Each option gleamed in front of me, pulsing faintly with golden borders. Thousands of them. But the longer I stared, the tighter my jaw clenched.

  No. I didn’t want their templates. I didn’t want a hand-me-down fantasy, already mapped and imagined by someone else. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t this.

  “Can I have a custom option?” I asked. My voice came out steady, somehow.

  The stained glass eye blinked into view above me, riding the spiral like it had always belonged there. Its colours shifted with a grace that made me catch my breath; flames to flowers to sorrow to stormclouds and then it nodded.

  System Notification:

  [Custom Domain Path Unlocked]

  [Seedling Core – Creative License Granted]

  The spiral widened around me, stretching into a tunnel of stars. The air glittered with half-formed code and luminous dust, swirling through the dark like digital pollen. And below it all, I saw the edges of something vast. Empty. Waiting.

  A canvas.My canvas. I tipped forward, weightless, heart thudding. I was falling again, but this time not through fear or grief. This time—I was free.

  “She’s falling into something new,” a thought whispered through my mind. I couldn’t tell if it was mine, or the system’s.

  “Something hers.”

  I opened my eyes. I hadn’t moved, not really but the words left my mouth before I could second-guess them. “I want to make my own high school.”

  The moment the word “high school” left my lips, the black marble beneath me pulsed.

  System Notification:

  [Domain Selection Confirmed – “High School”]

  [Constructing Anchor Environment Based on Core’s Emotional Imprint…]

  The stained glass eye blinked once, colours swirling into a sharp violet spiral and then vanished into nothing. Silence followed, but it was a loud kind of silence, thick with anticipation.

  Then the floor buckled.

  I didn’t fall. I just moved without moving. Space twisted around me like a magician’s scarf trick, unfurling and folding over itself with soft, liquid sounds. The ceiling stretched. The walls curved inward. And the black marble began to melt.

  I backed up instinctively, my bare feet sticking slightly to the glossy surface. It was soft now—breathing. Like warm plastic left in the sun. The room re-formed itself in front of me.

  Not cleanly. Not kindly. Out of the black stone, a single shape began to appear. It started with the desk. That damn desk. Long, wide, with fake wood grain and a drawer that never closed properly. The principal’s desk. My old high school’s principal, Mr. Renner, had sat behind it like a king on a budget throne.

  The word 'Powerlessness' seemed to pulse, and with it, a memory surfaced, sharp and unwanted, dragging me back… I was sixteen.

  There was blood on my shirt—mine. It had soaked through the pale blue cotton in long, ugly streaks, clinging to my skin in sticky, cold patches. My lip was split, thick and throbbing. My nose was still leaking, faintly, a warm red thread I couldn’t even feel anymore, the shock having numbed everything. My legs trembled, not from fear, not anymore, but from the sheer exhaustion of it all. From a rage caged too long, finally breaking free in a messy, ineffective burst.

  They’d jumped me behind the gym. Kiley led it, of course, her red hair a vicious blur in my peripheral vision. Her perfect little court of girls followed her without question, each one a grinning, jeering face in the sudden, tight circle, laughing like it was all a joke, a hilarious prank. But it hadn’t been a joke when I was curled on the asphalt, arms over my head, hearing the dull thuds of boots kicking my ribs. Someone had grabbed my hair, twisted their hand in it, and pulled so hard that a chunk of it came loose from my scalp. I still remembered the dry, awful rip of it, like tearing cheap fabric.

  Then came the real cruelty; dragging me inside, not to the nurse, not for help.

  Dragging me here.

  The principal’s office. That stale, airless room smelled like old paper and fake pine cleaner.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I stood now, sixteen and shaking with the effort of holding myself together, while Kiley dabbed expertly at the corners of her eyes with a tissue, conjuring fake tears like magic. The others flanked her, shoulders slumped just so, looking like sad little actresses in some tragic school play they’d rehearsed perfectly.

  “She attacked us,” Kiley had said, her voice trembling just right, fragile and wronged. “We were just trying to help her. She freaked out.”

  And the principal, Mr. fucking asshole Renner, sat behind that big, fake-wood desk, his eyes already deciding the truth before I even opened my mouth. His expression was already set in that familiar mould of disappointment and weary authority. He sighed a heavy sound that seemed to fill the quiet room. Folded his hands neatly on the blotter.

  “Chloe,” he said, his voice full of that forced, patronizing patience I hated, the kind that made you feel like a difficult child even when you were hurting. “The girls say you lashed out. That you were screaming, violently. That you’ve been unstable lately.”

  He didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't ask about the blood on my shirt. He just repeated their version, already accepted as fact. I didn’t say anything. My voice felt thick with unshed tears and something much harder. What was there to say? The story was already written.

  I just looked at the desk. That goddamn desk. One of the drawers had a sharp nick on the edge from where someone kicked it once. Probably a teacher having a bad day, or maybe another kid who knew exactly how I felt right then. I used to count the chip marks in the veneer while being scolded for skipping class, for being late, for wearing the wrong clothes. It was easier than looking people in the eye and seeing the judgment there.

  My jaw was clenched so tight my teeth hurt, a dull ache echoing the one in my ribs. Blood tickled my chin, warm and sticky. My fists were balled at my sides, nails digging into my palms, small crescents of pain grounding me.

  He didn’t believe me.

  He never did.

  No one ever did.

  And at that moment, standing there bleeding and shaking in the principal’s office, watching Kiley play the victim, I realized something cold and absolute: no one was coming to save me.

  I was back now. Back in my new body, standing before that desk. I could almost hear his voice, “We’re just concerned about your behaviour, Chloe. Your mother said—”

  The walls followed next. Pale green, the sickly institutional kind. A corkboard formed with paper edges curling under the weight of imaginary tacks. Fluorescent lights snapped into place above me, flickering once, then humming with that subtle, awful drone.

  I swallowed. My mouth was dry.

  A single chair sat in front of the desk. The kind moulded for maximum discomfort. And worst of all, behind the desk…

  A black silhouette.

  Featureless, sexless, eyeless. Just a humanoid shape of ink and static slouched in Renner’s seat.

  It didn’t move.

  Didn’t breathe.

  But I knew what it was. Not him, not exactly. Just... a memory of powerlessness. A ghost of discipline, formed from every moment I sat in that office while adults pretended I was the problem.

  My stomach flipped.

  But the thing didn’t speak.

  It just sat there.

  Waiting.

  I took a slow step forward, then another until I stood beside the desk. My desk, now. I could feel it in the room’s bones. It was still twisted and wrong, but it bent to me. This place, it was mine. The lights flickered again. A door with a window, something you would see in a high school movie from the 80s. Looking through the glass I could see a hallway.

  A high school hallway that looped like an Escher painting. Rows of red lockers stretched into the distance, bending upward and back around like gravity didn’t matter anymore. Some were dented. Some were scratched with names I recognized. Others pulsed faintly, like heartbeats behind the metal.

  I reached out to touch the wall beside the window and felt it thrum beneath my fingers. Alive. Like the whole place was breathing with me.

  System Notification:

  [Core Room Assimilation Complete.]

  [Seedling Core: CHLOE’S DOMAIN]

  [Emotional Anchor: Institutional Trauma Recognized]

  [Control Level: 87% – Stabilizing…]

  A slow grin crept across my face before I even realized it.

  This was real. This was happening. And this time, I wasn’t the one waiting to be told what I did wrong. I was the one in the chair. I was the one with the keys. With that thought, the shadow behind the desk shivered once. Then melted into the chair like candle wax, sinking into the me. Gone. I took its place.

  “I guess I’m the principal now,” I muttered. As the shadow became part of me, I could feel my smile grow.

  The desk was warm beneath my hands. A spiral of glowing script danced faintly across its surface, unreadable for now. The corkboard beside me shimmered, half-formed memories trying to coalesce. I saw pieces of them. A hallway fight. A broken locker mirror. A detention slip with my name scrawled on it, over and over.

  They couldn’t hurt me anymore. But maybe… maybe I could use them. That thought crackled in the back of my head like static electricity before a storm.

  System Notification: [Core Attendant Selection Available – Would You Like to Choose Your Dungeon Fairy?]

  I blinked. “Fairy?” I laughed, just once, quick and sharp. “Like the tooth fairy.”

  SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: [Welcome to your Dungeon, Chloe. Your Domain awaits your command.] [Begin construction by selecting an option from the attendant list, also known as the dungeon fairy.]