Mio
[Time Remaining: 0:00]
[TRIAL OF GENESIS: COMPLETE]
The jaws stopped.
Mio waited for the crunch. The pain. The nothing that came after.
It didn't come.
The Draugr released her—almost ceremonial, like a dog dropping a toy on command.
The pressure vanished. The weight lifted.
Then they dissolved. All of them. Fell to the floor in wet chunks of bone and rotting vine.
Dead. Inert.
She was alive.
[HP: 1/106]
One.
No mana. No potions. No friends.
I'm sorry, Nana. I tried. I really—
Hands cupped her face. Warm. Gentle. Smelling faintly of turned earth and something sweet.
Her eyes wouldn't focus. The world was gray and fading. But she knew that warmth. Nine months since the Overflow, and her mother had come to bring her home.
Mom.
The word didn't make it past her throat.
The hands withdrew.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
"You did it!"
The voice was wrong.
Mio's vision sharpened. The Entity stood over her, head tilted, smile stretching too wide.
"Sixty-four candidates." She clasped her hands together. "A year of watching. Waiting. And you're the fourth to make it this far—the only one who might actually last."
Mio tried to speak. Managed a wet cough instead.
"What..." The word broke in her throat. "What are you..."
"Shh." The Entity crouched, pressed a finger to Mio's lips. Her skin was warm. Faintly sweet, like rotting fruit. "Don't talk. You're dying. We'll fix that."
"Fix..."
"But first—" She leaned closer. "Don't you want to know why you survived?"
Mio didn't answer. Couldn't.
"That passive of yours. Overheal." The Entity's smile widened. "I gave it to you."
The words landed somewhere far away. Her brain was too busy keeping her heart beating.
"Remember when you got sick? During Integration? Three days of fever. Thought you were going to die."
Her voice was light. Conversational.
"That was a fragment of my power settling in. I seeded sixty-four Healers that day. Most didn't survive the night."
Mio remembered.
Nana's voice through the door. The status screen glowing in her peripheral vision. Blood on her tongue.
"You..." She coughed. Blood on her lips. "You made me weak. Made everyone think I was broken."
"Also true."
"And you killed my friends."
"Ah." The Entity wagged a finger. "That's where you're wrong."
She stood, circling Mio. Where she stepped, the stone flinched.
"I told them three could leave if one died. I never said which one. I never said they had to kill anyone."
She examined her fingernails.
"They chose you. They did the math. They decided you were expendable."
The words sank in.
Tank. DPS. Buffer.
Healer was optional.
Mio remembered Shiori's voice. She's Grade F. A healer who can't even cast twice without falling over.
She remembered Aoi's face. The moment her eyes went flat.
She remembered Rin's boot on her wrist.
We'll take care of Nana.
"They were my friends," she whispered.
"Were they?" The Entity's eyes didn't blink. "Friends don't do math, Mio. Friends don't calculate who's worth saving."
Something hot pressed behind Mio's eyelids. She didn't have enough blood left for tears, but her body tried anyway.
"And you know what the funny part is?"
The Entity crouched again, close enough that Mio could count the petals in her hair without looking up.
"The whole thing—three may leave, one must die—I made it up. Entertainment. A story to make them desperate." She watched Mio's face. "But the trial was real. The Trial of Genesis. I built it for you, Mio. Just for you. To see what you'd become when everything else was stripped away."
Her voice dropped.
"They were never meant to leave. They were meant to show me who you really are."
They killed me for nothing.
Mio wanted to tear her throat out. Her hands twitched against the stone, nails dragging through her own blood, but her body wouldn't move.
Couldn't do anything but lie there and bleed.
"Anyway." The Entity clapped her hands once more. "Time to hold up my end of the bargain."
"Bargain..."
"I said if you survived, I'd consider marking you." She smiled. "Consider it considered."
She flexed her fingers.
Light gathered at her fingertips—not green like the vines, but something older. Gold and white, with edges that hurt to look at.
"The others have already found their champions. I'm late to the game." She tucked a strand of Mio's hair behind her ear, almost tender. "But you were worth the wait."
Her smile slipped. The flowers in her hair wilted—just for a second, petals curling brown at the edges.
"I needed someone who won't break when the Seventh reopens."
She reached toward Mio's forehead.
"Wait—"
Her thumb pressed against Mio's skin.
Then she drove it in.
Like a nail straight through bone. Mio felt the crack. Felt the intrusion punch through flesh and cartilage and keep going, carving deeper, burning a shape into the meat of her brain.
She screamed.
Her back arched off the stone. Her hands clawed at nothing. Her eyes rolled back until all she could see was white and the ghost of a symbol searing itself into her vision—a circle, a spiral, a root system spreading through her thoughts.
The Entity whispered something.
Not Japanese. Not English. Something older. Something that tasted like dirt and growing things.
Mio's heart stopped.
Started.
Stopped.
Started.
[CLASS CHANGE INITIATED]
[Current Class: Healer]
[New Class: Biomancer]
Something fundamental shifted. Like a bone being reset. Like a key turning in a lock she didn't know she had.
[SYSTEM OVERRIDE]
[ENGINE INITIALIZED]
A new interface layered over the old one. Sharper. Different.
Where the System had always felt like a mirror—static, showing her what she was—this felt like a road.
A path forward.
[LEVEL: 1]
[HP RESTORED: 340/340]
She stared at the notifications.
Level.
That word had never existed in her status. The System didn't have levels. You were born with a Grade, assigned a Class, and that was your ceiling forever.
Everyone knew that.
But there it was. A number that could go up.
[ABILITY FORGOTTEN: Mend]
Mend left her. Pulled out like a splinter.
[DEFECT REMOVED: Self-Healing Penalty]
And the weight went with it. The one she hadn't realized she was carrying.
Gone.
[NEW ABILITY ACQUIRED: Vitalize]
Cycles life into healing
Cost: Reservoir. If empty, costs HP.
She understood it the way she understood breathing. Take from one place. Give to another. The Reservoir or herself—either way, something paid.
[NEW ABILITY ACQUIRED: Spark]
Cycles life energy into a devastating bolt; overcharged life energy makes it toxic
Applies Necrotic Blight
Cost: 50 Reservoir
She understood it the way she understood anger. Point. Fire. Watch them rot from the inside.
[PASSIVE INVERTED: Overheal]
All healing received ×213%
The curse that had ruined her. Inverted. What drained her would feed her now.
[NEW PASSIVE ACQUIRED: Reservoir]
Stores harvested life
Fuels Biomancer abilities
Capacity: 12,500 × Level
A space opened in her chest. Empty. Waiting to be filled.
[NEW PASSIVE ACQUIRED: Life Bloom]
When a creature dies within 10 meters, a Bloom manifests
Blooms last 60 seconds
Absorb to fill Reservoir
Death would feed her now. Every kill within range—a flower waiting to be picked.
[RESOURCE CHANGE]
You no longer gain Mana
Your abilities now consume Reservoir
The stagnant pool of mana she'd carried since Integration—the one that had never been enough—evaporated.
In its place: nothing. A void where power used to be.
But also: potential.
[MARK RECEIVED: Mark of the Gaian]
The words burned themselves into her understanding.
Gaian.
That was her name. The thing that had made her weak. The thing that had just made her something else.
Overheal, the passive that had made her dead weight.
It wasn't a bug anymore.
It was the entire point.
Mio pulled up her status. The new one. The real one.
[Status]
Name: Tamei Mio
Class: Biomancer
Level: 1
HP: 340 / 340
Reservoir: 0 / 12,500
VIT: 13 | STR: 2 | AGI: 3 | INT: 3 | SPR: 7
[Abilities]
Vitalize: Cycles life into healing. Cost: Reservoir (HP if empty).
Spark: Cycles life into devastation. Applies Necrotic Blight. Cost: Reservoir
[Passives]
Overheal: All healing received ×213%.
Reservoir: Stores life. Cap: 12,500 × Level.
Life Bloom: Death within 10m creates Bloom. Absorb to fill Reservoir.
[Special]
Mark of the Gaian
Two abilities. Three passives. Simple.
She let the screen fade. The words stayed burned into her vision.
Gaian's face filled the dark. That smile. All teeth.
"There you are."
Mio's mouth opened. Nothing.
Gaian rose, her silhouette swallowing the emerald light.
"Make it interesting for me, Tamei Mio."
She snapped her fingers.
The world began dissolving.
Mio let it.
She had a sister to get home to.
[Mark of the Gaian: Active]