The void spat them out like a swallowed breath returning to the lungs of the world.
Sai Ji hit the ground hard—knees cracking against cold, unforgiving stone. Aeliana skidded beside him, catching his arm before he could face-plant. Nyx landed in a predator's crouch, blades already singing from their sheaths. His bodyguards formed a seamless, protective wall in front of him in less than a heartbeat.
The stranger—Riven—landed without a sound, the cloak of bleeding twilight settling around him like dissipating smoke.
For a moment, there was only the sound of ragged breathing.
The air was thin and tasted of ozone and deep, geological silence. The cavern walls were a black so profound they seemed to drink the light from the small, pulsing silver runes that vein-crawled across their surface. It was a place that felt less like a location and more like a organ in some planetary beast.
Sal Vera's voice trembled in the sanctum of his mind, hushed with awe and dread. "My King… this is the Wraithbone Sanctuary. Also called the Maw of Ancestral Night. It is a domain grave… and a birthplace. Neutral ground, where even empires fear to tread."
Sai Ji groaned into his palms, the sound muffled and pathetic. "Why is everywhere we go a capital offense? Can't we just… visit a nice tavern? One that doesn't double as a geopolitical act of war?"
Aeliana's whisper was tense. "This is beyond illegal, Sai Ji. Stepping foot here is grounds for the Empire to mobilize the Black Dawn Legion. It's a soul-erasure level transgression."
Nyx nodded grimly, his eyes never leaving Riven. "They cleanse continents for less."
"Fantastic," Sai Ji deadpanned. "A five-star death trap. My favorite." He pushed himself up, and the world lurched. "Okay, whoa. Dizzy."
It wasn't just dizziness.
A deep, tectonic shudder worked its way up from his core. Silver light, like cracks in porcelain, began to spiderweb under the skin of his hands and forearms. A pressure was building behind his eyes—the same feeling as before his aura had detonated in the alley, but hotter, more contained, and infinitely more painful.
Aeliana's eyes widened. "He's going into backlash again!"
Nyx moved to steady him. "Master, you must breathe, center your—"
Sai Ji couldn't. His chest was a vice. His vision swam with static. The proto-Domain inside him, that raw, screaming knot of sovereignty, was thrashing against its cage, and the cage was his own fragile, mortal biology. He felt like a dying star trying to ignite in a cardboard box.
Riven moved. One moment he was a statue by the wall; the next, he was directly in front of Sai Ji, his movements a study in disquieting grace.
"Hold still," he said, his voice devoid of warmth or malice. It was a command.
"Don't you dare touch m—" Sai Ji's protest was cut off as Riven pressed two cool fingers to his forehead.
Silence.
Not the absence of sound, but its absolute excision. The roaring in his veins ceased. The psychic pressure popped like a soap bubble. The silver light under his skin drained away, siphoned down a spiraling ribbon of energy that vanished into Riven's fingertips.
Sai Ji sagged against Aeliana, gasping as if he'd just broken the surface of a deep lake. His heartbeat, now a normal, frantic drum instead of a celestial timpani, hammered against his ribs.
"What… what did you do?" he wheezed.
Riven lowered his hand, examining his own fingertips as if checking for stains. "Sovereign backlash. Your Domain is an engine trying to turn over in a cart meant for a donkey. I applied a… suppressor."
Sai Ji blinked, the relief making him stupid. "So… you're a healer?"
"No."
"A support-class mage? A buffer?"
"No."
"Does your job description involve… touching people's foreheads until they stop glowing?"
Riven's lips—sharp, unsmiling—thinned slightly. "No."
Aeliana coughed delicately. "Sai Ji, perhaps now is not the time to interrogate the mysteriously powerful person who just kept your soul from atomizing."
Riven finally pulled back his hood.
The face revealed was one of sharp, androgynous beauty that seemed carved from moonlit marble. Ink-black hair was cropped close to the skull. Eyes the color of polished obsidian held no reflection. And over his left brow, burning with a faint, inner light, was a sigil: a slashed crescent moon.
The same symbol that had flickered in Sai Ji's own unleashed aura.
Nyx hissed, his blades coming up a fraction. "That mark… Sovereign Hunter."
The words hung in the cold air.
Riven's smile was a slow, razor-thin thing. "Former. But yes. I hunted the incarnations of divine will."
Sai Ji's stomach performed a perfect, nauseating somersault. "You… you hunted people like me?"
"I killed the previous Werewolf King," Riven stated, the confession dropping like a stone into a still pond. "The one whose throne you are inheriting."
The silence that followed was absolute. Aeliana's grip on Sai Ji's arm tightened to the point of pain. Nyx looked ready to spring, consequences be damned.
"He… requested it," Riven added, as if that explained everything.
Aeliana found her voice first, a strangled whisper. "He what?"
Sai Ji's mind broke for a second. "What kind of last wish is 'please murder me'?! Was the retirement plan that bad?!"
Riven's obsidian eyes seemed to look through him, into a memory. "Your predecessor wasn't… stable. Sovereignty is a crown of infinite weight. It cracks minds, warps souls. He saw the fractures in himself and chose a clean end over a slow unraveling that would have taken the continent with him." He tilted his head. "He was, in his way, the most sane of them all."
"Perfect," Sai Ji breathed, a hysterical laugh bubbling in his throat. "So my genetic legacy is 'divinely powerful and suicidally depressed.' My future is looking bright."
Riven turned, his cloak whispering against the stone. "Your future is whatever you make it. But to have one, you must move. The Empire's tracking spells are subtle, but they are persistent. They will paint this location in less than an hour."
He began walking deeper into the cavern, expecting them to follow.
Sai Ji, after a moment of sheer, overwhelmed inertia, did. Because what else was there? At this point, his week had included: ecclesiastical kidnapping, accidental godhood, public cosmic announcements, military sieges, and now a guided tour of a forbidden crypt by his past life's assassin. Following a mysterious killer into the dark felt like just another Tuesday.
Aeliana fell into step beside him, her voice dropping to a thread only he could catch. "Sai Ji… now that the truth is… out. What do you want? Truly?"
The question hit him with more force than any backlash. He walked in silence for several steps, the only sounds the scuff of their boots and the distant drip of water in the dark.
"I want," he said finally, the words simple and heavy, "what I wanted from the very beginning. Before the slimes. Before the guild. Before any of this."
She looked at him, waiting.
"I want to be an Adventurer. Just… a normal player. Explore the world. Grind quests. Fight monsters that don't bow to me. Level up. See Aetheria the way it was meant to be seen. Not as a king. As a tourist with a sword."
Nyx, walking ahead, stumbled slightly on a loose stone. He didn't turn, but his shoulders stiffened.
Aeliana's expression softened into something unbearably fond and sad. "It's a good dream."
"If that is your wish," Sal Vera's voice chimed in, warm and unwavering, "then it is our command."
Riven glanced back over his shoulder. "If you want to live long enough to pick flowers and kill rats, you'll need training. Your 'Sovereign body' is currently a collapsed star wrapped in tissue paper. You need to rebuild. From the ground up. Your stats have reset."
Sai Ji stopped. "Reset? You mean I'm…"
"Base human attributes. Level one, for all intents and purposes. The backlash burned out the unstable overflow. What's left is the foundation."
A strange, perverse hope flickered in Sai Ji's chest. "So… I can start over? For real?"
"You can." Riven flicked his wrist. A small, crescent-shaped amulet, etched with moonlight runes, appeared in his palm. He tossed it to Sai Ji. "This will help. The 'Amulet of Mortal Veil.' It will lock your form to your original human template. Suppress the aura to near-zero. It even comes with a convincing stat sheet."
Sai Ji caught it, the metal cool against his skin. "What's the catch?"
"No catch. It's a very good artifact. The only… side effect is that Sovereign blood leaves traces. Even the best illusion can't hide the… shine. Your Charm stat will be comically, problematically high. You will look like a bard's fantasy come to life."
"Slightly more handsome, got it," Sai Ji said, fastening the chain around his neck.
Light enveloped him—a gentle, warm glow that settled into his skin. He felt a slight shift, a settling, like putting on a perfectly tailored suit he'd always owned.
Aeliana's breath caught.
Nyx turned, looked, and then immediately looked away, his ears turning faintly pink.
Even Fern and Lura, the unflappable bodyguards, exchanged a glance.
"What?" Sai Ji asked.
"You…" Aeliana began, then shook her head, a faint blush on her own cheeks. "The 'slightly' was an understatement."
Sal Vera cackled in his mind. "My King, you are now a public hazard. That face could start wars or stop them, and it will do neither conveniently."
As they navigated the final tunnels of the Sanctuary, Sal Vera provided a soft, mental primer. "Aetheria is divided into Ten Realms, from the Mortal Plains to the Sovereign Pillars—the endgame worlds. You, technically, belong in the last category. But you will start… in the first."
They emerged into the clear, moonlit night of the Wildfront Range. The air was fresh, pine-scented, and blessedly free of apocalyptic pressure. Sai Ji took a deep, shuddering breath of it. He pulled up his quest interface, the familiar blue screens a comfort. It showed his new, gloriously mundane status.
[PLAYER STATUS — HUMAN SAI JI]
Name:Sai Ji
Race:Human (Veiled)
Class:Unassigned
Level:1
HP:120 | MP: 60
STR:7 | AGI: 8 | VIT: 6 | INT: 10 | WIS: 9
LCK:15 | CHA: 42 (???)
Note:Charm exceeds standard parameters. Individual flagged for observation.
And beneath it, greyed out and locked, a second status page lurked like a sleeping dragon:
[HIDDEN STATUS — SOVEREIGN FORM: STABILITY - 12%]
"Level one," Sai Ji muttered, a real smile touching his lips for the first time in what felt like ages. "With the charisma of a love-struck deity and the strength of a sickly scholar. This… this I can work with."
He located the nearest beginner marker on his map. "Wolf Den Caverns. A ten-minute walk. Perfect for a fresh level one party."
Aeliana nodded, a genuine excitement in her eyes. "A proper beginning."
Nyk sheathed his blades, adopting the posture of a simple, if overly intense, hired guard. "We shall proceed with discretion."
Riven lingered at the mouth of the cavern, a silhouette against the dark stone. "Frostfall City is two days northeast. Its guild is large, anonymous. You'll get lost in the crowd. Start there." He paused. "And Sai Ji?"
"Yeah?"
"Try not to die. The world has invested… considerably… in you."
Before Sai Ji could muster a retort, a scream tore through the tranquil forest.
It was followed by a thunderous, rustling, clattering cacophony—the sound of a thousand small, furious bodies moving through underbrush.
A figure burst into the small clearing where they stood, armor dented, cloak shredded, face a mask of pure, unadulterated panic. He skidded to a halt, chest heaving.
"HELP! PLEASE, ANYONE! THEY'RE—THEY'RE EVERYWHERE—IT'S A BUG, IT HAS TO BE A BUG—!"
Sai Ji's interface flickered, identifying the runner:
[Midnight Wolf - Level 24 - Player]
A player. A real, honest-to-goodness other person from Earth, stuck in the same insane game.
And behind him, the forest exploded.
Not with fire, but with green. A tidal wave of goblins—hundreds, easily over a thousand—poured from the treeline, a seething, snarling, scratching mass of crude weapons and beady, furious eyes.
Nyx's analysis was a tense whisper. "They are not chasing him. Their formation is a rout. They are… fleeing."
Aeliana paled. "Fleeing from what?"
But Sai Ji wasn't looking at what they were fleeing from. He was looking at Midnight Wolf—a fellow player, about to be overrun because of some glitch, some stupid game error. It was the most normal, most video game problem he'd encountered since arriving.
And he had had enough.
Ignoring Riven's sharp warning hiss and Aeliana's gasp, Sai Ji stepped forward. He felt no godly power, no crushing aura. Just the AGI 8 of a slightly-above-average beginner. But it was his.
He slid to a stop between the crumpled player and the leading edge of the goblin horde, arms spread wide.
"HEY!" he yelled, his voice cutting through the goblins' chittering. "BACK OFF! FIND SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE!"
The front rank of goblins skidded in confusion. They sniffed the air, beady eyes squinting at this sudden, handsome obstacle. They sensed no terrifying aura. No boss-monster pressure. No hidden levels. They saw a level one human with a suspiciously well-defined jawline and a death wish.
Sai Ji puffed out his chest, trying to look larger. "That's right! You smell nothing! I'm level one and broker than you are!"
The goblins blinked. They looked at each other. They looked back at the deeper, darker forest behind them, from which a low, predatory hum was now emanating. Then, as one, they shrugged—a thousand green shoulders lifting in unison—turned, and scampered away into the night, choosing the known terror of the handsome weirdo over the unknown terror in the woods.
The silence they left behind was profound.
Midnight Wolf stared up at Sai Ji from the dirt, his expression that of a man who has just seen the fundamental laws of the universe rewritten by a very pretty anomaly.
"You… you just… they just…" he stammered. "Bro… what are you? An NPC? A hidden raid trigger? A… a visual effect?!"
Sai Ji reached down, offering a hand. He summoned his best, most normal, most human smile. "Sai Ji. Just a new player. Totally human. Extremely, utterly human."
Behind him, Riven let out a long, weary sigh and massaged his temples.
Sal Vera's mental laughter was a delighted chime. "Oh, my King. Your legend begins not with a roar, but with a bluff."
Aeliana facepalmed gently.
Nyx leaned close to her and whispered, voice thick with doomed certainty, "He is going to get us all killed."
Aeliana watched Sai Ji help the stunned player to his feet, that infuriatingly charming grin plastered on his face. She sighed, a small, resigned smile touching her own lips.
"Yes," she agreed softly. "But have you seen his Charisma score? We'll probably enjoy it."