Scale opened the drawer of her dresser and stared vacantly. Her movements were nguid and slow; her mind was focused on something other than the now. A thick anxiety brimmed in her eyes, overflowing like a clogged sink. Christmas had passed like a storm and a new feeling had taken root in her heart, a feeling that she couldn’t quite put into words. It certainly wasn’t something negative—she understood that much.

  “Ah.” She sighed and turned to look out the bck window. It was a cloudless night. A bnket of stars wrapped the earth in their gentle light. In the corner of her eyes the [System] continued its countdown, the number scheduled to reach zero at midnight—at exactly the dawning of the new year.

  Scale knew what the timer was for. She could lie to others but she couldn’t lie to herself. Her right hand gently pulled on her face, stretching the skin under her eyes as her hand slowly pinched to her chin. She grabbed a pair of jeans and a matching top.

  “Ah. Pet, let’s go,” said Scale. She dragged Anatoly with her.

  Her breath showed up in puffs, like ephemeral wisps of cotton candy. She walked without thought, and her feet guided her to where she needed to go. The city lights cshed against the canopy of stars. Crowds formed in the city center but Scale turned east. She followed an instinctual pull towards where it would fall.

  Eventually her feet brought her to the empty lot in the city outskirts. Old trenches and half-dismantled barricades remained like specters of the past. A long, cw-shaped gully, half-buried in snow, stretched from the center of the clearing all the way to a meridian line cut across the dirt—all the way to the pce where a Gate once stood. Scale rubbed her cold hands together inside her jacket.

  “We're a little early,” she said. A cold wind scattered snow heavenward in a spiral toward the moonless sky. She turned towards Anatoly. Her lopsided smile sent a shiver down his spine. He sensed a tremendous magic start to move.

  [The Consteltion, “The Judge”, offers you a contract.]

  "Is this your Consteltion?" He asked. Scale didn't reply. She kicked him in the knee and made him colpse. He screamed, "What the fuck are you doing? If you assault me as a contractor then the contract will be--"

  [The Consteltion, "The Judge", offers you a contract.]

  The contract was still there. Anatoly's voice caught in his throat. His hands started to tremble. He looked up at Scale's crooked grin. For the first time since his captivity, he finally realized exactly how much he and the others had underestimated this dragon.

  Response University, Second Auditorium. Special New Years lecture on Contracts, The System, and the Hero.

  “The System is an ancient collectivist magic. It binds all consteltions and awakeners to it.” The professor's voice reached the full auditorium with ease. He stood in front of the podium with a straight back. “The System allows awakeners to increase their strength by providing them valuable resources, and it also protects humanity from the Consteltions by keeping them from crossing the Veil.” He coughed and collected himself. “Of course, and this is only theoretical, some schors have hypothesized that it might be possible for someone to not be bound with The System under special circumstances, but there is a severe ck of evidence for this. Oh! Yes, you in the back with the green sweatshirt, what's your question?”

  “Professor, what are those special cases?”

  “Well,” said the Professor, “There are three main theorized cases. One is that a consteltion grows powerful enough to overcome and break the System's binding. We know this is impusible because, in the thousands of years since the System has been around, no Consteltions have escaped it. To do so that Consteltion would require strength rivaling the collective strength of all the others. While some awakeners closer to their Consteltions have reported being told stories about Unbound Gods who meet that requirement, such stories are considered more a mythology instead of historical record.”

  “Two is that someone awakens in a world unconnected to the system, grows to an incredible level there, and then comes to a world governed by the System. This would allow them to avoid binding with the System in the first pce, which would theoretically be easier to do than to break an established binding... But without access to the System's resources, an awakened growing to that level is simply a pipe dream. It also bears the risk of being attacked by all of the System-bound consteltions.

  “The third case would be if a being was born powerful enough to escape the binding from the very start. This one is just ridiculous. Let's move on.”

  “Contracts between entities, with the exception of The System itself, require consent from all involved parties. This is always true. A consteltion cannot force you to accept their contract.” The professor's voice sounded a bit raspy. “Consteltions can, however, try to trick you. When you think of Fae or Demons you think of tricksters, and many Consteltions have those same tendencies. They'll try to sneak cuses into the contracts that put you at a disadvantage. That's why its so important to never jump into a Contract.”

  “Professor you said they can't force it?”

  “That's correct.”

  “But that doesn't mean they can't coerce you, right? Doesn't our textbook say something like that?”

  The professor smiled. “In the distant past some Consteltions with strong contractors would have their people physically threaten those that denied their contracts. This was fixed in the year XX BC...” The professor told a long story about numerous consteltions banding together to alter the collective contract with The System. “Now there are safeguards in pce. If a contractor attempts to physically force another awakener into a contract then that contract will be voided.”

  “A contractor can't do it, but couldn't a contractor hire other people to do it for them?”

  “Theoretically, yes. But at some point there will be diminishing returns to such efforts. There has never been an awakener talented enough to warrant such attention since King Arthur's day.”

  “What about the consteltions themselves? Couldn't they threaten someone with an avatar?”

  “Hoh! We've not talked about Avatars yet. I'm gd to see someone is studying the materials ahead. But you've missed a key detail. An avatar is just a contractor whose body has been taken over by the mana of their Consteltion. Fundamentally, the System treats that body like any other contractor and it would void the contract.” The professor smiled but soon noticed a timid girl in the back halfway raise her hand before putting it back down, as if she were afraid to ask her question. She looked a little too young to be at a university lecture. She was probably a high-school student visiting the campus. “You, girl, if you have something to ask then just do it. There's no reason to be afraid. There are no stupid questions.”

  “Y-yes! I was wondering, hypothetically if a Consteltion ever found a way to get past the Veil, couldn't they force contracts onto awakeners?”

  “Hohoho! That's an interesting question. What was your name, miss?“

  “Harper.”

  Scale looked at the kneeling Anatoly. Her irises were vertical slits. White illusionary wings spread out from her aura.

  “Sign it.”

  “Kill me.”

  “I've already done that twelve times now.” Scale ughed and raised her hand. “Unless you want to go for a record, you should sign the contract.”

  “Well, Miss Harper, if a Consteltion ever managed to get past the Veil then—” The professor pressed a button and the slide changed. “Life as we know it would end. There would be nothing to stop them from conquering the world.” He ughed. The slide showed terrible ruined cities one after another. These were, of course, the result of massive Gate breaks since no Consteltion had ever roamed the world unfettered before.

  “And what if there were more than one?” Asked Harper.

  “Well,” said the Professor, pausing and taking his time to think. “I suppose—”

  The sky rippled. The timer ticked down towards zero. Scale looked up and closed her eyes. Fourteen lights sparkled overhead. A familiar mana approached alongside thirteen unfamiliar ones. [The System] screamed as the mana concentration on Earth started to swell. Thunder roared.

  A massive pilr stretched upward to infinity, breaking the horizon. It could be seen from every corner of the Earth. Gates popped up like daisies, linking their subspaces together. Scale felt a tremendous pulling force on her body. She looked down at her insurance policy and grinned.

  "Be a good boy while I'm gone, pet. You will help Alyssa, Sarah, and a few others. Remember, now that you've signed the contract there is no going back. There is no disobeying my orders. After all--"

  Anatoly looked up only to find Scale gone, vanished like smoke on a windy day. He was alone in front of a strange Gate. His eyes trailed further up, and he finally snapped awake. Cwing at the heavens, an illusory tower stood like the spine of Pangu, a bridge between the sky and the ground.

  A lingering voice whispered to Anatoly, "--You belong to me."

  “I suppose if that happened, then Earth’s mana concentration would be high enough to trigger The Tower’s descent. It would be a repeat of the legendary Breaking. Those Consteltions and other strong awakeners would get sucked into the tower by The System as a st resort, and humanity would only have a short time to conquer the Tower to prevent their release. Of course, these are just stories passed down. We cant be certain if the records are even true..."

  "Which brings me into the final part of this lecture. The Hero. In every tumultuous era where The Towers appeared, humans have risen up to climb them. The Tower is a camity, for sure, but it also increases the magic concentration by several folds. It allows humans to evolve even further, pushes us to achieve the impossible. Whenever the tower falls humanity shows its true colors. Heroes always rise from the ashes of a doomed world."