Mason Carver stops half a block from Harper’s Core.

  The arcade’s sign glows over the sidewalk, its shifting blues and reds turning the cracked concrete into something out of a promo reel. The front windows are plastered with AstraForge posters—pro Duelists mid-summon, creatures frozen with claws inches from impact. A vinyl banner above the door shouts:

  LOCAL QUALIFIER – PATH TO REGIONAL CIRCUIT!

  The words land heavier than the vinyl looks. Path to regionals. Path to maybe not bagging groceries forever.

  He adjusts the strap of his messenger bag where it cuts into his shoulder and stares longer than he means to. The rig on his forearm feels heavier than usual, like it’s absorbing his nerves.

  This is it. Do well here, get onto the regional ladder. Blow it, and it’s back to overtime, “real work,” and his dad’s tight jaw at the kitchen table.

  A car rolls past, music rattling loose metal somewhere under the street. The world keeps going like this tournament isn’t a fault line under his feet.

  Focus.

  He crouches by the curb, balancing the messenger bag against one knee, and pulls out his deck box. The plastic hinge sticks, then gives with a familiar snap. Thirty cards, sleeves cloudy from wear, edges whitening where they’ve caught on their neighbors a thousand times.

  He fans the top few into his hand.

  Blitz Fang, Rank-2 Striker, jaws open in a spray of stylized teeth and neon static. Hazard Wisp, a twitchy little Controller unit that looks like a cross between a fox and a glitch. Crossline Raider, his only Rank-4, the foil dulled but still catching stray light in battered flashes.

  “Still you and me, huh,” he mutters at the Raider’s scarred helmet.

  The card just leers back like always, like it did in the catalog the first time he saw it under the harsh store lighting that made everything look cheaper than the price tags.

  He straightens the stack and counts automatically. Ten creature sigils, nineteen Tactics—

  He stops, frowns, and counts again.

  Nineteen.

  Heat spikes under his collar. He flips through the stack, fingertips skimming card symbols.

  Creatures. Tactics. Tactics. Creatures.

  “Come on,” he breathes.

  He dumps the contents of the box into his lap, fingers moving faster. If he’s actually short a card—

  Something thin and glossy taps against his sneaker and skids to the curb. He looks down.

  A lone card leans against the concrete, face-down, the back scuffed from too many shuffles. Must have slipped out when he popped the hinge.

  “Seriously,” he mutters, scooping it up.

  He flips it over. Hazard Wisp’s smoky form curls across the art, eyes bright pinpoints in the haze.

  “Trying to bail on me before we even get inside?” His hands steady a little as he slides the card back into the pile and counts again. Thirty. “Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

  He snaps the box shut and tucks it into his bag with exaggerated care.

  The rig on his left arm hums faintly when he flexes his wrist. Older model, matte black casing, hairline scratches across the display from the time he dropped it between the bleachers scrambling to make a round. Faint ink lines creep along the side where he’s drawn his own sigils—half art, half superstition. AstraForge design teams would probably call it “defacing the brand.”

  His father’s voice arrives like a bad draw. This isn’t a job, Mason. It’s a toy with commercials.

  He pushes the memory aside and replaces it with his mom in the cramped kitchen that morning, steam fogging the one good window as she’d “looked” for coffee filters with one hand and slid an envelope toward him with the other.

  “Bus fare and a little extra. Don’t tell your father. And don’t skip meals.”

  The envelope is still a rectangle of weight in his pocket, heavier than the rig.

  He straightens, rolls his shoulders, and makes himself walk the rest of the way.

  As he nears the arcade, sound reaches him first. The roar of a crowd cresting as a Core Integrity bar drops on some overhead screen. The high chime of system prompts. The buzz of a hundred overlapping conversations: matchups, card pools, half-bragged war stories from past locals.

  The glass door swings open just before he reaches it, warm, recycled air rushing out with the smell of cleaning solvent and cheap popcorn. A kid about twelve squeezes past, rig too big for his narrow arm, chattering into a battered phone.

  “…no, dude, I swear, I top-decked the perfect Terrain, it was insane—”

  Mason steps through the doorway and Harper’s Core swallows him.

  Chaos has been shaped into something almost organized. Rows of wall-mounted rigs line the left and right walls, each with a plastic stool in front and a small knot of spectators behind. Big screens hang overhead, looping pro-level highlights—sigils flaring, creatures lunging, bright graphics announcing things like FINAL DRIVE and OPENING PUNISH in overexcited fonts.

  The center of the room is cleared. A circular Core Field arena dominates the space, translucent panels rising into a dome overhead, their surfaces faintly shimmering with containment matrices. At the edge of the ring, AstraForge-branded staffers in polos plug diagnostic tablets into ports, watching readouts scroll in alien blues and greens.

  The hum of the Core Field is a physical thing, a low thrum under the din. The first time he heard it in person, years ago, standing on tiptoe at the back of a rec league crowd, it had crawled up his spine and refused to leave. He won his first prize pack in this room, and lost his first “you’re playing on stream” match here too—blanking out so hard he missed a lethal Opening and watched the clip get replayed with pity-laced commentary for a week.

  “Look what the cat dragged in. And ten minutes before registration closes.”

  The voice cuts through from his right.

  Denise Harper sits behind a folding table a few steps inside the entrance, tablet in one hand, a lanyard of keys and staff badges hanging against her chest. The table is buried in branded lanyards, Sharpies, and overlapping clipboards.

  Mason angles toward her automatically.

  “You say that like I’m not your most reliable late entry,” he answers.

  She peers over the tops of her glasses, unimpressed. “Reliable and late is still late, Carver. Bag off the arm, let me see your rig.”

  He shrugs the messenger bag down and rests his left arm on the table. Denise takes it with practiced care, turning the gauntlet until the registration port faces up.

  “You clean this?” She eyes the scuffed casing.

  “I, uh, wiped it down.” He rubs at a smear with the side of his shirt. “Mostly.”

  “Old man like this, you got to respect his joints.” A thin cable snakes from her tablet into the rig’s port. “You’re in the main bracket, right? Not juniors?”

  He clutches his chest theatrically. “Wow. Just like that? No warm-up?”

  “You’re aging out in a few months,” she reminds him, fingers dancing across the tablet. “You may as well get used to it.” She doesn’t look up. “Name?”

  “Mason Carver.”

  “Handle?”

  He hesitates. On ladder, “CoreRiff” had sounded brilliant in the privacy of his late-night brain.

  “CoreRiff,” he says.

  One corner of her mouth curls. “You sure you don’t want to just go with your actual name?”

  “Too late now.”

  “It’s never too late to make better choices.” She taps it in anyway. The tablet beeps; his rig vibrates once, a little harder than normal.

  He glances down. The tiny display on his gauntlet cycles through the registration animation, then freezes. For a beat, nothing moves.

  Denise’s eyes sharpen. “Come on, old man,” she mutters toward the hardware. “Not on qualifier day.”

  A second drags. Then another.

  A faint prickling crawls up Mason’s forearm where the rig’s contact nodes meet skin.

  Denise’s thumb hovers over a retry icon. Just as she moves to tap, the rig screen flashes and a green checkmark pulses twice.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “See? He likes me.”

  “He likes that I’d throw him in the parts bin if he embarrassed me today.” She unplugs the cable with a flick. “No unauthorized firmware?”

  “You ask me that every time.”

  “And I’m going to keep asking until you graduate to shiny sponsors who can afford lawyers.” She finally glances up. “You remember what happened with those hack rigs last year.”

  The image from the news drops into his mind uninvited: a kid on a regional side-stream, screaming as smoke curled up from his gauntlet, commentators stumbling over each other before the feed cut to a generic safety graphic.

  “Yeah,” Mason answers. “I keep it stock.”

  “Good.” The edge in her tone softens. “Decklist?”

  He passes his deck box across. She doesn’t open it—she trusts he knows the official ratios—but scans the barcode on the bottom.

  “Thirty cards, legal distribution, no Core card,” she reads as the system tallies. “You still not running an Ultimate?”

  “Can’t afford one that isn’t garbage.”

  “Garbage wins games if you understand it.” She rifles through the pile of lanyards until she finds one with a red stripe. “Main bracket. Lose twice, you’re out. Top four get regional invites. Same as always, just with shinier graphics.”

  He takes the lanyard. CORE RIFF glares up in block letters over a photo from some monthly where he hadn’t realized the camera was firing yet. He looks like someone just told him Charge started at zero.

  Denise pulls a black marker from her pocket and writes a tiny “7” in the corner of his badge. “Staging is by the snack machines. Pairings go up in five. You eat today?”

  “Had a bar on the way here.”

  “A bar is not food.” She tips her chin toward the vending machines glowing at the back. “Grab something that crunches. Low Blood Sugar Riff is not the fan favorite you think he is.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She levels the marker at his chest. “You play like you’re fine, or you sit. Those are your options in my house.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A snort escapes her. “Don’t ma’am me. Go warm up. And Mason?”

  He pauses.

  Her gaze flicks past him, toward the Core Field. One of the staffers triggers a test summon. A training dummy materializes in a burst of pale light—a humanoid outline, featureless face, limbs held in a neutral pose. It looks solid from here, a stranger in backup dancer gray, then its edges fuzz for a moment before stabilizing.

  “Remember it’s supposed to be fun,” she says. “Even when it doesn’t feel like it.”

  The training dummy staggers as if struck, then shatters into motes that swirl once and disperse into the shimmer of the field.

  Fun. Right.

  “Got it,” he answers, and moves deeper into the arcade.

  The press of people folds around him. A knot of middle schoolers argue near a side console about whether Grapplers are “honest” or “just stall, bro.” A girl in an oversized hoodie leans against a support pillar, lips forming silent card texts as she memorizes Tactic triggers. A boy with a pristine, top-tier rig scrolls his digital collection, probably tweaking his list in a panic.

  A few regulars toss nods his way.

  “Yo, Riff, you running that janky Wisp lock again?” a lanky kid calls over.

  “Only jank I need is you brick-drawing your whole hand,” Mason shoots back, weaving toward the snack machines.

  The rig flexes against his arm with each movement, familiar weight, familiar itch. He’s played in this room more times than he can count—free-play nights until Denise kicked everyone out for closing, last-chance qualifiers where he dropped round two and spent the rest of the day running practice sets for kids who’d already busted out. He still remembers the burn of his cheeks the first time one of his matches hit the local stream: miscounting Charge, missing lethal, hearing the casters go gentle in real time.

  “Sometimes you learn more from a loss,” Denise told him afterward, when he sulked by the mop closet. “Sometimes you just learn how much you hate losing. Both are useful.”

  He buys a bag of pretzels from the machine with the smallest bill he has, tears it open, and crunches mechanically as he leans against a wall near staging.

  Above the Core Field, one big screen flips to a standby graphic: LOCAL QUALIFIER – STREAM GOES LIVE IN 05:00.

  On a small platform beside the arena, the two commentators fumble through dry runs. One adjusts his headset, reading an intro off a crumpled sheet.

  “…big day here at Harper’s Core,” he drones, voice flattening the words. “Path to the regional circuit starts right in this room…”

  His partner pokes at a touchscreen, flipping between overlay layouts. A test replay stutters across the monitor, flashing score bars and slow-motion explosions from some archived pro match.

  Near the staging area, players cluster in little islands of nerves. Lanyards bump shoulders. Rigs glint. Mason picks out familiar faces and a lot of new ones.

  “You hear he’s actually coming?” someone nearby mutters.

  “Hear who’s actually coming?” Mason asks, more to occupy his mouth than from any real need to know.

  “The prodigy,” the kid answers, eyes wide. “Kellen Royce. King K. My cousin says he’s dropping in to ‘slum it in the locals’ before regionals.”

  Another player snorts. “He’s not gonna waste time at Harper’s.”

  “Bro, my cousin’s friend works at the downtown Core Field,” the first insists. “AstraForge wants ‘community engagement footage.’ Where else would they send him? Denise’s place is like, neighborhood central.”

  Mason crunches down on a pretzel hard enough that his jaw aches. He’s seen the highlight reels. Everyone has. Kellen in slow motion, jacket flaring as he whips toward the camera; Kellen’s Blitz Fang tearing through a Controller’s last line; Kellen grinning into a mic while chat explodes down the side of the stream.

  “Think he’d even be allowed to play?” another kid asks. “Wouldn’t that wreck the bracket?”

  “They’d seed him,” the first says with the unearned confidence of the chronically online. “Give him a bye or something.”

  “Yeah, give him my bye,” someone over Mason’s shoulder groans.

  The laughter that follows is tight around the edges. Sharing air with someone off the pro reel does weird things to people. Half dread. Half wanting to be the one who upsets the script.

  Mason forces himself to breathe in, out. Prodigy or not, his job doesn’t change: win his matches. One at a time. Anybody he’s not facing is background noise.

  A sharp whistle cuts through the talk.

  “All right, heads up!” Denise’s voice carries easily even without the PA, but the small speakers crackle to life anyway. “Registration is closed. Bracket is live in sixty seconds. If you’re not wearing a lanyard, you are a spectator. Spectate somewhere that is not the staging zone.”

  One of the overhead screens blinks, switching to a digital bracket. Names slot into place list by list: handles, last initials.

  CORE RIFF – vs – J. DUNN (GRP)

  Third match of the opening block.

  Grappler round one. Not ideal, not a death sentence. Hit early, don’t get stuck in Clinch, keep a Tactic ready to blow out any grab that lands.

  He runs lines in his head, pretzel salt scratching his tongue.

  The murmur at the entrance spikes.

  The glass door swings wide again and, for a moment, the whole room tilts that way.

  Three people step inside.

  The one in front—the one with the camera already tracking him—is Kellen Royce.

  He’s a little shorter than the camera angles make him look, but carries himself like gravity is more of a suggestion. Copper-streaked curls catch the arcade’s shifting lights. A limited-edition AstraForge bomber jacket glints with stitched sigils down each sleeve. His rig is the latest model, casing seamlessly curved, edges lit from within by a soft burn even at rest.

  Behind him, a brand rep hustles in with a tablet and a harried expression. A third guy with a handheld camera hovers, already filming.

  Conversations fragment mid-sentence.

  “Holy— it’s actually him.”

  “Dude, I’m in the shot, I’m—”

  “I told you. I told you.”

  Kellen lifts a hand in a small half-wave, motion casual and practiced, just enough to give the camera something. His gaze sweeps the room: rigs, posters, faces. It’s the look of someone scrolling, skimming thumbnails.

  Denise abandons the folding table. Keys and badges clack lightly against her chest as she crosses to meet him.

  “Mr. Royce.” She offers her hand. “Welcome back to Harper’s Core.”

  Back.

  Mason straightens without meaning to. Back?

  Denise mentioned once, offhand, about a kid who’d come through at thirteen with a deck worth more than her car and left with two quick trophies and a sponsorship scout’s number. Mason had pictured some smug preteen with braces. He hadn’t connected that story with the boy on the posters.

  Kellen’s mouth curves. He takes Denise’s hand with the exact amount of pressure a camera loves. “Ms. Harper. Been a minute.”

  “You were three inches shorter and a lot more polite last time you were in my house,” she replies. “Congratulations on your… what is it now, top sixteen world?”

  “Top eight in the latest power rankings,” the brand rep pipes in, already angling his tablet for a good shot. “Unofficially. Official season hasn’t closed points yet.”

  Kellen doesn’t bother to look back. “Round up, round down, it all clips the same,” he says lightly. He lets his eyes roam past Denise toward the Core Field. “Place looks good. Field’s upgraded.”

  “We repaint, we patch, we keep the lights on,” Denise answers. “Can’t all have your sponsorship budget.”

  The rep jumps in like he’s been rehearsing. “We’re just here to grab some local flavor, Ms. Harper. B-roll of Kellen interacting with community players, a quick exhibition, highlight that every pro starts in grassroots spaces like this—”

  “As long as he registers like everybody else, obeys the same rules, and doesn’t bump some local kid off the bracket for a ‘fun little exhibition,’” Denise cuts in. “My house, my ladder.”

  “Of course.” The rep’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “We wouldn’t dream of—”

  While they talk, Kellen’s gaze slides back to the players.

  It catches on Mason.

  For one second, the whole arcade narrows to that thin line of sight.

  Mason’s leaning near the snack machines, pretzel bag hanging loose from his fingers, old rig sitting heavy on his arm, lanyard slightly crooked. His first, furious thought is that his gauntlet looks like junkyard scrap compared to the polished hardware across the room.

  Kellen doesn’t look impressed. He doesn’t look dismissive, either. He studies Mason the way people study decklists: a quick scan for headline cards, one extra beat for anything odd.

  The corners of his mouth tilt in a small smirk that could mean anything—challenge, amusement, nothing at all. Then he turns back to Denise and the brand rep, moment over as neatly as a card slotted back into its sleeve.

  The cluster of players around Mason erupts in quiet chaos.

  “Bro, did he just look at you?”

  “He looked at all of us, relax—”

  “No, he looked at him. Old rig guy. He’s so dead.”

  “Maybe it’s like charity content,” someone else whispers. “Lose to a pro, get a signed mat.”

  “Shut up,” Mason mutters.

  He crumples the empty pretzel bag in his fist and stuffs it into his pocket, eyes back on the bracket screen.

  The first match names glow green and red. The commentators’ voices climb as the starting handshake plays on the main display.

  “…and we are live here at Harper’s Core! Local qualifier action, path to the regional circuit—”

  “Remember, top four today punch their ticket to regionals,” the other caster adds. “This is where stories start, folks—”

  “Players for match two, report to staging!” a staffer calls over the arena hum.

  Mason’s match is next.

  On the Core Field, the first-round players take their places. The lights around the dome dim a notch, focusing down, the hum deepening into something his bones remember.

  A Grappler on-screen clinches its opponent, arms locking with mechanical precision. The crowd gasps as the feed zooms in, displaying health bars and Charge counters in a neat overlay. Somewhere in the front row, a kid lunges closer to the barrier, eyes wide.

  The reality of it still feels a little off if he lets himself think about it too long. Years ago, this was all holo-emitters and drones, weightless light smashing into light. Then AstraForge patched the rigs, rolled out the Core Fields, and suddenly you had things that cast shadows. Things that made the air move when they swung.

  It’s normal now. Highlight reels, merch, sponsorships, injury reports. But sometimes, when a summon appears just wrong enough around the edges, the old unease stirs.

  “Match three players to staging!” the staffer yells.

  That shrinks the world down to something he can handle.

  He taps the top of his deck box through the canvas of his bag—a tiny ritual—and pushes off the wall toward the corridor that leads to the player entrance.

  As he passes the front, Denise raises her voice without looking his way.

  “Riff!”

  He glances over.

  She jerks her chin at the Core Field. “Remember what I said.”

  “Have fun?” he calls back.

  “Don’t forget where you came from,” she returns. “And keep your head when the lights come on.”

  The arena lights flare with the end-of-round graphic, casting shifting color across the middle of the room. Cheers spike, then blur into background noise as the next players take their marks.

  Fun. Heads. Origins. All swirling around the same place.

  He swallows, his mouth dry despite the pretzels, and steps into the staging corridor. The hum of the Core Field grows louder, the world beyond narrowing to the tunnel, the door ahead, and the ring where every decision he’s made about cards and charge and this stupid dream is about to get tested.

  Somewhere closer to the entrance, Kellen laughs at something the brand rep says, the sound easy, practiced, made for microphones.

  Different worlds, same arena.

  Mason runs his fingertips along the edge of his rig, feeling the tiny grooves of his hand-inked sigils, and keeps walking.