The office past midnight had its own kind of silence, the kind James always imagined belonged to old aquariums: a humming, sterile quiet that seemed to press in from all sides. The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, a sound too soft to notice during the day but suffocating when the world had gone still. Rows of cubicles stretched in regimented lines, each capped with the same small plastic fern, the same coffee mug left beside an unplugged monitor, the same faint reflection of someone’s unfinished work.

  Except his.

  James’s screen was still lit, a glowing digital spiderweb of color-coded lines twisting across the monitor like some neon geometry puzzle. It should have been comforting. He had drawn plans like this since he was twenty-two. Beams, load paths, wall thicknesses, escape routes, his brain usually sorted it all effortlessly. But tonight the grid was a shapeless smear, a mess of numbers and angles that refused to hold still.

  He blinked. Still blurry.

  He rubbed both eyes, dug his knuckles harder than strictly healthy, and opened them again.

  Still blurry.

  He made a soft, pitiful noise and grabbed his mug. The coffee was lukewarm and bitter, with the flavor profile of a tax audit. He swallowed anyway. His dignity had fled the building hours ago.

  A soft voice intruded into the monotony.

  “Still here?”

  James turned, muscles cracking from sitting too long.

  Ethan stood at the edge of his cubicle, messenger bag slung over one shoulder. His jacket was already on, hair a little disheveled, face tired. Tired, but not James tired. No one was James tired, not without winning a prestigious award for professional self-neglect.

  “Yeah,” James muttered. “Deadline.”

  Ethan made a sympathetic face, the kind coworkers gave each other when both understood exactly how badly management was crushing them beneath unrealistic project timelines.

  “Good luck, man. Seriously. I hope you get more than three hours of sleep tonight.”

  “Sleep is for people with functioning life choices,” James said, voice dry enough to be sandpaper.

  Ethan laughed under his breath. “See you tomorrow. Or in a few hours, I guess.”

  “See you.”

  The automatic lobby doors clicked shut behind Ethan, and then James was alone again.

  The monitors outside his cubicle were all dark now. The only light in the whole floor came from his screen and the high, cold glow of the fluorescent bulbs overhead. He turned back to the blueprint, the mess of lines twisting more when he focused too hard.

  His spine slumped.

  Behind him, the sharp tap–tap–tap of leather shoes broke the stillness.

  He didn’t need to look. That cadence was familiar, precision trimmed into authority.

  “Still working?” came a deep voice.

  James fought the instinct to wince. He kept his tone flat. “Just making final adjustments.”

  Mr. Halberg stepped beside his chair. Tall, expensively dressed, immaculate as always. His expression blank in the way that always made James feel like a number in a spreadsheet rather than a human being.

  “I expect the email confirming the completed blueprints before sunrise,” Halberg said, tapping the face of his watch. “The client presentation is tomorrow, and this needs to be flawless.”

  James nodded, every muscle tight. “Understood.”

  “Good.” A pause, long enough to be insulting. “And do try not to fall asleep at your desk again.”

  He walked off without waiting for a response.

  James stared at the monitor.

  “Asshole,” he whispered, too softly for anyone to hear.

  His fingers hovered above the keyboard, trying to gather the scattered remains of his focus. His neck ached. His eyes burned. His coffee tasted like old decisions he regretted.

  He zoomed in on the blueprint. The lines blurred. He zoomed back out. They blurred again. His vision pulsed unsteadily, like his brain was one exhausted heartbeat away from shutting down everything nonessential.

  Another sigh escaped him, long and fraying at the edges.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “I hate my life.”

  He reached toward the keyboard to save the file...

  The screen flickered.

  Once.

  Twice.

  A third time, longer, like it was thinking about something unpleasant.

  “No, no, no,” James said frantically, clicking the mouse. “Come on, not tonight, please!”

  The entire display froze mid-refresh.

  Then the pixels smeared. Lines bent like they’d turned molten. Colors ran together, dripping into an abstract mess.

  “What the hell…?”

  James stood slowly.

  It wasn’t just his screen.

  Every monitor on the floor had frozen on the same melting image. Thirty, forty identical glitching displays stared back at him across the darkness.

  The overhead lights dimmed.

  Flickered.

  Stuttered like a failing pulse.

  James turned toward the windows and his breath locked in his throat.

  There was nothing outside.

  Not darkness. Not night. Not the city.

  Nothing.

  The glass looked out into a blank, depthless void, as if the world had been erased with a single sweep of a cosmic brush.

  His skin prickled.

  “What… the hell… is happening?”

  His pulse spiked. Panic tightened his throat. His breathing turned fast and shallow.

  A sharp pop cracked across the office.

  James whipped around just in time to see smoke curling from the nearest electrical outlet. Blue sparks snapped at the cords plugged into it.

  Another outlet popped. Then another. Sparks skittered across the carpet like fireflies escaping a jar.

  The fluorescent light above him burst with an explosive crackle.

  “WHAT THE?!”

  Lightning danced across the ceiling, jagged arcs leaping from fixture to fixture. Smoke filled the air in choking wisps. Sparks rained like metallic confetti.

  James ran.

  He sprinted through the maze of cubicles, dodging chairs as more outlets erupted behind him. A storm of electrical discharge chased him, snapping at his heels.

  “Come on, come on!”

  He skidded into the lobby, grabbed the metal door handle...

  Agony.

  A surge of electricity slammed through him, blinding and absolute. His muscles convulsed. His lungs seized. His vision went white, then white-hot, then...

  Nothing.

  He didn’t feel himself hit the floor. He only felt weightlessness, the strange drifting of a mind untethered from a body.

  The ceiling lights exploded one by one, and the world collapsed into blackness.

  His last conscious thought was small and pitiful.

  …I didn’t save the file.

  Then everything vanished.

  ***

  Warmth.

  Not the dry, artificial heat of an office vent, but a soft, pulsing warmth that felt like sinking into a bath where the temperature was exactly right. It wrapped around James in slow waves, like sunlight filtering through dark water. His awareness floated in it, suspended somewhere between sleep and waking.

  His body felt far away at first, as if someone had turned down the volume on his physical self. Eventually, sensation seeped back around the edges. There was weight beneath him, firm and uneven. There was air in his lungs, cool and damp as he drew it in.

  He registered scents before he registered sight. Damp earth, rich and loamy, pressed up into his nose first, grounding and unfamiliar. Wild herbs threaded through the smell, sharp and green, joined by something smoky and sweet that absolutely was not fluorescent ballast burning out. This smoke smelled like wood and sap and fat, not melted plastic and ozone.

  His eyes opened slowly.

  Above him stretched a sky that was not a sky. Threads of light, pale blue and soft green, crisscrossed overhead, weaving through each other like rivers suspended in the air. They shifted and pulsed gently, as if they were breathing along with him, drawing in and out, in and out.

  He lay there and stared, disoriented. The office ceiling was gone. The grid of panels and fluorescent strips had been replaced by something that belonged in an art installation or a fantasy movie.

  Where was the office? Where were the cubicles? Where was the buzzing light, the smell of burnt electronics, the familiar oppressive weight of deadlines?

  He shifted and realized he was lying on his back inside a shallow circle drawn on packed soil. Ash clung to his clothes and skin. Chalk lines traced symbols around him, slightly smeared as if someone had drawn them with a shaking hand. Bundles of dried herbs burned at intervals along the circle’s edge, their smoldering tips glowing red-orange and releasing little curls of smoke.

  The whole scene looked like he had fallen into some folk ritual at a forest festival, one of those historical reenactments where costumed volunteers invited you to churn butter and learn about ancient bread ovens. The difference here was that none of the details felt staged. The chill in the air. The uneven ground. The hunger in the scents and sounds. It all sat with the heaviness of the real.

  His heart thudded hard in his chest, every beat sending a tremor of panic through his limbs.

  A voice cut through the fog of his thoughts.

  “OOOONDEHRAH HOHH—HEE—AHHH—BRING-FORTH—THE SAVIORRR!”

  The chant was so spectacularly off-key that, for a second, his brain latched onto that instead of the bigger problem. It sounded like someone had taken three languages, chewed them up, and spit them out into the sky, hoping the universe would be impressed by the effort.

  James twisted his head toward the sound and instantly wished he had taken another second to prepare.

  A firepit roared near the circle, flames licking up and throwing wild light across a crowd of people. They ringed the clearing in a ragged semi-circle, thin bodies wrapped in rough cloth and patched leather, shadows accentuating every end-of-the-world line in their faces. Their eyes were fixed on him or on the fire or on the horrible centerpiece of their ritual.

  A goat. Or what had once been a goat.

  The carcass was laid out near the fire, its hide smeared with runes that might have been ominous if not for how badly drawn they were. One of them looked suspiciously like a sideways stick figure with heroic shoulders. The entire effect fell somewhere between sacred sacrifice and doomed group project.

  James sat up with a choking gasp. Ash puffed around his hands. His heart hammered against his ribs.

  “What…” His voice came out rough and thin. He swallowed, throat dry. “Where am I?”

  Something flickered above him, not the fire, not the sky-threads, but a small, contained glow.

  He froze.

  A sphere of pale gold light hovered just a few inches above his face. It was about the size of a large apple, smooth and self-contained, its surface shimmering softly like there was a bright star trapped inside a soap bubble.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  James stared at it, every muscle locked.

  The orb pulsed once, a gentle bright–dim–bright, like a heartbeat.

  Then it spoke.

  “Good morning, James,” it said. Its voice was clear, calm, and bizarrely carried the same energy as a very patient customer support agent.

  James yelped and scrambled backward in a panic, hands sliding through the ash. He nearly tripped over his own feet getting away from the thing. “Oh my god! Oh my god! What? what is... What?!”

  The orb drifted back a little, as if giving him room, the glow remaining steady.

  “Please don’t panic,” it said.

  “I should panic!” James shouted. His chest was heaving; every breath felt too big or too small. “You’re talking and glowing and I was in my office and now I’m... Now I’m in a dirt circle surrounded by... by... whatever this is! Where the hell am I?!”

  The light pulsed again, a little softer around the edges, like it was trying to be soothing.

  “You are in Vaelrin,” it replied.

  “Vael… what?” James staggered to his feet, ash falling from his clothes. He spun around, taking in more than just the firepit and the goat now.

  Trees rose in every direction, not the polite little landscaping trees from city sidewalks but towering, ancient things with trunks as wide as cars. Their bark was dark and rough, scored with age. Roots curled and twisted over the ground like the backs of sleeping animals. High above, their branches intertwined to form a dense canopy, and through that living lattice, the glowing sky-threads bled their light down in faint ribbons.

  The air was cool and slightly damp, smelling of moss and leaf mold. It carried a faint tang of something wild and sharp that no office air conditioner would ever recreate.

  Behind him, half-hidden against the treeline, were huts made of mud and wood, built with more desperation than skill. Roofs sagged. Walls leaned. Everything looked like a strong wind or a heavy rain might finish what time and neglect had started.

  The firepit still smoldered, and from it came the unbearable stench of charred hair and meat. His stomach rolled. The circle of people around him watched with open, tired eyes. Their clothes were worn, patched, and mismatched, a far cry from any costume design. Most of them looked underfed, their cheeks hollow, their arms wiry.

  “What happened to me?” he rasped. “Where is my office? The electrical fire? The windows… everything went black. Did I… Did I die?”

  The orb dimmed slightly, as if in sympathy.

  “No, James. You did not die,” it said.

  He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Relief fluttered through him for exactly two and a half heartbeats.

  “But you are no longer on Earth.”

  His breath caught again, tearing this time.

  “No. No, no, no…” He stumbled back, hands shaking. “This can’t be real. You don’t just jump worlds. That’s... This is insane. This is some kind of coma dream or hallucination. Carbon monoxide. Smoke inhalation. Something.”

  “Insane or not,” the orb replied softly, “it is reality.”

  James pressed both hands to his head, fingers digging into his scalp like he could squeeze himself awake. His thoughts jittered uselessly between office, lightning, void, glowing sky-threads, goat, chanting, and this talking light.

  “You are not dreaming,” the orb continued, after a gentle pause. “I am your Lumen. Your guide and familiar. And you have been called to this world to help it.”

  He laughed then, a high, shaky sound that did not match how his chest felt, tight and aching. “Help? Help who? Or what? I can’t even help myself. I was drowning in overtime ten minutes ago.”

  The Lumen floated slightly closer. The warmth of its glow brushed his face without heat. Its voice dropped into something near a whisper, though it still spoke straight into his mind as much as his ears.

  “You have been summoned because this tribe needs a savior,” it continued. “Because the people here are on the brink of extinction. And because you, specifically you, possess a rare potential.”

  James barked a brittle laugh. “Potential. Sure. I design fire escape routes and standardized stairwell layouts. My biggest accomplishment this year was convincing my boss not to cut a safety inspection to save money. I’m not exactly action-hero material.”

  “And that,” the Lumen said, with a patience that felt almost fond, “is exactly why Vaelrin chose you.”

  The name hit harder when spoken in that tone. Vaelrin. A world that apparently existed and had opinions about his professional life. His gaze drifted upward again, to the faintly glowing rivers of light threading through the branches.

  “What are those?” he asked hoarsely. The question slipped out, curiosity briefly winning over fear.

  “Leylines,” the Lumen replied. “Rivers of mana. The lifeblood of this world. They form the foundation of magic, classes, and civilization.”

  Magic. Classes. Civilization. Tribes on the brink of extinction.

  His heart pounded under the weight of too many impossible nouns piled on top of each other. Somewhere at the edge of the clearing, someone coughed softly. The villagers kept their distance, watching him like a wild animal that might bolt or bite.

  “You will learn slowly,” the Lumen went on, sensing the overwhelm. “I am here to guide you. You are not alone.”

  James swallowed again. His voice, when it came, was smaller than he liked.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asked.

  The Lumen floated to eye level, its light steady.

  “You were granted the class of Mana Architect,” it said. “One who builds with mana. One who designs shelter, safety, and growth. These people,” it flicked a glow toward the lopsided huts, “are a tribe on the edge of collapse. They attempted a summoning ritual, but lacked the power to complete it. Something older answered. Something greater. It pulled you through.”

  James stiffened. A cold shiver traced down his spine, unpleasant and lingering. “Something… older?”

  “Yes,” the Lumen confirmed.

  “What was it?” he whispered.

  The orb dimmed.

  “…Unknown,” it said after a moment. “But I do not sense malice.”

  That was not the reassuring answer he had been hoping for. “Great,” James muttered. “Mystery cosmic force, not actively hostile. Perfect.”

  The Lumen brightened again, as if choosing to focus on the practical.

  “Your purpose, however, is clear,” it said. “You are here to help these people survive. To rebuild what was lost. To create. To lead.”

  James let out a shaky exhale, his shoulders slumping. “I don’t know if I can do that,” he admitted. The truth tasted raw. “I mean really do that. This isn’t a simulation. These are actual people, and I’m… me. I’m an exhausted architect with chronic burnout and too many saved versions of the same file.”

  “You can,” the Lumen said simply. There was no hesitation in its tone. “Because you already have.”

  James frowned. “What?”

  “You spent years building safety where there was none,” the Lumen told him. “Designing structures meant to protect lives. Guiding people without recognition. You know resilience. You know systems. You know how to organize, plan, and persist.”

  Its glow warmed like early sunlight.

  “Vaelrin sees you clearly, even if you do not,” it said.

  He rubbed his chilled hands together and stared at the ground. The chalk circle ringed him like a boundary between who he had been and whatever this was going to force him to become. Ash smudged his fingers. The herbs still smoldered, sending up thin ribbons of smoke. Beyond the circle, he could hear the faint murmur of the villagers, the occasional whimper of a child, the low murmur of someone trying to soothe them.

  His brain was at its limit. It could not process the entire scene at once without short-circuiting. So he clung to the one piece that made some kind of structural sense: the orb and its words.

  A soft chime sounded in the air, as if someone had gently struck a glass. A translucent blue window materialized beside him, its edges softly glowing.

  James flinched back with a strangled sound, because apparently his day was determined to keep adding new layers of impossible.

  Class Acquired: Mana Architect – Level 10

  You have crossed worlds as chosen by Vaelrin’s weave.

  Create. Restore. Protect. Build the future.

  Skill Gained: Mana Construct (Lv1)

  Form simple shapes and objects from pure mana.

  Skill Gained: Mana Resonance (Lv1)

  Sense mana-rich areas and structural weaknesses.

  Class Skill Gained: Blueprint Weaving (unique)

  Draft magical blueprints for buildings.

  The text hovered in the air like an AR overlay, hovering at a comfortable reading distance no matter how he tilted his head.

  James stared at it until the words stopped being words and became shapes. Finally, he sank back down into the ash with something like a controlled collapse, his knees giving up on the idea of pretending this was manageable. His heart was still beating too fast. His hands trembled faintly.

  Beyond the herbs and chalk, human shapes hovered at the edge of the firelight. Men and women stood shoulder to shoulder, some clutching one another’s sleeves. Two children peered around an adult’s legs, eyes wide and huge in their thin faces. The tribe.

  He did not look directly at them for long. The weight of their attention felt like standing under a collapsing roof. His mind filed them away under “later” because right now there was only room for glowing text and a talking light.

  He fixed his gaze on the Lumen again.

  “You said… classes. Skills. Professions,” he managed. His voice still shook a little. “I don’t… How does any of this actually work?”

  The Lumen bobbed up and down, its glow brushing over the chalk lines with a faint golden sheen. “With your arrival, the system has acknowledged you fully,” it said. “We can review your beginning sheet now, if you wish.”

  He let out a quick, unsteady half-laugh. “Sure. Why not. Let’s add one more thing I don’t understand to the pile.”

  Another chime rang in the air, slightly different this time. A new window unfolded, expanding outward like an invisible page turning itself. Lines of text wrote themselves across the translucent surface.

  Character Sheet – James Wright

  Race: Human (Outworlder)

  Class: Mana Architect – Lv. 10

  Title: Summoned Savior

  Familiar: Lumen (Bound)

  Attributes:

  Strength – 8

  Dexterity – 9

  Perception – 12

  Willpower – 11

  Intelligence – 13

  Vitality – 10

  Charisma – 10

  Unassigned Attribute Points: 35

  James blinked several times, then rubbed his eyes and checked again. The number didn’t change. “Thirty-five attribute points,” he said slowly. “That’s… Okay, that seems like a lot.”

  “As an Outworlder, you were granted a starting boost,” the Lumen explained, tone still gentle. “Your class demanded it.”

  He stared at the sheet, years of gaming instincts kicking in despite the situation. Some part of his brain went, Of course there are stats. Of course there are levels. If he wasn’t actively freaking out, he would almost have appreciated the sheer commitment to the bit.

  “Right,” he muttered. “So now I just need to decide what to put these in. Strength, intelligence, maybe dump some into perception and...”

  A soft hum cut him off. The Lumen’s glow brightened. “I would advise, you invest all your points in charisma."

  The attributes shifted with a smooth animation, numbers flipping and settling into new positions.

  “Why?” James demanded. “Charisma is a soft stat. It’s useless for survival. You don’t put everything in... Who builds a character like that? You put points in Vitality if you don’t want to die, or Intelligence for spells, or even Perception so you don’t walk into traps like a complete idiot!”

  “You will lead these people,” the Lumen said calmly.

  James’s protest withered before it could leave his mouth. A breeze slipped through the clearing, stirring the smoke and brushing cool fingers against his overheated face. He could hear the villagers murmuring at the edge of his awareness, too quiet to make out the words, too present to ignore.

  “I don’t…” He wrapped his arms around himself without meaning to, fingers gripping his own sleeves. “Lead. I don’t lead anything. I handle paperwork and schedules and compromise solutions. Okay, yes, I’ve managed teams before, but that’s not leadership. That’s negotiating between egos and trying to keep everyone from killing each other before the end of the project.”

  “And here,” the Lumen replied softly, “you will manage fear. Hunger. Morale. Trust. You will handle twenty souls who have lost everything except a sliver of hope.”

  James stiffened.

  The tribe stood silently in the shadows beyond the ritual light, watching him. Some eyes were wary. Some were exhausted. None of them were hostile. Desperation clung to them like a second skin.

  The Lumen drifted slightly, interposing its glow between James and their stares without blocking them completely.

  “Charisma, in Vaelrin, is not merely charm,” it explained. “It is presence. Authority. Influence. The ability to rally others when they would otherwise scatter. To persuade, to negotiate, to calm the frightened and strengthen the weary.”

  James opened his mouth, then shut it again. He didn’t have a counterargument that wasn’t just I don’t want this.

  “Your Mana Architect class is built on cooperation,” the Lumen continued. “Your greatest structures will require teams to gather resources, to trust your plans, to follow your guidance. Without influence, your class is half-crippled before it begins.”

  He slumped forward, elbows on his knees, fingers threading into his hair. “This is insane,” he muttered. “I was just trying to finish a blueprint and go home. Now I’m… what? A leader? A savior?”

  The Lumen hovered closer, its light warming the air around his hunched shoulders.

  “No one expects you to be a savior today,” it said.

  His breath hitched. Something in his chest eased a fraction.

  “Today,” the Lumen went on, “they only expect you to stand.”

  James lifted his head.

  The villagers were easier to see now that his eyes had adjusted fully to the firelight. None of them stepped forward. None of them turned away. They just watched. Waiting. Their eyes weren’t hostile. Just tired. Just hopeful in a way that hurt to look at directly.

  The Lumen lowered its glow, like a lantern held closer against the dark.

  “You cannot change everything at once,” it said. “But you can take the first step. That is enough for now.”

  James shivered. It wasn’t fear exactly, not anymore. It was something heavier settling over him; not acceptance, but the first fragile thread of understanding. He wasn’t here because he was the strongest or the bravest or the most qualified hero out of some cosmic applicant pool. He was here because, somewhere, a world had decided that a burned-out architect who spent his life thinking about how to keep people alive inside buildings might know how to keep them alive outside of them too.

  “Okay,” he whispered. His voice cracked a little as he invested his points into charisma.

  Attributes Updated:

  Strength – 8

  Agility – 9

  Perception – 12

  Willpower – 11

  Intelligence – 13

  Vitality – 10

  Charisma – 45

  He cleared his throat and tried again. “Okay. So… what now?”

  The Lumen floated to the edge of the chalk circle.

  “Now, James,” it said quietly, “you stand up.”

  He took a breath, feeling it all the way down to his toes this time. Then he pushed himself to his feet. His legs wobbled but held. The chalk line glowed faintly where he had scuffed it.

  He stepped carefully over the boundary.

  The villagers inhaled collectively, a ripple of sound around the clearing. Someone gasped outright. Someone else whispered, “He walks,” in an awed tone, as if that were the most impressive thing they had seen in months. A baby hiccuped loudly against its mother’s shoulder.

  He opened his mouth, unsure what he intended to say, but the moment shattered like thin glass.

  An elderly shape hurtled out of the crowd with startling speed for someone who looked like he’d been held together by stubbornness and string for the last twenty years. The old man’s robe flapped around him like an unraveling curtain as he skidded to a dramatic stop at James’s feet.

  “BEHOOOOOOOLD!” he screeched, voice cracking around the edges.

  James actually jumped. The Lumen dimmed in what felt suspiciously like second-hand embarrassment.

  The villagers bowed their heads almost as one, as if this kind of spectacle was just another Tuesday.

  The old man threw his arms up toward the sky, well, roughly toward it. Both shoulders popped audibly halfway through the motion, and he winced but powered through the pain like it was a familiar price to pay for drama.

  “THE SAVIOR HAS RISEN FROM THE CIRCLE OF ASH AND DESTINY!” he bellowed.

  “M-Maybe don’t yell,” James tried, because his ears were ringing and also because he had yet to process being called “the savior” in front of an audience.

  The elder was a force of nature, utterly unstoppable. He was a hurricane made of bad knees, wild eyes, and breath that spoke of a long and committed relationship with onion stew.

  “HE HAS COME TO US IN THE FORM OF A MAN!” the shaman declared. “A TALL MAN! WITH LEGS! AND ARMS! AND… AND… LOOK! HE POSSESSES ALL HIS TEETH!”

  The crowd murmured reverently at this critical detail, some people nodding as if that confirmed an important part of the prophecy.

  James clamped his mouth shut very tightly and tried to look as if he had never owned teeth in his life.

  The elder hobbled closer and squinted up at him. One eye locked onto James’s face; the other gazed off toward some mysterious horizon only it could see.

  “I SAW HIM IN A VISION,” the old man screamed. "A VISION OF FIRE AND LIGHT!"

  The shaman jabbed a knobby finger at James’s chest.

  “I WELCOME YOU, O GREAT SKY-FALLER, HEARER OF SILENT LIGHTS, MASTER OF SHINING SQUARES…”

  “The what?” James whispered sideways to the Lumen.

  “He means the interface windows,” the orb murmured apologetically.

  The old man sucked in another huge breath and continued with renewed enthusiasm.

  “BREAKER OF FATE-BOLTS, WRANGLER OF BLUE FLAMES, DESTROYER OF...”

  He stopped suddenly, eyes narrowing.

  “…of… uh…” He leaned close to James, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial rasp. “What did you destroy again?”

  “I… think I destroyed my chances at a peaceful weekend,” James muttered. The words slipped out before he could strangle them.

  The old man gasped loudly enough to startle a bird from a nearby tree.

  “AH! YES! DESTROYER OF WEEKENDS!” he cried. “A TERRIBLE AND HONORABLE TITLE!”

  James opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. There was truly no winning this conversation.

  The shaman turned back to the tribe and flung his arms wide so aggressively it was a miracle his shoulders stayed attached.

  “REJOICE, MY CHILDREN!” he shouted. “FOR DESTINY HAS SENT US A SAVIOR WHO SHALL REBUILD OUR HOMES, FEED OUR CHILDREN, BANISH OUR ENEMIES, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY…”

  The villagers leaned forward as one, hanging on the last, crucial clause of this holy job description.

  “…FIX THE BATHHOUSE ROOF!”

  The entire tribe erupted into cheers. It wasn’t polite applause. It was full-throated, desperate joy, like this particular roof had been personally tormenting them for months.

  James stared blankly at the celebrating crowd. A woman wiped tears from her eyes, laughing as if the bathhouse roof being fixed was the first good news she had heard in a long time. A man punched the air. Someone hoisted a child up onto their shoulders, and the kid waved both arms in triumph.

  Beside him, the Lumen hovered with a glow that absolutely felt like it contained barely suppressed laughter.

  “Welcome to Vaelrin,” it whispered.

  James let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and resisted the urge to sit down again. “Of course the bathhouse roof is the priority,” he said quietly. His voice held a thread of wry amusement, wrapped tightly around a core of dawning responsibility.

  In a way, it was almost comforting. Worlds might shift, magic might be real, summoning rituals might involve badly painted goats, but some things never changed. People still needed roofs that didn’t leak.

  He could start there.