The system window hovered in front of Ezra like a held breath.

  He didn’t have to read the words to know them.

  Level 10 reached.

  On cue, another line unfurled beneath it.

  Race Reroll Available

  [Accept] / [Decline]

  Everyone took the reroll. It was one of the few times the System handed a genuine choice: preview the lineage, accept if it suited your path, decline and walk away unchanged. If the result was a labor-class bloodline or a cursed beast strain, you declined. No penalty. No risk. Practicality had taught people to treat it as insurance.

  Ezra tapped Accept.

  The interface hummed.

  Analyzing compatibility… Calculating lineage probability…

  A single pulse of blue light, then a pause—long enough that it tasted wrong.

  Before he could decide why the delay felt like a fault, a new window ripped forward, harsh and sudden.

  ? SYSTEM ERROR

  Lineage Conflict Detected

  Errors were not supposed to happen here. The reroll was a sandboxed, predictable process. Ezra could feel the air where the System had always been steady; now it stuttered.

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  The text on the display broke, then resolved.

  Race Result:

  …Hybrid Origin…

  The moment those two words locked into place, the interface convulsed. Red alarms blossomed across the panel.

  ? STATUS ERROR

  Stability: UNSTABLE

  The confirmation buttons dissolved. Wherever the accept/decline had been, there was only blank space. Windows multiplied and stacked themselves into a chaotic, unreadable mass.

  ? SUCCESSION PATH — ERROR

  Data Unavailable

  ? AWAKENING — ERROR

  Access Denied

  ? SYSTEM WARNING

  Race Tier Exceeds Permission Level

  The familiar blue bled into crimson. Ezra’s stomach did a slow, cold twist. Something old and raw pressed against the edges of his mind—instincts that carried the memory of teeth and night and hunger. Awareness sharpened until the world felt painfully close: scents, distances, a territorial geometry he hadn’t known he possessed.

  Two ancient currents swam against each other inside him. Neither surrendered.

  A white-hot pain lanced through his ribs as the System fractured around those incompatible lines. The windows on the display fractured like glass and vanished altogether.

  Connection lost.

  He fell. First his knees, then his hands, then the air leaving him in a ragged, uneven rush. The pain ebbed, leaving exhaustion that shook through his limbs.

  There was no confirmation. No polite option to decline. No orderly succession. The System had made its decision for him — and in doing so, revealed something it seemed to have been designed to deny.

  When the interface returned later, it was stripped and cautious, as if pretending nothing had happened.

  [Status Window]

  Name: Ezra

  Class: None

  Race: Human

  Level: 10

  Strength: 6

  Vitality: 7

  Endurance: 6

  Agility: 8

  Intelligence: 14

  Mana: 9

  Race: ???