He awoke to the buzz of failing lights, blinking through the flickering dark of a slanted ceiling. His apartment, like him, leaned — tired, forgotten, cracked open from a past monster incursion. Rain tapped the glass like it was trying to get in. The storm was still far off, but the wind carried the scent of something rotting just beneath the surface of the city.
He moved like memory — automatic. A body already too used to this. The water from the faucet was brown for a second, then clear. He didn't wait for it to warm. Just washed. Stared. Didn't speak.
Then came the job.
In the line of porters at the edge of the Rift zone, no one said his name. They handed him a worn vest. No system pinged for him. No stat window. Just the weight of crates, the grind of stone, the silence of bodies moving past him like he wasn't there.
"Hey, you. Carry that," a hunter grunted without looking.
He carried it.
Inside the dungeon, the air was damp, the ground slick with monster blood from previous sweeps. He was placed in the back, where the trash went. The other hunters barely glanced at him. One of the rangers sneered, watching him stumble. "Wasted opportunity," he muttered under his breath.
Then came the goblin.
Screams. Gunfire.
He was slow to dodge.
Claws slashed his side. He felt the warmth spill before the pain. He clutched the wound and fell back, breathing in rust and mold and something worse. The hunters stepped over him. The healer crouched near him, cast a spell with mechanical coldness, eyes already moving to someone else.
The magic stung. It didn't soothe. It forced his flesh together like sewing wounds with barbed wire. His body lurched. He gasped, but no one reacted. He was not a person. He was a thing. A tool. A disposable cog.
He stumbled out on his own.
...
The rain had picked up. Grey sheets slicked the streets as he walked, arm wrapped tightly around his bleeding side. The healing hadn't finished the job. It only sealed him enough to survive.
He didn't hail a cab. No one would stop.
He walked to the hospital.
He checked himself in without speaking. They barely looked at him. Just pointed to a chair.
He dragged the plastic seat across the tiled floor. Slow. Scraping. Too loud for the silence inside.
He sat.
His mother was already in the room. Hooked up to wires, tubes, a world of quiet beeping and stale air. Her eyes were closed.
He didn't speak. Didn't cry.
He just sat.
His side throbbed. His breath was shallow. The world blurred, not from pain — but numbness. As if he were watching someone else's life unfold.
Thunder rumbled.
Home again. The building buzzed with unstable energy. The doorframe tilted slightly from where a horned beast once crashed through the lower floors. He climbed the crooked stairs, hand gripping the rusted rail.
His door shimmered.
It wavered like heat off asphalt. Like something was wrong.
He stepped back.
Then a voice, soft. Gentle. A whisper in the noise.
"Come in."
He froze. It wasn't threatening. It was… inviting.
He pushed the door open.
Inside sat a boy.
Ash.
His presence bent the room around him. The shadows stretched unnaturally, pooling toward him like water drawn to gravity. He sat in a chair that did not belong to him.
That's my father's chair.
The thought came unbidden.
And then — a memory.
His father, strong hands calloused from labor, sitting in that chair with a smile that made everything quieter. Nights of soup and oil lamps and calloused fingers on his hair, brushing the world away. Safe.
That warmth tried to bloom in him — until reality crashed back.
The room warped.
Darkness rose like a tide, swallowing him whole. The ceiling fell away, the walls distorted. He couldn't breathe.
He was drowning in something vast. An ocean of ink.
Then — a voice.
Chi Long's.
"Focus."
It cut through like a blade. Sharp. Real.
The darkness peeled away.
He could breathe again.
Chi Long stood with arms crossed, eyes like daggers.
"Sit down."
He sat.
Ash said nothing. He just… looked.
Chi Long filled the silence.
"You've survived your first brush with a dungeon. Congratulations. You didn't awaken. Expected."
She paced. "Do you know why you're here?"
He didn't respond.
"You're a potter. A seed. One that might sprout. Might not. But let me tell you a secret."
She leaned in.
"Seed won't sprout in blood alone. It needs death. It needs pressure. It needs to break before it grows."
He clenched his fists.
"I'm not strong," he said finally. "I have no talent."
The storm outside howled.
Ash blinked. Then spoke, barely above a whisper.
"I don't want talent."
The room darkened.
"I want greatness."
Lightning flashed, and the windows shivered.
He looked at Ash, saw the child sitting in his father's chair, saw the weight behind his silence. The abyss that waited beyond him. The presence that changed everything.
He inhaled.
And nodded.
Thunder cracked — loud and final — splitting the sky as the storm arrived.