There is an old legend whispered through broken timelines and buried stars—of the System, a force omniscient and unyielding, that marks all who live. It bestows levels for bloodshed, wisdom for obedience, strength for servitude. From birth to death, every breath is weighed and measured, each fate prewritten with meticulous cruelty.
Yet even the gods have questioned: are we but numbers in an endless ledger, pawns in the game of an unseen hand?
The Paragons—those who rose beyond—were not born with such titles. They were forged in rebellion, not compliance. They bled against the script, tore the threads of fate, and in doing so, earned the name.
—From the Shattered Tablets of Varn-Kael, discovered deep beneath the Null Crypts of Skaraith
***
The bones stirred.
Not just beneath Arin’s feet, but within him—ancient marrow waking up from an aeon-long slumber.
Vibrations hummed through his ribcage like a forgotten drumbeat. He froze, pulse echoing against the silence.
And then they spoke.
Not with words, but with pressure. With aches in his joints, a tightening in his spine, with reverberations through every part of him that had ever known fear, hope, hunger, purpose.
“Are you truly Paragon?”
“Or are you merely the latest ornament hung on the neck of an omniscient system?”
“Did you choose this path, or did it choose you—like a noose wrapped in silk?”
“Would you still walk it if there were no promise of reward at the end?”
“Are you power, or are you property?”
The questions rippled through him with no mercy, no tone—just raw, perfect inquiry. The kind that left no room for lies, not even the ones one told oneself.
Arin staggered back, the cloak fluttering like a second heartbeat. His knees buckled slightly.
He had meditated beneath Bodhi-like trees. He had walked among the Graveyard dead and read the language of the forgotten titans. But this? This was something different. This was not knowledge. It was reckoning.
And then, of course, Theryx ruined it.
“Aha! Got it!” he declared from behind a small burst of confetti.
Arin turned, jaw tight. Theryx was wearing a monocle fashioned from a snail shell, upside-down, standing on one foot, balancing a plate of fungus and roasted garlic on his head.
“Trying to find your thought frequency,” Theryx chirped. “You vibrate like a confused xylophone, my boy. Had to isolate the emotional overtones—fear, reverence, indigestion. All very useful.”
Arin blinked. “I—what?”
Theryx wagged a finger, then flicked his wrist. A cascade of glowing sigils burst into the air, assembling themselves into a rotating wheel made of bone, fireflies, and mango peels. “There. Now you can understand me and the bones. Multi-lingual resonance tuning fork. Calibrated to your... oh! You were a herb-gatherer, weren’t you?”
“I was a wood-gatherer,” Arin muttered, still shaken. “A provider. For my- village.”
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Theryx beamed. “Yes! And now you’re a question-gatherer. See how life levels up?”
Behind them, the bones whispered again.
“You wear a cloak born of devotion. But whose devotion drives you now?”
“When you wield power, is it yours—or are you merely a vessel for another’s longing?”
Apparitions bloomed around them like living murals: a younger Arin kneeling by a forest shrine, a vision of his mother laying hands on his shoulders. The spirit of the Cloak loomed behind him, weeping silently.
“Do you even know who you are without us?”
Arin’s breath hitched.
The ground lit up as Theryx twirled his staff. “Ooh! That one hits the core chakra. Watch closely, now—I made this one dramatic.”
He pointed, and the apparitions coalesced into a monstrous version of Arin—made of bone fragments and woven memory—standing atop a mountain of systems: thrones, temples, seals, chains. The creature looked both noble and lost.
Arin flinched. “Why are you showing me this?”
Theryx frowned, spinning his staff like a circus baton. “I am not showing you anything. They are. The bones are excellent dramatists, if a bit existential. Personally, I’d stage it with more color, maybe a talking owl—”
“Why do you flinch at your own image?” the bones pressed.
“If your heart is humble, why do you fear greatness?”
“If your spirit is free, why do you crave permission?”
Arin dropped to his knees, the whispers gnawing at his spine. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” he said quietly.
A silence settled. Heavy. Absolute.
And then Theryx tossed a mushroom at his head.
“Of course you didn’t,” he said cheerfully. “Neither did the stars. But they shine anyway.”
He paused, tapped his staff to the ground, and said in a sing-song voice: “Now then! Time to remove those pesky system labels.”
Arin blinked. “What labels?”
Theryx waggled his eyebrows. “Necromance Supreme. Lightbringer. You’ve got divine graffiti all over your soul signature. Bleh! It’s like reading a scroll with someone else’s highlights.”
He gestured. A bright, shimmering outline appeared behind Arin—etched into the very air, glowing with sigils of divine status, loyalty contracts, destiny locks.
“System tags,” Theryx said, making a gagging noise. “Very standardized. Very gross.”
He snapped his fingers. A floating glove appeared. Then a tiny vacuum. Then a polishing cloth embroidered with a cartoon skull giving a thumbs up.
“I call this the Meta-Tag Muffin Cleaner?.” He winked. “Patent pending.”
“What are you—”
With wild precision, Theryx began “cleaning” the air behind Arin, pulling divine glyphs from the air like gum off a shoe.
“Oops! There’s your Lightbringer mark. Sticky, isn’t it? Looks like it came from a High Radiant Bureaucracy. They love their drama. Let’s just—” slurp “—pop that off, and... there we go!”
He held it up like a prizefish. “Gone!”
Arin looked at it. It shimmered and vanished with a soft, slightly embarrassed sound.
“Do you see now, Paragon?” the bones whispered. “The system gives you titles to keep you from asking who you are without them.”
“Are you a savior... or a servant?”
Theryx yanked another sigil from behind Arin’s spine. “And that one’s Necromance Supreme. Ugh, who came up with that name? Sounds like a pizza cursed by a lich. Hold still—”
Arin didn’t protest. The marks fell away like armor he didn’t know he was wearing. And with every removal, the bones grew louder.
“What will you build, now that you are unbeholden?”
“What does freedom taste like—ashes or honey?”
“Would you still walk this path if no one ever knew your name?”
Images flooded his mind: a quiet village. A child's laughter. The cloak resting on a clothesline, drying in the wind.
Arin whispered, “What... do you want from me?”
The bones paused.
Then—
“We want nothing.”
“We offer remembrance.”
“What you do with it... is your own tale.”
And just like that, the vibrations faded. The bone fields went still. Only the distant hum of time remained.
Theryx sighed, dropping his staff so it leaned dramatically on nothing. “Well, that was intense. Care for a snack?”
Arin shook his head, still absorbing the weight of what had just happened.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” he said.
Theryx shrugged, tossing him a glowing fruit. “Good. Means you’re finally asking the right question.”
The wizard began walking ahead, muttering to himself as apparitions chased him like curious children.
“Paragon with a pulse, system-free soul signature... Not bad. I’ll need to recalibrate the next trial. Maybe more bones. Or less bones. Or bones that sing. Hmm…”
He paused and turned, eyes twinkling under the nest-crowned hat.
“You coming, Paragon? Or shall I leave you with your existential soup?”
Arin stood. The silence behind him was full of meaning. The path ahead? Full of madness.
He took one step forward. Then another.
And just before he caught up, the bones whispered one last time—soft, gentle, questioning:
“Will you ever be whole if you never shatter first?”
The question lingered.
Arin said nothing.
But he walked on.
***