Alex had never been someone who woke up with energy. Most mornings he opened his eyes to the same grey weight he had closed them with the night before — nothing to look forward to, nowhere to be, just another day of the same. He had grown used to it.
This morning was different.
The second his eyes opened he called up his Codex, almost involuntarily, as if some part of him needed to confirm it hadn't been a dream. The pale panel appeared in front of him, quiet and unhurried as ever.
He stared at it for a moment.
"Still here."
He didn't bother hiding his smile. He dismissed the Codex, got up from the bench, and started moving.
The morning streets of Faction 7 looked exactly the same as they always did. The people he passed glanced at him the way they always had — eyes dropping to the tear in his shirt where the Walker had caught him, then sliding away just as quickly. Normally that kind of look had a weight to it. Today it rolled off him completely.
He was Awakened. By tonight he would have a bed. Warm food. Four walls and a door. Things that other people took for granted without ever thinking about them.
He kept walking, hands in his pockets, already running through what he remembered about the nearest Awakening Registry. The world hadn't changed. He had.
After about an hour of walking he was finally standing in front of the building he had been looking for. He had seen it before, but only from the hill — a distant shape among the rest of the skyline. Up close it was something else entirely. He didn't bother counting the floors.
"I guess this is normal for me now."
He walked inside.
It was the nicest place he had ever been in, and it wasn't particularly close. Everything was clean in a way that felt deliberate — polished surfaces, chairs tucked neatly around low tables, none of it looking like it had ever been used. The air even smelled different. He stood in the entrance for a moment longer than he intended before spotting a desk near the far end of the room, a woman seated behind it. She was the only person he could see, so he walked over.
She was working through a stack of paperwork and didn't look up immediately. When she did, her expression shifted — a brief, barely concealed flicker of disgust that she didn't quite manage to hide in time.
"Can I help you?"
Alex felt the look before he fully processed it. Then he remembered the state he was in — torn shirt, straight off a park bench — and understood.
"Is this the Awakening Registry?"
Her expression changed immediately.
"You Awakened?"
"Yes."
She pulled a form and pen from her desk and held them out to him, then nodded toward the tables behind him.
"Fill this out. You can sit anywhere you'd like."
He took the form and scanned it as he walked over. Name, Affinity, Aspect — everything the Codex could already tell him, plus a handful of additional questions at the bottom. He sat down and started writing.
He was halfway through when the door opened behind him.
He glanced up briefly. A girl, roughly his age, stepping inside. Her hair was black and fell well past her shoulders. Her clothes were clean and clearly expensive — the kind of thing that didn't come from a market stall. He looked back at his form.
He could hear the conversation at the desk without trying. She was there for the same reason he was — an Awakening, recent. The woman behind the desk sounded genuinely caught off guard, her surprise barely professional. Two in one day. The way she said it suggested that almost never happened.
The conversation ended the same way his had. A form, a pen, a gesture toward the tables.
Alex kept his eyes on his paper.
Then the chair directly beside him scraped back from the table.
He looked up. The girl sat down next to him, settled her form in front of her, and began writing without a word — as if she hadn't noticed him, or had noticed him and simply didn't consider it worth acknowledging. Alex stared at her for a moment. The room had an entire other table. Dozens of empty chairs. She had walked past every single one of them and chosen the seat directly beside him.
She looked up and met his eyes without any particular expression.
He looked back at his paper.
Is something wrong with her?
It bothered him more than it should have — the fact that she had chosen the seat directly beside him without explanation, without acknowledgment, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He couldn't explain why it bothered him. She hadn't done anything wrong. He let it go and finished his form.
He walked back to the desk and handed it over. The woman read through it in silence. He watched her expression shift — subtle, but there — the particular look of someone deciding whether to say what they were thinking.
She looked up.
"Your affinity is Star? I don't think I've ever heard of anyone with that affinity."
Alex said nothing. He hadn't heard of it either, not before last night. The fact that someone who worked at the Awakening Registry had never come across it told him more than the Codex description had.
She continued.
"And your Aspect says Unknown. Are you sure you read it correctly? I'm not sure Unknown is even a valid entry."
Trust me, I didn't think it was possible either.
"That's just what it says,"
he said.
"I didn't choose it."
She looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone who had decided not to argue but hadn't decided to believe him either. Then the girl appeared beside him, setting her completed form on the desk. The woman picked it up, read it over, and this time her expression settled into something satisfied.
"Thank you, Ms. Nakashi."
Alex caught the look the girl gave him after that — brief, sideways, unreadable. Like the acknowledgment had confirmed something she already knew.
The woman behind the desk set both forms down.
"Since you both Awakened recently, you'll be assigned to Faction 4. Bring these papers to them directly and report for training immediately."
She slid a document across the desk to each of them. Alex picked his up. It was a clean summary — his name, his affinity, everything he had just filled out, plus a small photograph in the corner that he had no memory of anyone taking. He didn't ask.
Then he glanced at the girl's paper.
[Name: Momo Nakashi]
[Affinity: Blood]
[Aspect: Severance]
[Imprints: 4]
[Titles: None]
[Relics: None]
Blood affinity. He had heard of it — not much, but enough to know that users tended to be dangerous. It didn't surprise him that she would end up being one of those people. Something about the way she carried herself made it fit.
Then he registered the Imprints.
Four? She killed four monsters?
He glanced down at his own paper. One Imprint. The Walker from last night, which had nearly killed him.
Maybe she lied. Either way, four and one isn't exactly a significant gap. It doesn't matter.
He folded his paper and told himself he believed that.
They walked out of the building together, though Alex let himself fall a step behind almost immediately. He had no idea where the Faction 4 headquarters was, and he wasn't about to ask her. He followed at a distance that he hoped looked like disinterest rather than necessity.
Momo didn't acknowledge it either way.
They boarded a train without much said between them. Alex found a window seat and watched the city move past as they cut through the Dominion toward the Fourth.
He had never seen it like this — faction by faction, laid out in sequence. Each one was its own world. One had streets so clean and new they barely looked real. The next had garbage piled at the corners, buildings that leaned slightly, residents who moved with the wariness of people used to being overlooked. Then another — older buildings, quieter streets, a different kind of wealth that didn't need to announce itself. He had spent his whole life in the Seventh and made it to the Sixth maybe a handful of times. Seeing this much of the Dominion at once was quietly astonishing, though he kept his expression neutral.
The Fourth, when it finally came into view, didn't look like any single thing. It sat somewhere between everything he had passed through — modern buildings rising alongside older, traditional ones that had clearly been there long enough to earn their place. The streets were clean without feeling sterile. Most of the people visible from the window looked comfortable, unhurried. Not the wealth of some of the inner factions, but the quieter kind — the kind that had simply always been there.
He glanced over at Momo. She was still looking out the window, taking it in with the same unreadable expression she seemed to wear for everything.
"Are you ready?"
She turned and looked at him. Then nodded once, already moving toward the doors.
Alex followed her out onto the platform and looked up. The building ahead was unmistakable — a large numeral 4 mounted above the entrance, visible from most of the street. He fell into step beside her and they walked toward it without another word.