The fire in the hearth crackles upward. For a moment, the room grows warmer, then colder, then warmer again. The light folding in on itself like a story preparing to rest. "I can't even believe your classless?"

  “I can’t even believe you’re classless,” he says again, but it lands differently this time. Not incredulous or disbelieving, just soft. Like someone who has realized they’ve been using the wrong map and is trying to memorize a new coastline.

  Eileen hums low in her throat, not agreement or correction, just the kind of sound that fills space with warmth while decisions settle. She reaches for her tea, finds it cool, and sets it aside without complaint.

  William leans forward a bit, his elbows resting on his knees, the carving knife on the nearby table all but forgotten. His voice is quieter now, almost wary. “Is this common on the surface? To have a lack of classes? I just don’t understand. How could you... just... not have one?”

  She smooths her skirt, patting down a crease that isn’t really there. “I’ve had a few classes over the years,” she says. “So did Daniel. We didn’t lose them, though. We let them go instead in exchange for something else.”

  William’s frown deepens, his ears twitching slightly as he tries to translate her words into a structure he understands.

  “But what possible benefit could there be to completely giving up your class? Classes are... they’re everything. They shape you, they define you, they tell the Dungeon what your purpose is, what it can use you for.”

  Eileen smiles at that, though not unkindly. “That may be true down inside that Dungeon of yours,” she says, “but up here, classes are as much a detriment as they are a boon. Yes, they tell others what your story can be, but sometimes those stories are a poor fit for who you are.”

  He shifts in his chair, and the fluffy tumbler on his foot lets out a peep and rolls over. “So you just gave it up?”

  “We sold it, bit by bit. Piece by piece, extracting everything we could without unraveling our bodies.” Her hands rest in her lap now, still. “Daniel and I built our lives on a strange kind of work, not common or uncommon. Not the kind that leaves behind fame or fables either, but enough to be noticed when it mattered. We had favors, connections, marks of trust. The same many had in our line of work. Currency of all kinds, too and really rare books, from all over. And when our son started coming of age, when he began to form his class... well, it wasn’t looking good for him.”

  William doesn’t interrupt, but his silence is full of questions. He’s listening with more than ears. “We could see the patterns emerging,” she continues. “There was a misalignment in instincts. Daniel’s family comes from a long line of temperaments that are historically incompatible with the classification system. It was shaping our son into something brittle. Not dangerous, but limited. Something he’d spend his life trying to outgrow, much like Daniel had.”

  She looks toward the hearth as though the coals might nod in agreement. “We weren’t going to let that happen. So we cashed in everything. We called in all the debts. We traded rare items, treasures, rights and echoes of previous work, even a few memories by the end. We broke open every sealed back channel we had ever established. And with it, we bought him something better. So much better then either of us ever hoped for.”

  William clears his throat. His voice comes cautiously, almost as if he expects the question to offend. “You can do that on the surface? Buy classes?”

  “You can,” Eileen says in a causal kind of way, “It’s not exactly looked upon kindly, but if you know the right networks and are willing to give up what you have and what you used to be, then yes. Better classes can be bought for just about anyone.”

  William leans back a bit and glances toward the Motic Resonances drifting quietly above Eileen’s shoulder, spinning with the lazy precision of dust caught in memory. His voice is softer now. “And you did that... for him?”

  Eileen smiles, not grandly, not with pride, but with the quiet certainty of someone who already knows the answer has been written in every part of her life, since the beginning and to the end. “Of course we did. Isn’t that what strength is for? Creating a better life for those who stand behind you.”

  The shadows beneath William’s eyes seem deeper now, as if something inside him has shifted without quite letting go. He begins to speak, stops, tries again, then falls into a pause so heavy it almost swallows the moment. Eileen watches him with that same patient stillness, waiting not for his words, but for his shape to catch up to them.

  “Yes, it’s hard.” she says gently, answering the question he hasn’t asked aloud. “It’s a sacrifice, plain and simple. But it’s more common than you think. Many elders are expected to quietly pass their time in the comfort of her homes. Its why so many of us live outside of cities, towns and villages.”

  She gestures loosely to the room, not bitter, just acknowledging. “I’m no different. The expectation of me, regardless of the success of my youth, did not and would not ever change the expectation society places on me. That’s why purchasing the best class for him was the best move we could have ever made for our family. And it gave me the opportunity to be someone else.”

  She says the last part with less enthusiasm, not because the choice was wrong, but because its weight has never left her.

  William leans back fully, his eyes tracing the knotwork on the side of the hearth. The flames have burned low, casting long, thoughtful patterns across the rug for they aren't flickering with drama.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  “I’ve always assumed people were their class,” William says. “In the Dungeon, it’s about the only way you’re recognized. It’s how I know that whomever I’m speaking to is officially the right creature to talk to.”

  Eileen tilts her head slightly, her gaze turning back toward him with a calm that does not waver. “Don’t fret, dear William. The surface is no different. People are just as judgmental here too. After we sold our classes and retired out here, we really found out just how little people think of the classless. Still we are lucky, people have known us here for many years, their knowledge of what we were, clouds the judgment of what we are, still magical amulets of disguise help. Never the less it is simply the way of the world when you get old. To be forgotten about until you pass.”

  She lifts a single finger, not to emphasize, but to gently interrupt the thread of thought. “But I’ve found that going from my well known days of traveling with the party to now being classless has given me quite a look into the other side of success. And I’m finding that I have started to recognize others not by a title or a class but by what they keep to themselves as sacred, when no one else is looking.”

  William stays quiet for a long moment. His eyes remain on the hearth, but he isn’t watching the fire. The silence stretches not because he is unsure of what to say, but because something within him is still catching up to what he has heard. “Are you also taught to show what you are so openly?” he asks, eventually. “To display your path with prominence? Make it easy for you to be sorted?”

  Eileen nods slightly, as if this makes perfect sense. “Of course. Symbolism. Identity. Writs of power. Those are easy to read and understand. Letting your title speak first is an important part of social decorum even her on the surface.”

  William leans forward again, a crease forming between his brows. “But what if you’re classless and young?” His voice drops low, careful. “In the Dungeon, classes are assigned from birth, if a child is born classless they are discarded.”

  Eileen doesn’t answer immediately. Her expression changing instead. The warmth in her eyes doesn’t vanish but something older sits there now, not anger, but memory polished by time and still sharp in the hand. “Well,” she says, “If your child should develop something unbound, then you run. Or you hide them away. Or you lie well enough to be left alone until you can secure them something of worth.”

  William glances at Fenn, then back at her. She holds his gaze. “It is dangerous to not belong, William. It always has been. If your child refuses an apprentice, develops an unquantifiable class, or if you cannot buy them one, then a tracking guild will ‘stabilize’ them."

  He looks up sharply. His voice drops into something hushed. “You mean...”

  “They’d never use that word,” Eileen replies. “They say it’s for the good of the world. That loose experience orbs create imbalance. That your identity must namable to be safe. Classes can always be forced upon someone, it just takes overwhelming will. That’s why stabilizing someone young is so effective, its why those guilds exist.”

  William does not respond immediately. His mouth opens once, then closes. He looks down at his hands, then back toward the hearth, then up to the motes still gently circling above Eileen’s teacup. When he finally speaks, his voice carries the shape of something like shame, not for what he has done, but for what he now sees with new clarity. “So you could take a class, then, if you wanted? You’re not locked out from it in totality? Then why haven’t you sorted that out? Why hasn’t your son acquired one for you?”

  Eileen nods slowly, the motion is small, but certain, as though she has been waiting for this part of the conversation to arrive. “Most people do,” she says. “They accept something more common. Something modest, clean, sensible but often those classes come with work clauses, debt cycles, service terms. Binding obligations hidden under polite names.”

  She folds her hands again in her lap. Her eyes remain on the fire. “I’m not interested in that kind of work anymore. I’m more interested in spending what little time I do have right here, quietly living in peace, before my body expires.”

  Her voice holds no self pity for it moves with precision. “Besides,” she adds, “I chose what to give up and I knew exactly where it was going. Daniel and I were not tricked, we were not coerced into it. We saw something we loved, begin to be shaped wrong, and we did what needed doing to shift the mold into something our son could grow with, not against.”

  She picks up the edge of her shawl and runs her thumb along the hem. The stitches are old, but they are firm and familiar. “I’m quite proud of what we were able to afford,” she says. “To retire here is a far better end than many of our friends have found. And the work we did, it did some good. It mattered in the way that continues to help others to this day.”

  William watches her. His eyes follow the motion of her hand on the fabric, but it is clear his thoughts are somewhere else. They are half caught in memory and half caught in something entirely new. Something not yet named. “You don’t sound like someone who regrets it,” he says. “Even though it must have cost you everything.”

  Eileen draws in a slow breath, as if she is tasting the quiet between them. “I don’t,” she says. “Regret is what happens when you believe there were better options. But none of those options were ones we could live with and none were ones we were willing to let our son carry.”

  The fire settles in the hearth with a soft sigh, the coals shifting under their own warmth. Outside, the wind brushes against the glass in long, even strokes, as if it is tracing the edge of the house without urgency. The motes above Eileen’s teacup begin to drift downward, not in a fall but in a slow spiral, as if gravity has remembered them only gently.

  William sits back slightly. He does not loosen, but something in his shape becomes less held. His spoon rests now on the table beside him. He does not reach for it. He does not resume carving. Instead, he watches Eileen with the kind of attention usually reserved for ancient symbols or unfinished maps. He is not trying to understand her with reason. He is trying to feel where her truth fits inside what he knows.

  “I think,” he says after a while, “I always believed classes were the only way to protect yourself. To know where you stood in comparison to others and the only safeguard of being seen as useful enough not to be discarded.”

  Eileen does not interrupt him, she lets the words arrive at their own speed, lets them find their own shape. “In the Dungeon,” he continues, “being without a class means failure, it means death. It means something is wrong with you, that something went so wrong, that it would be better if you could just disappear and die.”

  Eileen lifts her teacup. It is warm again, not hot, but comfortingly so, its also been refilled, although by whom she does not know for she does not see the Motic Resonances working so hard to fill her cup up.

  “I wonder,” he says, “if there are more like you. People who would give something up without ever telling anyone. People who chose something invisible and made peace with it.”

  Eileen smiles, but this time it is not entirely warm. It carries a quiet sorrow, the kind that comes from knowing something others are still pretending not to see. “There are,” she says. “But most of them do not get to tell their stories. The world rarely listens to those who stepped aside on purpose.”