The smoke of Silverpass tasted like the end of a very bad dream.
It clung to Sai Ji's throat, gritty, stubborn, a bitter reminder that his day had officially become a divine comedy with collateral body count.
Every breath burned.
Every step echoed in the rubble-strewn streets, now littered with collapsed barricades, shattered crates, and the faint aroma of panic.
He stared at the kneeling figure in front of him.
Nyx.
Silver-haired, impossibly composed, radiating that disturbing mix of reverence and zeal that made mortals uncomfortable.
"Your Majesty," Nyx said, voice tight with devotion bordering on mania, "the Royal Council believed your line extinguished. The scent of your return… it has haunted our scrying pools for months. You must return to the capital. Immediately."
Sai Ji blinked.
His soul considered permanent resignation. Mediocrity had been granted… and the universe was now actively mocking him.
Before he could protest, Aeliana stepped in, moving like a noblewoman defending her favorite vase from a clumsy servant.
"Absolutely not."
Nyx's left eye twitched. "…Pardon?"
Aeliana jabbed a thumb toward her chest.
"He," she said, "is my party member."
Sai Ji flinched. "I am NO ONE'S party member—"
"Hush," she whispered, patting his shoulder with the precision of someone who had been taming tempests for decades. "The adults are talking."
Nyx squared his shoulders. "With respect, Lady Nightblossom, this is the Sovereign heir—"
"Temporary heir," Sai Ji interjected miserably. "Provisional. Possibly a clerical error. Likely a system bug. Definitely not qualified for any responsibility beyond… picking up slimes."
"…And protocol dictates he be escorted by the capital's elite guard for his safety and the realm's stability," Nyx insisted.
Aeliana crossed her arms. "Says who?"
"The law."
"I am the law," she countered, tone lethal.
"You are a minor scion of a cadet branch with… eccentric field reports," Nyx shot back.
"Semantics," Aeliana said, eyebrow raised.
Sai Ji buried his face in his hands. "I am surrounded by professionally diagnosed lunatics," he muttered, voice muffled.
Fen drew a line in the churned battlefield dirt between Nyx and Sai Ji with the tip of his boot. "Agent Nyx," he said calmly, "our Master's will is paramount. Any attempt to remove him will be met with intervention."
Nyx hesitated.
Then Lura produced a spear from thin air, the blade dull and hungry, and brandished it lazily at his chest.
"WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET THAT?!" Sai Ji screamed.
"I am always armed," Lura sighed, like it was the most mundane fact in the cosmos.
Fen added, "And… we are hungry."
"…How is hunger relevant to royal succession?" Nyx asked, perplexed.
"When we are hungry," Fen explained, "we become irritable."
"And when irritable," Lura added, spinning the spear like a baton, "we break things.
Structures. Protocols. Ambitions."
Nyx's confidence faltered.
Sai Ji slammed both their heads in frustration. "STOP! Threatening the government! We are not fugitives! We are… confused tourists!"
They chimed in unison: "Apologies, Master."
"We meant it as a polite inquiry into flexibility," Lura said.
"A negotiation tactic," Fen nodded.
Before Sai Ji could die from mental exhaustion, something massive nudged his leg.
A mutated, carriage-sized boar with luminous eyes pressed its snout against him.
Soft. Tentative. Like a puppy.
Aeliana gasped. "Sai Ji… it seeks affection."
"No," he whispered. "It seeks to sample me."
The corrupted wolves slinked forward.
The stag, antlers crackling with residual magic, lowered its head in submission, placing the remains of a pine tree at his feet.
"SWEET MORADIN'S HAMMER—THE MONSTERS ARE COURTING HIM?!" a nearby adventurer shouted.
"I am not a petting zoo," Sai Ji groaned, body slack.
Nyx cleared his throat.
"They are not courting you. They respond to your passive Sovereign signal."
"They want PATS," Sai Ji snapped. "This is a social interaction. Different from obedience. One pat! One! And then… a quiet, nervous breakdown!"
He tapped the boar.
The sound: a deep, reverberating hrrooooooonnnk, like a church organ being murdered in slow motion.
Every corrupted beast collapsed into blissful submission.
Aeliana whispered, awestruck: "He tamed them… with one… impossibly soft… pat…"
Sal Vera sighed in his mind. Your touch hasn't changed, My King. Still the same gentle tyranny.
"Do NOT phrase it like that!" Sai Ji snapped.
Then the sky answered.
A polished, judgmental gold light flared above the treetops. A bell rang somewhere inside his skull.
Descending, robes lined with golden sigils, silver hair flowing, ageless, severe.
The High Priest landed, and the battlefield stilled.
Sai Ji sidled toward rubble—the universal gesture for "I am a shrub."
The Priest froze. Then fell like a marionette with cut strings, forehead to the ground.
"Your… Majesty… we have waited lifetimes."
Sai Ji pinched his nose. "What is it now? Am I the lost god of pastry? Chosen of the laundry spirits?!"
The Priest stared at the space around him.
"Your aura… it expands even as I speak. The final seal upon your soul… frays."
Fear unlike anything Sai Ji had ever experienced ripped through him.
"What seal?"
Silence.
Sal Vera's voice, sharp, clear, urgent: Sai Ji. Step back. Now.
He felt it—a thrum in his bones. Something vast and ancient stirring.
The amulet at his chest shuddered violently. Control slipped.
His aura erupted—not a pacifying mist, not a whisper, but a detonation.
Air bent. Sky cracked. Ground curved.
All life froze. Nyx: "SOVEREIGN ASCENSION PROTOCOL?! AT LEVEL ONE?!"
Aeliana: "SAI JI! CALM—"
Fen and Lura: pale, stunned, silent.
Sal Vera: My King… your true form is calling.
The amulet sparked once more—and shattered.
A drop of silver welled from his sternum, vanished.
Pupils slit. Nails darkened. A phantom tail flickered.
Aeliana's grip: his only anchor. "LOOK AT ME!"
The cracked sky.
The ringing bell.
Sigils of celestial geometry in moonlight burned above.
Every adventurer collapsed again.
System prompts glitched into static:
⚠ WORLD ANNOUNCEMENT ⚠
[SOVEREIGN SIGNAL DETECTED]
[AETHERIA HAS RECOGNIZED A NEW KING]
Sai Ji's stomach performed somersaults.
"No! NO! I am a person, not a public service announcement!"
Nyx: "You are the Sovereign. The only one."
Sai Ji: "I JUST WANTED TO DO A SLIME QUEST!"
Sal Vera: Listen. There is no more time for gentle lies.
Memories pierced him—wolves of silver, a moonstone crown, an empire kneeling, betrayal, sealing, casting away.
"You died to save the echo of your people. Now… it calls its king home."
Sai Ji's knees buckled.
Pulse shifted. Blood sang a new song.
Nyx: "Do not complete the awakening… the strain on the mortal plane—"
Aeliana: "SAI JI! Don't let this take you!"
The sigil pulsed. BOOM.
⚠ WORLD ANNOUNCEMENT #2 ⚠
[SOVEREIGN AURA UNLEASHED]
[DOMAIN EXPANSION: 12%…]
Aeliana: "At 100%, you'd create a Domain… a piece of your reality…"
Nyx: "It would crush the city into a theological footnote."
Sai Ji: "HOW DO I STOP THIS?!"
Sal Vera: Calm, My King. Let it come. You cannot stop a tide by begging it to be water.
The celestial sigil burned, forming a half-wolf, half-celestial shadow crowned with moonfire.
It tilted its head.
Return.
The Domain Expansion ticked upward: 15… 18… 20%
Sai Ji, boy from another world, stood at the axis of awakening, his humanity a candle in a gale of divinity.
The throne was no longer cold.
It was calling.
And it would not be refused.