Rain hammered against the walls outside, a relentless staccato in the dark.

  Vivian placed the short stool before the stove with careful, practiced movements, then bent down and scooped two handfuls of brown rice from the sack beside it. There wasn't much left. Her brother had stolen a silver trinket from the docks last month, and that was all it had bought them—one bag of rough rice. She'd rationed every grain for the past two weeks, counting and recounting, but the sack grew lighter by the day, and so did the knot in her stomach.

  They were running out of food.

  A few more days, and they'd have nothing at all.

  Her eyes burned as she glanced toward the small bed in the corner of their crumbling shack. A young man lay motionless on mildewed bedding, his face pale and still. Her brother hadn't woken up. Not today, not any day this past fortnight. The priestess who'd once shown them kindness seemed to have given up—Bishop Fehr had little interest in spending divine power to save a thief.

  Vivian wiped her tears with the back of her hand and climbed down from the stool.

  She was eight years old, small and underfed. Lighting a fire was still a struggle. She gathered the split wood in both arms, snapped a few branches she'd collected during the day, and fed them into the stove. The afternoon downpour had soaked everything; the wood caught slowly, belching thick, acrid smoke. Her eyes stung and watered, but she puffed out her cheeks and blew until the kindling finally caught. Only then did she rub at her eyes.

  "Brother..."

  "You have to wake up... Vivian misses you so much..."

  "Don't leave me..."

  Tears rolled down her soot-smeared cheeks as she sat by the stove, sobbing quietly. After a while she wiped her face with her palm, leaving two pale streaks across the grime. They'd had salt once, but it ran out last week. She'd tried to steal more, mimicking what her brother used to do, but the fat shopkeeper nearly caught her. His wife had cracked a broom across her back. The bruise still throbbed at the slightest touch, a hot stripe of pain.

  "Woof! Woof!"

  An old dog padded over—black and tawny, stiff in the joints, but still carrying the ghost of what had once been a fine hunting hound. Vivian held out her small hand. The dog came to her side without a sound, looked up at the stove, and let out a low, mournful whine.

  "Hiss."

  She pulled the old dog into her lap. As if reading the hunger in his eyes, she sniffled and stroked his back, murmuring, "There's barely any food left."

  "We have to save it for Brother. I'm hungry too, but... once the rain stops, you can go find something outside."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Am I really that useless?"

  "I can't steal anything. I can't save Brother. All I ever do is cry..."

  The old dog seemed to understand. He pulled his gaze from the stove, licked her palm once, then settled at her feet and closed his clouded eyes.

  Footsteps sounded outside—pausing at the door, accompanied by low voices.

  Hiss's eyes snapped open. In an instant, the decrepit hound was gone, replaced by something feral and dangerous. A vicious growl rumbled from his throat, and he let out a single, sharp bark toward the door.

  "Damn it!"

  "I'll butcher that old mutt and make stew out of him, just you wait!"

  A man's voice, ugly with frustration, then retreating footsteps fading into the rain.

  Some of the terror drained from Vivian's face. She reached out and touched Hiss's head. "If he tries to come in," she whispered, "you bite him."

  "Brother's unconscious. You're the only one who can protect me now."

  The old dog nuzzled against her. Despite his age, there was still something fierce lurking behind those clouded eyes.

  He was a Goras Hound.

  In his prime, he could have brought down a leopard. The folk along the Agate River said his breed descended from the hellhounds of Cerberus himself.

  But he was very old now.

  The scent of rice porridge rose from the stove. Hiss's nose twitched once, then he lay back down.

  Vivian's stomach growled, but she climbed onto the stool, ladled thin porridge into a chipped ceramic bowl, and blew on it gently. Spoonful by careful spoonful, she fed it to the motionless young man on the bed. She was too small and too weak to sit him up, so she could only tip the wooden spoon to his lips and wait.

  "Brother! Eat up—you'll get better once you eat..."

  "Everything's going to be all right."

  Her voice cracked on the last word. Tears came again, and she set down the bowl, climbed off the bed, and went to bar the door.

  This was the Amber City slums.

  A place teeming with thieves, cutthroats, and slavers. A helpless little girl couldn't last long here. If not for Hiss standing guard, someone would have snatched her in broad daylight—a damp rag soaked in sleeping powder pressed over her mouth and nose, then a burlap sack and a quick sale. Girls vanished from these streets all the time. Sometimes grown women, too.

  "Hiss!"

  After her brother had swallowed most of the bowl, Vivian drank the rest in hurried gulps, splashed water on her hands and face, and crawled under the mildewed blanket. She winced as the fabric brushed the welt on her back, let out a small, involuntary sob, then wrapped both arms around her brother's arm.

  "If anyone comes near," she told the dog at the door, "you bark."

  "I know what they want. They think Brother can't protect me anymore, so they want to sell me to that woman—Sossia."

  "They'd get good coin for it."

  She knew too much for a child her age. Sossia was the biggest slaver in the district. She picked out the pretty girls, trained them young, and sent them to the pleasure houses in the upper city.

  An eight-year-old girl simply could not survive in the slums alone.

  Something hard and resolute flickered in Vivian's eyes. She leaned down and kissed her brother's forehead—gently, the way she'd seen mothers do.

  "If anyone's going to sell me," she said quietly, "I'll do it myself."

  "I'll take the money and hire a real cleric. Maybe one who can actually save you."

  She knew what that fate meant.

  Sossia would keep her for a few years, teach her to serve men. If she grew up pretty enough, she'd be gifted to some nobleman. If not, she'd end up in the cheapest brothels in the lower quarter.

  But for her brother, she would do anything.

  He was the only family she had left.

  The clash of steel and screaming erupted somewhere outside.

  Vivian flinched under the blanket. At the door, Hiss rose to his feet, eyes gleaming as he stared down the alley.

  Someone had died out there.

  Death was unremarkable in the slums. Even the clerics of the Dawn Temple couldn't be bothered with the lives lost here.

  Doors slammed shut all along the lane. Bolts scraped home. Vivian scrambled up and wrestled the heavy bar across their own door.

  She'd learned the rhythms of this place over years of watching. When someone died, things always escalated. The fighting would spread. People nearby got caught in it.

  Fear.

  The fear drove her to pull Hiss close and drag him under the bed with her.

  "Hiss."

  She peered out through the gap. Rain-blurred shapes moved in the alley, armed and slashing at each other. Blood pooled in the gutters, only to be washed clean by the downpour.

  The coppery smell of it drifted in through the cracks.

  It was Colen and Savi's gangs, fighting over territory again. Ever since her brother had been struck down by a wizard, the local thieves had torn themselves apart. Every boss from the old days lay dead in the streets now, and the survivors battled endlessly for scraps. No city guard would set foot here. This was Amber City's forgotten corner.

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  They fought over blocks. They fought over children, too—because every gang needed small hands to pick pockets and lift purses. That was how her brother had become a thief in the first place, just to put food in front of her.

  Vivian's memories of her parents were hazy at best.

  She knew her mother had once had a husband—a master thief, by all accounts. He'd taken one last job and never returned. Died somewhere in a wizard's tower.

  From that day on, wizards became the most terrifying thing in her world.

  That man had been her brother's father. Vivian hadn't been born yet, but Soren had told her about him.

  After his death, their mother drifted from city to city with a young Soren in tow, desperate enough to serve drinks at taverns—and whatever else was required of barmaids who needed the coin. Vivian knew what that meant. She understood more than any child should. That life continued until their mother met a mysterious adventurer.

  Soon after, she was pregnant again.

  The adventurer never married her. He kept her like a mistress, nothing more. That man was Vivian's father.

  A powerful professional, they said.

  Hiss had been his companion. Then one day he vanished without a trace.

  Only the old dog stayed.

  Their mother, having lost two men, began to unravel. She fell into a wasting sickness of the soul and eventually died of it.

  Vivian was three.

  Soren was twelve.

  Two children, alone on the streets. Soren fought other boys for scraps of bread. Eventually he joined a gang and learned to steal properly. Only then did their lives find something resembling stability—a roof, a door that locked, a small corner of the chaos they could call their own.

  A piercing scream cut through the rain.

  Vivian shook and buried herself against her brother's chest. Hiss shot to his feet, hackles raised, glaring into the dark.

  Someone else was dead.

  In the slums, that was just another night.

  Vivian clutched the old dog's head, her small body trembling.

  "You'll protect me, right?"

  "Rrruff!"

  The bark startled her—but then she realized Hiss wasn't facing the door. He was barking at the bed. At her brother.

  "Brother...?"

  She spun around. The young man on the bed had opened his eyes. His lips moved, barely.

  Everything she'd been holding—the fear, the loneliness, the weight of these endless days—shattered all at once.

  She threw herself into his arms, and the tears came pouring down.

  Soren opened his eyes.

  For half a month, every attempt had ended the same way—a flood of raw data cascading through his mind, ones and zeros streaming past like a binary waterfall, each surge bringing a splitting agony as though his skull might crack apart. His awareness of his own body was faint, disconnected; his nerves hummed with stray current, his bioelectric field scrambled into white noise. He could hear everything outside. He could feel the small hands feeding him porridge, the warmth of a child pressed against his arm.

  But he couldn't move. Not even a finger.

  No.

  I have to wake up.

  I must wake up.

  He didn't understand why he'd been reborn into this world, but he knew one thing with absolute clarity: the little girl outside was in danger.

  The girl who'd been feeding him and talking to him every day—she was in danger.

  Her name was Vivian. Eight years old. Pale gold hair that fell past her shoulders, and two small dimples when she smiled.

  His half-sister.

  She was also the target of every slaver in the district. They could tell she'd grow into a beauty. A parentless girl whose only protector lay comatose—there was no easier mark.

  This was a world that devoured the weak.

  Over the past two weeks, Soren had heard people trying to break in more than once. If not for the old dog named Hiss, Vivian would already be gone.

  No.

  I will wake up.

  His mind raged, over and over, until even his memories of his previous life blurred. The other Soren—the original owner of this body—was fading too, dissolving into him like ink in water. All that remained was a single, burning imperative: wake up and protect her.

  She was running out of time.

  In his limited perception, he'd overheard two men discussing how to poison Hiss, then sell Vivian to a woman named Sossia.

  It was about to happen.

  If he couldn't wake up, the girl would be lost.

  Darkness.

  Infinite darkness.

  The binary streams still flowed through his mind, and faint currents pulsed through his body. Fragmented memories surfaced—his own, from before—then merged with the blurry recollections of another life.

  The pain was excruciating.

  Through that soul-rending agony, he gradually pieced together what had happened: the rejuvenation pod where the accident occurred, his consciousness already jacked into virtual space. Then another image surfaced—a wizard cloaked entirely in black, pointing a single finger at him. Lightning erupted, and his very soul seemed to shatter.

  Through the haze, a face materialized.

  A young man with dark eyes and flax-colored hair, something raw and unfinished about his features. He reached out a hand, his voice solemn:

  "Protect her."

  "Don't let her get hurt."

  Soren's consciousness dimmed again, and it was like falling into someone else's dream—a whole lifetime compressed into moments, memories that weren't his flooding in.

  Then that presence was gone. Completely.

  Only a name remained. Soren kept it, because he felt the boy deserved at least that much. After all, it was his surrender—his choice to let go—that had allowed Soren to wake.

  His name had been Soren.

  So now, his name was Soren too.

  What he'd been called before no longer mattered. The only thing that mattered was waking up and reaching Vivian before those men did.

  The current still surged through his body. But the endless cascade of ones and zeros was finally slowing, and something settled into place deep within him—a sense of fullness, as if a new force had taken root in his mind, pressing down on the rampaging data and chaotic static, imposing order where there had been none.

  Then a sound like thunder detonated inside his skull.

  Soren opened his eyes.

  A familiar interface materialized before him.

  Name: Soren

  Race: Half-Elf

  Attributes: STR 12 | DEX 19 (+1) | CON 15 | INT 18 (+1) | WIS 15 | CHA 16

  Alignment: Lawful Evil

  Class: Commoner 5 / Rogue 1 [Tier 1]

  HP: 12/12

  XP: 150 (Unallocated)

  Skill Points: None

  Attribute Points: None

  Status: Weakened (Soul Resurrection)

  Class Skills — Stealth 20, Theft 35, Lockpicking 45, Traps 15

  Legendary Skill — Universal Deft Hands [Sealed] (Soul Weakened)

  Personal Feats — Nimble Left Hand, Perfect Recall

  "What... is this?"

  His mind cleared by degrees, and understanding came with it. Before the accident in the rejuvenation pod, he'd been logged into a virtual reality game. That explained the weeks of binary flooding his consciousness—the pod malfunction had dumped the game's data stream directly into his mind. Every time he'd tried to open his eyes, raw code was all he could see. It had taken until now for the data to fully integrate with his brain.

  A moment of stunned silence.

  Then Soren shook it off and forced himself to focus. Could it be? Had his brain actually absorbed the data stream—effectively restructured itself into a biological processor?

  It was worth testing.

  "Allocate 150 experience points to Commoner."

  Warmth flooded through him.

  To his astonishment, sensation returned to his limbs. The parasitic current in his body began to dissipate, replaced by a steady pulse of vitality flowing through his veins.

  Commoner class level raised to 10. Base class maxed.

  Gained 25 Skill Points.

  Soren's heart surged. Everything worked exactly like the game—Battle of the Gods, the virtual world that had taken the Earth Federation by storm. While competing titles still hovered around seventy-five percent realism, Battle of the Gods had boldly claimed a technological breakthrough: one hundred percent immersion. The hype was justified. Millions had flooded in on launch day, Soren among them. He'd even admired the design of the game pods—sleek, fantasy-styled capsules with what looked like a magic circle etched into the base chamber.

  In the era he came from, virtual worlds were more than entertainment. The interstellar age demanded extraordinary minds—people capable of mastering staggeringly complex fields of knowledge. That required enhanced memory, enhanced processing power. Virtual immersion technology had originally been developed to stimulate the right hemisphere through micro-currents, boosting cognitive development by three to ten percent. Essentially, it was early-stage research into turning the human brain into a biological supercomputer.

  Progress was slow and expensive. The cheaper alternative—virtual gaming—eventually took its place, becoming one of civilization's core industries. Research confirmed that realistic virtual environments, especially dangerous and complex ones, could boost right-brain activity by over three hundred percent. The more immersive the simulation, the greater the effect. So before anyone could qualify for skilled work, extensive time in virtual worlds was practically mandatory.

  None of that mattered right now.

  What mattered was that before the accident, Soren had been piloting his legendary rogue through the Shadow Temple, on a heist to steal an epic-tier artifact—one that could grant him a demigod's Divine Rank. He'd already recognized the rogue's limitations at that stage: without divine attributes, he'd be crushed in the coming Divine War.

  His prestige class had reached level 20, and for his legendary skill, he'd chosen the one that made every other player seethe with envy:

  Universal Deft Hands [Legendary Skill]: The legendary rogue possesses supernaturally nimble hands. All profession-related checks receive a +5 bonus. When wielding any weapon, the rogue automatically gains mastery-level proficiency or higher.

  In theory, Universal Deft Hands could manipulate any item—divine treasures, class-restricted weapons, artifacts with impossible prerequisites. A legendary rogue could use them all, effortlessly.

  With virtually no drawbacks.

  Battle of the Gods was brutal about class progression. The Commoner class granted no attribute points on level-up, not even bonus hit points. The only reward was twenty-five skill points. Real growth only came from prestige classes, which awarded one precious attribute point for every two levels gained.

  Sensation crept back slowly.

  When Soren opened his eyes again, morning light filtered through the cracks in the walls.

  Vivian had fallen asleep slumped over the edge of his bed, her small body curled against the frame. She'd been too excited to sleep after he'd opened his eyes last night, fussing over him until the small hours before exhaustion finally claimed her.

  "Ngh—"

  A jolt of pins-and-needles agony. Soren tried to lift one finger, and his whole body seized as if struck by lightning.

  The residual current was still there, and fragments of data still flickered at the edges of his vision. It only deepened his suspicion that his brain had been accidentally restructured into something close to a biological processor. Academic research back home had already proven the human brain could serve as the core architecture for a superintelligent system. Some of the Federation's greatest scientists had donated their brains posthumously for exactly that research.

  Neural chips were built on the same foundation.

  Arcs of electricity danced through his nerves. But as the shock-like pain faded, control returned piece by piece. He sat up, swaying.

  "B-Brother!"

  Vivian's eyes flew open. For one dazed heartbeat she stared at him—then she grabbed his arm with both hands, tears streaming.

  "You're okay! You're finally okay! Vivian was so scared..."

  "There are so many bad people!"

  "They wanted to take Vivian away and sell her!"

  "Th-thank goodness for Hiss... he kept them away..."

  "Hiss...?"

  She turned toward the door, and the words died in her throat.

  She let go of Soren's arm and scrambled to the threshold, throwing herself over the old dog's body. "Hiss? What's wrong? Hiss!"

  "Don't scare me!"

  "Please, please wake up—just bark once, please, I'm begging you—"

  Tears splashed onto tawny fur.

  Vivian sat in the corner, cradling the old dog in her arms. His body was already cold.

  He lay in the doorway, perfectly still.

  As if he were only sleeping.

  His name was Hiss—a Goras Hound, a breed that could face down leopards in its prime. But he was old. So very old.

  From the moment Soren fell unconscious, Hiss had not left Vivian's side. He had stood guard at that door every night, snarling away anyone who came too close. For two weeks straight, he hadn't truly rested—because during that time, he was the only thing standing between the girl and the darkness outside.

  He was exhausted. He was starving. There was barely enough food for Vivian, let alone him. He'd resorted to hunting rats in the alleys—vermin he would have scorned in better days. But his old body could barely catch them anymore. Most nights he went hungry, sustained by nothing but the ancient, stubborn instinct to protect.

  And now Soren was awake.

  His duty was done.

  He was old—truly, deeply old—and so he lay down at the door one last time, and slept.

  He would not wake again.