Hunter Gold had always been a nerd. He liked to read books, play video games, and hang out with his select group of friends. They were the outcasts, the rejects, and the unlucky. They were the collection of oddballs in their various pursuits that didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the group. It was with those people that he felt a sort of kinship. They helped him feel like he wasn’t an imposter in his own skin.

He didn’t always consider himself a nerd. Sure, he did well in school. He played sports in high school and participated in extracurricular activities but never felt like he belonged.

It seemed like everyone else had a plan for their life. They walked a road paved in stone, painstakingly set by their teachers, parents, and mentors. They wanted to be doctors or lawyers or successful businessmen. Meanwhile, as graduation neared, Hunter found himself looking for his own track and coming up short.

It always seemed to be just out of sight. Hunter liked to read, but writing took too much time. Plus, he never found that spark of creativity that would actually make him start writing. He had planned magic systems and sketched exciting characters but never sat down to write something. It seemed too hard. Other people wrote successful stories—he just lived among their pages.

He liked to play video games, but every coding class he attended made him feel like he was trying to learn a foreign language. And his second year of Spanish made him very aware that he wouldn’t be adept at languages. Once he realized that his teacher, Mrs. Hernandez, expected him to ask to leave the class in Spanish every time, he quickly started planning his bathroom breaks appropriately.

Even in sports, Hunter was only passable. He was a varsity player on his high school basketball team, but he was never the type to make the winning basket. The teenager was the kind of player who seemed poised to set up someone else for the perfect shot. He could expect to do that for a living if he was better, but he had never filmed his games or sent them off to recruiters. He had never even attempted. He wished someone would help him do it, but the assistance never came.

The truth was Hunter knew that he wouldn’t be successful at any of those things. He was only good at school because the teachers told him what to do. The varsity player was only passable at basketball because his coaches made him run drill after drill.

When people weren’t showing him the way, he felt lost. He didn’t have the discipline or the motivation to put in the extra hours of practice or dedicate time to study. He had a gift for being good at everything but no real drive to be great at anything. He was perpetually stuck in a half-life of his own making. Worse, his time was running out, with nothing but a minimum wage job and a gaming addiction in his future.

That was why he sat halfway up Snodgrass Mountain, glaring balefully down at the small town below. The town center looked like a Christmas nativity scene, the recent snow settling across the town’s perfect buildings like a downy blanket while twinkling streetlights glowed merrily from Hunter’s elevated position.

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His mother had thought it would be good for Hunter to visit her parents during spring break at their summer home in Crested Butte. She had hoped being around his opulently wealthy grandparents would give him the spark he needed to apply to some reputable colleges and find his road to redemption.

She didn’t realize that Grandma Blair and Grandpa Hank were entirely unhelpful. They practically dripped wealth like seasonal homeowners to Colorado often did. They had the tricked-out Jeep, the sophisticated lodge-style home, the multi-acre ranch with alpacas, and a pair of Bernese Mountain Dogs that were the only real bright spot for his crappy spring break.

His grandparents weren’t close to his mom, and now Hunter felt the brunt of their disapproval. Since his mom had run away from home to get hitched to his no-good father, they had practically disowned her. She worked as a bank teller while attending community college, trying to provide for Hunter and his little sister, Summer.

When his dad split, his mom had to take care of him and his sister by herself at the tender age of eighteen. Hunter always shook his head in wonder when he realized that his mom had done all of that while being only a little older than he was now.

The real sticking point was that his grandparents had refused to help. They thought his mom should have to own up to her mistakes and realize the life she had left behind. Now that Hunter was staying with them, they treated him like a burden. They were always quick to point out how much money they were spending to feed him or how lucky he was that they allowed him to stay. It was all so...transactional.

He could have dealt with all that. He didn’t care how they treated him. Disdain was something that he was used to. His grandparents were no worse than the many bullies Hunter had endured for most of his life. He found his breaking point when they took thinly veiled jabs at his mom.

That was the reason for his short hike up Snodgrass. He couldn’t hear one more story about his grandfather’s success on his latest venture capital project or how his grandmother had scheduled a meeting with senator-who-fucking-cares about their latest Super PAC. He didn’t want to listen to one more: “Now, if your mom had listened to us, she could’ve …”

Hunter took a deep breath to steady himself. He knew he was just making himself angry, and the frigid air helped to steady him. The bitter cold reminded him that he probably shouldn’t have made the trip in the first place. Going up the mountain was easy enough. The trails were mostly clear, and the guideposts were clearly visible, but the trek up was only half the battle. Once he exhausted himself going up, he would still need to make his way back down. By then, the cold air would’ve chilled his bones and turned his blood to syrup.

He slid off his perch and decided it was time to head back. The light was already fading from the sky, and it would be dark when he reached home. If he were lucky, he could find someone in town to give him a ride to his grandparent’s property. Unlike his home in Arizona, the people in Colorado seemed all too willing to handle hitchhikers.

As he started to trudge his way down Snodgrass, a message appeared in his eyes.

System initializing…

Hunter tripped over his feet in surprise and immediately began to tumble down the trail. He rolled a couple of times before his feet caught him and halted his slide. His reaction didn’t save him from the cold and wet snow that permeated the entirety of his being. His teeth were chattering when the following message arrived.

Welcome to the Celestial Archive. Prepare for your first Revelation.