The light burned when I stepped out.
After weeks—months?—inside that abyss, the sun felt like a blade across my skin. My body reeled, my storm twitched in protest, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I breathed air that wasn't poisoned by void.
I staggered out of the rift, half-dead, blood crusting my skin and clothes. The ground beneath me was real again. Solid.
For a moment, I just stood there, closing my eyes and listening to the wind.
I should've felt relief. Instead, there was only the echo of that voice. The throne. The weight of the title pressed against my chest like a second heartbeat.
Heir of the Nameless God.
I didn't ask for it. But now it lived in me.
I smirked faintly, my voice hoarse. "Guess I should get used to surviving what should've killed me."
Time outside hadn't waited for me.
When I finally limped back into the city, whispers spread faster than wildfire. I had gone into the Tower of Silence, then vanished. Many said I had died in the attempt. Some cursed my name. Some mocked the guild I had built as a reckless vanity project.
And yet… others whispered differently.
That I hadn't died. That I was training in secret, preparing for something only I understood. That I would return stronger than anyone had the right to be.
Five months had passed.
Five months where the world changed. Kingdoms shifted their armies, alliances were strained thin, and rumors of god-inheritors spread from continent to continent. My name had made its way into those rumors, whether I wanted it to or not.
The Obsidian Guild I left behind hadn't crumbled. No. It had grown. My second had drilled the recruits like a merciless firebrand. The berserker girl carved her legend in the training grounds. The boy I treated like a younger brother sharpened his skills with feverish determination.
They were becoming something in their own right.
But even they wondered if I'd ever return.
The city square gasped the day I walked back in.
I was thinner. My eyes darker. My storm didn't just spark—it hummed, steady, as if barely chained to my skin. And when I walked, the air trembled as though carrying a secret too heavy to name.
I ignored the gawking. I ignored the nobles whispering, the envoys trying to place me.
I only said one thing, my voice cutting through the silence like thunder:
"I told you—I don't die that easy."
And the storm rolled above the city, answering me.