with his hands in the air, red system light flickering across his face.

“Okay,” he said. “I can explain.”

The freckled guard’s jaw was tight enough to crack walnuts. “Can you?”

“No,” Rowan said. “But I can say words in a confident tone until we all feel better.”

The butt of a spear hit him behind the knee.

He went down hard.

Mud slapped his palms. Pain burst up his leg. Someone twisted his arms behind him before he could suck in a breath. Cold iron clamped around his wrists, and the moment the manacles closed, his interface stuttered like a video caught buffering.

STATUS APPLIED: Bound

Dexterity reduced by 40%.

Skill activation prohibited.

CONSOLE ACCESS: partially restricted

“I don’t have skills,” Rowan said into the mud.

“Then you’ll behave beautifully,” said the guard kneeling on his back.

The freckled spearwoman crouched in front of him. Up close, he could see a small silver bell hanging from a cord at her throat. Not jewelry, he realized. A badge.

“Rowan Vale,” she said, like she was committing the name to a wanted poster. “By authority of Bellwether Watch and Registry Law, you are detained for unlawful system anomaly, suspected soul fraud, and public disturbance.”

“Soul fraud?”

“If you have a complaint, you can make it to the magistrate.”

“Great. Love magistrates. Huge fan of due process.”

She leaned closer. “Do not make jokes at the magistrate.”

Rowan spat mud from his lip. “That was me being diplomatic.”

They hauled him upright. The gate crowd had retreated into a staring crescent. Children peered from behind skirts. The electric boar sparked weakly on its pole. Above several heads, labels flickered into existence and vanished as Rowan’s broken interface struggled against the dampening manacles.

Merrit Dole – Miller – Level 3 – Fearful

Jun Applehand – Orchardist – Level 5 – Curious – Quest Available

Old Dog – Dog – Level 2 – Knows 14 buried bones

Focus, idiot.

The guards marched him through the gate.

Bellwether swallowed him in color and noise. Narrow streets twisted between timber-framed buildings with whitewashed walls and steep blue roofs. Rainwater dripped from carved gutters shaped like foxes and fish. Market stalls crowded the square, bright awnings sagging under the wet. Vendors called over one another, selling honeycakes, knife sharpening, charm threads, stew bowls, monster parts.

Rowan’s stomach tried to leap out of his body when a woman lifted a ladle from a pot of thick brown stew. Chunks of meat and orange root vegetables glistened in gravy. Steam curled through the air like a love letter.

“If this is my perp walk,” he said, “can we perp walk through the stew line?”

The guard behind him shoved him forward.

“Worth asking.”

People watched from under eaves. Some made warding signs. Others whispered behind hands. A boy of about ten jogged alongside until Talia snapped, “Home, Pip,” without looking.

The boy skidded away, disappointed.

At the far side of the square stood a building that made Rowan think of a church and a DMV having a child neither of them loved. It was built from pale stone, its front carved with bells, scales, swords, sheaves of wheat, open books, masks, bones, and a dozen other symbols. A bell tower rose above it, silent against the crimson sky.

The sky still bothered him.

Not constantly. Human brains were disgusting little adaptation machines. After enough hours of seeing red clouds rolling behind bright sun, part of him had filed it under weather, weird. But when he looked up too quickly, his whole body remembered that Earth’s sky had been blue.

Earth.

The word felt slick. When he reached for details, they frayed.

A subway platform. Screaming metal. A woman’s hand slipping. His own shoulder driving into someone, pushing them away from the collapse. Lights bursting white.

And before that…

A studio office with dead plants. A laptop covered in sticker residue. His name in an email subject line beside words like restructuring and unfortunately.

Someone laughing in a kitchen?

No. Gone. A hole where a face should be.

His interface pulsed.

MEMORY INTEGRITY: 91.2%

Rowan swallowed, suddenly colder than the rain warranted.

The guards pulled him up the steps of the civic hall. Inside, the air smelled of wax, ink, and old wood. Benches lined the entry chamber. A painted mural covered the far wall: a radiant figure offering glowing sigils to kneeling people while monsters cowered at the borders. Across the top, gold letters proclaimed, BY CLASS WE SERVE, BY SERVICE WE ASCEND.

“Subtle,” Rowan muttered.

Talia heard him. “Classes are the bones of civilization.”

“Sure. I just prefer my civic propaganda with fewer kneeling peasants.”

She gave him a look that said she was measuring the cost of punching a prisoner.

They took him past the benches and through an iron-banded door into a smaller chamber. This room had no windows. Blue crystals glowed in sconces. Shelves climbed the walls, packed with ledgers, scroll tubes, and brass devices that ticked softly to themselves. At the center stood a circular platform inlaid with silver lines. Runes crawled along its rim like lazy insects.

Behind a desk sat a thin man with gray hair braided down one shoulder. His robe was deep blue, stitched with silver bells. A pair of half-moon spectacles perched on his nose, though his eyes glowed faintly behind them.

Above him, the System label appeared, jittering around the edges.

Magistrate Oren Voss
Civic Arbiter – Level 18
Disposition: Irritated
Hidden Trait: Embezzles candle budget

Rowan stared.

The magistrate looked up. “Well?”

Talia saluted. “Unclassed adult male. Gave the name Rowan Vale. Triggered a visible registry contradiction at the north gate.”

Voss’s irritation sharpened into interest. “Visible?”

“Red panels, sir. System warnings.”

The magistrate removed his spectacles very slowly. “Everyone out except Brent.”

The other guards looked relieved to leave. The door shut behind them with a heavy clunk.

Rowan stood in the center of the room, wrists bound behind him, mud drying on his cheek, while Voss circled him like a man inspecting a cracked antique.

“Thirty-two?” Voss asked.

“Give or take being dead recently.”

Talia shut her eyes for a moment.

Voss paused. “Dead.”

“Metaphorically.”

“You are quite bad at lying.”

“I’m underfed.”

The magistrate’s gaze moved over him. “No Class marker. No origin token. No guild tag. No soul seal from any recognized temple.”

He reached into his desk and withdrew a rod of white crystal capped in brass. When he passed it near Rowan’s chest, it chimed once, then emitted a sound like a choking modem.

Every panel in Rowan’s vision inverted.

QUERY RECEIVED FROM CIVIC REGISTRY

Provide citizen record? Y/N

Automatic response disabled.

Manual override available.

Rowan froze.

A cursor blinked in the corner of his sight.

Not a fantasy rune. Not a mystical prompt. A command-line cursor. Small. White. Impatient.

Voss frowned at the crystal rod. “Odd.”

Rowan’s heart began hammering.

Manual override.

He pictured saying yes and watching whatever passed for a government database swallow his impossible existence whole. He pictured saying no and being dragged to a dungeon, or a temple, or a stake. Neither option sparkled.

The cursor blinked.

He did the first thing that came naturally.

He tried to see if the prompt had tooltips.

Something in his vision clicked.

CIVIC REGISTRY QUERY DETAILS

Request Type: Identify Soul, Assign Jurisdiction, Confirm Class Compliance

Requester Clearance: Municipal Level 2

Hidden Parameter: Flag anomalies for Inquisitorial review if Class = null

Exploit note: Inquisitorial flag delayed until Class compliance check resolves.

Rowan nearly laughed.

It came out as a cough.

Voss’s eyes narrowed. “Something amusing?”

“Municipal bureaucracy,” Rowan said. “Universal constant.”

The magistrate held the rod closer. “Step onto the platform.”

Talia prodded him with the spear shaft. Rowan stepped into the silver circle.

The runes around the rim flared blue. The room dropped away.

Not physically. The walls remained. Talia remained, spear ready. Voss remained, crystal rod raised. But a second space unfolded through the first, vast and black and full of falling stars. Rowan felt a hook slide behind his breastbone and tug.

His knees buckled.

The manacles hummed. The platform burned cold through the soles of his sneakers.

CLASS COMPLIANCE CHECK INITIATED

Soul Age: ERROR

Body Age: 32

Prior Class: None

Unallocated Levels: 1

MANDATORY CLASS SELECTION OVERDUE

“Overdue,” Voss murmured. “By twenty years.”

“I was busy,” Rowan said through clenched teeth.

Blue light climbed his legs in crawling threads. He felt them inside his bones, measuring, weighing, rummaging. It was not pain, exactly. It was the sensation of someone searching his pockets while he was still wearing his skin.

The System’s voice did not sound like a voice. It sounded like meaning stamped directly into his skull.

CHOOSE YOUR CLASS.

The black space brightened.

Choices appeared around him in hovering cards, each crisp and luminous. Rowan knew, instantly and without being told, that these were supposed to be the foundation of a life. More than jobs. More than combat roles. The cards hummed with possibility, gravity, identity.

Fighter
Reliable martial progression. Weapon proficiencies unlocked. Recommended for high Constitution and Strength souls.

Scout
Mobility, perception, survival tools. Recommended for adaptable souls with high Dexterity.

Hedge Mage
Basic spellcasting path. Requires Mana growth. Warning: current Mana value below recommended threshold.

Laborer
Civilian progression. Increased stamina, crafting aptitude, and community contract access.

More cards spun into being. Peddler. Scribe. Initiate Healer. Rat-Catcher, insultingly. Grave Tender. Torchbearer. Bellwether had apparently processed enough frightened peasants to provide a full menu of underwhelming life paths.

Rowan’s eyes darted over numbers and descriptions. His game designer brain, the traitorous thing, started evaluating builds even while the rest of him panicked.

Fighter keeps me alive. Scout gives mobility, maybe stealth. Hedge Mage is bait with zero mana. Scribe may synergize with interface if literacy matters. Laborer is death by cabbage.

“Selection usually happens at twelve,” Voss said from somewhere far away. His voice echoed inside the star-black. “The System offers what the soul can bear.”

“Any chance mine can bear a sandwich?” Rowan asked.

“Choose,” Voss said. “Or the platform will choose a corrective Class for you.”

“Define corrective.”

Talia answered quietly. “Criminal. Vagrant. Oathbound Servant. Depends how much the System dislikes you.”

Rowan looked at her. Her face was hard, but something in her eyes had changed. Not pity. Not quite. Recognition, maybe. She had seen people crushed by this machine before.

The cards pulsed.

TIME REMAINING: 00:59

“Oh, come on,” Rowan said. “There’s a timer?”

He reached toward Scout.

Not with his hand. His hands were bound. But intent moved through the space, and the Scout card tilted toward him. Skills fanned beneath it.

Level 1: Quick Step, Trail Sense, Knife Familiarity

Projected Survival Increase: 23%

Decent. Safe. Boring, but useful. He could always exploit later. A good designer took a stable base and built outward.

Then the red text returned.

It did not appear in front of the cards. It appeared behind them, as though written on the bones of the interface itself.

HIDDEN CLASS OPTIONS UNLOCKED

Reason: Undefined user permissions

Reason: Prior external development access

Reason: Death flag unresolved

The ordinary cards flickered.

New ones slid into the circle.

They were wrong.

Every other Class had a shape Rowan could understand, a little fantasy archetype wrapped in math. These looked like corrupted files pretending to be destinies. Their borders glitched. Their icons blurred. Looking at them made his teeth ache.

Heretic Architect
Build where no structure is permitted. Alter sanctified spaces. Provoke divine aggression.
Warning: Gods remember unauthorized edits.

Patch-Eater
Consume obsolete rules for temporary power. Gain resistance to world revisions.
Warning: Identity erosion likely.

Null Saint
Blessings invert. Healing harms. Death refuses standard ownership.
Warning: Temple hostility guaranteed.

Rowan stopped breathing.

Voss’s crystal rod chimed faster. “What is it doing?”

Talia shifted. “Magistrate?”