The System Gave Me A Dead God

Chapter 6: The Rankings Board

Ezra made it four blocks before he understood why people kept looking at him twice.

The first few he wrote off as paranoia, adrenaline still working its way out of his system, the kind of jumpy hyperawareness that came standard after nearly losing a fight to something with no eyes.

By the fifth stranger who slowed down to stare, he stopped and caught his own reflection in a storefront window and understood.

He was standing straighter. He hadn't noticed himself doing it. Three years of flinching smaller in public, shoulders in, eyes down, had come off him somewhere in that tunnel like a coat he'd forgotten he was wearing.

*Interesting,* Vaelgrith said, entirely too pleased with itself. *You didn't used to walk like that.*

"Didn't have a reason to."

*You still don't have much of one. One kill. One Skill. Don't confuse surviving with being strong.*

Ezra kept walking anyway. He couldn't help it.

The Guild's public rankings board sat in the middle of Cathedral Plaza, a massive holographic display that updated in real time, S-Ranks at the top in gold, working down through the alphabet of Ranks toward the bottom, where a small crowd had gathered the way it always did on rankings update days, half of them Awakened checking their own standing, half of them civilians who liked watching other people's worth get sorted out loud in public.

Ezra hadn't meant to walk through the plaza. His feet took him there anyway, the way a tongue kept finding a sore tooth.

His name wasn't at the bottom anymore.

It wasn't anywhere. Where E-RANK — EZRA KADE used to sit dead last, dependable as gravity, there was nothing, no entry at all, like the board itself didn't know what category to file him under and had decided not filing him was safer.

"Well, would you look at that."

Ezra didn't need to turn around to know the voice. Three years of hearing it aimed at him in this exact tone had burned the sound into the back of his skull permanently.

Damon Ashgrove was leaning against the plaza railing in full Guild dress uniform, gold S-Rank insignia catching the afternoon light like he'd had it polished specifically for this. He had the kind of face that photographed well from every angle, which Ezra had always found personally insulting.

"Kade's finally off the board," Damon said, loud enough to carry, loud enough that the little cluster of onlookers turned to watch.

"Took you long enough. What happened? Did the delivery route finally kill you, and nobody updated the system?"

A ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Ezra felt his jaw tighten and made himself breathe through it.

"Just a glitch," Ezra said. "Should be back up by tomorrow."

"A glitch." Damon pushed off the railing, closing the distance with the easy confidence of a man who had never once in his life had to wonder if a room was safe to walk into.

"You know what I think? I think somebody finally told the