The square of light stabilized in front of me.
It didn't flicker. It didn't glitch. It simply existed, steady and indifferent, like it had always been there and I'd only just learned how to see it.
I forced myself to look directly at it.
===== Status =====
Name: Dreyden Stella
Race: Human
Strength: 12
Toughness: 15
Agility: 13
Intelligence: 20
Perception: 10
Magic Energy: 30
===== Skills =====
Celestial Library {0}
—A vast library that stores skill books.
Stored Volumes:
• Eyes of Truth {1}
• None
• None
• None
The air left my lungs in one long breath.
It was there.
Celestial Library.
I hadn't realized how tightly my chest had been wound until it finally loosened. The tension didn't snap—it unraveled.
A laugh escaped me.
It wasn't happy.
It wasn't relief.
It was something rougher. Unsteady.
"Thank God…"
The words felt thin in that oversized room.
And maybe I should have been more disturbed by how quickly I was stabilizing. I wasn't spiraling. I wasn't clawing at the walls or demanding to wake up.
My mind had already shifted.
Not why.
What now.
Maybe panic becomes inefficient when survival enters the equation.
If this world was real, then strength wasn't optional.
Emotion could wait.
Celestial Library.
My loophole.
Level 0. Unregistered. Weak at a glance. Catastrophic in the right hands.
It didn't overpower opponents.
It accumulated them.
Copy under restriction.
Observe magical flow during activation.
Store up to four.
Use two simultaneously.
Remove one permanently if deleted.
Balanced.
Which meant dangerous.
I had built it that way—tired of watching systems reward brute talent over creativity.
"Skills."
Another window opened, cleaner and more compact.
The interface felt instinctive. I didn't need instructions. My body seemed to recognize what to focus on, where to send intent.
That was unsettling.
Everything matched what I wrote.
Every flaw.
Every limitation.
The consistency should have comforted me.
Instead, it made my stomach tighten.
Because if the logic was intact—
Then the consequences were too.
There was another problem.
I wasn't fully Dreyden.
Yes, fragments of his memories drifted through my mind like misplaced files. Faces. Shame. Training attempts.
But instincts? Muscle memory?
Zero.
Magic Energy: 30.
That wasn't weak for a first-year candidate.
But power without control was just volatility wearing confidence.
I might as well have been a child handed a loaded weapon without knowing where the trigger was.
And in less than twelve hours, I'd be walking into the Triangle.
Not a high school.
Not some prestigious academy where failure meant summer tutoring.
The Triangle.
Where failure was instructional.
Where humiliation sharpened discipline.
Where promising students either became weapons—
—or disappeared.
I checked the time.
Under twelve hours.
"…Fantastic."
The laptop on the desk looked deliberately placed.
I hesitated before lifting it open.
If it required a password, I didn't know it.
If it didn't…
Then this world was actively cooperating.
I pressed the power button.
It booted straight to the desktop.
No lock. No delay.
I stared at it for a long second, uneasy.
"Okay," I muttered. "Fine. I get it."
Then I started digging.
Forums. Archived combat recordings. Beginner mana manipulation guides. Amateur breakdowns of circulation patterns drawn in crude diagrams.
Threads with titles like:
"WHY YOU KEEP BLOWING YOUR NERVES OUT — READ THIS."
Not reassuring.
Magic accidents were apparently common.
Improper circulation could rupture internal channels.
Overloading a limb could cause temporary paralysis.
Interrupting a skill mid-activation risked backlash severe enough to fracture bone.
I took notes like I was cramming for finals.
Because I was.
Except this final involved fire, reinforced steel, and people significantly stronger than me.
I started with sensing.
Eyes closed. Breathing steady. Attention turned inward.
It took nearly thirty minutes before I felt anything consciously.
A low hum.
Subtle. Warm.
Like blood flowing too close to the surface.
Guiding it was harder.
Moving energy from core to limb felt like trying to push water through a straw without collapsing it under pressure.
I failed twice.
The second time, my forearm went completely numb for nearly a minute.
Good.
Pain was data.
Data meant progress.
I didn't really sleep.
I lay down around four, closed my eyes, and opened them again at 7:32 as if someone had cut time in half.
By 9:45, the metallic hallway outside the exam arena was packed.
Hundreds of students.
Different heights. Different uniforms. Different levels of visible confidence.
The air felt compressed.
Sterile metal walls boxed us in, amplifying whispers and nervous shifts of weight. Everyone tried to look composed.
No one succeeded.
Shoulders were stiff. Jaws clenched. Stray sparks of magic flickered around trembling hands before being forcibly suppressed.
Then the massive door at the end of the hall groaned open.
Silence crushed the noise instantly.
A short, muscular man stepped through.
Heavy boots. Controlled posture. No wasted motion.
Fifith.
Level 7 — Stone Aura.
An instructor infamous for dismantling arrogance in under five minutes.
"Welcome," he said evenly, voice carrying without effort, "to the first step of the next two years of your lives."
Then—
BOOM.
The temperature spiked violently.
Heat rolled down the hallway like someone had thrown open an industrial furnace. Students flinched. Someone swore. The scent of scorched air cut through recycled ventilation.
That wasn't Fifith.
I forced my way forward through the crowd to see.
Red hair.
Confident stance.
Fire coiling around clenched fists.
Octave Weyle.
My stomach dropped.
He had been rejected.
Just like me.
"Pathetic," Fifith said calmly. "I know your family. I know your face."
Octave smirked. "Then you know you're weaker than me."
That kind of confidence was lethal in this world.
Fifith cracked his knuckles once.
"Unfortunately," he replied, "this isn't the Triangle yet."
He drove his hand into the metallic floor.
Steel split with a shrieking groan.
The artificial plating tore apart, exposing raw earth beneath. Energy surged outward—dense, yellow, compressed.
Chunks of stone ripped free and began orbiting him, layering, compressing, hardening into interlocking armor that hugged his frame.
Stone Aura.
Clean. Efficient.
Terrifying.
Octave attacked first.
Rapid fire punches, heat flaring with every strike. Flames crashed against stone plating and burst into sparks that lit the corridor.
They hit.
They did almost nothing.
The armor absorbed the impact and dispersed it with ruthless precision.
Sweat beaded along Octave's temple. His jaw tightened. He realized the gap.
He inhaled sharply.
Blue flames erupted around his fists—hotter, sharper, more volatile.
"Flaming Fist!"
"Rocky Fist!"
The collision detonated the hallway.
Heat. Shockwave. Smoke and fractured sound.
When the haze cleared—
Octave was embedded halfway into the far wall, unconscious, hair singed.
Fifith's armor was cracked in several places.
But intact.
He hadn't looked worried for a second.
The hallway trembled with silence.
Some students cried quietly. Others stared at the floor, as if refusing to look at what failure looked like up close.
Lesson delivered.
A notification flickered at the edge of my vision.
[Congratulations! You acquired the skill book: Fire Fists.]
I felt it settle within the Library.
A new volume slid onto a shelf—warm, volatile, humming faintly with residual heat.
Even in chaos, I was growing.
That wasn't what unsettled me most.
Across the hall, near a silver-haired girl trying to mask her tension, stood two faces I recognized instantly.
Dhara Silvius.
Riven Dogers.
Approved submissions.
Canon characters.
Chosen by the author.
They were here.
Existing.
Breathing.
And so was Octave.
Rejected.
Like me.
Which meant this world wasn't filtering by approval anymore.
It wasn't selecting based on ranking.
It wasn't honoring canon boundaries.
It was pulling everything in.
Approved.
Rejected.
Side characters.
Placeholders.
Filling narrative gaps however it deemed necessary.
Which meant—
Anything I assumed was safe from canon interference could trigger.
Anything I believed wouldn't matter… might.
This wasn't a story running along rails.
It was a living adaptation.
And I didn't know if that improved my odds—
Or made them catastrophically worse.