For a moment, it was easy to forget this wasn't the real Sky River.
People walked past them on the sidewalk, heads down over comms, bags slung on tired shoulders. A vendor on the corner flipped skewers over a small grill, smoke curling up into the artificial sky. Somewhere, far above, a projected sun bled weak light through a cloud layer that was a little too uniform if you knew what to look for.
Ethan knew.
He could feel the hum underneath the street.
Not the subway.
The formation.
[Trial One: Territory] Time Remaining: 1:41:23 Anchors Secured: 0/3
"We're close," Shen Mei said.
Her eyes weren't on the people, or the shops, or the too‑perfect clouds. She was watching the air.
Feeling for the static.
Jin Yue walked a few steps ahead, hands loose at his sides, as if he were just strolling through downtown. Huo Liang brought up the rear, looking like a man itching for an excuse to break something.
Ethan tried to walk like someone who belonged here.
A man in a borrowed life, moving through a borrowed city.
Fitting.
The anchor in the old district wasn't much to look at.
You wouldn't see it, if you weren't meant to.
Just a small plaza where three narrow streets met. An old, chipped stone platform in the center, half‑hidden by a vending machine and a public notice board no one read.
But in the overlay only contestants could see, a pale symbol burned over it—a rotating sigil that pulsed in time with the faint buzz under Ethan's feet.
[Anchor #2: Old District Shrine] Status: Unclaimed
"It's ugly," Huo said.
"That's how you know it's important," Shen Mei said.
No one else in the plaza reacted to the four of them walking straight toward the old platform.
NPCs.
Ghosts made of data.
Real enough to bump into.
Not real enough to bleed.
"We just… stand on it?" Huo asked.
"Leave it to the experts," Shen Mei said.
She stepped up onto the worn stone.
The anchor shivered.
The overlay flickered.
[Contestant Contact Detected] Team A Presence: 1 Team B Presence: 0
"Go on," she said to Ethan without looking back. "You're the favorite variable."
"That's not reassuring," he said, but he followed.
The moment his foot hit the anchor, he felt it.
Like stepping on a nerve.
Not his.
The city's.
Threads—not visible like in the Hall, but present—brushed against his ankles, probing, tasting.
Who are you?
What story do you bring?
He didn't push back.
Not yet.
He just stood there.
Himself.
The weight of three lives on his shoulders—Youcef the reader, Ethan the trash son‑in‑law, Ethan‑with‑a‑system who had started to say no to the wrong targets.
The anchor buzzed harder.
[Anchor #2: Claiming Initiated] Narrative Presence Threshold: Measuring…
"Don't overdo it," Shen Mei murmured. "If you show it everything, the Pavilion will see more than you want them to."
"I know," he said.
He gave the anchor enough.
Not the fifth‑floor apartment.
Not Room 617.
Not the bathroom mirror.
Just the banquet.
Pictures. Sounds.
Faces turned away in convenient laughter while one man used another as a stepping stone.
And the moment the script had tried to make him kneel again and he'd finally whispered no.
The stone under his feet warmed.
The sigil above them brightened.
[Claiming… 27%]
"It's working," Huo said.
"Don't jinx it," Shen Mei snapped.
Jin Yue watched the edges of the plaza, eyes half‑lidded.
"They'll feel it soon," he murmured.
"Them or Xu?" Ethan asked.
"Assume both," Jin Yue said.
The anchor wanted more.
He felt it.
A hungry, low‑level curiosity.
Like a stray cat that had realized someone might feed it.
Images floated unbidden to the surface of his mind.
Daniel, smiling with story‑given ease.
Yuhan, jaw tight, eyes hard.
Shen Mei, alone in a parking garage with four men and a knife.
Wei Donglin's eyes, clear for a second before the model rewrote him.
He let the anchor taste just the edges of those.
Enough to register there was a dispute.
Not enough to reveal the tools he wielded.
[Claiming… 63%]
"You're holding back," Shen Mei said quietly.
"So are you," he replied.
"Fair," she admitted.
She reached down—gently—and let her fingers brush the stone.
The buzz changed.
For a flicker, Ethan sensed something sharp and bitter pour into the anchor—her memory of system prompts that treated people as "environmental damage", her three "accidents", the crushing awareness that she'd hurt people she hadn't meant to.
She didn't give it guilt.
She gave it resolve.
I will do better. Or I will burn trying.
The formation drank it.
[Claiming… 89%]
Jin Yue stepped onto the edge of the platform.
He didn't feed it images.
He fed it calm.
Years of walking through other people's drama without becoming its center. The practiced discipline of a man who had chosen, over and over, not to chase spotlights.
The anchor steadied.
Thrummed.
[Anchor #2: CLAIMED] Owner: Team A
The sigil above them flared, then sank, its light folding into the stone.
For a moment, the plaza looked exactly as it had when they arrived.
Old concrete.
Rust‑spotted vending machine.
NPCs walking by.
Nothing to see here.
"One down," Huo said.
"Don't relax," Shen Mei said.
"I wasn't planning to," Ethan replied.
A soft chime sounded in his ear.
[Anchor Status] — Anchor #1 (River): CLAIMED — Team B — Anchor #2 (Old District): CLAIMED — Team A — Anchor #3 (Hospital): UNCLAIMED
Time Remaining: 1:12:49
"They grabbed the river," Jin Yue said.
"As expected," Ethan said.
He could picture it without trying.
Daniel on a bridge, water swirling under his feet, light catching his profile perfectly as the anchor there bent eagerly toward him.
Some people were born for scenic shots.
"Then it's a race to the hospital," Shen Mei said.
"No," Ethan said.
Three sets of eyes snapped to him.
"If we sprint straight there, they'll expect it," he said. "They'll get suspicious about why we care so much about that one."
"We do care," Huo said.
"Yes," Ethan said. "Which is why we pretend we don't—for as long as we can afford it."
He looked at Jin Yue.
"You know this city better than the projections," he said. "How many ways to get from here to the hospital without crossing any of the flashy locations?"
Jin Yue's eyes crinkled.
"You want the back alleys," he said.
"I want the paths the arrays didn't bother to choreograph nicely for the audience," Ethan said.
Jin Yue nodded once.
"This way," he said.
They moved.
Through side streets.
Past back doors of restaurants, where NPC staff smoked phantom cigarettes.
Across a small park where children's laughter played on loop, slightly out of sync if you listened too hard.
Ethan's awareness kept trying to tilt outward—toward the feel of Daniel's team, toward the buzz of the river anchor—but he forced it back.
One thing at a time.
If he kept trying to see the whole board, he'd end up like the man in Room 617.
"You're doing it again," Shen Mei said.
"What?" he asked.
"Staring past everything like you're listening to a director," she said.
"Occupational hazard," he said.
"You're not the only one watching the watchers," she said. "Remember that."
"Comforting," he said.
"It shouldn't be," she replied.
The hospital rose ahead, white and blue against the not‑quite‑real sky.
In the simulation, it looked almost identical to its real counterpart.
Same facade.
Same logo.
Same spiritual trauma ward on the sixth floor.
Ethan's stomach clenched.
[Anchor #3: Hospital Nexus] Status: UNCLAIMED
"They really put one here," Huo muttered.
"Why not?" Shen Mei said. "If you're going to test whether someone understands the cost of power, you might as well drag them through where you filed the invoices."
"That's very poetic for a girl who swears as much as you do," Huo said.
"Trauma breeds range," she shot back.
They stepped through the sliding glass doors.
The lobby hummed with the low‑level noise of waiting. Chairs half‑filled. Posters on the walls about early detection of qi deviation and the importance of regular meridian scans.
None of the people here were real.
But the feelings they represented were.
Fear.
Guilt.
Hope with its back against the wall.
The anchor was not in the lobby.
It was above.
They rode the elevator again.
Ethan's knuckles were white on the rail.
"You don't have to reenact last night," Shen Mei said quietly.
"I think I do," he said.
Sixth floor.
Ding.
The doors slid open onto the same corridor.
Same sign.
LONG‑TERM CARE / SPIRITUAL TRAUMA
Except this time, the overlay didn't need coaxing.
The anchor blazed at the far end of the hall.
A tight, knotted ball of light pressed against the double doors of a central ward—far larger than the single room of 617.
[Anchor #3: Seer's Ward] Status: UNCLAIMED Narrative Density: HIGH
"That's not just one man," Shen Mei whispered.
She was right.
Ethan could feel them.
Multiple threads woven together.
Failed breakthroughs.
Cultivation deviations.
People who had tried to read beyond their lines and been punished for it.
The Pavilion had built an anchor on top of them.
Like a stone on a grave.
"They're daring you," Shen Mei said.
"All of us," Ethan said.
Behind them, he heard the soft chime of elevator doors opening again.
Footsteps.
Too measured to be NPCs.
He didn't need to turn to know who it was.
[Team B Presence Detected]
"Of course," Shen Mei muttered.
Daniel's voice carried down the corridor before his steps did.
"You really like hospitals," he said.
Ethan turned.
Daniel, Lan Xue, Qiao Min, Yan Shu.
Team B.
Perfectly composed.
Slightly damp from whatever route they'd taken.
His gaze flicked past them to the ward doors.
Then back to Ethan.
"Couldn't resist this anchor either?" Daniel asked.
"You started at the pretty river," Ethan said. "We started at the ugly truth."
"Always with the lines," Daniel said. "Do you rehearse them?"
"Only the ones meant for you," Ethan said.
The overlay chimed again.
[Anchor #3] Team A Presence: 4 Team B Presence: 4 Status: CONTESTED
The air thickened.
Not just with tension.
With attention.
The anchor felt… awake.
Hungry.
Ready to see which of them it believed more.
Lan Xue's eyes dropped briefly to the label on the door.
Seer's Ward
Something flickered there.
Recognition.
"You know this place," Ethan said.
"Everyone who trains at the Pavilion long enough knows of it," she said. "We're told it's where they treat the ones who push too hard."
"They forgot to mention it's also where they bury the bits that don't fit the plan," Shen Mei said.
Qiao Min shifted uneasily.
Yan Shu's jaw set.
Daniel didn't look away from Ethan.
"So," Daniel said. "Two teams. One very loaded anchor."
"Feels like a group project designed by a teacher who hates us," Ethan said.
"You started this," Daniel said quietly.
"No," Ethan said. "I just refused to pretend I didn't see it."
The anchor pulsed.
A deep, resonant thrum that shook dust from the light fixtures.
It wanted a claim.
It wanted a story.
It didn't care about their personal moral arcs.
It cared who could hold it.
"You know they're watching every second," Daniel said. "Xu. The clan heads. The sects. The… whatever it is that decided you get to play thief."
"Good," Ethan said. "Then let's give them something worth replaying."
Daniel's smile was thin.
"You're infuriating," he said.
"You're very late to that realization," Ethan replied.
They stood there, eight people in a corridor built for patients, with an anchor full of broken seers humming between them.
Part of Ethan wanted to fight.
Hit something.
Relieve the pressure the simple way.
The larger part of him knew that was exactly the reaction this trial was baiting.
"We don't have to turn this into a brawl," he said.
Daniel raised a brow.
"You propose… sharing?" he asked.
"I propose," Ethan said, "that we see what happens if, for once, this thing isn't claimed by just one story."
He stepped forward.
Onto the anchor.
The others tensed.
No one moved to stop him.
Not yet.
He felt the ward's weight hit his bones.
Room 617.
And all the others.
He let it see him.
Not all of him.
Enough.
A reader who'd asked too many questions.
A trash character too stubborn to stay in his place.
A man who had started, however imperfectly, to pay back what he stole.
Then he did something very few people in this city ever did in front of power.
He stepped sideways.
Leaving room.
"You want a piece of this, Carter?" he asked.
Daniel's eyes flashed.
"What game are you playing?" he asked.
"The same one you are," Ethan said. "Except I'm done pretending I'm the only one in it."
He nodded at the anchor.
"Come on," he said. "Let's see what it does when we both stand on it."
If you're still here as Ethan walks willingly onto the most cursed anchor in the city and then invites the original protagonist to join him, you're absolutely wild—and I love that. If you'd like to help me keep writing chapters at this level, even a small Ko‑fi support really, genuinely helps: https://ko-fi.com/youcefesseid