The sun crept through the cracks in the curtains, its warmth brushing my face. For a second, I forgot everything — the dungeon, the blood, the lightning. For a second, I was just a man waking up in his bed.
My sister's soft snoring came from the other side of the room. She must have crawled in during the night. Clutching my sleeve like always. Some things never changed.
I let her sleep.
The day was… ordinary. Strangely, painfully ordinary.
I chopped wood out back. The axe cracked against the logs, each strike steady, unhurried. My hands had grown calloused in the dungeon, and the rhythm felt almost too easy now.
Inside, my mother hummed as she cooked. The smell of herbs and porridge drifted out, sharp but comforting. She paused often, coughing, her illness gnawing at her strength. But she still smiled when I stepped in with firewood stacked on my shoulder.
"You're finally useful," she teased.
I rolled my eyes. "Don't get used to it."
At breakfast, my sister talked about school, about teachers who complained and bullies who didn't shut up. I listened. Really listened. More than I had in years.
She asked questions too — about where I'd been, what I'd seen. I kept my answers vague.
"Monsters," I said simply. "A storm you couldn't imagine. And a fight I shouldn't have won."
Her eyes widened, awe mixing with worry. "You're not lying, are you?"
"Do I look like I have the energy to lie?" I smirked, and she threw a crust of bread at me.
For the first time in a long time, the laughter didn't feel forced.
The day passed in fragments — small chores, small meals, small smiles. Nothing epic. Nothing grand. Just a family pretending life was normal again.
But beneath it all, I felt it.
The hum of power under my skin. The quiet crackle of purple sparks at my fingertips. The eyes of the nameless god still watching me from the void.
This peace… it wouldn't last.
Night fell.
And while I sat with my sister by the dim lantern, listening to her chatter about nothing and everything, far away another kind of gathering was taking place.
In a marble hall lit by runes and fire, guild leaders sat around a crescent table. Their voices were sharp, overlapping, restless.
"He's alive. Someone walked out of the Purple Lightning Dungeon. Weeks inside, no signal, no survivors — except him."
"Impossible. That dungeon was ranked unclassified. Even continent-level hunters avoid anomalies like that."
"And yet, reports say he emerged. His system readouts are… blank. Error. No recordable stats. Like a corpse — or worse."
The room grew colder.
Across from them, a robed elder leaned back, his eyes narrowing. "Then the rumors are true. The Nameless God has chosen a vessel."
Silence.
Then chaos.
Because if the Nameless God had moved a piece on the board… the entire world would soon feel the storm.