Chapter 1: The Price of a Cold Soda

The fluorescent lights of Quick-Stop Mart buzzed overhead like dying insects, casting everything in that particular shade of retail purgatory that made Arthur Tala'thel's eyes water. He'd been staring at the same inventory sheet for the past twenty minutes, his pen hovering over boxes of energy drinks and convenience store sushi that nobody in their right mind would actually eat.

112 years old, he thought bitterly, and this is what I've become.

The uniform—a polyester nightmare in corporate blue and gray—hung loose on his tall, lanky frame. His supervisor had ordered it in human sizes, never bothering to ask if elves might need different measurements. Not that anyone knew he was an elf. The pointed ears were easy enough to hide under his long, raven-black hair, which he kept tied back in a messy bun that would have horrified his former clan-mates. The silver eyes were harder to disguise, but humans rarely looked close enough to notice they held depths that spoke of decades beyond his apparent late twenties.

The bell above the door chimed—that same cheerful ding-dong that had been grinding away at his sanity for the past three months. Arthur didn't look up. At 2:47 AM on a Tuesday, it was probably just another drunk college student looking for overpriced snacks and energy drinks.

"Welcome to Quick-Stop," he recited without enthusiasm, still focused on his clipboard. "Everything's exactly where you'd expect it to be."

No response. That was... unusual. Even the drunkest customers usually managed a grunt of acknowledgment.

Arthur finally raised his head and felt his breath catch in his throat.

The man standing just inside the doorway was pale—not human-pale, but the kind of bloodless white that spoke of serious injury or shock. His expensive suit was torn in several places, and dark stains that definitely weren't coffee spread across his shirt. But it wasn't the blood that made Arthur's ancient instincts suddenly scream warnings.

It was the way the shadows around the man seemed to move.

"Help," the stranger whispered, stumbling forward. "Please, they're—"

The lights went out.

Emergency lighting kicked in a second later, bathing everything in hellish red. Through the windows, Arthur could see that the entire block had gone dark. But that wasn't what made his hands shake as he reached for the phone behind the counter.

The shadows were still moving.

They poured through the doorway like liquid darkness, coalescing into something that hurt to look at directly. Arthur's elvish heritage, dormant for so long he'd almost forgotten it existed, suddenly roared to life. Every magical sense he'd spent decades suppressing screamed that this thing was wrong—an absence where something should exist, a hole in reality shaped like hunger.

The wounded man collapsed against a display of candy bars, sending Snickers and Kit-Kats scattering across the linoleum. "Don't let it... don't let it take me back to—"

The shadow-thing made a sound like wind through a graveyard, and suddenly Arthur remembered why he'd wanted to be a healer all those years ago, before his clan had cast him out for pursuing "lesser human knowledge" over traditional elvish magic.

Because someone has to help.

He vaulted over the counter, his long legs carrying him to the stranger's side in three quick strides. Up close, he could see that the man's injuries were severe—deep gashes that looked like claw marks, and something else, something that made Arthur's skin crawl. The wounds were wrong, edges shimmering with an oily darkness that seemed to eat light.

"It's okay," Arthur said, pressing his hands against the worst of the bleeding. "I've got medical training, I can—"

The shadow-creature lunged.

Arthur threw himself sideways, pulling the wounded man with him. They crashed into a rack of chips, sending bags of Doritos flying. The creature's passage left frost on the air and the acrid smell of ozone.

"You cannot run from the Collective," it spoke, voice like breaking glass. "The asset will be retrieved."

Asset? Arthur didn't have time to process that. The thing was turning, flowing like smoke toward them again. In desperation, he grabbed the first thing his fingers found—a can of soda that had rolled off the shelf.

"Hey!" he shouted, hurling the Coke at the creature's center mass. "Pick on someone your own—"

The can passed right through it. The shadow-thing laughed, a sound like children crying in an empty house.

Arthur felt something he hadn't experienced in decades—not since the day his clan's elders had told him his dreams of healing were "a corruption of true elvish nature." It was the familiar burn of righteous anger, the fury that came from watching someone hurt the helpless.

Without thinking, he stepped between the creature and the wounded man.

"No," he said simply.

The shadow-thing paused, something like curiosity rippling through its form. "Interesting. There is something... old about you, convenience store elf. Something that remembers better days."

Arthur's blood went cold. It could see through his disguise.

"But age without power is just prolonged death," the creature continued, gathering itself like a wave preparing to crash. "Step aside, or join your patient in dissolution."

Arthur could have moved. Should have moved. Any sane person would have run screaming into the night. But as he looked down at the stranger—barely breathing now, life ebbing out through wounds no normal medicine could treat—he thought about all the people he'd wanted to save and couldn't. All the patients he'd watched die during his abbreviated medical training because the human treatments he'd learned weren't enough, and the elvish healing arts had been forbidden to him.

He thought about spending eternity stocking energy drinks and wondering what might have been.

"No," he said again, and meant it.

The shadow-creature struck.

Pain exploded through Arthur's chest as claws of living darkness tore through his uniform, his skin, his ribs. He looked down in shock to see his own blood spreading across the gray polyester, felt his knees buckle as his life poured out onto the Quick-Stop's grimy floor.

The wounded stranger was trying to say something, reaching toward him with trembling fingers, but Arthur's vision was already going dark around the edges. He was dying. After 112 years of life, he was going to die on the floor of a convenience store, having saved no one.

Well, he thought as consciousness began to slip away, at least I tried.

The last thing he heard before the darkness took him was a voice—not the shadow-creature's glass-shard whisper, but something else. Something vast and patient and unutterably sad.

Would you like to try again?

Arthur's eyes snapped open.

He was lying on his back, staring up at the buzzing fluorescent lights. The emergency lighting was gone; normal power had been restored. There was no blood on his uniform, no gaping wounds in his chest. But there was something else—a warmth spreading across the back of his right hand, accompanied by a gentle golden glow.

Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, Arthur sat up and looked around. The Quick-Stop was exactly as it had been before the shadow-creature arrived. Candy bars were neatly arranged in their display. No bags of chips littered the floor. The wounded stranger was gone.

Had it all been a dream? Some kind of stress-induced hallucination brought on by too many late shifts and convenience store coffee?

Then he looked at his hand.

A symbol was etched into his skin just below his knuckles—geometric lines that seemed to shift and pulse with their own inner light. It was beautiful and alien and definitely not something that had been there an hour ago.

As he stared at it, words began to appear in his vision, floating in the air like a computer interface made of golden light:

DIVINE SYSTEM INTERFACE ACTIVATED

WELCOME, CHAMPION

CLASS: CLERIC

PATRON: THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS

LEVEL: 1

STATUS: NEWLY AWAKENED

QUEST AVAILABLE: DISCOVER YOUR PURPOSE

Arthur blinked hard, but the text remained. He waved his hand through it experimentally—the letters rippled like water but didn't disappear.

"What the hell..." he whispered.

LANGUAGE, CHAMPION. SOME THINGS ARE STILL SACRED.

Despite everything—the impossible interface, the glowing symbol, the fact that he'd apparently just been resurrected by what claimed to be a god—Arthur found himself laughing. It was a sound he hadn't made in months, maybe years.

He was alive. More than alive—he could feel power thrumming through his veins, a warmth that had nothing to do with the store's inadequate heating system. For the first time since his exile from the elvish enclaves, he felt like he might actually be able to help someone.

The bell above the door chimed again.

Arthur looked up to see a broad-shouldered dwarf in a rumpled trench coat step inside, sharp eyes immediately scanning the store with professional interest. There was something about the way he moved—careful, alert, like someone who'd seen too much and expected trouble around every corner.

The dwarf's gaze settled on Arthur, took in the glowing symbol on his hand, and his weathered face split into what might have been a grin.

"Well, well," he said in a voice like gravel mixed with whiskey. "Looks like tonight just got a lot more interesting."

Arthur had the distinct feeling his days behind the Quick-Stop counter were over.

He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

QUEST COMPLETED: SURVIVE

REWARD: DIVINE RESURRECTION

NEW QUEST AVAILABLE: MEET YOUR MENTOR

The golden text pulsed gently, waiting for his response.

Arthur looked at the dwarf, who was now casually examining a display of beef jerky while keeping one eye on the door, and made his choice.

"Welcome to Quick-Stop," he said, his voice steadier than he felt. "I have a feeling you're not here for the snacks."

The dwarf's grin widened. "Smart lad. Name's Kael Bronzebeard, and we need to talk."