[Balance Updated: +1,000 Gold]
[Protector Summon Available]
The system's voice struck like a divine gong—loud, sudden, absolute.
My eyes snapped open.
I didn't even remember closing them. Maybe sometime after the bruises numbed into background noise. After the last scream from outside had faded into the hum of dark silence. Maybe when hope dulled into fatigue and time unraveled inside that damp, broken cart.
But now—
Now, something surged.
My breath caught in my throat. My ribs still ached with every breath, each inhale scraping bone against bruise. My wrists still burned beneath the bite of rope. But none of that mattered anymore.
Because this was it.
The moment I had counted down to.
Lived for.
Clung to like a lifeline in a sea of filth and fury.
I whispered, voice raw and shaking, "Initiate summon."
---
[Summoning Ashar Volkhain – Confirmed]
[Initiating Reality Anchor – Hold Position]
[Warning: Temporal distortion may cause hallucinations or unconsciousness]
---
A pulse rocked the world.
It wasn't sound—it was sensation. The air folded inward. My ears popped violently. My skin crawled. My spine twisted with the sudden, disorienting tilt of gravity being yanked like a rug from beneath reality.
For a heartbeat, the world had no up.
No down.
No name.
Light bled through the cracks in the cart's walls—not golden sunlight, but slivers of raw magic, red and silver threads weaving like veins through the ruined air. The boards beneath me trembled, groaned, and then—
Splintered.
Wood screamed. Ether burned. The whole cart detonated outward, not with fire, but with force. Debris spiraled into the night.
And from the core of the explosion, Ashar Volkhain arrived.
---
He stood at the heart of the wreckage, the very earth beneath him fractured like shattered bone. Eight feet tall—inhuman in stature, but terrifyingly real. He wore blackened battle-leathers sculpted like armor but etched with crimson glyphs that pulsed as if alive, veins of war-magic feeding through his limbs.
His face was obscured behind a half-mask of bone and gold, its edges fused into skin like it had grown there over centuries. Behind his shoulders, a cloak of shadow flowed—not cloth, but something older, darker, trailing smoke and silence in its wake.
He didn't move like a man.
He moved like memory.
A relic of a time the world had tried to forget.
---
[Ashar Volkhain – The Immortal Eclipse]
[Combat Level: 30 (Suppressed)]
[Loyalty: Bound]
[Will: Autonomous]
---
He looked down at me. Eyes glowing from within the mask—not gold, not red, but the color of a dying star.
Then, with the gravity of a thousand unburied kings, he spoke:
"You summoned me."
I nodded, stunned.
He extended his hand. The motion was slow, deliberate, like a ritual performed a thousand times across a thousand fallen empires.
I reached out and took it.
And power answered.
---
The forest shuddered.
Back in the camp, every cup of ale halted mid-air. Every drunken word dried up like spit on coals. Even the star-beasts at the forest's edge whimpered and fled into deeper darkness.
Someone screamed. Someone else dropped their weapon.
Kord emerged from the shadows of a half-collapsed tent, sword half-drawn, his muscles coiled. His eyes locked on Ashar, and his lips parted—not to speak, but to breathe differently. Instinct had taken over.
He recognized what stood before him.
Not a summon.
Not a man.
Something that shouldn't still exist.
Ashar tilted his head, as if amused.
"You draw a weapon against my contractor?"
His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to.
Kord didn't answer.
He ran.
Or tried to.
Ashar moved.
One step.
Just one.
The ground cracked beneath him.
Kord's body blurred through the air like a tossed ragdoll—slammed into a pine tree twenty meters away with a sickening crunch. He didn't get up. Didn't twitch.
Ashar didn't follow.
He turned back to me, voice as calm as still water.
"Permission to finish cleansing?"
I stared at him. The word echoed in my mind. Cleansing.
My voice cracked. "Just… don't kill everyone. Please."
He inclined his head.
"Understood."
And then—he vanished.
Not in a flash of light. Not with a gust of wind. He simply wasn't there anymore.
---
In the heavens above, something stirred.
Far beyond mortal eyes, above clouds and stars, a thread of cosmic thought pulsed across the sky. Something ancient blinked awake.
Celeste—the Will of the World—opened her eyes.
She had witnessed gods rise, and monsters burn. She had watched the System adapt, fracture, repair, evolve.
But this…
This wasn't a summon.
This was a retrieval. A resurrection.
Something the rules were designed to prevent.
The System had just torn through temporal protections to drag forth a relic from an age that no longer belonged to the living.
Even sealed. Even suppressed. Even bound to loyalty and obedience—
Ashar Volkhain was not supposed to walk the earth again.
Celeste narrowed her gaze.
The being itself did not register as a threat.
But the System?
That was new.
That was interesting.
For the first time in a century, the Will of the World did not look away.
She lingered.
Just for a second.
Then vanished—into wind and stars.
---
Ashar returned twenty minutes later.
Not a scratch on him. Not a crease in his cloak.
He walked back into the clearing carrying a torn sack slung over one shoulder—full of confiscated weapons. He dropped it with a clatter of steel and bone.
In his other hand, Kord's unconscious body, limp as rope.
He dropped that too. A dull, solid sound.
"Camp cleared," he said.
His voice was the same. Dry. Level. Like nothing had happened.
I was still shaking.
Still sitting amid the wreckage, blood drying on my skin, rope frayed at my wrists, lungs struggling to believe they were safe.
I didn't know whether to laugh, scream, or cry.
So I did the only thing I could.
I whispered, "Thank you."
Ashar tilted his head. No emotion showed. But something shifted—like a recognition passing through ancient gears.
Then, like a warrior remembering a long-forgotten ritual, he spoke softly:
"You did well. Summoning me was the correct decision."
---
[Ashar Volkhain now bound. Loyalty tier: Absolute.]
[Upgrade tree available upon next interface.]
---
I sat down fully on the broken remains of the cart. My legs finally gave out. My heart thundered inside my bruised ribs, loud and uneven.
But it beat with something new.
Not fear.
Not despair.
Momentum.
A step forward.
Finally.
My story had begun.
---
[END OF CHAPTER]
---