The road from the frontier village stretched out for sixteen kilometres, a winding rib of frozen gravel cutting through the endless, towering pines of the outer rim. By midday, the thick treeline finally began to clear, giving way to the sprawling, stone-walled perimeter of the regional capital.
The city was a chaotic, suffocating hive of movement. Thousands of young men and women from every outlying settlement across the frontier were pouring through the massive iron gates, their faces a uniform mask of anxious terror and desperate hope. For commoners, the Awakening Ceremony wasn't just an administrative registration; it was the single day that decided whether you spent the rest of your life breaking rocks in a localized mana-mine or earning a coveted spot inside an elite hunter academy.
We waded through the packed cobblestone streets, following the dense, slow-moving flow of the crowd. Lysander kept his head down, his broad shoulders unusually rigid as people jostled against him. I kept my own gaze constantly shifting, my eyes automatically scanning the crowd out of pure muscle memory.
Most of these kids won't even rank past F-Talent, I calculated silently, noting the fragile builds and erratic breathing of the surrounding teenagers. They are looking for safety, completely unaware of the rifts waiting for them in the years ahead.
Eventually, the narrow alleyways opened up, spilling the entire crowd into the grand central plaza. Towering over the massive square was the Cathedral of the First Interface—a colossal, ancient structure built entirely from smooth blocks of white star-stone. The majestic white arches seemed to actively absorb the natural sunlight, radiating a faint, cool hum of raw energy that vibrated directly through the soles of our boots.
It was the unmistakable pressure of the global system framework. Even though the interface was completely offline inside our individual minds, the massive planetary engine itself was pulsing right beneath the stone floor, waiting to read our parameters.
"Look at the size of this place," Lysander whispered, his voice catching as he stood at the base of the massive marble stairs. He stared up at the vaulted iron doors of the sanctuary, his knuckles white as he anxiously checked his bronze token one more time. "There are thousands of them here, Astraeus. What if... what if the system doesn't find anything inside me? What if I'm just a civilian forever?"
"You won't be," I replied smoothly, keeping my voice calm and steady to anchor him. I remembered his original baseline numbers—he had awakened with a high B-Rank physical talent, a natural foundation that simply needed the altar to unseal his channels.
The real variable on the board was me.
If that surreal dream state inside the forest clearing was nothing more than a hallucination, the system would unseal my channels today and hand me the exact same A-Rank blade talent I had received before. But if the Starlight Entity was a real anomaly... if that burning cosmic vortex had genuinely rewired my soul... the global network was about to read a physical glitch it had never encountered before.
A sudden, deep chime echoed from the top of the white stairs, the massive vaulted iron doors of the cathedral slowly grinding open to reveal a dark, yawning sanctuary filled with the soft glow of blue altar circles.
"The countdown is over," I muttered, a cold, calculated calm settling deep beneath my ribs as I took my first step up the marble stairs. "Let's go find out what the dream left behind."