The soil was the last thing he knew. Rich, dark, promising earth crumbling through fingers knotted with age and arthritis. The summer storm had been brewing, and Jarine had been securing his prized heirloom tomatoes, the first fat drops kissing his weathered neck. There had been contentment in that final moment. A life complete, measured in seasons and harvests, not in years.
Consciousness returned not with a jolt, but with a slow, muddy seepage, like water into parched ground.
He was drowning in someone else's memories.
Cold. A pallet of itchy straw. The sour scent of a sickroom. A name—Jaren. Sixteen years of hunger, of hard glances in a village called Fallow's End. A fever burning through a frail body, a final, desperate gasp for air that never came.
The memories collided, braided, fused. The serene wisdom of an eighty-four-year-old horticulturist grafted onto the raw, desperate fear of a dying boy. He was both. He was neither. He was new.
A rough hand shook his shoulder. "Up, dreamer! The Awakening waits for no one, least of all a nameless whelp from the provinces!"
He was pushed into a line of youths in identical gray tunics, their faces pale with anticipation and terror. They stood in a cavernous hall of white stone, the air thrumming with a latent energy that made his new-teeth ache. At the far end, on a raised dais, sat three stern arbiters in velvet robes. And before them, pulsating with a slow, mesmerizing light, floated the Awakening Orb.
One by one, his peers stepped forward. A girl's touch made the orb blaze with crimson fire—[Pyromancer]. A boy sparked with arcs of blue lightning—[Storm Knight]. A hulking youth gained shimmering, stone-like skin—[Granite Warden]. Each revelation was met with cheers, proud tears, or sighs of relief. Classes of war, of magic, of clear, useful purpose.
A cold, clean chime sounded in the depths of his merged consciousness, silencing the internal cacophony.
[Dual-Soul Synergy Confirmed. Host Vessel: Optimal.]
[System Initialization Sequence Commencing…]
[Welcome to the Interdimensional System Shop – Your Unique Talent.]
A catalog of impossible wonders unfolded behind his eyes, silent and vast. Seeds of the World-Tree (Sapling). Phantom Wolf Cub (Juvenile). Gravitational Plow of the Dwarven Deep. Core Manual: Celestial Verdancy. The items shimmered, priced in a currency of glowing System Credits. His balance read 0.00.
It was not overwhelming to the old soul within. It was a new kind of seed catalog. Jarine felt a flicker of profound curiosity.
"Jaren of Fallow's End," a bored, resonant voice announced.
He stepped forward on legs that felt both sturdy and alien. The head arbiter, a man with a beard like a bank of snow and eyes like flint, watched him with disinterest. "Place your hand upon the Orb and accept the weave of destiny."
Jarine placed his palm on the crystal. It was warm, not hot. A deep, resonant hum vibrated up his arm, into his bones. The Orb responded not with a flash, but with a swell of color—a rich, profound, nurturing green. The green of ancient forests, of sunlight through leaves, of life itself. It was gentle, powerful, and unmistakably benevolent.
"A strong Life-alignment," the arbiter murmured to his scribe. "A [Druid] of some stripe. Perhaps a [Herbalist] or a [Greenwarden]. Noted."
The green light deepened, wrapping around Jarine like a comforting blanket. He felt a connection to something vast and growing. This, he understood. This was the soil, the rain, the patient push of a sprout through darkness.
Then the System chimed again. [Primary Class Detected: Farmer. Scanning for latent synergies…]
The Orb's light fractured.
From the heart of the nurturing green erupted a second, violently different energy. Cold, brilliant silver. Geometric, alien sigils of binding and compulsion. Rings within rings, gateways to screaming voids, chains of starlight. The magic of Summoning. Of pulling entities from beyond, of command and domination.
The hall gasped as the two magics—the nurturing Life and the coercive Summoning—coiled around each other in the air above the Orb. They did not clash. In a silent, breathtaking alchemy, they merged. Emerald vines grew through silver astral rings. Nebulous star-fields blossomed like night-flowers on wooden staffs. The symbols resolved, solidified, and settled into a single, unprecedented emblem that hung in the air for all to see: a humble, wooden-handled scythe, its curved blade a shimmering slice of the Milky Way.
CLASS: [FARMER]
For three heartbeats, there was absolute silence.
Then, the laughter began.
It started as a disbelieving snort from a richly dressed noble's son in the front row. It spread like a contagion—a roar of derisive, relieved mirth that echoed off the stone vaults. Farmer! The class of magicless peasants, of menial laborers who bowed to the dirt. The most basic, bottom-tier branch of the Life-tree, fit only for feeding their betters.
Jarine saw the arbiters' faces transform. The initial surprise at the dual-display melted into cold, bureaucratic dismissal. The silvery Summoning sigils, the only hint of something extraordinary, flickered wildly and then, inexplicably, vanished from public view, retracting into the Orb as if they had never been. Only the simple, glowing scythe remained, now looking absurd and pathetic.
The head arbiter cleared his throat, his voice cutting through the laughter like a knife. "A Farmer. A… vital calling. The foundation upon which society is built." His tone made it the greatest insult. "The kingdom is generous to all its awakened children. You are granted a territory to steward, as is tradition."
He gestured, and a scribe handed him a scroll. "Your allotment is the Blackwood Vale. You will secure its borders, pay its seasonal tithes to the Crown, and cultivate its… potential. May the land grant you wisdom."
The words were formal. Their intent was a death sentence. Every soul in the hall knew Blackwood Vale was not a fiefdom; it was the garbage heap of the frontier, a monster-infested blight where inconvenient people were sent to be forgotten.
Privately, in Jarine's mind, the System delivered its true verdict.
[Primary Class: Farmer – Registered.]
[Hidden Sub-Class: Planar Shepherd – Confirmed.]
[Consolidated Title: Verdant Sovereign – Applied.]
[Initial Stipend Granted: 100 System Credits.]
[Primary Quest Issued: Establish Your Demesne. Survive 90 Days.]
[Secondary Objective: Challenge Their Assumptions.]
As two armored guards gestured for him to follow them to his exile, Jarine, the old man within, looked at the laughing faces, at the scornful arbiters. He did not feel shame. He felt the quiet, unshakable certainty of a gardener who has just been handed a patch of barren ground and seen, in his mind's eye, the orchard it could become.
The laughter was just noise. He had held the silence of growing things, and it was infinitely louder.
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