The thing about Katanja High School's Class 2-B was that it was loud.
Not unpleasantly loud. Just — people loud. The kind of noise that happens when thirty-four teenagers who have known each other long enough to be comfortable fill a room before the teacher arrives. Conversations overlapping, chairs scraping, someone laughing too hard at something near the back, the particular high-pitched argument happening between two people about something that was definitely not worth arguing about.
Haruki Sora sat in his seat - third from the back, second row from the window - and turned a page.
He wasn't bothered by the noise. He wasn't wishing he was part of it either. He was simply elsewhere in the comfortable way that a person with a good book is always slightly elsewhere, present enough to exist in the room and absent enough to be somewhere much more interesting.
The book was one his grandmother had given him. Old, slightly water-damaged at the corner, about a man who travelled through various mountain regions and documented the practical crafts of each community he passed through. It was not, by any measurable standard, an exciting book. Haruki had read it four times.
Outside the window, October was doing its best - the kind of crisp pale morning that made the school courtyard look almost pretty, a few leaves coming down from the single tree near the gate, a first-year student running late and looking panicked about it.
Haruki watched the leaf come down, watched the student disappear around the corner, and turned another page.
The metalworkers of the Hiragi valley, his book informed him, use a folding technique passed down through seven generations that produces a blade edge of remarkable durability through a process requiring patience above all other qualities-
"Haruki."
He didn't look up. "Mm."
Daisuke, from the seat beside him, leaned over with the energy of someone delivering important news. "Mizuki got a hundred on the literature exam."
"Good for her."
"She got a hundred on the math exam too."
"Also good for her."
"And the history exam."
Haruki turned a page. "Daisuke."
"Yeah?"
"Is there a point coming?"
Daisuke thought about it. "Not really," he admitted, and leaned back.
Near the front of the class, Hana Mizuki sat with her notebook open, reviewing something with the focused calm of a person who was never not working. She didn't perform her competence. She just was competent, quietly and completely, the way some people are tall - just a fact about them that the room adjusted around.
Beside her, or rather near her, since Ren Takahashi rarely stayed in one place long enough to be beside anything, the class representative was currently standing on the side of his desk explaining something to three people at once with the volume and enthusiasm of a sports announcer. What he was explaining was unclear. The enthusiasm was the point.
Haruki watched him for a moment with the mild fond exasperation of someone watching a very energetic dog, then looked back at his book.
He was not envious of any of them.
This was something people sometimes found hard to believe when he said it, so he had mostly stopped saying it. But it was true. Ren's energy exhausted him to observe. Hana's relentless competence seemed like a lot of work. The conversations happening around the room — social navigation, reputation management, the complex ongoing drama of thirty-four people stuck together five days a week - seemed like an enormous amount of effort for outcomes that would largely not matter in three years.
His grandmother had said once, while repairing a ceramic bowl with a careful bead of lacquer: some people need the whole room and some people just need their corner. Neither one is wrong, Haruki. Just know which one you are.
He knew which one he was.
He turned another page.
The patience required for the folding process cannot be overstated. A smith who rushes will produce a blade that looks correct but carries hidden fractures-
The light changed.
It was subtle at first - just a warmth at the edge of his vision, the way sunlight shifts when a cloud moves. Haruki's eyes stayed on his page for two more seconds before something about the quality of the silence made him look up.
The classroom had gone quiet.
Not the natural quiet of a teacher walking in. A different quiet. The kind that happens when thirty-four people all notice the same thing at exactly the same moment and don't yet have words for it.
The light was coming from everywhere.
Soft and golden and sourceless, rising from the floor, the walls, the air itself - and in the front of the classroom, where the teacher's desk had been, stood a woman.
She was — Haruki's brain processed several things in quick succession and set most of them aside — tall, composed, and dressed in something that his grandmother would have described as extremely optimistic given the weather. White and gold, ceremonial, elaborate in the places it existed and notably absent in several others. She had the bearing of someone who had walked into rooms and commanded them for so long it had become involuntary.
She also had wings. Or something like wings - light-formed, white-gold, folded behind her like an afterthought.
The class stared.
Ren, to his credit, sat down.
The woman looked over the room with an expression of serene assessment, the way a person looks at a tool they are considering purchasing.
"Students of Katanja High," she said, and her voice carried the particular resonance of someone whose voice always carried, "I am Seraphiel. Saint of the Dominion. I have come to you from the world of Aethermoor with a divine summons and a sacred purpose."
A beat.
"You have been chosen," she continued, "as heroes."
Another beat. Longer.
Someone near the back whispered "what" and was immediately shushed.
Seraphiel proceeded with the efficiency of someone who had done this before and had refined the presentation to its essential points. Another world. A great conflict. A system that would be granted to each of them, tailored to their souls, that would guide their growth and grant them abilities beyond their current understanding.
"The demons of the Territories," she said, and her voice cooled slightly on the word, "are a threat to all human life in Aethermoor. You will be trained, equipped, and supported by the Dominion in your sacred duty."
She paused, and something moved through her expression - not warmth exactly, but the performance of it.
"Some guidance before we proceed. The demons are dangerous and without exception hostile. Do not engage in conversation with them. Do not attempt negotiation. Should you encounter one -" a pause that managed to feel both delicate and absolute "- eliminate them. Your systems will provide further instruction."
Haruki, who had closed his book at some point without noticing, looked at the woman at the front of the room.
She was looking at the class the way the class looked at a test they were confident about.
He thought about what his grandmother had said about people who were very certain of things.
The ones who are loudest about what's right, she'd told him once, are often the ones who most need you to agree with them. Watch what they do when you don't.
He filed this away.
Then the light got very bright and the floor stopped being a floor and Haruki Sora had exactly enough time to think oh no before the world came apart at the seams.
The sensation of transmigration, for the record, was deeply unpleasant.
The thirty-four students who arrived in the Grand Summoning Hall of the Dominion's Royal Capital experienced it as a sudden lurch followed by a landing - disorienting, dizzying, but essentially manageable. The hall was enormous and golden and full of people who had been waiting and now erupted in cheering and trumpets and the general noise of a civilization greeting its heroes.
Haruki experienced it differently.
Something in the geometry of the spell - some margin of error, some fractional miscalculation, some cosmic shrug of indifference - threw his arrival coordinates off by a distance that was either catastrophically large or precisely exact, depending on how you looked at it.
He didn't land in the Grand Summoning Hall.
He landed in The Grey.
Specifically, he landed face-down in cracked grey earth at the precise midpoint between the Human Dominion and the Demon Territories, at a location no map bothered to mark, under a sky the color of old pewter, with ash in his hair and the distinct physical sensation of every cell in his body having just been rearranged and put back mostly right.
He lay there for a moment.
Then he lay there for a moment longer.
Then, because there was nothing else to do, he lost consciousness.
In the Grand Summoning Hall, the ceremony proceeded.
The sphere was brought forward - a crystalline orb the size of a large melon, glowing with internal light, warm to the touch. Each student approached in turn, pressed their palm to its surface, and received their system.
Most received Tier 3 or Tier 4. A few received Tier 5. The crowd reacted to each announcement with the enthusiasm of people who understood what the tiers meant and found even the lower ones impressive.
Then Hana Mizuki stepped forward.
She placed her hand on the sphere with the same composed efficiency she brought to everything.
The sphere blazed white.
The attendants stepped back. Seraphiel, who had maintained perfect serenity through the entire ceremony, allowed one eyebrow to rise approximately two millimeters.
SOVEREIGN SYSTEM — TIER 7Class: Strategic OverlordPrimary Affinity: Command and Enhancement
The hall erupted.
Hana received her Hero Medal - gold and white, warm in her palm - and stepped back with an expression that revealed nothing. She was already counting. Already thinking. Already building the picture of what this meant and what came next.
Ren Takahashi hit the sphere like he was challenging it.
It blazed gold-red.
CHAMPION SYSTEM — TIER 6Class: Vanguard DestroyerPrimary Affinity: Offensive Combat
Ren made a noise that was somewhere between a victory cry and an explosion and had to be gently redirected from immediately trying to use his new abilities in the hall.
Seraphiel stepped forward when it was done, surveying the assembled students with an expression of genuine satisfaction.
"Remarkable," she said to the king beside her, quietly enough that only he could hear. "Exceptional yields across the board. Two high-tiers in one summoning."
"Extraordinary," the king agreed.
"They will need rest before training begins," she told the room, raising her voice. "The system integration requires time. Pushing your abilities immediately risks mental strain - I have seen it cause lasting damage. Sleep tonight. Begin tomorrow."
The students, most of whom were simultaneously thrilled and exhausted and completely overwhelmed, agreed with more relief than they showed.
Nobody counted the faces.
Nobody noticed the number was thirty-four.
Nobody said the name Haruki Sora until much later, and by then it was too late to matter to the people making decisions.
The Grey was quiet when Haruki woke up.
It was a specific quality of quiet - not peaceful, but empty. The silence of a place that had been silent for so long it had forgotten what sound was for. The sky above him was the same flat pewter it had been before he lost consciousness. The ground under his cheek was cold and grey and slightly gritty.
He lay still for a moment, running an inventory.
Alive. Check. All limbs present. Check. Book - he felt for it automatically - still in his jacket pocket, slightly bent at the cover corner. Manageable. Location: unknown. Situation: unclear. General outlook: not great.
He sat up slowly.
The landscape extended in every direction with the commitment of something that had never considered being anything else. Grey earth, cracked in long irregular lines. The ruins of something - walls, maybe, or structures - jutting from the ground at intervals like broken teeth. A sky with no sun visible, just diffuse pale light from everywhere and nowhere. The air smelled of something mineral and faintly burnt, like the memory of a fire that had gone out centuries ago.
There was nobody here.
There was, as far as he could see in every direction, nothing here.
Haruki sat in the middle of it and took a breath and thought about his grandmother, who had once gotten them thoroughly lost on a mountain trail and had sat down on a rock, eaten a rice ball, and said: panic is for people who have nothing useful to do. You always have something useful to do. Start with what you know.
What did he know.
He knew he had been in a classroom. He knew a woman with wings had appeared and said something about another world and heroes and demons. He knew there had been light. He knew he was now here, wherever here was, instead of wherever everyone else was.
He knew he was hungry, which was not useful information but was very persistent.
He knew his jacket was intact, his book was intact, and his bag - he checked - was still on his back, containing: one water bottle half full, his grandmother's small folding knife that he carried everywhere without thinking about it, a packet of convenience store crackers, a pencil, a small notebook, a slightly squashed rice ball wrapped in plastic, and a ball of grey-green yarn with two knitting needles stuck through it.
He looked at the yarn for a moment.
Right, he thought. Working on the sleeve.
He was, he decided, going to eat the rice ball and then figure out the rest.
He was unwrapping it when the voices started.
They were coming from - not around him. Not nearby. They were coming from inside his head, which was a new experience and not one he would have requested, delivered with the absolute conviction of two people who did not know or care that he could hear them.
"—told you. The coordinates were wrong. He's not in the summoning hall, he's not in any registered zone, he is in the exact midpoint of the Null Territory and by every metric I have access to he should be—"
"DEAD, yes, you've said that, but he's BREATHING which contradicts your metric—"
"Breathing is a preliminary state. It doesn't preclude—"
"HE'S BREATHING AND HIS HEART RATE IS STABILIZING AND THOSE ARE GOOD SIGNS—"
"Or they're the body's final—"
"THEY'RE GOOD SIGNS."
"You are being willfully optimistic—"
"ONE OF US HAS TO BE—"
"—and frankly if we can't confirm viability we should simply—"
"SIMPLY WHAT."
A pause.
"...Check," the first voice said, in a tone that had shifted slightly into something that Haruki's brain flagged as concerning. "Confirm status. I suggest we-"
"Suggest we WHAT."
"Slit his throat," the first voice said, with the brisk practicality of someone proposing a reasonable administrative solution, "and see if the regeneration protocols-"
Haruki stood up.
He stood up very fast, the rice ball still in his hand, and spun around looking for whoever had just suggested - there was nobody there. There was nobody within visible distance in any direction. There was nothing but grey earth and broken ruins and empty sky.
He stood very still.
"He moved," said the second voice, sounding delighted.
"I can see that," said the first voice, dryly.
"HE'S ALIVE."
"He stood up. I'll grant you that."
"THAT'S ALIVE, SOL. THAT'S WHAT ALIVE LOOKS LIKE."
Haruki looked at the empty air around him. Looked at the grey landscape. Looked at his rice ball.
"I can hear you," he said, to nobody.
Silence.
A different quality of silence this time.
"...He can hear us," said the second voice.
"Evidently," said the first.
"Is that- should he be able to-"
"No," said the first voice. "It shouldn't be possible at this stage. The integration protocol isn't-" a pause. "Fascinating."
"HI," said the second voice, apparently deciding that the situation called for a fresh start. "HELLO. GREETINGS. WE ARE-"
"Don't shout."
"I'M NOT SHOUTING, THIS IS MY NORMAL-"
"You're shouting."
"...Hi," said the second voice, at a volume that was still enthusiastic but had conceded the point. "Hello. We are - well. We'll explain in a moment. Are you okay? You were unconscious for approximately-"
"Forty-seven minutes," said the first voice.
"—forty-seven minutes and your vitals were—"
"Concerning," said the first voice.
"—we were monitoring closely," the second voice finished.
"One of you," Haruki said, very carefully, "just suggested slitting my throat."
A pause.
"That was a diagnostic proposal," said the first voice, without a trace of apology. "The regeneration protocols of a dual-system host under integration stress are theoretically capable of-"
"It was a BAD IDEA," the second voice said firmly, "and I said no, which is the important part-"
"You said no with enthusiasm rather than logic-"
"THE OUTCOME WAS THE SAME-"
Haruki sat back down on the grey earth.
He ate a bite of his rice ball.
He looked at the sky, which remained unhelpfully grey.
This, he thought, with the calm of a person whose threshold for surreal experiences had just been permanently recalibrated, is great. First I get transported to what appears to be a wasteland instead of wherever everyone else went. Then I pass out. And now I'm hearing voices in my head and one of them wanted to cut my throat to see what would happen.
Grandma, he thought, I feel like you didn't prepare me for this one specifically.
A screen appeared in front of his eyes.
It materialized from nothing, hovering in the air before him at comfortable reading distance, glowing with soft light against the grey backdrop. It was clearly some kind of interface - text-based, formatted, official-looking.
It read:
WELCOM FELLO HUMEN
We invite you too our World !
Do you wish to froge a system ?
[ YES ]
Haruki stared at it.
He read it again.
He looked at the single option - just the one, just yes, no alternative presented, no cancel button, no actually I'd like more information first -
He looked at the spelling.
"...Froge," he said.
"Don't," said the first voice, with the pain of someone who had already had this exact reaction and needed to move past it.
"IGNORE THE SPELLING," said the second voice urgently, "JUST PRESS YES-"
"There's only one option anyway," Haruki observed.
"YES SO PRESS IT-"
He pressed yes.
The screen vanished.
A new screen appeared. Same size, same position. Different color - this one a cleaner white, the text properly formatted, spelled correctly. It read:
WELCOME, TRAVELER
You have arrived in the world of Aethermoor.
Do you wish to forge a system?
[ YES ][ NO ]
Haruki looked at this one.
He looked at the yes and the no.
He thought about pressing no, as a matter of principle, to see what happened.
Then he thought about the grey wasteland in every direction, the two voices in his head, the fact that he was apparently in another world with a half-eaten rice ball and a knitting project, and that the woman with the wings had mentioned something about systems being important.
He reached out to press yes.
His finger, he would reflect later, made contact with the button at the exact moment his brain was still processing the previous screen and the word froge and the general absurdity of everything and he genuinely was not certain which button he touched.
He was approximately forty percent sure he pressed yes.
He was sixty percent sure he might have pressed yes twice.
Either way -
The world went white.
And then the world went a very different color - split, simultaneously, into silver-white on one side and deep crimson-red on the other, two cascades of light that met at exactly the point where Haruki was sitting and seemed profoundly confused about what to do with each other.
The light resolved.
Two figures stood before him.
He had approximately two seconds to process this before his brain, which had been handling a remarkable amount of information in a very short time and had reached its administrative limit, made an executive decision.
He passed out again.
"He collapsed," said the first voice, which now had a visible form - tall, silver-white, immaculate, regarding the unconscious figure on the ground with an expression of extremely restrained exasperation.
"...Yeah," said the second voice, which was larger, warmer-colored, and currently crouching next to Haruki with an expression of genuine concern. "Can't really blame him though."
"No," Sol admitted, after a moment. "I suppose not."
They both looked at him - their host, their anomaly, their impossible dual-system human, lying face-down in the ash of the Grey with a half-eaten rice ball still loosely held in one hand and a book-shaped lump in his jacket pocket.
"He's going to be fine," Rax said. Not loudly. Just - said it.
Sol considered the grey wasteland, the cracked earth, the complete absence of any support structure, civilization, or resources within forty kilometers.
"He's going to have to be," he said.
A pause.
"...Yes," Sol said, quietly. "He'll be fine."
The Grey was silent around them.
Somewhere on the horizon, too distant to see but faintly detectable if you knew what to look for, the glow of the Royal Capital's summoning celebration was still going.
Thirty-four heroes, welcomed and celebrated and given medals.
One anomaly, face-down in the ash, with two systems and a knitting project and everything his grandmother ever taught him.
To be continued ....