The level of exhaustion in the room was palpable.
Holo?maps papered every wall, each a translucent layer of New York stacked over each other. Staff moved in clean, practiced lines from console to console, the kind of quiet panic that only happened when people had been overworked long enough to stop yelling.
Somewhere, an overburdened coffee machine wailed.
Li Wei stood at the central table, neck bent as he rubbed the back of it with one hand, the other cupping a mug that smelled more of despair than caffeine. Thin red lines traced across a floating ledger beside him, updating in real time—Area 003’s incident load graph crawling steadily skyward.
A security guard cleared his throat from the doorway.
“Commander Li. Your guests.”
Li Wei looked up, already mid?sigh.
Two gremlins stood just inside the threshold: Chewie in her scuffed riding boots, school bag slung over one shoulder, and Eathan in his usual COZMART hoodie, dark circles, and barely disguised anxiety.
“So, about that message on ‘something urgent,’” Li Wei said. His voice was hoarse at the edges. “Please tell me you’re here with an actually relevant problem. Like the world ending a little less than last week.”
Eathan and Chewie exchanged a look, then the latter straightened.
“Commander Li,” Eathan began solemnly. “As my temporary guardian of record, you have a moral and legal duty to take responsibility for my growth.”
“He practiced that line,” Chewie added.
Li Wei blinked once. “...Hah?”
“I mean,” Eathan pushed on, “Mister White personally entrusted me to Area 003 ‘if anything happens’, right?” His throat tightened briefly around the words. “‘Anything’ has now happened. And is currently still happening. Next time the world goes sideways, I don’t want to be dead weight.”
The war room was silent as the intern talked.
“It feels like I’ve always just been babysat for everything. Next time, I want to be something you can actually plan around. So I’m here to file a formal request for…”
Eathan spread his hands.
“I don’t know. An upgrade plan?”
The security guard at the door stared at him like he’d grown extra limbs. Li Wei’s gaze slid from Eathan to Chewie, there and back.
“Did you put him up to this?” he asked.
Chewie sniffed. “No. This is all his terrible phrasing.”
Li Wei closed his eyes for a solid three seconds, pinched the bridge of his nose, and exhaled.
“Of course it is,” he muttered. He glanced at the guard. “Everyone, out. And postpone the liaison briefing thirty minutes.”
“Sir, the UMC—”
“Thirty minutes,” he said, not loudly, just final.
The guard saluted and vanished, clearly relieved to escape whatever this was.
Li Wei grabbed his coffee, jerked his head toward the main display. “Fine. Since you’ve come all this way to complain about your own stats, we’ll make it useful. Over here.”
They followed him from the busy conference room to an empty one that had the biggest holo?screen. The door closed behind him, trapping the three in silence.
Li Wei snapped his fingers; the war?map shrank and slid aside. In its place, HeavenOS blinked awake in gold and white. Eathan’s eyes widened at the running script. Those were his latest [SYSTEM] stats—the ones he’d submitted after closing Rift L-4312.
A mission log slid beneath, compact lines of nightmare scenarios and bureaucratic labels.
Li Wei’s eyes flicked over the data fast enough to give a mortal whiplash.
“Hm,” he said.
“Hm good, or hm ‘we should recycle him for parts’?” Chewie asked.
“Right now,” Li Wei said, tapping a column as he peered towards Eathan, “your build is a fragile high?performance prototype.”
He enlarged three bars with a flick of his fingers.
“Fast,” tap on [Agility], “sharp,” tap on [Intelligence], “and very easy to explode.”
Chewie snorted.
“Huh,” Eathan said weakly. “I feel so seen.”
Li Wei ignored the commentary, switching into a cadence that sounded like an overworked engineer doing a code review.
“High [Agility] and [Intelligence] versus relatively lagging [Strength]—good for support roles, bad for getting body?checked by reality. [Integrity] at 67%: plenty of divine throughput. [Humanity] hovering around fifty percent…”
He turned his head slightly.
“You are running two operating systems on one piece of hardware. One of them is legacy god?ware.”
“Legacy.” Eathan winced.
“In technical terms,” Li Wei concluded, “you are a glass cannon bolted onto another glass cannon. It works, but if someone sneezes too hard, both shatter.”
Chewie choked on her own laugh.
Li Wei swiped, pulling up a simple bar chart that sliced Qi Tokens into three neat colour blocks.
“First problem,” he said. “You treat Qi Tokens like spare change instead of a budget.”
He labelled sections with brisk strokes.
“It’s called strategic reserve.” The block glowed. “30-40% of your Qi Tokens should be untouchable except in near?death situations. If you dip into this for anything below a Class?A rift, we might as well retire all together.”
“Knew I needed better budgeting skills,” Eathan muttered.
“Speaking of budgeting—you also need long?term stat increases and skill level?ups. But we schedule these,” Li Wei said. “You do not impulse?buy them mid?fight because something ‘felt right.’”
He flicked the block.
“You’ll log expenditure after each mission. If your operational spend goes over threshold, you cool down. You run COZMART shifts and do admin errands until the curve stabilizes.”
“If he impulse?spends, I propose punishment via assignation to COZMART’s backroom cleaning duty.” Chewie shot her hand up.
“Sure,” Li Wei said. “Negative reinforcement.”
Eathan stared between them. “I didn’t come here to be bullied.”
Chewie looked at him smugly. Li Wei dismissed the chart and brought the skill tree forward; each icon pulsed like a node in a network diagram.
“And skills,” he said. “Right now your power distribution is… theatrical.”
Chewie snickered, and Eathan shot her a look.
“Barcode scanner tool is flashy,” Li Wei said, highlighting it. “Your other skills should be the focus for the next few months. Like [Minor Reconstitution]—it keeps people alive. They should all be at comparable levels.”
The skill icon obligingly flashed, appending a little [TARGETS] line. On the holo, a little array rotated into existence as he spoke—a four?point grid, labelled “CASE STUDY #1527.”
“For example,” Li Wei said, “[Ledger Tap]. You currently use it like a glorified notification ping.”
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Eathan grimaced. “Was it that obvious?”
“Bring it up a notch,” Li Wei said. “That gets you localized incident feeds and karmic trend subscriptions. Especially important if you’ll be walking into unfamiliar terrain in future—we want you to know what ‘normal’ looks like so you can spot anomalies before they start chewing on you.”
“Yummy,” said Chewie.
“Node Imprint,” he went on. “Your home?court advantage skill. Also underused. If you train this skill, you can turn COZMART, a subway station, or a rooftop into a rigged board before anything shows up. That buys you control. Control keeps you alive.”
He tapped the holographic floor plan; the map blossomed like fireworks.
“In practice,” he continued, swapping to a more generic city intersection, “[Ledger Tap] into local incident drift so you know which anchor is under the most strain. Then you use [Receipt Printer] to throw a short, two?step stabilizer onto that anchor—one to bind, another to purify, for example. Don’t waste resources on fireworks if a stiff breeze will do.”
Eathan stared. “You… thought about all this already?”
Li Wei gave him a look. “I’m not Foxfire,” he said. “You think I read Area 001 reports for gossip?”
He flicked to a log line. The Commander’s Nightmare entry expanded: [UNAUTHORIZED TRANSFORMATION – HOST: LIN, EATHAN].
“Judging by the Games’ replay, you’d improvised a close-to-complete Qilin takeover in the White Tiger’s nightmare,” Li Wei said. “Risky, but an extremely valuable last resort. I’ve had six weeks to think about how to make that survivable.”
Chewie muttered, “He probably had a spreadsheet for it.”
“I do,” Li Wei said, unashamed.
He dismissed the profile and pulled up another panel: [DORMANCY PROTOCOL – AREA 001]. A timer ticked in the corner.
“Dormancy,” he said. “We’re at Day 65 of the extended lock. The Cloud?Jade Ledger expects an outcome by Day 365.” He tapped the counter. “That gives us exactly 300 days to prepare for whatever comes next with Bai Hu and Area 001.”
He let that hang for a breath.
“That’s your window, intern.”
Eathan’s throat felt dry. “No pressure.”
“You wanted to grow stronger,” Li Wei said briskly, sliding another screen in. “So we’ll train you exactly as you wish.”
Headers appeared in clean script, accompanied by a jam-packed schedule that busied Eathan’s eyes.
“From now on,” Li Wei said. “You’ll be a part of Area 001’s Urban Response Team. You’ll partake in weekly scheduled shifts with our field crews, as well as different captains.”
“Experience building.” Chewie nodded along. “Ideal for character development.”
Ignoring the eleven-year-old’s commentary, Li Wei tapped into the final header, and it expanded across the holographic screen.
“Equally importantly—[Humanity] safeguarding.”
There was no flash, no dramatics. Just three bullet points.
? Daily meditation ? Guided journaling ? Maintaining life routines
“Your mind is an asset too,” Li Wei said, tone matter?of?fact. “If Qilin eats the host OS, you’re not helpful to anyone—least of all Taeril White.”
Eathan’s shoulders stiffened. “I’m… not planning on letting that happen.”
“Nobody plans for data corruption,” Li Wei said. “They notice when it’s too late. Right now, you are sitting at 50% to 51% [Humanity]. That’s not just a number. It’s a measure of how much Eathan Lin is sitting in the driver’s seat versus an immortal whose last major act was removing himself from the board.”
He looked directly at him.
“When you dropped below fifty on the plane,” Li Wei said, “you grew ghost antlers in my cabin and dropped into a breakdown.”
Chewie coughed pointedly. “And almost took the entire plane down with you.”
Eathan flushed. “I apologized.”
“I know. Listen, I’m not making you journal to be cruel,” Li Wei said. “I’m trying to keep you recognizable to yourself when the numbers go up.”
He turned to the side console, opened a drawer, and pulled out a slim, nicely bound notebook. The cover was unmarked save for an embossed sigil that, on second look, was a stylized Cloud?Jade Ledger icon eating its own tail.
Li Wei tossed it gently; Eathan caught it on reflex.
The moment his fingers closed around the cover, his wristpad pinged. A new app icon bloomed in his HUD:
[IDENTITY LOG] has been activated!
Soft, aggressively positive bubble visuals reflected in his eyes.
“…This is a feelings diary,” Eathan said.
“It’s a log,” Li Wei corrected.
“It has prompts like ‘Today I am grateful for—’,” Eathan said accusingly, flipping the first page. A neat grid of dates and questions beamed up at him.
“Identity anchors,” Li Wei said. “Not optional.”
“I’m not twelve,” he protested. “I don’t need to draw my emotions with crayons.”
“Please do,” Chewie said. “We can hang them on the fridge.”
He shot her a look. She looked unrepentant.
“I mean, there’s no way around it,” Chewie said, calm as a guillotine. “You’re not as stable as you think.”
“Thank you for the reminder,” Eathan muttered.
Li Wei folded his arms.
“When we say ‘train,’ it doesn’t just mean your numbers going up,” he said. “It means you still recognize yourself in the mirror when they do. Think of [Humanity] as redundancy. Qilin is powerful, yes. But the only reason his fragment hasn’t overwritten you is because you’ve spent over twenty years being Eathan Lin.”
He tapped the notebook.
“We keep that process running.”
Eathan stared down at the journal. The first prompt blinked faintly.
Prompt 001: Today, I am grateful for—
He wanted to laugh and shove it back into Li Wei’s face. He also remembered the cemetery. The hand he’d almost refused. The way his voice had sounded when he asked if he was just divine insurance.
“And if I don’t fill it out?” he asked, too casual.
Li Wei’s glasses caught the light; his eyes didn’t.
“We sync again in a month,” he said. “Bring your stats, mission logs, and [Humanity] trend. If you’ve let it slide, Chewie assigns your punishment reading list.”
Chewie brightened. “I have been saving a special calculus textbook,” she said. “Lots of proofs. No answers in the back.”
“That’s illegal,” Eathan said.
“It should be,” she agreed.
Li Wei’s mouth twitched, almost a smile.
“One minute a day,” he said. “Start there. If you can’t give yourself sixty seconds, you’re not ready to walk into the battlefield for anyone.”
Something in the way he said “anyone” tightened under Eathan’s ribs.
Li Wei glanced up at the war?map, then back down.
“Taeril White spent fifteen years keeping you away from this edge,” he said. “He left a corner shop, contingency orders, and half his reputation eroded at the Jade Court because he wanted you to have a life that wasn’t just ‘vessel.’”
He held Eathan’s gaze.
“If you plan on stepping closer now—for him—you owe it to him not to do it carelessly.”
The conference room seemed quieter all of a sudden. The hum of consoles faded; the coffee machine’s hiss sounded very far away.
Eathan’s fingers tightened on the journal cover.
“…So,” he said, voice rougher than he’d like. “One minute a day.”
“One minute,” Li Wei confirmed. “Mortals are adaptable. Remember?”
Eathan swallowed.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
Chewie huffed softly. Approval, translated from Chewie?speak. Li Wei nodded once, already turning back toward the surrounding chaos. A notification ribbon popped up at the edge of Eathan’s HUD.
[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION:
[Hidden Quest (new!)]
Start an Identity (personal) Log (diary)!
? Life is all about self-care and improvement! Perhaps some journal entries would help?
Reward: Improved stability for mind and [Humanity]
Note: This is a long-term quest! Host should act accordingly for optimal effects.
“…”
Eathan stared at his [SYSTEM] interface for a second longer before closing it with a sigh.
“Self-care at its finest.”
***
That night, COZMART breathed in the city and exhaled flickering neon.
The “OZMART” sign buzzed outside, still missing its C. Fridge hum, faint incense, a distant siren on Maple & 8th. Closing time had come and gone; the last mortal customer had left with a pack of gum and no idea the world was recalibrating around his head.
Chewie had already been marched off to bed by sheer exhaustion and a threatening text from Li Wei about “tomorrow’s drills.” The shop was quiet except for the antique clock ticking towards nowhere.
Eathan sat on the high stool behind the counter—Taeril’s stool—meditative journal in his lap, pen hovering uselessly over the first page.
The new app pinged once in the corner of his vision, reflecting the same content in the physical journal.
[IDENTITY LOG — Entry #001]
Dormancy Protocol: Day 65
Minimum entry time: 1 min.
Prompt 001: Today I am grateful for—
Eathan sighed. “Always start with the cliché.”
He thought about all the things he wasn’t grateful for, which was easier: the Jade Court, being a god-container, games that weaponized grief, the image of Bai Hu ripping his own core loose.
The pen didn’t move.
He exhaled and looked around instead.
The AC rattled. The mop he hadn’t put away yet leaned awkwardly against the fridge. The C of COZMART still lay behind the counter, sulking in dust and dried glue. Somewhere down the street, a neighbour fought with a blender.
He put the pen down, flexed his fingers once, and started writing before his courage could evaporate:
[IDENTITY LOG – ENTRY #001]
Dormancy Protocol: Day 65 – 22:41
Prompt: Today I am grateful for—
The stupid missing C in the COZMART sign.
(Every time I see “OZMART” it looks wrong and a little sad, but it’s our wrong and a little sad. If it ever quietly fixes itself before Mister White comes back, I’ll know something is really off.)
The way Chewie complains about horses like they personally offended her.
(But even so, she still shows up to every lesson anyway. That has to count as hope.)
Emily’s over?specific coffee order and Luke’s conspiracy theories about haunted vending machines.
(One of them is actually right, which is the concerning part. Still, it’s… nice that some people in my life can worry about school homework and flickering streetlights instead of the world ending.)
The corner shop.
The dust that never quite goes away, the way the bell sounds when someone steps in—even when that someone is an ear?ogre in a borrowed body. I don’t know what COZMART actually is in the big cosmic picture, but right now it’s the one place that still feels like “home” and not “case file.”
Mister White.
(I’m grateful he put up with mortal me long before I knew what I was carrying. I’m also extremely not grateful that he shattered himself in front of us. These can both be true.)
I don’t know if this is how I’m supposed to do this.
I don’t know if “writing it down” actually helps keep me… well, me.
But:
My name is Eathan Lin.
I’m twenty-two.
I work at a corner shop now with a missing C.
I have (had) worries about midterms, rent, my irresponsible war god guardian, and half an immortal beast in my chest.
But despite all that, I’m still here, so…
The pen stopped.
The clock ticked.
A soft chime threaded through the quiet.
[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION:
New Habit Registered: Daily Identity Log (current streak: 1)
“Good enough,” Eathan murmured.
He closed the journal with a yawn, set it carefully beside the cash drawer, and reached up to turn off the lights.