Chapter 2: No Patron Found

The blue window hung in the air like a threat pretending to be a menu.

DOMINION SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE

Soul Anchor: Unregistered

Origin: Invalid

Divine Patron: None

Status: Awaiting Selection

CHOOSE A PATRON TO RECEIVE CLASS, STATS, SKILL TREE, AND RESURRECTION RIGHTS.

Marcus Vale stared at it from the dirt with blood on his tongue and a sky the color of a fresh wound boiling above him.

The air smelled wrong.

Not sterile, not recycled, not touched by the faint ozone tang of overheating hardware. It smelled of wet stone, bitter weeds, smoke gone cold, and something deeper under the soil that reminded him of old bones. Wind dragged grit across his cheek. Somewhere far away, thunder rolled without clouds, a long grinding sound like a mountain being pulled apart tooth by tooth.

He was not in the rig.

He was not in the illegal dungeon race.

He was not sitting in his apartment with four empty stimulant cans and a message from his old sponsor still unopened on the second monitor.

He flexed his hands.

They were his hands, mostly. Same long fingers, same scar across the right thumb from when he had smashed a glass desk after losing the Western finals six years ago. But there was dirt under his nails, and his skin carried a grayish undertone, as if ash had been kneaded into the flesh.

The window pulsed.

SELECT PATRON

Recommended Divine Alignments Based on Soul Pattern:

1. Veyra, Lady of Radiant Mercy — Healer / Support / Resurrection Priority

2. Kaul, Iron Judge — Guardian / Law / Threat Control

3. Orryx, the Red Hunt — Berserker / Predator / Blood Tribute

4. Thalen of the Thousand Eyes — Strategist / Scryer / Tactical Casting

5. Other Patrons Available — Expand List

WARNING: Refusal of patronage will result in severe system limitations.

Marcus pushed himself upright. The world tilted hard enough that his stomach tried to climb out through his throat. He clenched his teeth and rode the vertigo like he had ridden adrenaline crashes after twelve-hour scrims, eyes narrowed, breath steadying.

“Okay,” he said aloud.

His voice sounded cracked, unused, but real. Too real.

“Okay, that’s cute.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and found red. “You want me to pick a god.”

The menu waited.

A dead forest stretched around him. Not dead like winter. Dead like judgment. Black trunks clawed from gray earth, bark split open to reveal dull red crystal veins inside. Leaves hung shriveled from branches in clumps like burned feathers. Beyond the trees, he could see the jagged remains of a road paved in white stone, half swallowed by roots and cracks. Broken statues lined it at intervals, their faces hammered away, their hands still raised in poses of blessing.

It should have been beautiful in the way fantasy games always tried to be beautiful, with ruined grandeur and color grading and ambient particle effects.

But there was no distance blur here. No safe edge to the map. No comforting hum of fans behind his ears.

A bug crawled over his boot. It had too many legs and a shell like polished obsidian. Marcus kicked it away on reflex. It clicked angrily and vanished beneath a tuft of black grass.

The blue window followed his gaze.

CHOOSE A PATRON.

“No.”

The word came out before strategy could get involved.

Marcus froze.

The window brightened.

Input recognized.

Confirm refusal of divine patronage?

Y/N

He stared at the letters.

That was the problem with menus. They made impossible things feel manageable. Put death, slavery, godhood, hunger, and resurrection inside a clean blue rectangle and a player’s brain immediately started optimizing. Which patron gave the best early-game scaling? Which faction owned the dominant meta? Was resurrection insurance worth build restrictions? Were the gods actual entities, AI governors, raid sponsors, cosmic parasites?

Marcus had spent half his life doing that. Looking at numbers until the world behind them disappeared.

Pick the best team. Pick the right sponsor. Pick the patch-proof build. Pick the role no one respected because without it everyone died. Stand in front. Eat the hit. Trust the healers. Trust the shotcaller. Trust the system.

His right thumb twitched.

He remembered a different blue light. The race timer at 00:03. His team screaming in voice chat. His health bar evaporating under a boss mechanic he had called correctly and nobody had dodged. Then heat. White heat behind his eyes. The smell of plastic melting. His heart stuttering like a lag spike.

And before that, years before that, a contract across a table. A manager with perfect teeth saying, You’re family here, Marcus. Just sign and trust us.

Family had benched him the second his wrists slowed.

The window pulsed again.

CONFIRM REFUSAL?

Y/N

Marcus laughed once. It hurt.

“I don’t know where I am,” he said. “I don’t know what you are. But I know a rigged onboarding flow when I see one.”

He lifted his hand and jabbed the floating Y.

The world held its breath.

Then the sky screamed.

It was not sound exactly. It was pressure. It punched down through the crimson clouds and into Marcus’s bones, vibrating his teeth, flattening the grass in a circle around him. The blue window shattered into a thousand rectangles, each one flashing symbols too fast to read. A cold lance drove into the center of his chest.

Marcus fell forward onto his hands.

His spine arched. Every muscle locked.

Something vast turned its attention toward him.

Not one thing. Many.

He felt them the way a man in dark water felt shapes passing underneath.

A sun-white gaze filled with pity sharp enough to flay. A red hunger that laughed. Iron scales balancing and finding him wanting. A thousand glass eyes opening in sequence. Others behind them, crowded at the edge of perception, curious, offended, amused.

The dirt beneath Marcus’s fingers cracked.

DIVINE PATRONAGE REFUSED

Violation of Dominion Covenant detected.

Applying civil and spiritual penalties…

Resurrection Rights: DENIED

Temple Services: DENIED

Party Formation: DENIED

Guild Registration: DENIED

Quest Distribution: RESTRICTED

Map Access: DENIED

Sanctuary Access: DENIED

“Yeah,” Marcus gasped, forehead nearly in the mud. “That seems fair.”

The cold in his chest became fire.

He clawed at his shirt—coarse brown cloth, not his hoodie, not anything he owned—and tore the collar wide. Light burned under his skin. Lines crawled outward from his sternum in a jagged circle, black as old ink. They formed a broken halo crossed by a vertical scar.

The symbol sank into him.

Marcus screamed.

The ruined road threw his voice back in pieces. Birds burst from the dead trees, except they were not birds. They had long tails and too many wings, and their cries sounded like children mocking him from the branches.

When the pain finally loosened, he lay curled in the dirt, sucking air through his teeth.

BRAND APPLIED: Godless

You have rejected divine ownership.

All beings aligned with the Dominion may identify your status.

Reputation with Divine Factions set to: Hostile

Probability of lawful execution upon discovery: High

“Ownership,” Marcus whispered.

The word stuck worse than the pain.

He rolled onto his back. The crimson sky spun above the black branches. For several seconds, he did nothing except breathe and wait for his heart to decide whether it wanted to keep being part of this situation.

Then another window unfolded.

Not bright blue this time.

This one flickered. Its edges stuttered, glitching between Dominion blue and something darker underneath, a deep stone-gray etched with hairline gold fractures.

CLASS ASSIGNMENT PROCESSING…

No Patron Found.

No Divine Template Available.

No Blessing Architecture Detected.

Searching Unclaimed Class Debris…

Searching…

Searching…

ERROR: Soul Pattern incompatible with civilian noncombatant templates.

ERROR: Aggro History exceeds acceptable thresholds.

ERROR: Damage Avoidance Index critically low.

ERROR: Repeated voluntary exposure to lethal force detected.

Fallback Defensive Vessel identified.

Class Assigned: Stonebound Wretch

Marcus blinked.

“Wretch?”

The system ignored him with the serene cruelty of all bad UI.

LEVEL 1 STONEBOUND WRETCH

Role: Defensive Failure / Condemned Bulwark

Primary Attribute: Endurance

Secondary Attribute: Burden

Damage Skills: None

Mobility Skills: None

Threat Skills: Malformed

Utility Skills: None

Party Slots: 0

Class Description: Some souls do not kneel, do not shine, do not burn. They remain. The Stonebound Wretch is a discarded defensive shell assigned to condemned entities expected to die slowly and without significance.

Marcus stared at the words until they blurred.

Then he barked a laugh so hard it turned into a cough.

“Defensive failure,” he said. “Great. Perfect. Story of my career.”

Another panel opened.

ATTRIBUTES

Level: 1

Vitality: 3 (Broken)

Strength: 2 (Broken)

Agility: 1 (Broken)

Mind: 4 (Unstable)

Faith: 0 (Godless)

Endurance: 18 (Anomalous)

Burden: 12 (Unrecognized)

Health: 190/190

Stamina: 34/34

Mana: 0/0

Armor: 27 (Natural)

Resistances: Physical +31%, Divine -50%, Blight +10%

Marcus pushed himself up to sitting.

His ribs ached. His chest still burned around the brand. But the numbers pulled him in despite everything, old instincts snapping awake.

Level one. One hundred ninety health was absurd if the baseline matched any traditional curve. Strength and Agility were trash. Endurance at eighteen was not just high; it was obscene compared to the rest. Burden was new. Natural armor meant passive mitigation, likely tied to the gray tint in his skin. Divine vulnerability was bad, very bad, given every faction apparently wanted him dead.

He looked down at his forearm and pinched the skin. It felt tougher than it should have, dense, faintly gritty under pressure. When he rubbed his thumb across it, pale dust came away.

“I’m turning into concrete,” he muttered. “That’s healthy.”

The final panel arrived with a sound like a shovel striking a coffin lid.

PASSIVES

Despised by the Living I: Creatures with intact survival instinct are more likely to identify you as a threat. Hostile attention generation greatly increased. Pacification effects reduced.

Stoneflesh I: Your body has begun to imitate inert matter. Gain natural armor and increased pain tolerance. Healing from divine sources reduced by 90%.

Last Refusal ???: Locked.

Hidden Clause Detected.

Access: Denied

Marcus leaned closer.

“No, no, no. Go back. Hidden clause?”

The window collapsed.

“Of course.”

Silence rushed in after the interface disappeared.

It was not true silence. The ruined forest creaked. Something wet dripped steadily from a branch though there had been no rain. Far off, the thunder grumbled again. But without the system’s cold glow, Marcus felt the size of the world around him.

No minimap.

No quest marker.

No logout.

His throat tightened before he could stop it.

He dug his fingers into the dirt. It was damp and real beneath his nails. He tried to remember the last thing he had said before dying. Had he cursed? Had he called for a cooldown? Had anyone heard him choke when the rig cooked him alive?

His apartment would smell like smoke.

His body would be slumped in the chair.

News sites might run a paragraph if his old handle still had enough search weight. Former champion tank Marcus “Valeguard” Vale found dead after suspected illegal neural immersion incident. Comments would argue whether he had always been washed, whether he deserved it, whether the clip of his last wipe looked staged.

Then the feed would move on.

Marcus closed his eyes.

For one breath, grief opened under him like a pit.

A twig snapped.

His eyes opened.

Something moved between the black trunks.

Marcus went still.

The shape was low to the ground, maybe the size of a large dog, if a large dog had been assembled by someone who hated dogs. Its body was hairless and rope-muscled, skin pulled tight over jutting bones. Its forelimbs were too long, knuckles dragging through the ash grass. Its head hung sideways from a thick neck, split by a mouth that opened farther than anatomy allowed.

Two pale eyes fixed on Marcus.

A red marker appeared over it.

Grave Gnawer — Level 2

Disposition: Hostile

Type: Carrion Beast

Marcus exhaled slowly.

“Okay,” he said. “First mob.”

The Grave Gnawer peeled its lips back. Its teeth were long, black, and wet. Strings of saliva swung from its jaw.

Marcus looked around for a weapon.

Dirt. Rocks. Dead branches. Broken statue hands. No sword conveniently jammed in a stump. No tutorial chest glittering beside the spawn point.

“Naturally.”

The Gnawer took one step forward.

Marcus picked up a rock the size of his fist.

A red exclamation mark flashed above the monster’s head.

Its body changed.

There was no windup animation, no generous telegraph, just a violent compression of muscle and a blur of gray flesh. Marcus barely got his arm up before the thing hit him.

Impact drove him onto his back.

Teeth clamped around his forearm.

Pain flared, bright and immediate, but not the crippling agony it should have been. The jaws ground down with enough force to crush bone. Marcus felt pressure, tearing cloth, a scraping vibration through his arm.

But the teeth did not sink deep.

The Gnawer snarled around his limb, confused and furious.

-12 Health

Health: 178/190

Marcus stared.

“That’s it?”

The monster shook him.

His head bounced off the dirt. Stars burst across his vision.

-5 Health

Health: 173/190

“Okay, still rude.”

Marcus slammed the rock into the side of its skull.

It made a dull thock.

0 Damage

The Gnawer froze.

Marcus froze too.

“Zero?”

He hit it again, harder. Pain shot up his own wrist.

0 Damage

The monster’s pale eyes narrowed, as if even it found this pathetic.

Marcus switched tactics. He jammed his thumb toward its eye.

The Grave Gnawer jerked its head aside and released his arm only to snap at his face. Marcus rolled, slow and clumsy. Too slow. Teeth raked across his cheek and forehead with a sound like nails on stone.

-9 Health

Health: 164/190

Warm blood ran into his left eye. He kicked the creature in the ribs.

0 Damage

“Come on!”

The Gnawer lunged again. Marcus got both hands under its throat. It was stronger than him by a stupid margin, all wire and hunger, claws digging furrows into the dirt beside his ears. Its breath hit him in rotten waves. Maggots wriggled between its gums. It snapped inches from his nose.

Marcus planted a foot against its belly and shoved.

The creature moved half an inch.

His Strength stat might as well have been decorative.

The Grave Gnawer’s claws carved down his chest.

Cloth shredded. Sparks—actual sparks—jumped where claw met gray-tinted skin.

-14 Health

Health: 150/190

Marcus laughed breathlessly despite himself.

The monster was mauling him. It was absolutely, unquestionably winning the fight. But every attack landed like a level one mob trying to chew through a raid boss’s shield phase with auto-attacks.