I awoke with another violent jolt, heart hammering against my ribs.

  “Breathe, Morgan. Breathe,” I muttered to myself—the words coming out on instinct, the same grounding mantra I always used when those memories hit too hard or too fast.

  My surroundings slowly came into focus. I wasn’t in my Sphere. I wasn’t in Delaware. I wasn’t anywhere familiar.

  The room was rustic—primitive, almost. The bed beneath me crackled faintly with every shift; it was stuffed with straw and feathers that poked through the cloth in uneven tufts. A scarred wooden table sat at the center of the room, its legs uneven. A fireplace off to my right crackled with warm cedar-scented smoke.

  “You awake, kid?” a gruff voice barked from outside. “If so, get out here.”

  Taking the hint, I pushed myself upright—and paused.

  My viewpoint was…higher. Not just a little higher. A solid several inches. My legs felt longer. My arms stronger. My body—different.

  Great. Add that to the growing list of today’s existential crises.

  I stepped outside into pale sunlight and immediately spotted the source of the voice.

  He was huge. A solid wall of red skin and muscle, towering over me by at least a foot—even with my new height. And he didn’t just have two arms. He had four of them, each built like they could uproot a tree for fun. His presence was intimidating, but not hostile. More annoyed-with-life-in-general than dangerous.

  “Welcome to Aeterna,” he grumbled. “No idea why the Council of Divines keeps designating my home as one of their ‘starting locations,’ but they do. Every damn time. Makes me want to crush a skull, but—” he shrugged all four shoulders “—you don’t pick where you manifest.”

  He looked me over, his gaze sharp despite the fatigue behind it.

  “Name’s Stroy. Yours?”

  “Morgan,” I answered quickly, giving a respectful bow before I could stop myself.

  “Right then.” Stroy nodded. “Morgan. As I said, welcome to Aeterna. You’re probably level one, fresh status, fresh everything.” One of his upper arms pointed toward my chest. “And that pendant tells me you’ve got a SPHERE. Rare for newcomers.”

  Then he gestured at my right hand.

  “And the glove? That’s so people don’t immediately clock you as a Bearer. You—” His lips twitched at my confused expression. “You clearly have no idea what that means.”

  He sighed and crossed his lower set of arms.

  “There are two ways to become a Gem-Bearer,” Stroy rumbled, lifting one thick finger. “First: be the direct descendant of a previous Bearer. That’s the usual path. Strength passes through bloodlines, the divines like continuity—blah blah, cosmic poetry.”

  He lifted a second finger.

  “Second: kill a Bearer and take the gemstone as a spoil. Very rare. Very… messy.”

  “Got it. So the glove hides that identity,” I said, bowing respectfully.

  “Correct.” Stroy grunted in satisfaction. “So, Morgan, I’d suggest you walk around, get your feet under you. Shake off whatever divine nonsense you just lived through. When you’re ready, take the dirt path straight ahead. It leads to the local village.”

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  He gestured at me with a casual sweep of one of his lower arms.

  “I didn’t have anything exactly in your size, so I tossed you in the biggest robe I had lying around. Hope it’s not choking you.”

  Only then did I actually look down.

  The garment swallowed me whole. A huge brown robe, thick and coarse, hanging off me like I’d stolen a monk’s laundry by mistake. The sleeves completely covered my hands unless I lifted my arms straight out.

  “…Right,” I muttered.

  “Keep the Sphere pendant exposed,” Stroy added with a small, knowing grin, like he’d already anticipated the question rising in my throat. “Having a Sphere is rare around here, sure—but it won’t get you stabbed or robbed. If anything, people will assume you’re some noble brat slumming it.”

  He shrugged, the gesture rippling through four shoulders.

  “And around here, nobody will take that as a mark against you. Not unless you act like a noble brat.”

  “Thank you for the advice, Stroy,” I said sincerely.

  He snorted.

  “Bah. Don’t make it sound like a favor.” A wave of mild irritation crossed his expression, though none of it aimed at me. “You’re my third Twinworlder this year. I swear the divines flip a coin and decide to dump newbies through my roof.”

  He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward his small home.

  “I don’t enjoy my only bed being occupied in the middle of the night. Again, not your fault—but it’s hard to stay cheerful when you wake up to find a random kid manifesting on your floorboards.”

  A beat.

  “Especially when they drool.”

  I blinked. “…Did I drool?”

  He turned and walked away without answering, but the smirk on his face said everything.

  ***

  I followed the direction Stroy had pointed—down the dirt path winding away from his home and into the quiet morning. My steps were slow, careful. I had to relearn the feel of movement all over again. My legs were longer, my stride heavier, yet everything felt… weirdly natural. Like a suit tailored for a version of me that had never existed until now.

  Right. No brain. Or—no human brain.

  My thoughts flickered inward.

  Sylvient biology. Fungal network instead of neurons. A living colony threaded through my body, acting as organs, nerves, instinct, memory… Thought?

  It should have horrified me.

  Instead, it felt like slipping into a warm bath I didn’t remember running.

  I took a few more steps, trying to observe the sway of my new limbs, the shift of vine-tendons under bark-skin—and then a thunderous GONG detonated through my skull.

  I physically jumped.

  A full-body, startled flinch.

  “What—?!”

  My head whipped around, scanning the mangroves, the underbrush, the sky. I half-expected some giant beast to leap out of the trees wielding a war drum.

  Instead, a calm, monotone feminine voice echoed inside my mind:

  [You have acquired the Skill: Walking. Updating your SPHERE Master Status.]

  “…Oh. Oh gods. That’s what this is?”

  Thorn’s earlier words drifted through my memory like a ghostly lecture:

  “Nearly everything you do will affect your [Status]. Run. Walk. Punch. Eat. Sleep. Even something as mundane as reading or debating the color of the sky—everything contributes. It grows with you. It is you, in many ways.”

  Right.

  That.

  So apparently simply walking was enough to trigger an achievement in this world. And the reward was getting my eardrums obliterated by divine theater sound effects.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose—well, the area where a nose would be on a human face. “Okay. Great. I'm a walking gong simulator. That’s… fine. Everything is fine.”

  Not fine.

  I mentally projected the question, hoping the Sphere would answer:

  Is there any way to change the sound I hear when I gain or level a skill?

  Silence.

  A long, cold, empty silence.

  No voice. No message. Not even a denial.

  Just the audible hum of cicadas in the trees and the drip of moisture off tree branches.

  I exhaled through clenched teeth, defeated.

  “Of course not.”