(Third-Person Limited POV)
Silence was the loudest thing in Sai Ji's apartment.
It wasn't peaceful. It was the heavy, suffocating quiet of a place where life had given up. The only light came from his second-hand monitor, its flicker skating over a landscape of empty ramen cups and defeated ambitions. The air smelled like regret and instant noodles—his personal brand of cologne.
No pings lit up his phone. No missed calls. His parents' numbers were just ghosts in his contacts now. His friends? They had logged out of his life one by one, their avatars in the real world fading to grey. The manager at the convenience store had said he "looked too tired to inspire customer confidence." The man had been right. Sai Ji was tired. He was tired of being the background character in his own story.
So, his brilliant, final plan? Total escape.
He sank into the cracked leather of his VR rig—the only thing he owned worth more than his self-respect. The helmet sealed with a hiss, cutting off the world he'd failed.
Welcome to Aetheria Online.
The words were a promise. In here, he wasn't Sai Ji, the human ghost. He could be anyone. He could be someone who mattered.
The Hall of Origin was a sensory blitz of golden light and screaming newbies, all scrambling for their starter gear. But Sai Ji stood frozen in the chaos.
Something was wrong.
Not with the players. With the world. The light from the floating crystals bled at the edges like a bad render. The triumphant fanfare music had a half-second lag, a dissonant hum beneath the melody. The NPC greeters smiled with a plasticity that was one degree too perfect, their eyes not quite tracking right.
Forum whispers called them "atmospheric glitches." It felt like a lie. It felt like the game was sick.
A priestess glided toward him, a vision of starlight and code. Her violet eyes locked onto his. For a single, stomach-dropping frame, her beautiful face distorted—pixelating into a silent scream—before snapping back to serene.
"Welcome, traveler," she said, her voice like honey over broken glass. "You have one spin of fate. Will you claim it?"
She gestured to the Golden Gacha, a colossal orb swirling with every legendary weapon and divine mount a player could dream of. The altar of Aetheria's brutal, glorious randomness.
"Remember," she added, and her voice layered for a microsecond, a chorus of whispers beneath the words, "what is pulled… cannot be undone."
A chill, final and deep, traced his spine. He ignored it. This was the altar. He was the supplicant with nothing left to lose.
He hit SPIN.
The orb whirled. Blue light (common). Purple bloomed (rare). Gold flashed (legendary)—
—and then the world broke.
The gold didn't fade. It shattered, consumed from within by an impossible, light-eating VOID.
The Gacha orb didn't explode outward. It imploded into a singularity of wrongness.
The Hall of Origin tore apart at the seams. Player models stretched into screaming, polygonal smears. The marble floor liquefied, showing terrifying glimpses of other places—a blood-red moon over a dead forest, a throne of writhing roots, a pair of silver eyes as vast as lakes.
CRITICAL ERROR: Asset ID #666 — [WEREWOLF_KING_LEGACY] — RELEASED.
The priestess stumbled back, her scripted serenity incinerated by pure, system-level terror. "You… you are not supposed to exist."
Pain detonated in the core of Sai Ji's being. This wasn't the pain of injury. It was the agony of un-creation.
His bones were not breaking—they were being forged, reshaped into an architecture of fang and fury. Muscle tore and re-knit with the density of ancient stone. A pelt of midnight silver, tipped with frost, erupted from his skin. His jaw unhinged, his skull remolding itself, a crown of phantom iron and real, aching bone curling from his temples.
SYSTEM OVERRIDE: User SaiJi94 has merged with NPC Template — [WEREWOLF KING]. Sovereign Protocol: ACTIVE.
He fell onto all fours, a beast being born. Steam rose from his flanks in the suddenly frigid air. He tried to scream.
What came out was a roar that shook the crumbling code of reality itself.
Then, darkness....
He woke to the smell of wet earth and pine. Cold soil pressed against his… muzzle.
His senses rebooted on a scale that was horrifying. He could hear the sap crawling in trees a mile away. He could smell the fear-scent of a hidden rabbit, the iron tang of a distant stream. He could see the individual threads of a spider's web, glistening with dew thirty feet up.
He lurched to his feet—no, to his paws—and staggered to the edge of a forest pool.
The monster in the reflection stared back.
Eight feet tall at the shoulder, a monument of primal power carved from shadow and moonlight. Molten gold eyes burned with an intelligence that was alien, ancient, and terrifyingly familiar. Fangs like daggers and a crown of dark, twisted metal fused to the skull.
The Werewolf King.
"No way…" His voice was a deep, grating ruin of a thing.
Before human panic could drown him, a new instinct rose from the depths of this borrowed soul—cold, regal, and absolute.
Alpha.
A branch snapped.
Two figures emerged from the treeline, moving with a predatory grace that matched the forest. They froze. Their eyes widened. Then, as one, they dropped to a knee, heads bowed.
The first was a mountain of a man, his armor forged of ironwood and scarred leather, a hammer like a small anvil across his thighs. His voice was the rumble of stones deep in the earth. "Alpha. You've returned."
The second was a woman, lean and sharp as a honed blade, twin daggers of polished bone at her hips. Her grin was all fierce, feral joy. "The bloodline endures. We knew the call would be answered."
They looked at him with an awe that felt centuries old.
"Who… are you?" he managed, the words a deep, grating vibration.
"Your sworn. I am Fen."
"I am Lura,"the woman said, rising. "We have combed the wilds for your scent. Now… it begins again."
He didn't understand. But his body did. His instincts did. It was a memory in the muscle, in the bone. A ghost in the machine of him.
Three howls撕裂 the distance, raw with hunger and territorial rage.
Fen was on his feet instantly. "Dire Wolf scouts. Feral. Desperate."
"They smell the awakening,"Lura snarled, blades appearing in her hands. "Kill. Or be hunted."
His heart thumped—not with fear.
With excitement.
[WOLF SENSE — ACTIVATED]
Threats: 3. (Feral Dire Wolves — Level 22)
Status: TERRITORY INVASION.
ALPHA RESPONSE: REQUIRED.
He knew where they were. Their scent. Their footfall. Their hunger.
He leapt.
The forest became a blur of instinctive, perfect violence. A Dire Wolf lunged from the ferns. His body reacted without him—a twist, a swipe of a clawed hand that was less a strike and more a natural disaster. Bones cracked like dry twigs. The wolf fell, its life extinguished before it could yelp.
It was effortless. It was terrifying.
It felt… right.
Lura danced through another, her blades a silver whirlwind. Fen simply met the third's charge and crushed its skull with a single, hammer-like fist.
Silence returned, broken only by his ragged breaths, the steam rising from his bloodied claws. He stared at the carnage, the visceral proof of his new reality.
"Your first hunt, my king," Lura said, pride warming her voice.
"Flawless,"Fen intoned. "Word will spread. The Alpha walks again."
Sai Ji looked from his loyal, impossible NPCs to the blood on his claws. The realization was a cold shock, followed by a terrifying thrill.
He was not playing the Werewolf King.
He was him.
And somewhere, in the deep, forgotten code of Aetheria, a protocol older than servers flickered to life.
[Sovereign-Class Entity: CONFIRMED.]
[Narrative Anomaly: DETECTED.]
[World Event Trigger: IMMINENT.]
Far in the distance, something enormous and old stirred in its sleep, and answered the new King's first, bloody decree with a ground-shaking howl of its own.