Great. I’m the weird one here. In a village of half-naked people.

"You mentioned a dungeon earlier." Kalina was mentally sorting her questions by priority the way she sorted business proposals at Anaton. Most urgent first. "And a system that gives classes and skills. Can anyone pick any class?"

"No. The system generates class options based on what you’ve done and what you’re suited for." He kicked a small stone off the path while he walked. "I got something called Magician of Love which sounds ridiculous but it’s actually useful for-" He stopped mid-sentence and grinned. "Actually I’ll save that explanation. Just know that classes are locked until the system decides you’re ready."

"Magician of Love." She repeated it with a flat voice.

"Don’t. I know."

"Magician. Of Love."

"I said don’t."

This explains everything about his personality.

..

Eren stopped walking and looked at his own hand for a moment, flexing his fingers like he was checking something internal. He closed his eyes for two seconds then opened them.

"My mana’s full enough." He held his hand out to her. "Come on. Let’s go see your stats."

She took his hand and he led her toward the small tree in the center clearing. Up close the Totem was more interesting than it looked from a distance. The bark had a faint warmth to it even though the night air was cool, like sun-heated stone that hadn’t released all its heat yet. The thin branches above them swayed in a breeze she couldn’t feel and the leaves caught the Koen vine light from surrounding buildings in a way that made them shimmer like wet glass.

A small tree holding an entire village’s survival in its roots and it looked like something you’d walk past in a park without noticing.

"Put your palm on the trunk." Eren tapped the bark. "And just wait."

Kalina pressed her right hand flat against the bark.

It was warm and smooth and for a second nothing happened. She could hear her own heartbeat and Eren’s breathing and the insects in the distant tree line. Then the bark pulsed once under her palm like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers and the whisper came back. The same voice from the forest when she’d killed the slime but louder and clearer this time, like hearing someone speak through a wall.

It lasted two seconds and then her vision flickered.

Something appeared inside her field of vision. Not on a phone or a monitor or any surface she could point at but hovering directly inside her eyes like a heads-up display from a video game. Transparent blue text floating against the dark village behind it.

/ - 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Name: Kalina Ferraro

Level: 1 | Mana: 10

Race: Humanoid

Title: None

Class: Locked Genetic Heritage: You have no extra inheritances!

Energy Type: Biological

Current Physical Details;

/ Usable Evon Stat Points: 1

Strength: 5

Perception: 6

Endurance: 4

Intelligence: 9

Agility: 4

Mana: 1

Charisma: 6

Luck: 8

/ -

She stared at the floating blue text for ten full seconds without breathing.

I have numbers. Actual numbers assigned to my body huh.

This is seriously interesting. It like the video games my little brother used to play on that game console.

"What do you see?" Eren was watching her face with a grin he wasn’t even trying to hide.

"I’m Level 1." Her voice came out quieter than she intended. "Intelligence nine. Luck eight. Everything else is... between four and six."

"Intelligence nine is actually really high for base stats." He leaned against the tree with his arms crossed. "Average human baseline is around five to seven so you’re already above average in the thing that matters most for strategy and planning. And Luck eight? That’s higher than mine was when I started."

"I have one stat point to spend."

"Yeah you get one every time you level up. Put it wherever you want but I’d think about it before deciding." He tilted his head. "You’re a business person. You know better than anyone that investing in your strongest asset beats spreading thin."

Her instinct said Intelligence. It was already her highest stat and she hadn’t survived five years of corporate warfare at Anaton by being average at thinking. But something about the Luck stat caught her eye. Eight was already high and Eren had mentioned once during their business meetings that luck seemed to affect everything in subtle ways you couldn’t track.

She didn’t allocate it yet. She pulled her hand away from the tree and the display faded slowly from her vision.

I manage investment portfolios worth millions of dollars. I can take five minutes before spending a single stat point on my own body.

"You said you started at similar numbers." She turned to face him. "And now you’re over sixty in most stats. How long did that take?"

"About three and a half months. But I had advantages you don’t." He pulled a small crystal from his pocket and held it up between two fingers. It was dark red and about the size of a walnut and it pulsed with a faint inner light like a tiny heartbeat. "The dungeon, the constant monster attacks, a class that boosted my Charisma to insane levels. And this - this is a Dungeon Heart fragment. It stores mana separately from my body’s own mana pool. When I use Door Master to open a portal it drains all of my personal mana so to get back home I need this crystal to be charged too."

"Wait." She looked at the crystal and then at him. "So every time you open a portal you’re completely drained? If something attacked you right after opening a door you’d have no mana to fight with?"

"For about thirty seconds to a minute yeah. No mana, no mana-based skills." He tossed the crystal in the air casually and caught it. "I still have all the physical stuff though."

He tossed it again like it was a coin. And again.

Kalina watched the tiny crystal - the single object that connected two entire worlds and kept them from being permanently stranded on an alien planet - flip up and down in his hand like a toy.

He tossed it a third time and she grabbed his wrist mid-toss. Pinched the skin on his forearm hard enough to leave a mark. The crystal landed in his other palm and his face contorted.

"Ow! What-"

"Be more careful with that!" She snatched the crystal from his hand and held it in both palms like it was made of glass. "If you drop it and it cracks we’re both stuck on a different planet with dragons and wolves and no way home! Are you insane?!"

Eren rubbed his forearm and that stupid confident smile appeared on his face. The grin that didn’t exist when he was her employee. The one that said he’d already calculated the odds and decided they were in his favor.

"I can’t drop it. My reflexes literally won’t let me." He flexed his fingers. "I could juggle that thing blindfolded while running. My reaction speed is like two and a half times faster than a normal person’s and my coordination skills handle the rest automatically."

She pinched him again on the same spot and he laughed and didn’t even flinch. She reluctantly placed the crystal back in his palm and watched him pocket it.

"..still insane," she muttered.

"The skill has limits though," he continued as they started walking again. "Places I’ve been before are easy. The portal snaps to the location almost perfectly. But if the exact spot I’m targeting is blocked or there’s something alive standing right where I’m aiming it shifts randomly to somewhere nearby. Could be a few meters off or a whole street over."

"What about problematic locations? Buildings, crowded areas?"

"If the location is a problem the skill just picks the nearest safe spot." He stepped over a root in the path. "I’ve tested it dozens of times over the last three months. It’s reliable for anywhere I’ve physically been before."

"What about here? Can you open directly into the village center?"

"No and that’s actually one of the weird rules." He glanced back at the small tree behind them. "The Totem’s barrier blocks incoming portals completely. I can walk through the barrier on foot, no problem. Every time I come to Evon I open a door outside the barrier and just walk in. But I can’t teleport past it."

"But you opened a portal near Emily’s house earlier."

"Emily’s house is on the outer part of the village, far enough from center that the barrier doesn’t reach it. That’s why I could bring you in from there this afternoon." He paused. "Going outward is easy though. Inside to outside, zero resistance. I can open a portal from the village center to anywhere I want. It’s just incoming that gets blocked."

So there are rules. It’s not unlimited and the rules don’t even fully make sense yet.

"And the barrier is..."

"Weakening." Eren’s voice changed when he said it. Not dramatic or scared but flat in a way that told her he’d already processed the fear and moved past it into planning. "Every month the field shrinks a little bit. Three months ago I couldn’t open a portal within two hundred meters of the village center. Now I can get within a hundred. The protection ring that saved everyone during the dragon attack held but I don’t know how many more hits it can take."

He stopped walking and turned to face the Totem from across the square. The small tree stood there in the dark with its branches catching the faint amber glow of the surrounding vines and it looked peaceful and fragile.

"The Totem is dying Kalina. And when it goes this village loses its connection to the Evon System and its only defense against the things in that forest. The monsters, the dragon, all of it." He looked at her. "That’s why I need to move everything valuable to Earth before it happens."

She looked back at the tree. She thought about the pulse she’d felt under the bark when she’d touched it and how it had felt less like wood and more like something with a heartbeat that was getting slower.

"We need to go." Eren held up the crystal. "Both are charged. Me and the crystal. Ready?"

"How do I know you have enough mana to get us back?"

He looked at her with something close to appreciation. "I can feel it. Mana fills up naturally over time when you’re in Evon and faster near the Totem. Right now I have enough for one portal and the crystal has enough stored for a second one if I need it."

He raised his hand and focused.

"Door Master," he said quietly.

The air about two meters in front of them bent and twisted like heat haze over asphalt in summer. A door-shaped shimmer materialized with a faint blue glow around the edges and through the opening Kalina could see a dark street with trees and parked cars and yellow streetlights.

Earth.

They stepped through together and the portal closed behind them with a soft sound like someone shutting a book.

The air hit her first. Cooler and it smelled like exhaust and wet asphalt. Somewhere nearby a dog was barking and a television was playing behind someone’s window. Normal sounds. Earth sounds.

Kalina looked around and recognized the street almost immediately. She knew these trees and this sidewalk and those garden walls with the iron gates and the specific crack in the pavement near the third house from the corner.

"This is my neighborhood." She turned to Eren. "We’re two streets from my house."

He scratched behind his ear. "I dropped you off here once or twice with the company car back when I worked for you. The skill remembers locations I’ve been to."

She smiled at that. The memory of him driving her home in the black Anaton company sedan while she barked orders at him from the passenger seat about tomorrow’s meeting felt like it belonged to a completely different life. A version of Kalina Ferraro that didn’t have a stat screen and a slime kill and a portal-jumping boyfriend.

They walked together through the quiet streets lined with garden houses and old plane trees. The neighborhood was upper-middle-class Istanbul at its most manicured, with well-maintained facades and expensive cars in driveways.

Eren walked with his hands in his pockets and his eyes scanning the street out of habit. "When we get back to this side permanently I need to sort out the elf situation fast. IDs, housing, income sources. The business with you was the start but the dragon burned all the orchards so the fruit supply is gone. We need a completely new model."

"You need a corporate structure." Kalina’s brain switched gears instantly. She couldn’t help it and it felt good to be the expert again after spending an afternoon being the clueless newcomer. "A holding company registered offshore, maybe Malta or the Netherlands, that owns a Turkish subsidiary. The elves get employment contracts through the subsidiary which gives them legal work permit applications. You don’t need fake IDs at all. You need a labor import framework with-"

"Wait, that’s actually legal?"

"Completely legal if you structure it correctly." She was talking fast now with her hands moving the way they did during presentations. "I’ve done similar setups for international manufacturing clients. The holding company owns the IP for the products and the Turkish subsidiary handles local operations and employment. Workers get residence permits tied to their contracts."

She could feel the old Kalina kicking in. Anaton Department Manager Kalina. The one who made three executives cry in a single quarterly review.

"The fruit business was small time. If we’re housing two hundred people we need real revenue streams. Export licensing for the unique agricultural products, consulting fees, maybe even a research subsidiary if the medical applications of those plants check out."

Eren was looking at her like he was seeing her properly for the first time. Not the jealous woman or the beautiful face but the actual brain she was. The asset.

"You’re scary when you do this." He meant it as a compliment.

"You haven’t seen scary yet. Wait until I put together the tax strategy."

She was mid-sentence about double taxation treaty benefits between Malta and Turkey when she turned the corner and froze.

Her family’s house was right there. The garden gate was ajar and the balcony light was on and sitting outside with tea glasses and cigarettes and what looked like a tray of baklava were her mother, her uncle Giorgio, her aunt Defne, at least two of her cousins and someone who was definitely her grandfather in his usual chair at the corner of the balcony.

The entire Ferraro-Yılmaz extended family having their regular after-dinner session on a weekday evening. Like they did every single time anyone visited.

Eren noticed them at the same moment. "Your family is on the-"

"I can see them!" she hissed through her teeth and grabbed his arm and yanked him behind the thick trunk of a plane tree near the garden wall. Her back pressed against the bark and she dragged him in next to her with a strength that surprised both of them.

Her heart was hammering against her ribs. Not from the portal or the dragons or the stat screen but from the very real and very immediate threat of her mother seeing her walk home at ten pm with a man.

"Dear, Welcome!" Her mother’s voice floated down from the balcony. She must have heard the gate or the heels clicking on the pavement. The woman had some kind of maternal radar that operated through walls.

Kalina’s whole body went rigid. She turned to Eren and pinched his arm so hard he nearly yelped.

"What did I do?!" he whispered.

"Everything!" She puffed her cheeks out and glared at him with a look that had zero actual anger in it and all the panic of a thirty-year-old woman whose entire extended family was about to see her coming home at night with a strange man.

Her mother would have questions. Her uncle would have opinions or worse joke about it. Her grandfather would just sit in front her and laugh, which was somehow worse than actual verbal jokes.

And if any of them saw Eren’s face - because he looked like a model now with his half-elf jawline and those stupid shoulders - the matchmaking machine would activate at a speed that would make the Evon monsters look slow.

They would try to marry her to a "successful" person immediately because Eren’s danger was too much.

"Go." She pushed his chest with both hands. "Now."

"But I-"

"NOW!"

She shoved him toward the narrow alley behind the garden wall and he stumbled around the corner and caught his balance.