The morning sun cast long shadows across the Thornwick family's modest fields, but Kael felt no warmth from its rays. At sixteen, he should have been preparing for his Adventurer Aptitude Test like the other young people in Millhaven village. Instead, he struggled to lift a farming hoe that his twelve-year-old sister could handle with ease.
"Kael, you're holding it wrong again," his father Marcus called from across the furrow, barely looking up from his own work. Even at Level 3, Marcus could channel enough earth magic to till a row in minutes. His hands glowed with a faint brown light as he guided the plow, the soil parting before him like water.
Kael gripped the hoe tighter, his thin arms trembling from the effort. No magic flowed through his hands—it never did. The Thornwick family curse ran deep in his veins, that rare condition the village healer called "Mana Deficiency Syndrome." While other sixteen-year-olds boasted of reaching Level 8 or 9, Kael remained stubbornly stuck at Level 1.
"Maybe if you actually tried," muttered his younger brother Tam from the next field over. At fourteen and Level 4, Tam had already surpassed Kael in every meaningful way. "Father, should I take over Kael's section? At this rate, we'll be planting until winter."
Heat flushed Kael's cheeks, but he said nothing. What could he say? That he was trying his hardest? That every morning he woke before dawn to practice the basic enhancement magic that even children could manage? That he'd spent countless hours meditating by the village shrine, begging whatever gods might listen to fix whatever was broken inside him?
"The boy's doing his best," Elena Thornwick's gentle voice carried from the farmhouse porch. His mother's healing magic was weak—barely Level 2—but her faith in Kael never wavered. "Strength comes in many forms."
Tam snorted. "Name one form that matters where Kael's strong."
"That's enough," Marcus said sharply, though his tone carried more exhaustion than anger. How many times had they had this conversation? How many times had Kael's father defended his eldest son while secretly wondering what cruel fate had given him such a defective child?
Kael forced himself to swing the hoe again, ignoring the burning in his shoulders. The simple tool felt impossibly heavy, like it was made of lead instead of wood and iron. Around him, the other family members worked with casual efficiency that came from magical enhancement. Even his mother, with her weak healing magic, could strengthen her body enough to work twice as fast as any normal person.
But Kael was less than normal. He was broken.
"The Whitmore boy got accepted to the academy," Elena mentioned, her voice carefully neutral as she approached with a water bucket. "Eliza just got the letter from the capital."
The bucket might as well have been filled with ice water for how it chilled the conversation. The International Academy for Adventurer Excellence—the most prestigious school in the known world, where heroes were forged and legends were born. Students came from all three kingdoms: Valeria, the Beastland Federation, and the Ironhold Dominion. They trained to fight the monsters that emerged from the abyssal rifts, those tears in reality that had plagued the world for the past decade.
"Good for him," Marcus said, but his eyes found Kael involuntarily. The unspoken comparison hung in the air like morning mist.
Tam set down his own hoe—effortlessly, of course. "Thomas is only Level 9. That's barely above the minimum requirement." He paused meaningfully. "Of course, the minimum is still Level 8."
The words hit Kael like physical blows. Level 8. The absolute lowest level the academy would even consider. Most applicants were Level 10 or higher, with some noble children reaching Level 15 before their sixteenth birthday. And here was Kael, sixteen years old and still Level 1, watching his childhood friends receive acceptance letters while he couldn't even properly hold a farming tool.
"Perhaps," Elena said carefully, "the academy isn't the only path to—"
"What else is there?" Kael's voice came out sharper than he intended. "Stay here and pretend I'm not a burden on the family? Marry some farmer's daughter who'll spend her whole life disappointed? Die fighting a forest slime because I'm too weak to run away properly?"
The silence that followed was deafening. Even the birds seemed to stop singing.
Marcus straightened slowly, setting down his magically-enhanced plow. When he looked at his eldest son, Kael saw something worse than disappointment in his father's eyes—he saw pity.
"Son," Marcus began, his voice gentle but firm, "we've talked about this. The academy is for people with... different gifts. That doesn't make you worthless."
"Doesn't it?" Kael dropped the hoe, his hands shaking—though whether from exhaustion or emotion, he couldn't tell. "Name one thing I'm good at, Father. One thing that matters in this world."
Marcus opened his mouth, then closed it. The hesitation lasted only a second, but it was enough. Even his own father couldn't think of an answer.
"I'm going for a walk," Kael said quietly.
"Kael, wait—" Elena started.
But he was already walking away, heading toward the forest that bordered their property. Behind him, he heard Tam mutter something about dramatic exits, followed by Marcus's sharp rebuke. Kael didn't care. He needed to be alone with his misery, away from the constant reminders of his inadequacy.
The forest welcomed him with cool shadows and the rustle of leaves. Here, at least, no one expected anything from him. Here, his weakness didn't matter because there was no one to disappoint.
He walked deeper into the woods than he'd ever gone before, following an old game trail that wound between massive oak trees. His legs, unenhanced by magic, grew tired quickly, but he pushed on anyway. Maybe if he walked far enough, he could leave his problems behind. Maybe if he disappeared entirely, his family would be better off without their defective son weighing them down.
The thought was darker than he'd intended, and it scared him. Was he really considering...?
No. Even at his lowest, Kael wasn't ready to give up entirely. But the future stretched before him like a barren field—empty, hopeless, and completely out of his control.
He was so lost in his brooding that he almost missed it: a faint glimmer of light from somewhere ahead. Not sunlight filtering through leaves, but something else. Something that seemed to pulse with its own inner radiance.
Curiosity overrode despair, and Kael pushed through a thick stand of bushes toward the light. What he found made him stop dead in his tracks.
In a small clearing, half-buried beneath decades of fallen leaves and twisted roots, lay what appeared to be a crystal. But not just any crystal—this one was the size of his fist, perfectly clear except for the swirling energy that danced within its depths. The light pulsed in rhythm with something Kael couldn't identify, like a heartbeat made visible.
He approached slowly, hardly daring to breathe. The crystal seemed to grow brighter as he drew nearer, as if responding to his presence. When he knelt beside it, the pulsing intensified.
"What are you?" he whispered.
The moment his fingers brushed the crystal's surface, the world exploded into light.
Visions flashed through his mind—images of cosmic forces beyond comprehension, of reality itself being woven into existence by hands he couldn't see. He felt vast intelligences touching his consciousness, beings so powerful that their mere attention should have destroyed his sanity.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the experience ended.
Kael found himself on his hands and knees in the clearing, gasping for breath. The crystal was gone—not destroyed, but somehow absorbed into his body. He could feel it inside him, warm and alive and utterly foreign.
As he struggled to his feet, words appeared in his vision. Not floating in the air, but somehow written directly onto his awareness:
[DIVINE GROWTH SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
[COMPATIBILITY CHECK: COMPLETE]
[USER ACCEPTANCE: CONFIRMED]
[WELCOME, KAEL THORNWICK]
[CURRENT LEVEL: 1]
[FIRST QUEST AVAILABLE]
Kael blinked hard, but the words remained. Either he was having the most vivid hallucination in human history, or something impossible had just happened to him.
"This can't be real," he said aloud.
[QUEST: RETURN HOME SAFELY][REWARD: 50 XP, SYSTEM TUTORIAL][FAILURE CONDITION: NONE][WARNING: TELL NO ONE ABOUT THE SYSTEM]
A quest. Like something out of the adventure stories he'd heard about the academy's training exercises. But those were for real adventurers, people with actual power and purpose. Not for failed farmers with defective bloodlines.
Unless...
Kael looked around the clearing one more time, searching for any sign of the crystal that had changed everything. Finding nothing, he started the long walk home. With each step, the impossible text remained in his vision, a constant reminder that his life had just taken a turn he never could have imagined.
For the first time in years, Kael Thornwick felt something other than despair.
He felt hope.
And though he didn't yet understand what that crystal had been or why it had chosen him, one thing was becoming clear: his story as the weakest, most worthless member of the Thornwick family was finally coming to an end.
What would replace it, he had no idea. But anything had to be better than what he was leaving behind.
As he emerged from the forest and saw his family's modest farmhouse in the distance, Kael allowed himself a small smile. His father and brother were probably still working the fields, enhanced by their magic, accomplishing in minutes what took Kael hours.
But they didn't have a system. They didn't have quests and rewards and the promise of growth beyond natural limits.
For the first time in his life, Kael had something that was uniquely his.
Now he just had to figure out what to do with it.