The heat woke him before the light did.
It wasn't a gentle warmth either, but a dry, smothering kind of heat—like a closed oven door brushing against his skin. His throat was parched. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. When he tried to inhale, he coughed—harsh, dry, gritty.
Then came the pain in his palms, scraped raw from laying on stone.
Riku rolled onto his side and groaned quietly, blinking at fractured beams of light slashing down through a collapsed ceiling. Above him, cracked stone arches stretched across a high chamber, broken in several places. Something had caved in. Pillars leaned like exhausted men. The air was thick with the scent of sulfur, dust, and something faintly metallic.
He sat up slowly. His hands trembled—not from fear, exactly, but the weight of disorientation. Where was he? What had happened?
Then, the message appeared.
Not floating in the air. Not spoken aloud. Just—suddenly there, as if it had been whispered directly into his skull and burned into his vision.
"Welcome, Sovereign.
Assigned Domain: Sector 11 – Blackridge Crater.
Tribal Alignment: Fireborn Draganoids.
Protection Period: 30 Days (Absolute).
Global System Initialized."
He froze, the words lingering behind his eyes even after they faded.
Sovereign?
His thoughts reeled. He remembered standing in the hallway of his apartment. Remembered checking his phone. Then… what? A sound? A shudder? Something had cracked under his feet, and now—
More noise.
This time, real. Boots on stone.
Riku looked around, panic flaring just under the surface of his breath. He grabbed the closest thing he could find—half of a rusted blade embedded in old carpeting. His grip on it was instinctive but clumsy. His back pressed against the crumbled dais he'd been lying on. His eyes darted to the doors, twisted and half-broken.
They opened.
Figures stepped through. Tall. Broad. Humanoid in silhouette, but wrong in every detail. Ash-colored skin layered with scale. Glowing amber eyes beneath heavy brow ridges. Long tails dragged behind them across cracked stone. Not humans. Not even close.
The lead figure stopped five paces from him and crossed his arms. A massive cleaver rested across his back, slung over his shoulders like it weighed nothing. His voice was low and rough, like old coals stirring.
"You are the Monarch?"
Riku's brain wanted to ask a hundred questions. Who are you? Where is this? What does 'Sovereign' even mean?
But instead, he said the only thing that didn't feel like a mistake.
"Yes."
The creature's eyes narrowed. "This place is ash. Dying."
"Then we'll rebuild it."
Silence followed. One of the scaled figures near the back exhaled a short laugh, more like a cough. Another muttered something in a language Riku didn't know. The lead one just stared at him for a beat too long. Then he stepped forward, tail twitching behind him.
"I am Tharn. Until you fail, I serve."
It didn't feel like an oath. More like a warning with teeth.
They didn't kneel. Didn't introduce themselves. Didn't even look particularly impressed. But they didn't leave.
That counted for something.
Riku swallowed, adjusted his grip on the blade, and stepped past them through the doorway.
The air outside hit him like a furnace.
A wide, scorched crater opened up before him—black rock, twisted trenches, rising cliff walls of obsidian and steaming vents. The terrain pulsed with heat. A dry wind blew up from the lowlands, hot enough to sting the eyes. No birds. No life. Just the hiss of something boiling underground.
The entire basin was silent.
Below him, nestled in the interior of the crater, were ruins: three crumbling buildings in various states of decay. One looked like a forge. Another had the bones of a barracks. The last, a leaning tower held up by scaffold and prayer. And beyond those… what might've once been walls. The remains of a wooden palisade rotting into the stone.
He exhaled slowly and rubbed his forehead.
This was his?
A Draganoid approached from behind, holding a thick parchment bundle in clawed hands. He was younger than the others, and his eyes were more curious than hostile.
"Starter Pack," he said in a gruff accent. "Dropped in the throne chamber."
Riku took it. The scroll was stiff, heat-cured. He unwrapped it and skimmed the contents.
Tools: 1 Cracked Pickaxe, 1 Rusted Hatchet, 1 Dull Dagger
Resources: 50 Hardwood, 50 Cut Stone, 5 Rations
Blueprints: Headquarters (Active), Barracks (Damaged), Forge (Ruined), Tower (Inactive), Vault (Sealed)
Sovereign Logbook – Empty
Territory Map – Local
System Access Node – Silent
There was no guidance. No tutorial. Just survival.
As he tucked the scroll away, something flickered faintly in his peripheral vision. A soft hum of presence. Not loud. Almost like a breath.
[Fold Count: 0]
He didn't know what that meant.
Didn't ask.
He turned back toward the buildings and the molten-smelling ruin of what might've once been a capital. The ten Draganoids stood behind him, waiting without speaking.
"Kael," Riku said, reading the name off the scroll. "Inventory the wood. Split it into thirds. Tharn, pick two for outer patrol—eyes only, no weapons drawn, no vent crossings. The rest start clearing the forge. I want a wall of stone around the central keep by nightfall."
One of them snorted. "You think you command us already?"
Riku didn't answer. He just started walking down toward the forge.
And as he passed a blackened rock where someone had left the old, cracked spears, he glanced down.
There were two.
Identical. Same age. Same damage. One resting neatly beside the other.
He reached out, slowly.
His fingers curled around the second one.
It was real.
No one had placed it there.
He turned, adjusted the strap across his chest, and moved toward the ruin. The others watched in silence, uncertain.
The fire didn't fear them.
And he was beginning to realize… neither did he.