The mage did not sleep.
The boy understood this not because he saw him awake, but because nothing had changed.
The crystals embedded along the shelter's walls glowed with the same steady pallor they had the night before—unchanged in hue, unchanged in intensity. Their light did not flicker. It did not pulse. It simply persisted, as though time itself had been asked to pause and had obeyed without question.
The boy sat up slowly.
The cloak slid from his shoulders, pooling around his waist. Its weight still surprised him. He had learned to associate warmth with briefness, comfort with conditions. This was neither. It remained even when he shifted, even when he hesitated.
At the far end of the chamber, the mage stood unmoving.
His back was straight, his posture rigid in the way of someone who had been still for too long. One hand rested on the stone table, fingers splayed, while the other hovered just above a half-etched circle carved directly into the floor.
The air around him felt compressed.
Not thick—restrained.
"You're awake," the mage said, without turning.
The boy did not answer. His voice felt distant to him, as if it belonged to something not fully attached.
"Good," the mage continued. "Then this attempt will not fail unseen."
That word—attempt—settled uncomfortably.
The boy rose and approached the circle.
He moved cautiously, as though the symbols might react to his presence. Each step felt deliberate, his awareness tuned not to sound, but to resistance—the subtle sense that the space around him was measuring something it did not understand.
The circle itself was wide, carved with careful precision. Lines intersected at deliberate angles, forming structures that suggested order rather than decoration. Yet as his eyes followed the pattern, he noticed inconsistencies.
Several sigils ended too soon.
Others bent where they should have been straight.
It was not sloppiness.
It was refusal.
At the center of the circle lay the thin metal plate the mage had shown him before. Its surface was smooth, reflective, unmarred by engraving or inscription. It looked untouched—but the boy felt instinctively that this was not its natural state.
The mage picked it up.
For a brief moment, the plate reflected the crystal light perfectly, like a mirror. Then the reflection warped, rippling outward as if the metal had forgotten how to remain solid.
The mage's jaw tightened.
"It still denies you," he said quietly.
He turned the plate so the boy could see.
There was nothing there.
No mark.
No symbol.
No indication that it had ever responded at all.
"Do you know what a record is?" the mage asked.
The boy considered the question carefully before shaking his head.
"A record," the mage said, "is not memory. Memory is unreliable. It fades, it distorts, it lies."
He lowered the plate back into the center of the circle.
"A record is agreement. The world consents to acknowledge something—to define it, to bind it within cause and consequence."
He exhaled slowly.
"And you," he added, "are an objection."
The mage began the ritual without raising his voice.
There was no chant spoken aloud, no theatrical invocation. His fingers traced the final sigils along the stone, feeding mana into the circle with restrained precision. It flowed like water guided by invisible channels—controlled, measured, deliberate.
The air responded.
Not with force, but with pressure.
The boy felt it immediately.
A subtle sensation behind his eyes. A faint ringing at the edge of hearing. It was like standing before a mirror that reflected not his face, but a question he could not answer.
The metal plate reacted.
Light spread across its surface in sharp, clean lines. Symbols emerged one by one, aligning into a structure that felt correct in a way nothing else had since he entered the shelter.
Something answered him.
For the first time, the boy felt acknowledged—not by the mage, not by the room, but by something deeper. Something vast and impersonal.
The mage inhaled sharply.
"It's stabilizing," he murmured. "Good… very good…"
Then the light wavered.
The symbols did not fade.
They hesitated.
Lines blurred. Angles softened. The structure began to unravel, not violently, but with deliberate rejection—like ink washing itself off a page that had never truly accepted it.
The plate vibrated.
The sound it produced was distant and hollow, like metal struck in a place far removed from the present.
The boy gasped.
For a fraction of a second, the world lost its edges.
He did not feel himself leave his body.
He felt himself leave definition.
The room dulled. Colors flattened. Distance lost meaning. He was aware—terrifyingly aware—of how easily he could be overlooked.
As if reality itself were deciding whether to keep him.
The mage reacted instantly.
His palm slammed into the circle, severing the mana flow with brutal finality. The carved sigils fractured, cracks spiderwebbing outward as the structure collapsed under the strain.
The plate went dark.
The pressure vanished.
The boy dropped to one knee, breath coming in shallow, uneven bursts. His hands trembled against the stone floor.
The mage staggered back, staring at the ruined circle—not with frustration, but with awe tinged by something far more dangerous.
"…So that's the condition," he whispered.
Silence reclaimed the shelter.
The mage approached slowly and knelt before the boy, studying him with an intensity that had shifted from scholarly to personal.
"When the world is asked to record you," the mage said carefully, "it does not fail."
The boy lifted his head.
"It simply looks past your present," the mage continued, "and answers something else."
He met the boy's gaze.
"Your future."
The mage stood abruptly and began to pace.
"That explains the contradictions. The anomalies in temporal readings. The way causality bends around you." His hands clenched at his sides. "You are not lacking a past. You are being displaced by what you will become."
He stopped.
"The record cannot hold you," he said quietly, "because you are already something else."
The boy's voice was barely audible.
"Am I… wrong?"
The mage froze.
"No," he said at once. Then, after a pause, more softly: "No. You are simply early."
He turned to the shelves and retrieved a different object.
Not a plate.
A frame.
It was thicker, heavier, its edges reinforced with layered inscriptions. Unlike the plate, it bore no attempt at identity—only empty slots shaped like incomplete concepts.
"A record assumes permanence," the mage said. "That is its flaw."
He placed the frame between them.
"But a vessel," he continued, "exists to receive. It does not question what fills it."
The boy studied the object.
"What is it meant to hold?" he asked.
The mage's expression was unreadable.
"Possibility," he said. "And consequences."
That night, the shelter felt heavier.
Not oppressive—but settled.
The boy lay awake beneath the steady crystal light, the mage's words echoing in his thoughts.
You are not wrong. You are early.
For the first time, he wondered what kind of future could arrive before the present was ready.
Deep beneath the stone, mechanisms older than formal magecraft shifted, aligning themselves around a concept that had not existed before.
Not a name.
Not a fate.
But a structure.
One that would one day be called:
Class.