He woke at 5:40 to the alarm, same as always, and for a few seconds it was just another morning. Then his brain caught up and the date registered and something in his chest went tight.
Sixteen.
Adam sat up and swung his legs off the bed. The apartment was cold — he'd forgotten to set the heating timer last night. Early spring in Kerenth meant the mornings were still cold enough to sting. He could see his breath if he looked for it.
He dressed. Running clothes. Laced his shoes. Went through the front door and hit the pavement while the city was still gray and half-asleep.
Northbank was quiet at this hour. A few delivery trucks. A woman walking a dog that was more fur than animal. The river was a flat mirror reflecting nothing. Adam ran along the bank path, past the old warehouses that had been converted into cafes and studios, past the bridge to the academy district, and up the long hill toward Varen Overlook.
At the top, he stopped. Kerenth spread out below him — the river bisecting the city, the academy's white buildings clustered on the south bank, apartment blocks and shops filling the spaces between. Mountains behind everything, as always. It looked like a postcard. It looked like a place where nothing bad ever happened.
Adam checked his watch. 6:23 AM.
He'd done the research. The Bazaar didn't attach at midnight on your birthday like some fairy tale curse. It happened when you were awake and conscious, usually within the first few hours of the day. The reports from previous years described it differently — some said it was like a door opening in your mind, others said it was more like remembering something you'd always known. A few described pain, but those were outliers.
He didn't know exactly when it would—
It happened.
No sound. No flash. No dramatic moment of transformation. One second Adam was standing on a hilltop watching the sunrise, and the next second there was something in his head that hadn't been there before.
Not a voice. Not a presence. More like... an interface. A layer of awareness sitting on top of his normal consciousness, waiting. Patient. Functional. Like opening your eyes in a room you'd never been in and finding that you already knew where the light switch was.
Adam stood very still.
So that's what it feels like.
He'd read hundreds of first-contact accounts. Forum posts, textbooks from his classes, interviews with veterans. They all described it differently because it was, apparently, a fundamentally personal experience. For Adam, it felt like logging into a system for the first time. A clean dashboard. No notifications. No history. Just potential.
He reached for it — not physically, but with the same mental motion you'd use to recall a word on the tip of your tongue — and the Nexus Bazaar opened.
It wasn't visual, not exactly. His eyes still saw the hilltop, the city below, the mountains. But layered over that, or maybe underneath it, or maybe beside it in a direction that didn't have a name, was the interface. A storefront built from pure information.
Categories lined up like tabs in a browser. Physical Enhancement. Energy Systems. Techniques. Traits. Equipment Blueprints. Utility. Each one expandable. Each one leading deeper.
And next to each ability, each Trait, each technique — a name. A source. A world.
Adam's hands were shaking. He noticed this distantly, the way you notice weather.
He navigated to Energy Systems and expanded the list. Dozens of entries. Energy manipulation frameworks from worlds across the multiverse — some he recognized instantly, others he'd only read about in theory, a few he'd never heard of at all. Each one real. Each one purchasable. Each one a system he'd spent years studying from the outside, watching characters wield on screens and pages, analyzing for fun in a life that felt like someone else's dream.
They were real.
He already knew that, intellectually. Everyone on Earth Prime knew. The Nexus Bazaar had been active for decades. Explorers came back with abilities purchased from these systems. The IEC published reports. It was established fact.
But knowing it as a fact and seeing it listed in your own mind — priced, categorized, waiting for you — were different things entirely.
Adam closed the Energy Systems tab and opened Traits. Scrolled past the generics. Found the subcategory: Bloodlines. The list was long. Ocular abilities, biological enhancements, elemental affinities, transformation types. Some were available at Level 1 — minor stuff, the kind of low-ceiling Traits that gave you an edge in early worlds but plateaued fast. The entries he cared about were further down. Grayed out. Legendary tier. Level-locked behind walls he couldn't access yet.
He tapped one — a biological enhancement package that had been at the center of his build plans since he was thirteen. The full details, the price, the integration requirements, all hidden. Just a name and a single-line description that told him nothing he didn't already know.
That was fine. He had years.
He backed out of Traits and searched for the energy system he'd been thinking about the longest. The one that everything else in his build was designed to complement. Results populated instantly. Legendary. Level-locked. Grayed out, but there. Waiting. Beneath it, individual techniques in their own listings — each locked, each priced, each real. And below those: a custom development category. Unlocked only after the foundation purchase. No preset entries. A blank canvas.
Adam let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
He spent the next twenty minutes standing on that hilltop, systematically going through every category in the Bazaar. Not buying anything — he had zero Nexus Points and wouldn't earn any until he actually went on an expedition. He could go right now if he wanted. The Bazaar didn't care about academies or training programs or whether your aunt thought you were ready. It was a tool. You turned sixteen, it attached, and the multiverse was open for business. What you did with that was your problem.
But Adam wasn't reckless either. The smart play was to finish his final year at Westfall — the expedition practicals, advanced survival scenarios, team deployment exercises. Two years of academy training behind him and one more to go. The academies existed for a reason. Plenty of sixteen-year-olds had rushed in on activation day, drunk on possibility. Most of them didn't come back.
The plan was to finish the year. Then go.
For now: just cataloguing. Confirming. Every ability he'd planned for, every power system he'd analyzed, every sleeper purchase he'd identified in years of mental preparation.
They were all there. Exactly where they should be.
His build wasn't theoretical anymore.
A notification pulsed at the edge of his awareness — gentle, not intrusive. He focused on it.
NEXUS BAZAAR — INITIAL CONNECTION CONFIRMED Explorer: Adam Varen Level: 0 (Pre-Expedition) Nexus Points: 0
Beneath that, smaller:
Expedition deployment available immediately. Ability purchases limited to Level 1 classifications at current tier. Higher-tier abilities visible for planning purposes only.
And beneath that, even smaller, almost easy to miss:
Hub Access: Granted. Trading privileges restricted until first expedition completion.
Adam dismissed the notification. He looked up from the Bazaar — letting the interface settle into the background of his awareness, still there but not demanding attention — and realized the sun had risen fully while he'd been browsing. Kerenth was golden below him. A train was crossing the river bridge, catching the light.
His phone buzzed. A message from Aunt Lena: Happy birthday sweetheart. Call us when you're ready. We love you.
Another from Marc: Happy bday. Did it happen yet? What's it like?
Another from Sophie. Just a single emoji — a little flame. He wasn't sure what it meant, but it made him smile.
He'd call them. In a minute. Right now he wanted to stand here a little longer, on this hill, in this city, in this life that he'd been given without asking and was going to use without apologizing.
Sixteen years old. A clean interface in his mind. Zero Nexus Points and a plan that stretched to Level 8.
The last time he'd been alive, he'd spent thirty years avoiding risk, avoiding conflict, avoiding everything that might hurt. He'd died at his desk with nothing to show for it except clean code and an empty apartment.
Not this time.
Adam turned and jogged back down the hill toward Northbank. He had a phone call to make, a birthday dinner to accept, and a year of academy still ahead of him. The Bazaar was ready. The multiverse was right there. But a year of preparation was supposed to be worth more than a year of head start.
At least, that was the plan.