Darkness had no meaning anymore.
Time had long since lost shape—bled into one endless moment, stretched taut like sinew across centuries of silence. He had learned to stop counting the years after the first hundred.
He had not dreamed in ages.
And then—rupture.
A crack. A scream. A ripple through the bindings like a hot needle in rotten flesh.
The wall fell.
The seal shattered.
An insect crushed.
Freedom.
Dravek exhaled a breath he no longer needed, the motion more habit than necessity. He uncoiled, shadow made flesh and smoke. His body remembered pain—rebirth was never quiet. Cracking joints. Grinding tendon. A thousand meaty clicks as his limbs tore themselves into something resembling symmetry.
The world greeted him with stone, starlight, and blood.
And a man in yellow.
Dravek paused. His head tilted, motion sinuous and serpentine.
The figure stood alone in the courtyard, flail dangling like a forgotten thought, garbed head to toe in tight, shining yellow armor—garish, reflective, offensive to both taste and logic.
"Oh—that's—not good…" the figure muttered.
Dravek chuckled, a sound like tar bubbling over cold iron. He let the shadows stretch tall and wide, letting the full weight of his presence spill across the courtyard. He passed through the broken manor wall without touching it, letting the debris whisper reverence as he moved.
Then, finally, words—his first in centuries, savoring the taste:
"Ahhh… after all this time… the seal is broken."
He opened his arms, letting power flare like coals behind his eyeless mask.
"Countless years in that cursed manor. Watching. Waiting. Bound by those I called friends. Forgotten. Starved of power. But now..."
His attention shifted to the yellow fool. The flail, the armor, the dumbstruck stare. And then—
There. The mark. Barely visible beneath the fabric. Faint, but undeniable. He leaned forward.
"You."
Still, the mortal didn't move. Dravek could smell the adrenaline rolling off him.
"I see it now. The mark of the devourer. You slew the Crystal Warden. Broke the resonance lock. You were sent."
The yellow figure shifted slightly—just enough to betray awareness. Not the reaction Dravek expected.
"You freed me. After all this time… my faithful have not forgotten. Your garb is… tragic, but the intent is clear."
He gestured toward the armor with visible disdain.
"You've my thanks. Such as it is. Though I question your—aesthetics—and... choice of weaponry."
He let silence stretch, then asked what mattered most:
"Tell me, Liberator—has it begun?"
The yellow man wobbled. Then straightened. And then—spoke:
"…I've lived to serve. My life is a pittance for your freedom, great one."
Dravek paused. Stared.
Then the man fell in slow motion, like a drunken ritual. Was it theater? Was he dying?
No… he had fainted.
Dravek remained still for a moment. Then he sighed. Well… not the return he had envisioned.
He glanced around. The courtyard was cracked and weathered. The air carried strange scents—oil, iron, something synthetic. And there, half-buried in stone, was a metallic monstrosity with wheels—an alien construct that reeked of an age far removed from his own.
How long had it been?
This world was not as he remembered.
He turned back to the man. Sleeping now. Motionless save the rise and fall of his chest. Spandex still offensively yellow. He was tempted to kill him. To drain his essence and reclaim strength. But…
No.
Dravek knelt. Not out of reverence—but curiosity. There was potential in this one. He had survived the resonance backlash. Worn the mark. Freed him.
Perhaps fate had a hand in this. If he survived the night, Dravek would return. And if he did, then the yellow fool would be more than a Liberator.
He would be his General.
Dravek stood. Tore the air open with a clawed gesture. A seam of void split reality, shadows leaking from the edges like ink across parchment.
He stepped through—and vanished.
***
Jeff's day had started with a fist to someone's face.
In his defense, the guy had it coming. Shoving a freshman into a locker and calling it "character building" was just code for being a raging jagoff. Jeff didn't start the fight—but he sure as heck finished it.
Now he sat in the principal's office again, arms crossed, tuning out the lecture. He could recite the speech himself at this point. Something about "escalation," "non-violence," and "find a good role model." Right. Because protecting people was apparently against school policy.
By the time he got out, the sun was low and his mood was lower. The "kid car," an ancient Civic with more duct tape than trim, sputtered its disapproval as he drove it home. He hated the crappy thing. Loud. Embarrassing. But with no savings and fast food wages, he didn't have options.
Home was quiet. Mom and Dad were at work, and Thane... wherever Thane was, he wasn't answering his phone.
Jeff threw his backpack on the couch and stared at the fridge. Leftovers. Meh. He wasn't hungry, just drained. Still wearing the same scowl he'd had all day, he checked the time on his phone.
Shift starts in fifteen minutes.
He groaned. "Screw that job."
He hated it. Every part of it. Greasy floors, clueless managers, endless customer BS. He could skip. Just once. But as he grabbed his keys and headed toward the door, guilt kicked in. Thane would probably say something like, "You're not your job, but you are your habits." Whatever that meant.
Jeff sighed and opened the front door—
—and the world stopped.
Literally.
He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't blink. But he was aware. Something massive shifted in the air. He couldn't see it, but he felt it.
Then the messages appeared, glowing green and hovering just beyond the threshold:
Stuff about welcome to the system. Earth selected for transfer. Don't panic. Mass something-or-other. A tutorial, apparently.
Frozen? Jeff wanted to scream. Or laugh. He wasn't sure which.
He watched—trapped in his own body—as strange light swept over the neighborhood. Streetlamps winked out. The sky rippled like water.
And then the ground shook.
He couldn't move. Couldn't run. Just watch.
Then the world dropped out from under him.
His house—and about ten feet of the surrounding lawn—lurched free from the ground with a soundless snap. A couple neighboring houses followed suit, ripped up like Monopoly pieces on a cosmic game board. They began rising—fast. Really fast.
He could see it, the blur of earth and trees below shrinking to nothing, but he couldn't feel it. No gravity shift. No G-forces. Just motion without sensation. Like being dragged upward through a movie screen.
Clouds tore past, then atmosphere. Then stars.
Jeff's mind went blank. His brain short-circuited trying to understand. Below him, Earth shrank to a speck—then blinked out of sight entirely. All around, he could see other floating chunks of land, some with buildings, some with people, many frozen just like him. A cow hovered past on a floating slab of pasture, legs locked mid-graze.
[TRANSFER IN PROGRESS]
[WORLD COALESCENCE INITIATED]
[merge stage: 12%]
Then it happened.
From the far edge of space, beyond where his eyes should have been able to see, the land began to move. Not drift—snap into place. Islands of earth streaked through the void at warp speed, slamming into each other like magnetic puzzle pieces. The reassembly wave shot across the cosmos like a ripple of reality rewriting itself.
It reached him.
Everything went white.
Jeff didn't feel anything—but he knew something had changed. For a moment, the white fog was everything. Then, slowly, the blur faded.
He was still on his porch. The grass cut off in a perfect circle around the foundation. No yard. No fence. No driveway. Just ten feet of land—and then, nothing.
Black space stretched in every direction.
Then the distortion appeared.
A ripple in the void, like heat over pavement but wrong, twisted like a whirlpool made of glass. The space in front of him tore, revealing a swirling vortex, and then—he was moving again.
Dragged forward. Not violently, but inevitably. Like gravity with intent.
He passed through the vortex.
On the other side, a planet filled his view.
Not Earth. The colors were wrong. No familiar blue oceans or green continents. This place was streaked in purples, blacks, slate grays, and bone whites. Glowing rivers of magma traced the surface like scars. The planet looked ancient and angry.
Jeff fell toward it, the new world racing to meet him. He braced for the worst, mind screaming, frozen body locked in place.
As he plummeted closer, the landscape sharpened—massive mountains, forests like jagged teeth, and patchwork chunks of land awkwardly meshed together. Like someone had stitched a thousand jigsaw puzzles into one world.
Ahead—an enormous wall.
It stretched for miles in either direction, and rose at least 300 feet high, maybe more. It looked like it had been forged from obsidian and hate. And he was heading straight for it.
Closer. Closer.
He was going to crash. No time. No way to dodge. His floating house rocketed toward the stone like a missile—
Then stopped.
Just like that.
Ten feet from the surface, hovering in place, perfectly still. The shadow of the wall loomed over him. Silent. Immense. Jeff couldn't feel his heart beating, but if he could, it'd be in his throat.
[SECTOR 782: INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
And there he stood.
Frozen in place. Staring at a wall that scraped the sky. Ten feet from his front porch.
Then smiled thinking only one thing: guess I'm not clocking in today.
***
The drawing room glowed with amber light, thick with the scent of spiced wine and slow-burning incense. Velvet drapes muffled the sounds of celebration beyond the manor's stone walls—less a festival, more a funeral with expensive appetizers. Two men stood at the tall windows, watching the shimmer of the atmosphere ripple as Sector Gates powered up across the horizon.
"To think," said Lord Mydran, swirling his goblet, "that we are finally here. After decades of maneuvering. Decades of blood and coin. The old gods slept too long."
"Not all of them," replied the Duke of Quellmere, his voice like oil over steel. "But soon they'll sleep forever."
They raised their glasses in silent toast.
Lord Mydran turned from the window, eyes gleaming like polished obsidian. "And Earth's people… ripe for harvest. A whole world of blind, bumbling peasants dropped into our laps, grateful for the scraps we toss them. Can you imagine, Quellmere? The tax rights alone. The tribute. The contracts. We'll strip them clean."
Quellmere chuckled. "Some of the lesser lords have pledged to protect them. Build them homes. Teach them systems." He said it like one might describe a man licking a boot.
"Idiots," Mydran spat. "A farmer doesn't teach the cattle to read. He brands them."
His fingers curled around a crystalline map embedded in the table. Dozens of markers glowed softly—zones he had carved out, bartered for, bled over. Land gifted by backroom agreements and assassins' blades.
"All mine," he whispered. "And every fool that falls from the sky will owe me breath, blood, and gold. They'll scream and fight, of course. But in the end? They'll crawl."
He licked his lips.
"And when the markets open… when their little relics and talents start to sell…" A smile crept over his face, thin and razor-sharp. "I'll be richer than the Throne Houses. I'll buy a Seat outright. Why waste another war?"
Quellmere watched him with a wry smirk, but said nothing. He too had his pieces on the board.
Mydran's gaze drifted toward the window again. In the distance, great runic towers pulsed with growing energy. The arrival was near.
"Let the others play savior. Let them dream of unity and peace. I'll take gold. I'll take labor. I'll take everything."
And with that, he turned away, the glint in his eye brighter than the stars rising above Rellex.
***
While nobles schemed and commoners braced for change, The wild walkers—the ones who lived beyond the safety of the northernmost walls—watched the sky light up in silence. At a weather-worn tavern nestled against the Wilds, a group of veteran adventurers clinked mugs as green lights danced over the mountains. They knew what was coming. With tired jokes and a solemn toast, they saluted the Earthborn innocents about to be thrown into chaos. But sleep was short-lived. In the gray hours before dawn, the system thundered across their minds:
[WORLDWIDE ALERT: ANCIENT ENTITY FREED]
[DIMENSIONAL BREACH CONTAINED VIA DUNGEONIZATION]
[DUNGEON OVERFLOW IMMINENT:]
[To the victors of the dungeons go treasures unimagined and strength fit to sunder empires.]
Grumbling, cursing, and half-dressed, the veterans stumbled into the hallway. Then grinned. The promise of ancient loot, real danger, and world-shaking consequences? It was going to be a very good morning.