The raid was doomed from the start.
I knew it the moment I saw the roster — half-drunk mercenaries, overconfident rookies, a healer who sneered at me the second our eyes met. But I didn't have the luxury of refusing. When you're desperate, you take what's given. Even if it smells like death.
The dungeon gate loomed before us — a swirling black portal rimmed with veins of glowing violet. Storm clouds had gathered above, though the sky had been clear moments before. Ozone stung my nose, and with every passing second, the hair on my arms stood taller.
"Never seen one like this before," the raid leader muttered, trying to sound calm.
It wasn't calm. It was fear.
Inside, the world was unrecognizable.
Jagged black stone stretched into the horizon, the ground cracked and scorched. Every surface hummed with static, faint sparks dancing across the terrain. And above — endless clouds of violet lightning, striking the earth in relentless succession.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Every second, another bolt struck. Each one shattered the ground, leaving glassed craters glowing with unnatural energy. The air buzzed, alive, vibrating inside my chest like it wanted to rip my heart out.
"What… what kind of dungeon is this?" one of the rookies whispered. His voice trembled.
No one had an answer.
We pressed on, weapons drawn, nerves stretched thin. And then the first bolt struck our group.
I didn't see it coming.
One moment, the healer was grinning, readying a spell. The next, a blinding flash — a roar like the sky itself tearing open — and he was gone. Nothing left but a smear of ash and the echo of his scream.
Panic erupted. The formation shattered. Some ran. Some froze. Another bolt fell, then another. Bodies burned, armor melted, screams drowned beneath the storm.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. My sword slipped from my hand as the world dissolved into light and thunder.
I should have run.
I should have begged the gods for mercy.
But all I could do was stand there, trembling, as the sky itself descended on me.
The first bolt hit. My vision went white. Pain exploded through every nerve, tearing me apart. I collapsed, body convulsing, certain that this was death.
Then the second struck.
Then the third.
Then the tenth.
Each one should have ended me, but somehow, impossibly, I clung to life. My flesh burned, bones screamed, blood boiled — but something deeper kept me tethered. A spark. A refusal. A voice that whispered:
Not yet.
Time lost all meaning. Maybe an hour passed. Maybe a lifetime. Bolt after bolt tore into me until the ground itself gave way, until I was half-buried in a crater of my own making.
And then, silence.
The storm still raged, but my body… it wasn't breaking anymore. The lightning wasn't tearing me apart. It was inside me. Crawling under my skin, searing into my veins, coiling around my heart.
I gasped, clutching my chest, purple sparks dancing across my fingertips. My vision blurred, then sharpened — colors too vivid, sounds too sharp. The fear that had strangled me all my life was gone, burned away in the storm.
I staggered to my feet. Around me, the others were gone. Ash. Dust. Nothing.
But I was still here.
Breathing. Alive. Changed.
I looked at my hand — at the crackling purple lightning pooling in my palm — and for the first time, I felt something I had never known before.
Power.
And in the middle of that ruined, storm-scarred dungeon, as the thunder screamed my name, I smiled.
Not timid.
Not hesitant.
Not weak.
For the first time in my life, I smiled arrogantly.