Chapter 2: Class Selection Error

Mason Vale stared at his own corpse until the screaming started.

It came from everywhere at once—a ragged chorus ripped out of hundreds of throats. Men, women, children, old people, people in hospital gowns, office clothes, pajamas, a wedding dress streaked with soot. They sprawled across the blood-soaked field beneath the crimson sky like the aftermath of a plane crash that had somehow collected victims from every street in the city.

Some were sobbing. Some were praying. Some were trying to wake the dead bodies beside them, shaking shoulders that would never move again. A teenage boy in a varsity jacket vomited into the red grass. A woman with half her hair burned away crawled on her hands and knees, whispering, “No, no, no,” as if repetition could stitch reality back into shape.

And above every one of them floated silver text.

WELCOME TO THE ETERNAL PATCH
INITIALIZING SOUL INSTANCE…
STATUS: DECEASED / REASSIGNED
PLEASE REMAIN CALM WHILE YOUR NEW BODY STABILIZES

Mason’s throat tightened.

New body.

He flexed his fingers. They moved. Trembled. His hands looked like his hands, down to the crescent scar across the base of his thumb from a broken oxygen regulator two winters ago. His navy paramedic pants were torn at the knees, his shirt stiff with dried blood that wasn’t all his. His boots sank slightly into mud that smelled like copper and rain rot.

Two yards away, his corpse lay faceup in the grass.

Not a hallucination. Not a dream.

His real body—burned, crushed, ribs caved inward, one arm bent wrong under the weight of a twisted ambulance door that shouldn’t have existed here—stared at the sky with open eyes. The same eyes Mason had looked through when the ceiling came down and the world went black.

I died.

The thought should have broken him. Maybe it had, and this field was what madness looked like after the brain stopped firing. But the screams kept changing pitch, and the smell of blood kept crawling up his nose, and somewhere out beyond the rippling grass something howled.

The sound cut through the panic like a blade through tubing.

Low. Wet. Hungry.

Every head that still possessed enough sense turned toward the slope beyond the field.

The grass there bent against a wind Mason couldn’t feel. Between black-trunked trees, shapes moved on too many legs. They came in a loose line, shoulders rolling, jaws low to the ground. At first his mind tried to call them wolves because that was the closest file it had. Then one of them stepped fully into the red light.

Its fur was a patchwork of grave mold and exposed muscle. Ribs jutted through gray hide like cage bars. Its skull had split down the center and healed badly, leaving one eye higher than the other. A human hand hung from its mouth by two fingers, fresh enough that the wedding ring still flashed.

Silver text shimmered above its head.

CORPSE-WOLF — LEVEL 2
STATUS: HUNGRY
TRAIT: PACK FEAST

A man in a business suit made a strangled sound. “What the hell is that?”

“Run,” Mason said.

No one listened at first. Panic did that. It filled the ears. It made people freeze with all the power of a spinal injury.

The corpse-wolves spread out.

Mason’s training hit before thought. Scene safety. Triage. Threat assessment. Move casualties if possible. Stop catastrophic bleeding. Protect airway. Protect yourself.

Protect yourself, idiot.

He scanned the field. No ambulance. No bag. No trauma shears. No oxygen. No radio. No partner. Just bodies, terrified strangers, and monsters coming downhill with famine in their eyes.

The silver notification above his corpse flickered, then expanded into a translucent panel in front of him.

SOUL STABILIZATION COMPLETE
Candidate: Mason Vale
Origin World: Earth / Version 8.13.404
Cause of Death: Structural Collapse, Thermal Trauma, Heroic Interference
Disposition: Drafted

CLASS SELECTION AVAILABLE
Warning: Selection recommended before first hostile engagement.

Heroic Interference.

Mason almost laughed, but the sound came out sharp and breathless. Of course the universe had a billing code for dying stupid.

Another scream erupted to his left. A woman in a red coat stumbled backward as a corpse-wolf lunged at a man near the edge of the field. The man raised both arms. The wolf took one.

Bone cracked. Blood sprayed black-red under the alien sky.

That broke the freeze.

People scattered.

The field became chaos—shoving bodies, cries for help, people tripping over corpses, silver interface panels blinking into existence and being ignored. A young mother clutched a toddler to her chest while trying to run in heels. Two older men grabbed each other and fell together. Someone shouted, “Choose a class! The screen says choose a class!”

Mason turned on his own panel with shaking hands.

“Okay,” he rasped. “Fine. Class. Combat class. Give me something with a weapon.”

The interface brightened as if delighted.

SELECT STARTING CLASS
Your Class determines initial Stats, Skills, Equipment Potential, and Tutorial Path.
Classes are generated from Soul History, Death Conditions, Aptitudes, and Narrative Weight.

Available Classes:

Options unfolded in rows of silver light.

FIELD MEDIC — Support / Triage
Heal minor wounds. Stabilize allies. Low combat potential.

RESCUER — Utility / Endurance
Improved strength while carrying others. Bonus under collapsing structures. Low damage.

LAST RESPONDER — Death-Attuned Support
Sense dying targets. Delay death once per cycle. Moderate mental strain.

RUSTED SHIELD — Defensive Fighter
Absorb damage for nearby allies. Poor mobility. High survival rating.

SCALPEL DUELIST — Precision Striker
Critical damage against exposed weak points. Requires fine motor control.

Mason’s eyes snapped over them. Not enough. Not with wolves already eating people.

“Give me a fighter,” he said. “A real fighter. Soldier. Knight. Berserker. Anything.”

The panel trembled.

Request acknowledged.
Recalculating based on immediate survival preference…

Behind the transparent text, the man who had lost his arm was still alive. He lay kicking in the grass as the corpse-wolf worried his shoulder, shaking him the way a dog shook a toy. Two more wolves bounded toward the scattered newcomers. One pounced on a crawling teenager and vanished into a flurry of red grass and thrashing legs.

Mason moved before the class panel finished recalculating.

He grabbed a length of metal jutting from beneath his corpse’s ambulance door. The sight of his own dead fingers inches from his boot nearly made him retch, but his hands kept working. He planted one foot against the warped door and pulled.

The metal screeched free—a jagged strip of frame about three feet long, heavy at one end, sharp along the torn edge. Not a weapon. A hazard. Good enough.

“Hey!” Mason shouted.

The corpse-wolf with the man’s arm looked up. Its split skull twitched. Blood dripped from its jaw in long strings.

Mason hurled the metal strip.

It spun end over end and struck the wolf in the ribs with a wet clang. The creature yelped, more surprised than hurt, and turned toward him.

“Yeah,” Mason breathed. “That’s right.”

The panel flashed in front of his face.

Combat intent detected.
Emergency Class Shortlist updated.

RUSTED SHIELD — Compatibility 71%
SCALPEL DUELIST — Compatibility 43%
GRAVE RUNNER — Compatibility 38%
PAIN ANCHOR — Compatibility 64%

“Shield,” Mason snapped. “Select Rusted Shield.”

The corpse-wolf charged.

The selection button lit beneath his hand. His fingers punched through cold silver light.

Selection received.
Validating…

The wolf covered the distance too fast. Mason had time to see the human hand fall from its jaws. Time to smell grave dirt and stomach acid. Time to realize he’d thrown away his only weapon.

A stranger slammed into him from the side.

They both hit the ground as the wolf sailed over them. Its claws raked sparks from a broken ambulance panel behind them. Mason rolled, taking the stranger with him, and came up on one knee.

The man who’d tackled him was maybe twenty-five, broad-shouldered, with a delivery driver’s vest over a hoodie. His cheeks were wet with tears. “It was going to kill you!”

“Get behind me,” Mason said.

“I don’t know what to pick!” the man shouted. “It wants me to be a potter!”

“Then pick something else!”

“There isn’t something else!”

The wolf turned, shoulders bunching.

Mason’s panel flickered again.

Validation failed.
RUSTED SHIELD unavailable.
Reason: Existing Soul Pattern conflicts with Sustained Self-Preservation Priority.

“What?” Mason barked.

The wolf leapt.

Mason shoved the delivery driver down and raised his left arm.

Stupid. Instinctive. There was no shield, no armor, nothing but skin and bone and the old habit of putting himself between danger and someone else.

The corpse-wolf hit him like a sack of wet cement. Its jaws clamped around his forearm. Teeth punched through muscle. Pain detonated white-hot up to his shoulder.

Mason screamed.

The wolf drove him onto his back. Its breath washed over his face, rotten and cold. It shook its head, trying to tear the arm loose. Mason jammed his free hand under its jaw and pushed with everything he had.

“Get off!”

The delivery driver scrambled in the grass, sobbing, then grabbed the metal strip Mason had thrown and swung it with both hands.

The jagged edge smashed into the wolf’s skull.

Once. Twice.

The third hit split something. Black fluid spattered Mason’s face. The wolf’s jaw loosened. Mason ripped his arm free, leaving strips of flesh behind, and kicked the creature in the chest. It stumbled. The driver swung again, wild and desperate, catching the wolf across one foreleg.

Silver text blinked above the creature.

CORPSE-WOLF — LEVEL 2
HP: 9/34
STATUS: STUNNED

“Hit it!” Mason yelled.

“I am!”

“Harder!”

The driver screamed wordlessly and brought the metal down on the wolf’s head until the skull collapsed with a sound like a boot through rotten fruit.

HOSTILE DEFEATED
Contribution: 61% Mason Vale / 39% Evan Cho
Experience awarded.

Heat rippled through Mason’s chest. For one impossible second, the bite in his arm burned brighter than pain. The wound did not close, but the bleeding slowed as if invisible fingers had pinched the torn vessels.

Level Progress: 0 → 1 pending Class Assignment

Evan Cho dropped the metal strip and fell backward, panting. “I killed it. I killed a zombie dog.”

“Don’t celebrate,” Mason said through clenched teeth. “There are more.”

There were.

At least nine corpse-wolves now prowled the field, darting among the newly dead and the newly resurrected. Some newcomers had chosen classes. Mason could tell because light wrapped their bodies in brief flashes—green, bronze, blue-white—and rough weapons appeared in their hands.

A gray-haired woman in a bloodstained blouse swung a conjured mace and crushed a wolf’s paw, laughing with the brittle hysteria of someone whose mind had gone sideways. A teenager with glowing fists punched at empty air until a wolf took him down from behind. A man in scrubs raised both palms and formed a trembling barrier of yellow light around three children, only for another wolf to slam into it and web it with cracks.

Mason pushed himself up. His left arm throbbed, slick from wrist to elbow. The interface followed him, annoyingly serene.

Alternative selection recommended.
Available Compatible Classes updated due to Combat Behavior:

PAIN ANCHOR — Defensive Martyr / Debuff Tank
Take wounds intended for allies. Root yourself to reduce incoming damage. Long-term survivability: poor.

BLOOD STITCHER — Emergency Healer / Bloodcraft
Close wounds using available life force. Resource risk: severe.

GRAVE RUNNER — Mobility / Survivor
Increased speed near corpses. Reduced threat generation.

Mason barely read the last one before rejecting it with a snarl. “I’m not running over dead people for a speed boost.”

“Maybe run a little,” Evan said, voice cracking as he hauled himself up. “Running seems underrated.”

A wolf lunged toward the mother with the toddler. She screamed and turned away, folding her body over the child.

Mason swore and sprinted.

Pain chewed his arm with every stride. The red grass whipped at his legs. The wolf launched itself at the woman’s back.

Mason hit it shoulder-first midair.

The impact blasted the breath from his lungs. He and the wolf tumbled through the grass, claws scraping his ribs. It snapped at his face. Mason got his bleeding forearm between its jaws again, because apparently he was the kind of moron who fed monsters the same limb twice.

Teeth sank into already mangled flesh.

His vision went black at the edges.

Something inside him—not courage, not nobility, something uglier and more stubborn—refused to let go.

He drove his thumb into the wolf’s higher eye.

The creature shrieked. Mason dug deeper until his thumb slipped through jelly and membrane. The wolf thrashed. He hooked his legs around its torso, clamped his wounded arm against its mouth, and screamed back into its ruined face.

“Pick a class!” he shouted at the woman. “Now!”

She stared at him with huge eyes. The toddler wailed against her chest.

“I can’t,” she sobbed. “It says I’m too afraid.”

“Be afraid later!”

Evan arrived with the metal strip and brought it down on the wolf’s spine. Once. Twice. The third strike snapped bone. The wolf went limp across Mason’s legs.

HOSTILE DEFEATED
Contribution: 52% Mason Vale / 48% Evan Cho
Experience awarded.
Level Progress: 1 → 2 pending Class Assignment

Mason shoved the corpse off and almost blacked out.

His arm was a disaster. Ragged crescents of meat hung from it. Blood drummed into the soil. He needed a tourniquet, pressure dressing, fluids, antibiotics, surgery. He had none of those things. He had a floating screen offering him magical suicide careers.

The woman clutched his sleeve. “Thank you. Thank you, oh God—”

“Move,” Mason said. “Toward the people with barriers. Keep low.”

“Your arm—”

“Move.”

She moved.

Evan stood over him, face gray. “Man, you need a hospital.”

Mason looked at the crimson sky and laughed once, bitterly. “Yeah. Put in a transfer.”

Another system panel slammed into view, larger than before. Red warning icons pulsed around its edges.

CRITICAL SELECTION DELAY
Unclassed Souls suffer increased damage, reduced healing, and limited System protection.
Choose now.

“Fine,” Mason hissed. “Blood Stitcher. Select Blood Stitcher.”

If the world wanted him to be a medic, then at least he could stop bleeding out.

Selection received.
Validating…

The panel froze.

Not paused. Froze.

The silver text smeared sideways like wet ink dragged across glass. Mason blinked hard. The letters jittered, split into duplicates, then reassembled wrong.

Validating…
Validating…
Validating…
Error: Blood resource profile contaminated by external narrative trauma.
Error: Death event overlaps with active rescue directive.
Error: Soul did not release primary obligation at termination.
Error: Error.

A cold sensation crawled down Mason’s spine that had nothing to do with blood loss.

“What does that mean?” Evan whispered.

“It means the magic menu is broken.”

“I hate that sentence.”

The field shook.