Pain faded slowly.
Not like a game's quick respawn, but in slow, pulsing waves that peeled themselves off his nerves. Every sensation was too real, too physical.
Sai Ji's lungs expanded with air that tasted of wet earth and crushed leaves. His newly sensitive ears twitched, picking up a symphony of impossible sounds: a beetle under a rock meters away, the frantic wingbeats of a bird high in a canopy, the steady, wolf-like rhythm of Fen's heart, the calm-on-the-surface tremor of Lura's.
His senses felt upgraded without permission. His entire existence had been.
Fen and Lura flanked him in respectful, watchful silence. Their eyes never left him—part reverence, part wariness, as if he might vanish or lash out at any moment.
He pushed himself upright, the silver fur on his back brushing rough bark. His voice, when it came, was a low, gravelly rumble almost unfamiliar in his own ears.
"What… exactly happened to me?"
Fen bowed his head. "You awakened."
A profoundly unhelpful answer.
Lura shot her companion a glare sharp enough to slice bark. She stepped closer, her movements a study in cautious grace, the way one approaches a sacred and unpredictable beast.
"When you were slain, the pack fractured," she explained, her voice softer. "Rivals rose. Territories burned. But the system… it refused to delete your data. It waited."
"Waited?" Sai Ji repeated, the concept of a game system waiting for a dead king sending a fresh ripple of panic through him.
"For your return," she finished.
Return. Resurrection. Revival. All three words felt wrong, making him want to lie down and scream into the forest floor.
Before he could respond, a sharp, invasive chime echoed not in the air, but directly inside his skull. A red warning seared his vision:
[ALERT: Core Status Unstable]
[AI Divergence Detected]
[Entity ID: Werewolf King (???) has deviated from Expected Behavior Pattern]
[PLEASE CONTACT ADMINISTRATION.]
Fen's ears flattened as if struck by sound. Lura went rigid, the tips of her bone claws slipping from her fingers.
Sai Ji stared at the hovering text, a cold dread settling in his gut. Administration?
"Do not answer," Fen growled, the sound a warning vibration. "They will erase you. Again."
Erase me? The thought was a spike of ice. "Hold on. Who are 'they,' exactly?"
Lura moved even closer. Her violet eyes met his—not with fear of him, but fear for him. "They created us. Wrote our souls. Forced you to obey their cycles." Her throat worked. "You fought them once."
A chill colder than the forest air crawled through Sai Ji's pelt.
"And they killed you for it," she finished, the words barely a whisper.
Fantastic. So I rebelled before I even existed. The irony was a bitter pill.
A throbbing, non-physical headache pulsed behind his eyes—a psychic warning: Don't open that box yet. It's full of trauma you didn't buy.
He dragged his focus back to the present. Blood, dark and drying, still glistened on his claws. His new muscles hummed with stolen strength, and beneath that power coiled something else: deep instinct, phantom memory, and a territorial hunger. A shadow had taken up residence beneath his ribcage.
Then, a voice—deep, old, cracked like ancient stone—whispered from the marrow of his own mind:
"Take back the throne."
He blinked hard, and the forest snapped back into harsh clarity.
Fen watched him carefully. "More fragments?"
"Fragments of what?"
"Of the king before you," Lura answered. "His memories linger inside the power. You may see what he saw. Feel what he felt."
So I'm sharing a mental Airbnb with the ghost of a tyrant who hates authority. The situation kept improving.
Lura gestured urgently toward the dense woods. "My king, we must move. The Dire Wolves were scouts. Their alpha will come."
Fen bared his teeth in a grimace. "And he hates you."
"That seems to be a theme today," Sai Ji muttered.
As if on cue, the trees rustled, carrying faint, gathering howls. Not scouts this time. Hunters.
"Fine," he sighed, the sound more beast than man. "Where?"
Fen pointed toward a distant ridge, its peaks like black fangs tearing at the twilight sky. "The Old Den. Your throne lies there."
"And enemies," Lura added. "Many."
"Can't something in this world be simple?"
"No," they replied in unison.
Figures.
They moved and Sai Ji expected to stumble, to crash through the undergrowth like an idiot in a monster suit.
Instead, his body moved with a century's worth of ingrained grace. Every step was precise, balanced and power rippled under his fur like coiled springs. He cleared a fallen log in a silent, effortless leap while the very air seemed to part for him.
His heart should have been hammering with fear. Instead, it beat a steady, solid, almost predatory rhythm.
Maybe too solid.
With each step, more flashes scratched at the edges of his consciousness:
Fire swallowing ancient trees.
Wolves kneeling in a den stained with old blood.
A towering shadow with eyes of fractured, glitching glass reaching for him.
A voice, like a corrupted god, commanding: "RESET HIM."
The old king hadn't just ruled. He had died fighting something… profoundly wrong.
A deep, subsonic vibration shivered up through the soil.
Lura's ears shot forward. "Too late. They're here."
Fen stiffened, his hand closing around his hammer's haft. "Dire Wolf Alpha. Level 48."
The trees ahead exploded.
A creature of mythic proportions crashed into the clearing—a mountain of bristling black fur and corded muscle under a map of old scars. One baleful yellow eye burned with pure hatred; the other was a ruined socket, marked by the memory of claws.
Its gaze found Sai Ji.
"TRAITOR."
The word wasn't spoken. It was echoed directly into his skull, a scream through the system's own pipes. Then it charged.
"My king—MOVE!" Fen shouted.
But the king inside Sai Ji didn't move.
He answered.
Instinct seized total control, pulling every sinew into a harmony of terrifying power. Sai Ji's chest swelled, and he roared.
The sound was so deep it seemed to shake the roots of the world. Birds erupted from the trees in a panicked storm. Fen flinched. From the center of Sai Ji's chest, a burning sigil erupted—dark silver lines that pulsed outward like lightning-made veins, etching a crown of raw authority in the air.
[ALPHA DOMINION — Awakening Skill Activated]
Visible power whipped around him, twisting the grass flat in spirals. The charging Dire Wolf Alpha skidded as if hitting an invisible wall. Its massive body began to tremble violently, legs locking and buckling until its belly pressed into the churned earth.
It was forced to kneel.
Fen's jaw went slack. "H-He obeys you…"
Lura stared as if he had bent reality itself.
Sai Ji stepped forward, an aura of unasked-for dominion radiating from him. The Alpha collapsed further, its muzzle grinding into the dirt, utterly subdued.
His clawed hand rose. Instinct screamed a single, clear command: Strike. Finish the rival. Reclaim your dominance.
"No…" he whispered into the roaring silence of his own mind. "I'm not killing him."
But the ghost-king roared back: "A KING LEAVES NO RIVAL ALIVE."
Two wills clashed inside his skull—Sai Ji, the lonely loser from a stained apartment, and the Werewolf King, monarch of bones and breaker of armies.
His hand trembled. A single drop of blood, his own from clenched claws, fell and darkened the soil.
Fen and Lura did not move. They were statues, respecting—or fearing—his moment of choice.
The defeated Alpha waited, shivering, for judgment.
Sai Ji inhaled, the scent of pine, blood, and fear filling him.
And he chose.
[PATH SELECTED: King's Mercy]
[Dominion Evolution: Compassion Variant Unlocked]
[NPC Behavior Shift Detected]
[Storyline Divergence: 14,900%]
[WARNING: The System Cannot Predict You]
The glaring system warnings dissolved like smoke in the wind.
An utter, profound silence fell over the forest.
Fen finally breathed, his voice hushed with awe. "You… altered fate."
Lura exhaled a shaky breath, a small, fierce smile breaking across her face. "Then you are truly our king. Not his ghost."
The Dire Wolf Alpha rose unsteadily to its feet. Its single, intelligent eye no longer held hatred, but a deep, instinctual loyalty. It bowed its massive head once in clear submission… then turned and melted back into the shadows of the trees.
Sai Ji stood alone in the clearing, his heart a thunderous drum in his chest, his claws still trembling.
He was not the old, dead tyrant.
He was not the forgotten boy from the real world.
He was something new. Something unpredictable.
Something dangerous.
And whatever grand narrative the system had written for this world, he had just taken the first step off the page.