The heavy oak door clicked shut behind us, instantly cutting off the chaotic roar of the Guild Hall. Adda's office was a fascinating blend of grease-monkey garage and high-fantasy war room. Glowing Aether-crystals hummed in the corners, illuminating blueprints, scattered gears, and massive topographical maps of the Great Wilds.
Adda didn't sit in a plush chair; she leaned against the edge of a heavy iron desk, crossing her massive, muscular arms. The playful annoyance she had shown Thorek was completely gone, replaced by the calculating stare of an apex predator.
"Alright, the Dwarf is gone," Adda said, her baritone voice dropping a tactical octave. "Mara's empathy magic confirmed you aren't Void-Touched, and you don't mean the Guild any harm. That's the only reason you aren't currently locked in a containment cell. But 'denim-wizard'? Amnesia? Drop the act, kid. What actually happened out there?"
I stood there in my oversized, scratchy linen pants, clutching a two-tailed, frost-tipped cat.
My first instinct was to double down. Every manga and web novel I'd ever read screamed at me to play the mysterious, amnesiac protagonist. Hide your origins. Hide your power. Trust no one.
But then I took a breath, and my actual, twenty-nine-year-old brain kicked in.
I wasn't a teenager in a comic book, even if I was suddenly looking down at hands that were noticeably younger, smoother, and completely lacking my old coffee-burn scars. I was an unemployed software engineer who had just been hit by a delivery truck. I had no idea how the physics of this world worked, I had a digital UI glitching in my retinas, and I was completely out of my depth.
I've always preferred the company of animals to people, mostly because animals don't lie. But spending a lifetime observing animals means you get really good at reading body language. Looking at Adda, I didn't see a tyrant or a schemer. I saw a tired, pragmatic mechanic who was holding a chaotic city together with grease and willpower. She was a straight shooter.
If I wanted to survive this, I needed an ally, not an adversary.
"I didn't lose my memory," I said, my voice dropping its defensive edge. "And I didn't get mugged by a wizard."
Adda raised an eyebrow, her bear-like ears twitching forward. "Go on."
I sighed, running a hand through my hair. "Where I'm from, there is no magic. No Void-Rot, no Dwarves, no glowing UI screens floating in the air. I'm twenty-nine years old, Adda. Or, at least, I was this morning. I stepped in front of a speeding truck to save a kid, grabbed my cat, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up in a smoking crater looking like a sixteen-year-old."
I gestured down at Snow, who was currently sniffing a glowing Aether-crystal on the floor. "And my cat, who used to just sleep on my keyboard, now has two tails, glows blue, and talks to me in my head."
"I also demand premium seafood, which you have conveniently left out of this tragic backstory," Snow chimed in, not even looking up from the crystal.
Adda stared at me in absolute, unbroken silence. For a terrifying ten seconds, the only sound in the room was the low hum of the crystals. I braced myself for her to call the guards and throw me in the asylum.
Instead, she slowly uncrossed her arms, let out a long, heavy exhale, and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"You've got to be kidding me," she groaned, looking at the ceiling like it had personally offended her. "A transmigrator. The first major Void-spike in Sector 4 in a decade, the leylines are screaming, and Soma spits out a literal World Walker right on my doorstep."
My heart skipped a beat. "Wait. You believe me? Just like that? You know what a transmigrator is?"
Adda looked back down at me, a wry, exhausted smile touching the corner of her mouth. "Noah, this city was founded three thousand years ago by the first World Walker. You aren't the first dimensional castaway to crash-land in Aetheria. You're just the first one we've seen in a very, very long time."
She pushed off the desk, her massive frame towering over me, and grabbed a smooth, glowing blue stone from a velvet-lined box.
"If you really are a World Walker from a dead-magic zone," Adda said, holding the stone out to me, "then you're bound to add to my workload. Place your hand on the Aptitude Stone, and it'll tell us what we're working with."
Suddenly, the sharp clank of something heavy hitting the floor echoed throughout the room.
We both looked over to see that the glowing Aether-crystal was now rolling across the floorboards. Snow was standing on the edge of the desk right where it used to be, looking down at her handiwork with an expression of intense, haughty pride.
"Really?" I sighed, shaking my head. I looked back at Adda and shrugged my shoulders. "Cats."
Taking a deep breath, I reached my hand out to the Aptitude Stone.
The very moment my fingertips made contact, my vision completely whited out, replaced by a sprawling, translucent blue interface. Lines of digital text scrolled rapidly across my retinas.
[ SYSTEM PING ]
[ EXTERNAL MANA-RESONANCE DETECTED. ]
[ SCANNING INITIATED... ]
[ COMPILING ENTITY INFORMATION... ]
[ GENERATING STATUS PROFILE... ]
The scrolling text snapped into place, organizing itself into a clean, minimalist character sheet. It was the first time I was actually seeing my own baseline stats since I crashed into this world.
[ USER PROFILE: NOAH STARGAZER ]
TITLE: The World Walker
BIOLOGICAL AGE: 16
LEVEL: 4 (Stage: Awakened)
GUILD RANK: Unregistered
CORE AFFINITY: Sapphire Voltaic Dissonance (Anomaly)
APTITUDE POTENTIAL: Prismatic (Hidden)
ACTIVE BONDS: SNOW (Lunar Cat) | Lvl 4
ACTIVE SKILLS: The Architect's Eye (Passive), Aetheric Bridge (Active)
Before I could process what any of it actually meant, the digital interface violently glitched.
[ WARNING: HARDWARE FEEDBACK LOOP. OVERRIDING LOCAL PHYSICS... ]
The whiteout shattered.
I was slammed back into reality by the sharp smell of ozone and burnt hair. The smooth, glowing blue stone in my hand wasn't just glowing anymore. It was screaming.
Heavy, crackling arcs of sapphire-blue lightning were erupting from the stone, wrapping around my forearm and shooting across Adda's iron desk. It didn't look like normal magic; it looked and sounded like a blown electrical transformer buzzing with violent, charged static.
"Holy—!" Adda shouted, stumbling backward. The static electricity in the room was so intense that the short brown hair on her head and her fuzzy Ursine ears were standing straight up.
With a sharp CRACK, a hairline fracture spider-webbed straight down the center of the Aptitude Stone.
I panicked and yanked my hand back. The blinding blue lightning immediately snapped out of existence, leaving the room plunging back into the dim, ambient hum of the corner crystals. A wisp of smoke curled up from the cracked stone resting in Adda's hand.
I held my hands up defensively. "I didn't mean to do that!"
Adda wasn't looking at me. She was staring at the smoking, fractured stone in absolute horror. She slowly looked up, her dark eyes wide, the tough-mechanic persona completely shattered.
"A Dense Sapphire aura," she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the quiet hum of the room. "That color... that density... that's the signature of a Level 40 Harmonized Master. An elite military captain. But that's impossible. Thorek said you were a newly Awakened natural. You don't even have calluses!"
"I am!" I said quickly, pointing a finger at my own eyes to reference the invisible AR screen. "My profile just loaded! It explicitly says I'm only Level 4!"
Adda slowly set the cracked stone down on her desk like it was an unexploded bomb. "Level 4 Ascenders emit a faint white vapor, Noah. They don't generate high-voltage Sapphire plasma that cracks Guild-issued registration stones."
She leaned in, bracing her massive hands on the iron desk, studying me like I was a terrifying new species of Void-Rot. "Your raw power output doesn't match your structural level. You're a walking contradiction."
From the floor, Snow casually hopped back onto the desk, stepping delicately over the smoking crack in the stone.
"I told you we were royalty," she purred in my mind, sitting neatly beside the ruined artifact. "Though, breaking their toys on the first day is a bit tacky, even for you."