Several minutes before his guardians arrived at the grove, the first flakes of snow to swirl around the boy did so with a strange, unnatural purpose. They did not land, but instead began a slow, silent dance in the air around his seated form. Unseen by any living soul, the very air in the pine grove grew colder still, and the gentle snowfall intensified, drawn into a focused, nascent eddy of power.
But Alph perceived none of this. His physical form, perched on a snow-covered log, was a distant anchor he no longer felt. His consciousness was already adrift.
He existed in a quiet dark.
The cold against his skin was the first sensation to fade, its bite softening into a distant memory. Next went the sharp scent of pine, then the low hiss of wind through the branches. The world outside muted, its edges blurring into a formless, grey hum.
His mind, a torrent of anxieties and revelations moments before, went still. The fractured memories of two lives—a lonely lawyer from a world of steel and glass, and a bookish child from a world of snow and stone—ceased their circling. They simply hung in the quiet dark, motes of dust in a vast, empty room.
For a time, there was only peace.
The peace was absolute, but it was not eternal.
Against the starless backdrop of this expanse, a single point of light appeared. It did not blaze, but pulsed with a soft, steady rhythm, a pinprick of silver in the endless black. For a timeless moment, it was the only thing in the vast expanse.
Then, a second point of light emerged, distant from the first. A third followed. Soon, a fourth. They hung in the void, four distant, silent stars in a sky that had none.
The sudden change bewildered the boy's placid consciousness. A nascent curiosity stirred in the quiet. His formless awareness reached for the nearest point of light, a silent question posed to the void.
The moment he focused, the expanse itself seemed to warp. A powerful, irresistible force took hold of him, pulling his consciousness across the starless dark. The silver point of light swelled, rushing to meet him.
His journey ended as abruptly as it began. His consciousness slammed to a halt before the star, which pulsed with a soft, rhythmic light.
It did not remain separate. The light beat once, a soft silver pulse, and a torrent of understanding poured into him. It was not words or images, but pure concept. The essence of a path, a way of being.
A Profession.
The infusion of knowledge was instantaneous, a complete and sudden clarity. These four bright stars were the gateways, the fundamental paths unlocked and made available to him by his life and lineage. Beyond them, stretching into the infinite black, he could perceive countless other stars, impossibly faint and dormant, each one a different Profession awaiting a soul with the right key. He could reach out, choose one of the four burning before him, and forge his destiny.
For a moment, he could not process the sudden change. The lawyer in his soul—the part of him forged in a world of cold logic and hard evidence—rebelled. Was any of this real? Could this expanse, these stars of power, be anything more than a grand hallucination? A sweet, placating dream constructed by a subconscious mind pushed to its absolute limit. A fantasy born from the desperate hope of a boy exhausted in mind, body, and soul.
A lucid dream, then? It was a plausible explanation for a fabrication of a tired mind.
But even a dream has rules. It draws from the dreamer's well. The knowledge it presented, the essence of these Professions… it could be tested.
The lawyer in him surfaced, demanding evidence. He would cross-examine this vision. If this was a dream, the knowledge of these stars must align with the fragmented lore he had scraped together from Hemlock's scrolls. A dream could only build on the foundations he already possessed.
His awareness drifted from the first star and turned its focus to the dimmest of the four. As his attention settled upon it, the knowledge of its path bloomed in his mind. Druid. The requirements were clear: a natural empathy for plants and animals, a working familiarity with local herbs and tracks, a comfort with solitude in the wilderness. He considered this. He had lived in Oakhaven, but his connection was to its people, its history, not the mountain itself. This path was open to him, but it was a faint echo, a possibility born of proximity, not passion.
He shifted his focus to the next star, a point of light that burned with a sharper, more focused intensity. Hunter. Sharper-than-average senses. A good sense of direction. Agility and consistent practice with a hunting weapon. The recent days of exercise had honed his body, and his mind was sharp, but he lacked the years of ingrained experience of someone like Finn. The path was there, brighter than the first, but it felt like a borrowed coat, one that did not quite fit his shoulders.
His consciousness moved again, toward the third star. This one pulsed with a bright, inquisitive light. Mage. A strong curiosity about the world's mysteries. The ability to sit and clear one's mind. A flicker of recognition sparked within him. This was the path of the scholar, the path of the questioner. It resonated with the lawyer's drive to understand and the boy's love of history. The very act of meditation, of seeking a quiet mind, had led him here. This star felt... familiar. Warm.
Finally, his awareness turned to the last star. It was not merely bright; it was a beacon, a point of crystalline, silver-blue light that dwarfed the others, its radiance a cold, clean fire in the endless dark. As he focused, the knowledge hit him with the force of a physical blow. Frost-Rune Scribe. A steady hand, a methodical mind, great concentration. An aptitude for drawing complex symbols with precision. He had these things in abundance, the legacy of a lawyer and a scholar. But the primary requirement, the key that unlocked the gate, was absolute.
One must possess the activated Frostmoon bloodline.
He weighed his options, his newly unified consciousness processing the four paths with the cold pragmatism of a lawyer choosing a line of argument. The Mage was a strong contender. It fit his scholarly nature, his desire to understand the world. But the Frost-Rune Scribe... that was different. It was not just a path that fit his skills; it was his inheritance. It was the legacy of the father he never met, the same blood that flowed through Elara's veins. To choose anything else would be to turn his back on the only real connection he had to his past.
Survival was another factor. He remembered fragments from the old travelogues he'd read, whispers of rare 'variant' professions that branched from the common seven. They were spoken of with a mixture of fear and awe, practitioners with unique and potent abilities. A Frost-Rune Scribe was not a Mage; it was something more specialized, more focused. In a world with mercenaries at the village doorstep, specialization was a weapon. It was a substantial increase in his chances of living long enough to see tomorrow.
Then there was the goal. The original Alph's dream of reaching the grand Lumina Academy in Port Haethwy. He recalled a specific passage in a dry historical text about the Academy's charter: special admission was often granted to those who awakened into a recognized variant profession. The dream no longer belonged to a dead boy. It was his own now, a tangible objective. The Academy was not just a library; it was the heart of the Duchy's power. To understand this world, to grasp the forces that had shattered his family, he needed to go there.
Druid was a whisper. Hunter, an ill-fitting coat. Mage was a good choice, a logical one.
Frost-Rune Scribe was destiny. It was family, survival, and a direct route to the heart of the world's mysteries.
There was no real contest. His consciousness reached out, not with a hand, but with a simple, unwavering act of will. He chose the cold, silver-blue star.