Year 1,042,119 After Cataclysm
Verdant Reach, Valdris City – West Gate
Late Afternoon
Asa stepped through the west gate with a sigh that felt like it had been building for four years.
Valdris smelled the same: dust, mana-lamp smoke, and the sour tang of too many bodies in too little space. She adjusted her black cloak, the familiar weight of her twin daggers knocking lightly against her hips. Nineteen years old.
A B-rank badge on her chest. Proof she wasn't the orphan girl scraping for scraps anymore.
She'd come into this world at five years old with only two things from her past life: old memories and the stubborn rage of someone who still remembered what "fairness" should look like. No system. No cheat. No divine tutorial. Just hard-earned skill and the kind of stubborn resilience that even gods avoided challenging.
She'd survived. She'd risen. But returning to Valdris felt like walking back into the prologue of a story she'd already outgrown.
The orphanage was her first stop.
Its walls looked worse than she remembered: patched with flickering mana-wards that buzzed like dying insects.
The matron, Elara, looked up as Asa entered.
"Asa? Hells. Thought you died."
Asa smirked. "Disappointed?"
"Barely." Elara closed her ledger. "What brings you back?"
"Looking for someone. Raygen. He still around?"
The matron's expression softened. "Aged out three years ago. Good kid. C-rank now. Last seen entering Zone 17-C. He's overdue."
Asa's heart dropped.
Zone 17-C. A shifting dungeon. One she had warned him about a hundred times.
Asa was already out the door.
The guild hall was chaos: merchants shouting, adventurers arguing, clerks trying to stay sane.
Asa shoved her way to the C-rank board.
Raygen – Zone 17-C – Solo – 7 hours overdue. Her stomach twisted.
She grabbed a clerk by the collar. "Anyone go in after him?"
The man shrugged without concern. "Solo dive. His risk. And the entrance looks wrong: tearing, pulsing. Nobody's touching it."
Asa sprinted.
The entrance looked damaged.
The archway was cracked wide, thorn-vines shriveled and smoking.
The air hummed with ozone and something close to blood.
A thin silver fissure spider-webbed across the stone: wrong, alien, humming like it hated being seen.
Asa drew her daggers and dove in.
The dungeon tried to murder her immediately.
Searing heat. Freezing corridors. Walls that pulsed like lungs. Monsters far above the posted rank: shadow beasts, crystal serpents, a golem variant that nearly took her head off.
She moved with the deadly efficiency of someone who had spent two lives learning how to survive.
Four brutal minutes later, she reached the final chamber.
A skeletal giant lay dead, skull split by a perfect, surgically clean diagonal cut. Bones scattered. Curse aura gone.
And at the center:
Raygen.
Alive. Bleeding. Staring vacantly at the far wall like he'd glimpsed something no mortal should.
He turned at the sound of her boots.
"Asa…?"
His voice cracked open.
She crossed the room in three strides and caught him as his knees buckled.
"You absolute idiot," she hissed, already pressing a healing salve to his chest wound.
"I told you never to solo shifting dungeons!"
Raygen laughed weakly. "Missed you too."
"Shut up," she muttered, checking him over. Ribs bruised. Claw marks. Blood loss. But alive. He'd survive.
Unseen, in a layer of reality just beyond the stone floor, the nameless man watched.
He could have healed the boy with a thought.
But he didn't.
These two were… blank.
No fate he could read.
No future he could see.
A rarity.
He remained invisible, observing.
For now.
Asa lifted Raygen to his feet, bracing his weight.
"What happened? The Sovereign—"
"Dead," Raygen said quietly. "Something… helped."
Asa frowned but didn't push it. "Let's get you out before the dungeon throws another tantrum."
They limped toward the exit.
The nameless man drifted behind them, silent, curious.
Valdris gates were open when they returned. Guards glanced at Asa's badge and waved her through; Raygen might as well have been invisible.
They reached a healer's tent quickly.
The old elf inside glanced at Raygen and whistled. "Five hundred gold."
Asa paid instantly.
The healer worked for twenty minutes: mana threads stitching flesh, bones knitting with audible cracks. Raygen said nothing during the process, eyes far away.
Asa noticed. Something was different in him. Sharper. Quieter.
The nameless man noticed too.
Guild Hall – Bounty Counter
Raygen emptied his spatial ring onto the counter.
Pelts. Scales. Venom sacs. Mid-tier cores. And the Bone Sovereign's skull.
The clerk nearly fainted.
"Twelve thousand gold… with bonuses… fifteen thousand."
Murmurs rippled across the hall.
Asa whistled. "Not bad for a C-rank idiot."
Raygen accepted a fresh B-rank badge. "We split it."
"I didn't do the work," Asa protested.
"You came for me."
She rolled her eyes. "Fine. But you're buying dinner."
Night had fallen by the time they stepped outside, mana-lamps flickering to life.
The nameless man followed them at a distance, unseen.
"So," Asa said lightly, "besides almost dying, what've you been up to?"
Raygen shrugged. "Surviving."
"No dates? No disasters?"
"No time."
"Good. Stay boring."
He snorted. "What about you?"
"Same. World's too annoying for distractions."
More silence.
Then, quietly: "Thanks for coming back."
Asa punched his arm gently. "Someone has to keep you alive."
The nameless man tilted his head at that.
"Absolute idiot," she'd called him.
The phrase clung to the air.
Interesting.
A brand-new leather journal slipped silently into Asa's pack. She wouldn't notice it until later.
Near the Guild – Side Alley Moments Later They turned a corner: and ran into trouble.
Three guild thugs stepped into their path. Cheap armor. Greasy smirks. The kind of low-rank trash who thought backing from the right noble made them invincible.
"Well, well," the leader drawled, eyeing Raygen's new badge and bulging coin pouch. "Looks like someone got lucky today."
Asa's hand dropped to her dagger.
Raygen's jaw tightened.
The thug grinned wider. "Hand it over, runt. All of it."
He didn't see Asa's expression.
He didn't see Raygen's eyes narrow.
He definitely didn't see the nameless man, leaning against the air itself, amused.
"Go on," the thug mocked. "Be smart."
Asa smiled: slow and dangerous.
Raygen rolled his shoulders.
The nameless man whispered to the empty air:
"Let's see what they do."
The thug leader took one more step, mace raised.
Asa moved.
A blur of black cloak and silver steel.
Her dagger flicked out, slicing the mace-wielder's wrist tendon before he could swing.
The weapon clattered to the stones.
Raygen didn't stay still.
He stepped in, caught the second thug's incoming fist with an open palm, and twisted.
The man's arm bent the wrong way with a wet snap.
A scream tore the night.
The third thug tried to run.
Raygen's foot lashed out, hooking the man's ankle with impossible precision.
He went down hard, face kissing cobblestone.
Twelve seconds.
Three broken thugs on the ground, whimpering.
Asa stood over them, breathing steady, daggers already sheathed.
Raygen stared at his own hands like they belonged to someone else.
Asa stared at Raygen.
"How the hell did you do that?"
Raygen opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head.
"I… don't know."
Asa's eyes narrowed.
She had fought beside B-ranks, C-ranks, even one A-rank once.
None of them moved like that.
Not at sixteen.
Not bleeding from half a dozen wounds.
She grabbed his wrist.
"Inside. Now. Before someone sees whatever the hell just happened."
They ducked into the Drunken Wyrm tavern: dim mana-lamps, stale ale, a handful of late-night drinkers who knew better than to stare.
Asa shoved Raygen into a corner booth, ordered two bowls of stew and a pitcher of water, and leaned in.
"Explain. Slowly."
Raygen told her everything.
The uncharted floors.
The greed that kept him pushing deeper.
The Sovereign.
The fall through the silver crack.
The man on the pedestal.
The warning.
He left out the glowing rectangle.
He didn't know how to say it without sounding insane.
When he finished, Asa sat back, arms crossed.
"So some… thing… helped you kill a hidden boss and walk out without a scratch."
Raygen nodded.
Asa rubbed her temples.
"I died once, Raygen. Truck hit me. Woke up here. Spent fourteen years waiting for something like that. And you get it by tripping into a hole?"
Raygen managed a weak laugh. "Sorry?"
Asa stared at him for a long moment.
Then she punched his arm: hard enough to hurt, light enough not to break anything new.
"You absolute idiot."
Invisible, three tables away, the nameless man tilted his head.
Absolute idiot.
The phrase clung to the air like frost.
Interesting.
In Asa's pack, a brand-new leather journal appeared without sound or light.
Its first page wrote itself in perfect handwriting:
Day 1
Subject: Raygen (little idiot)
Observation: Impossible reflexes, strength, timing
Conclusion: The universe is unfair and I hate it
The nameless man read the words as they formed.
A faint, cosmic smile curved his lips.
The girl would learn.
Slowly.
Very, very slowly.
Outside the tavern window, the rain finally began to fall.
And somewhere in the city, three very broken thugs limped away, already spreading the story of the orphan who'd come back from the dead with a B-rank badge and a demon at his side.
The Absolute Rule had begun.
And the nameless man followed them into the night.
End of Chapter 2