I woke to a soft chime echoing in my skull and a faint glow pulsing in the corner of my vision. It took me a second to remember—right. The system. This was my life now.
Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I focused on the notification. The moment I did, it expanded in front of me, crisp white text hovering in the air.
 
[New Quest: Proving Grounds]
 
Before I could even process that, the words shifted, unfolding into something new—a map. It wasn’t detailed, just a simple outline of the city and the surrounding landscape. But right there, just beyond the outskirts, in the stretch of dense forest a few miles from my house, a small glowing marker pulsed.
Beneath it, a timer ticked down.
 
[11:59:47]
[11:59:46]
[11:59:45]
 
I stared at it for a long moment.
“Great. Nothing like a literal ticking clock to start the morning off right.”
I didn’t need a tutorial to understand what this meant.
This was it. This was where I had to go for my Judgment. My trial. My first and only chance to prove I was worthy of the power the system had just dropped into my lap.
I let out a slow breath, forcing my heartbeat to steady.
I had time. Not much, but enough. Enough for breakfast. Enough to get my head straight.
I closed the map with a thought, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and stood.
Twelve hours.
And then my real fight would begin.
Breakfast was simple. Two slices of toast, slightly burned on one side. Not much, but it was all we had. I wasn’t even hungry, not really, but I forced myself to eat. I’d need the energy.
Mom didn’t sit down.
She just hovered near the table, watching me like I might disappear before her eyes. Like this was the last time she’d see me. Which, if things went badly, wasn’t entirely off the table.
When I finished, I pushed the plate aside and stood up. Mom was already moving.
She stepped in close, placing her hands on either side of my face like she was memorizing every inch of me. Then she kissed my forehead, her lips lingering for a second longer than usual.
When she pulled away, her arms wrapped around me, tight and unshaking.Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
“Come home,” she whispered.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded against her shoulder.
She squeezed me once more, then let go.
I grabbed my bag and turned toward the door.
No more waiting. No more hesitating.
The Proving Grounds were waiting.
And I had a trial to survive.
 
The city gradually thinned out behind me, cobble roads giving way to packed dirt, buildings shrinking into scattered homes, then open fields. Up ahead, the tree line loomed, dense and quiet, stretching toward the horizon. Somewhere in those woods, the marker pulsed, waiting for me.
I adjusted my bag on my shoulder and kept walking, my mind drifting back over the past week.
I’d tried to track down someone—anyone—who had gone through this before. An old classmate, a neighbor, even one of the older Chosen I’d seen around town years ago. But they were all gone. The moment someone passed their trial, they left for bigger things. Casanaro was a small town and Chosen didn’t stay in slums like ours. They moved on.
That was strike one.
So, I went to the archives instead.
I spent hours among the stacked shelves, poring over brittle pages and faded ink, reading every account I could find from Chosen who had documented their trials.
It didn’t take long to realize something important—every single trial was different.
Some had been thrown into monster-filled arenas, forced to fight wave after wave of enemies. Others found themselves in shifting labyrinths, testing their minds against puzzles and traps. Some trials had massive, open landscapes to explore, with hidden clues and secrets that needed to be pieced together before an exit could be found.
But no matter how different the trials were, there were patterns. A structure.
Combat. Puzzles. Logic. Discovery.
Every Chosen had faced a mix of these challenges, though how much of each seemed to depend on the person.
And in the end, their performance decided what they walked away with.
The system would assign me a class, one shaped by how I handled my trial. And depending on how well I did, I could earn up to three chests of loot.
One chest was guaranteed—just for completing the trial. The other two? Earned. The better I did, the more rewards I’d get.
The accounts had mentioned magical items of varying power, all dictated by performance. Some Chosen walked away with legendary weapons and enchanted armor. Others barely scraped by with a basic sword and some vague regrets.
I slowly let out my breath, steady despite the nerves pressing against my chest.
It was all up to me.
My skill. My decisions.
Whatever was waiting for me in those woods, I had to be ready for anything.
And hopefully, it didn’t involve anything with too many teeth.
 
The portal hummed in front of me, a swirling mass of silver light that practically radiated judgment. It wasn’t like I expected a big ominous sign saying WELCOME TO YOUR POSSIBLE DEATH, but it might’ve been nice for the system to include a little more than just…this.
I sighed. “Alright. One silver portal, exactly where the system said it’d be. Guess that means I’m in the right place. Either that, or I’m about to get vaporized stepping into some cursed tear in reality.”
My fingers twitched at my sides as I stared into the portal, the rippling light making my stomach churn. I knew what this meant. Knew that after this, the world would be different. If I got through this, I’d start seeing blue portals—your standard, solo dungeon dives. Step in, survive, get loot, repeat. If you tried to go in with someone else, the system would just split you up, because apparently, it was a firm believer in personal growth through abject terror.
Then there were green portals. Team-based dungeons, built for groups of up to four Chosen. Harder, deadlier, but the loot was better, so I figured that even the risk-averse had to consider it worth the struggle.
And then the red portals.
Raids. The big leagues. You needed eight Chosen for these, and even then, success wasn’t guaranteed. The system seemed pretty attached to the whole sink or swim mentality, but red portals were more like sink or drown and get eaten by whatever finds you first. The archives had plenty of accounts from the Chosen who’d barely made it out of a raid alive. Most didn’t make it out at all.
But that wasn’t my problem. Not yet.
Right now, I had one job—walk through this silver portal, survive whatever fresh nightmare the system had planned, and hopefully, get assigned a class that wouldn’t get me killed immediately.
I swallowed hard. “Alright. Trial time. Let’s get this over with.”
One deep breath.
One step forward.
And then the world swallowed me whole.