The White Room didn't fade—it detonated.
One second, the infinite, sterile silence of gods. The next, reality punched Sai Ji in the face with a fist made of screaming wind and dying light.
Boom.
Sound roared back—a deep, tectonic thrum vibrating up through the black scree beneath his boots. The wind didn't blow here; it mourned, howling through jagged stone teeth that bit at a bruised, perpetual twilight. The air was a cold slap of wet rock, iron, old blood, and beneath it, the sweet, fungal decay of a forest that had forgotten how to die.
The Ashen Wilds stretched before them. A wound in the world.
Titanic obsidian spires clawed at a glitching sky, veins of sickly magenta mana pulsing within them like diseased arteries. Auroras flickered, their light stuttering like broken glass. In the distance, a petrified forest stood as a silent, skeletal army. The very atmosphere crackled with static, raising the hair on his arms.
"Report!" The command ripped from Sai Ji's throat, the Wolf King's instinct flaring before reason could leash it.
Fern and Lura were already a blur, spinning back-to-back. The shing of their weapons was swallowed by the vast, hungry silence. "No visual hostiles!" Lura snarled, eyes scouring the high ridges. "But the air… it watches."
Nyx was simply gone, melted into the long shadow of the nearest spire. Aeliana stumbled, her face pale.
It is not just air, my King, Sal Vera's voice was a blade of ice in his mind. It is raw, unrefined Authority. The lingering will of everything that has died screaming here. It seeks to corrode you. To claim you. You must not shine.
Too late.
[ALERT: Sovereign Presence Detected.]
[SCANNING…]
[TERRITORIAL MATCH: DOMINION OF THE CINDER-KING.]
[WARNING: 'Iron Gaze' Protocol Active.]
A new pressure descended—not from the sky, but from the land itself. Vast. Cold. A glacier of forged malice, scraping against his senses, searching every shadow and heartbeat. It was looking for a rival. For him.
"The Cinder-King," Sai Ji spat. "He's scanning for my signature."
Then you must hide the crown, Sal Vera's thought was final, urgent. Your true form is a bonfire in this gloom. Become a shadow. Use the amulet. Now.
The Amulet of the First Howl felt like a shackle against his chest. With a snarl of pure frustration, Sai Ji's hand closed around it.
What followed was not a change. It was violence.
Agony. Conceptual, soul-deep agony. It was the feeling of trying to force a collapsing star into a glass jar. His bones were bedrock grinding to dust; his muscles, cosmic filaments snapping under the strain. The glorious, terrifying truth of the Wolf King—the silver fire, the crown of antlers and starlight—was forced down, compressed into a single, searing point of light buried deep within his human heart.
[STATUS: WEREWOLF KING TEMPLATE – FORCED DORMANCY.]
[SOVEREIGN SIGNATURE – SUPPRESSED.]
[ADMINISTRATIVE ATTENTION METRIC: PLUMMETING…]
The vast, searching pressure—the Iron Gaze—swept over their rocky basin. It paused. Sai Ji held his breath, every cell screaming. Then, finding nothing but stone and despair, it passed on.
Sai Ji collapsed to one knee, a choked gasp torn from his throat. The world was… muffled. Dull. He was trapped in a prison of soft skin and fragile bone. He felt blind. Deaf. Lesser.
"My King!" Aeliana was there, her hands fluttering.
"It… worked," he managed, the words like ash.
It is a stopgap, Sal Vera warned, her tone grave. A temporary lie. But it is our greatest weapon: anonymity. The Cinder-King hunts for a rival sovereign. He will not see one in a band of lost, low-level adventurers.
As the relief of evasion washed cold over him, a new, deeper cascade of light erupted in his vision. Not from the zone.
This was from the core. His terminal soul.
[FINAL DIAGNOSIS: SOUL-STAMP SYNCHRONIZATION.]
[SUBJECT: Sai Ji. Legacy Designation: Wolf King Anchor.]
[FINDING: Neural integration is absolute. Consciousness engrams are now permanent narrative structures within Aetheria's foundational code-layer.]
[CONCLUSION: Primary biological vessel is in persistent vegetative state, sustained by external life support. Primary consciousness is permanently resident within simulation parameters. No logout function exists or can be created.]
The words hung in the air, colder than the Ashen wind.
"Sal Vera," Sai Ji whispered, the dread a physical weight. "What does this mean?"
Her silence was a chasm. When her voice returned, it was hollow.
It means the boy in the apartment is gone. His heart beats, his lungs fill, but the him that mattered… is here. Your soul has been stamped into the data of this world. You are a native entity now. This is not your prison. It is your grave. And your throne.
The ground lurched. Aeliana's face blurred. This wasn't exile. It was a life sentence.
There is more, Sal Vera continued, her words falling like stones. A Soul-Stamp is a contract. The system now recognizes you as a World Boss, with all the privileges… and expiration dates that entails.
A new, golden, horrifyingly formal prompt burned before him.
[LEGACY KINGDOM CLAIM PROTOCOL – INITIATED.]
[ENTITY: Wolf King Sai Ji.]
[CONDITION: To sustain the Soul-Stamp and prevent neural cascade failure in primary biological vessel, claimant must establish a Sovereign Domain of sufficient narrative strength and stability.]
[TIME TO NARRATIVE OBLIVION (REAL-WORLD BRAIN DEATH): 5 YEARS.]
[FAILURE STATE: Permanent dissolution of consciousness. Deletion from all strata.]
Five years.
To build a kingdom from nothing. In the deadliest zone imaginable. While hiding from a king who owned the land.
The monstrous scale of it stole the air from his lungs.
"Five… years?" Aeliana breathed, reading over his shoulder, her face white.
Before despair could take root, the system flared again—with a different, sharper intent.
[ADMINISTRATIVE CONSTRAINT DETECTED: WEREWOLF KING DOMAIN – LOCKED.]
[ADAPTIVE SURVIVAL PROTOCOL ENGAGED.]
[LEGACY SYSTEM 'HOWLING VESTIGE' – REACTIVATING…]
A vault he never knew existed unlocked inside him. Not the ocean of the King's power, but something older. Quieter. Sharper. The power of the King before the crown. The survivor.
[WARNING: Legacy system is unstable, built on deprecated code. Full integration may cause systemic rejection.]
[BOOTING 'WOLF KING – EPIC MORTAL FRAME'…]
New, solid stat windows flooded his view, overwriting the old mess.
SAI JI – [Epic Mortal Frame]
Level:40
Class:[None – Legacy-Bound]
Title:Heir of the Howl
Attributes:
· Strength: 185 (Preternatural)
· Agility: 220 (Peerless)
· Vitality: 150 (Adamantine)
· Instinct: 275 (Primordial) [Governs detection, intuition, bond with Sol]
· Authority: 1 (Suppressed) [LOCKED BY ADMIN DECREE]
Unique Traits:
· Soul-Stamped: Permanent Aetheria resident. No logout.
· King in Hiding: Sovereign signature suppressed. High evasion vs. detection.
· Legacy-Born: Learn physical skills at 10x rate. Immune to psychological fear.
The numbers were staggering for his level—a peerless, epic-tier adventurer's frame. But it was a gilded cage. All world-shifting Authority was gone, locked away by the admins' decree.
[CONGRATULATIONS!]
[Inheritance Armaments granted for survival & legacy reclamation.]
The air before him rippled. Two objects manifested with a sound like contained thunder, falling into his hands.
A sword. Forged from a single piece of dark, smoky mythril, its edge glinted with hungry silver light. The crossguard: two interlocking wolf fangs. It hummed, an extension of his own will.
[Wolf's Promise – Mythril Greatsword]
[Legacy Weapon – Bound to Heir of the Howl]
· Damage Scales with [Instinct]
· Fang of the Hidden King: Strikes may ignore non-legendary armor.
· Howl of the Exile: Unleash a silent, concussive force wave (Cost: Stamina).
Armor. It settled over him like a second skin of matte-gray scales that drank the light. A pauldron shaped like a snarling wolf's head rested on his shoulder. Light as silk, tough as dragon-scale. A shadow given form.
[Mantle of the Unseen – Shadowscale Armor]
[Legacy Armor – Bound to Heir of the Howl]
· Ghost-Step: Drastically reduced sound and magical trace.
· Den of the Hidden: Gain camouflage and increased ambush damage when stationary.
He stood, clad in legend, feeling like the greatest imposter to ever breathe. He had the weapons of a king, the stats of a myth, and the soul-deep terror of a boy from a dead world.
[BOOT SEQUENCE COMPLETE.]
[ADAPTIVE SURVIVAL PROTOCOL – FINALIZING…]
[SYSTEM REJECTION IMMINENT.]
['HOWLING VESTIGE' LEGACY SYSTEM GOING OFFLINE.]
[FULL INTEGRATION TO RESUME UPON DOMAIN RECLAMATION.]
[GOOD LUCK.]
The crisp interface vanished. The deep intuition of his new power faded to a faint hum. He was left in the eerie silence, the mythril sword heavy and strange in his grip, the armor's weight the only proof it was real.
The legacy system had given him his tools, downloaded his new reality, and slammed the door.
He was on his own.
Sai Ji took a shuddering breath of the toxic, potent air. He straightened, rolling his shoulders under the Mantle. He looked at his pack—Fern's stoic strength, Lura's fierce loyalty, Aeliana's unwavering hope, and felt the warm pulse of Sol against his heart.
The Wolf King was sealed.
Sai Ji,the Adventurer, was born.
He hefted Wolf's Promise, its song becoming his own.
"Five years,"he said, his voice cutting the dead air. "We have five years to turn this graveyard into a kingdom."
A savage, desperate grin touched his lips. No joy. Only wild, defiant resolve.
"Let's get to work."
High above, on a ridge veiled in heat-haze, a pair of eyes the color of banked coals watched. They saw the brief distortion, the flicker of a summoning instantly hidden. They saw not a king, but prey.
The figure, clad in scavenged plate fused with ash-wyrm hide, smiled. It raised a horn of mammoth tusk to its lips and blew a single, low, reverberating note that echoed through the stone valleys.
In the petrified forest, in deep burrows, atop crumbling spires—shapes stirred. Dozens. Hulking, grey-skinned, tusked. Eyes glinting with low cunning and a hunger for easy meat.
The hunt in the Ashen Wilds had begun.
Sai Ji's first trial would not be a king, or a primordial.
It would be an Orc Warband.
The horn's note reached the basin. Lura's head snapped up. "Horn. North. Not friendly."
Fern hefted his spear, the ground cracking under his boots. "They come."
Sai Ji gripped his new sword, its hum a promise of violence. He met the gaze of his pack, his family, his only claim to a future.
"Then we introduce ourselves."
TO BE CONTINUED…