Ronan woke up.

The strangest part was that he couldn’t remember ever falling asleep. Yet he must have, because now he was awake, still slumped against the altar, and something was different.

He felt no pain. The fatigue and wounds he had gathered over forty days seemed distant now, like the remnants of a fading dream. But there was something else, something even stranger.

A strange warmth pulsed through him, something he couldn’t name. His vision was still blurry, still adjusting to the shrine’s darkness, until the moon reached the right angle and its light spilled in, cutting through the gloom.

And then he saw her, Sarael.

She was at his side, her body pressed against his, kissing along his jaw with a fervor more fitting for a believer worshipping a god than for a god indulging a believer.

"Ronan, my dear Ronan, don’t leave me... please..."

She whispered between kisses, her eyes half-lidded as she went on.

But when Ronan attempted to move, she disappeared immediately, like she wasn’t there in the first place, leaving him alone in the shrine completely healed.

"Was I dreaming?"

He asked, but he immediately pushed that thought aside. There was no way it was a dream; if it was, then it was an incredibly rejuvenating dream for it to have healed him.

But he knew that wasn’t possible.

"System."

[Ronan Night]

[Class: God-Bound (???)]

[Level: 1] - [Freshly Reset Due To Corruption]

[STR: 15 +20]

[AGI: 13 +20]

[CON: 11 +20]

[MAG: 5 +20]

-[Skills]-

[Night’s Caress: Grants +20 to all stats while under moonlight or in darkness. (Effect scales with affinity to the Goddess.)]

[Shadow Consume: Enemies slain while Night’s Caress is active have their shadows consumed, allowing you to either summon their shadow at 200% of their original strength or use that creature’s stats and abilities (one target at a time). (Effect scales with affinity to the Goddess.)]

[Lover’s Protection: Grants uninterruptible invisibility when hidden in shadows.]

"What...?"

Ronan stared at the blue window floating in front of him, his breath catching in his throat.

+20 to all stats. At level one.

He’d been a porter for three years. He knew how stats worked.

Every class, regardless of rarity, started with a baseline of 1 in each stat. But that number was deceptive. A fighter’s 1 meant something very different from a mage’s 1. The value behind the number shifted based on class multipliers, hidden modifiers that the system never explained but every hunter learned to feel.

A porter sat near the bottom. Their 1 was barely above a civilian’s.

But this?

Ronan stared at his status window again, as if looking harder would make it make sense.

[STR: 15 +20]

[AGI: 13 +20]

[CON: 11 +20]

[MAG: 5 +20]

His original stats hadn’t been reset. Every point he’d earned over three years, from both the level-up stats and distributable points, every painful level from 1 to 11, was still there. But now, on top of that, Night’s Caress was grafting +20 to everything.

Twenty.

He’d watched S-Rank hunters brag about their numbers. He knew what twenty points meant. It meant he could punch through concrete. Outrun cars on an open road. Survive falls that should turn bones to powder.

And he was level one.

"One strength for a porter is garbage," Ronan muttered, doing the math in his head. "But one strength for a class called God-Bound?"

He didn’t know what the class multiplier was. The system was still corrupted, still hiding information behind those annoying question marks. But he didn’t need exact numbers to understand what had happened.

He’d been reset to level one. His experience requirements had shrunk back to the beginner curve. He could level up again, faster than before, stacking new points on top of stats that were already carrying a divine blessing.

By the time he reached his original level, he wouldn’t just be stronger.

He’d be a different weight class entirely.

"Assuming God-Bound follows the same rules as other classes," Ronan whispered, his heart pounding, "I’m already comparable to level twenty. Maybe higher."

He laughed. A short, sharp sound that echoed off the shrine’s walls.

Forty-seven days of hell. Watching everyone die. Crawling into a dead goddess’s temple to bleed out.

In the end, he couldn’t help but think it was all worth it.

But then he remembered the glaring elephant in the room, Sarael, his old goddess. Where had she gone?

Ronan stood up and, just as his physical appearance suggested, he was completely fine. Not a single ache or pain lingered in his body, nothing of the torment he should have felt after forty days of suffering. Right now, it was as if he had just woken from a terrible nightmare.

Except he hadn’t woken in his bed. He had woken in the same nightmare.

"Sarael...?"

No answer.

"System, open bond."

[???]

[Cannot Execute Command]

"Where did she go? There’s no way all of that was a dream. And the fact that I saw her before I fully woke up..."

Ronan clutched at his shirt over his heart, scanning the room for any clue as to where she might have gone. There was nothing. No trace she had ever manifested at all, aside from his now‑upgraded system.

"Wherever you are... thank you."

He knew he had been given a chance to live, to escape this god‑forsaken world and return as a star. But before he did that, there was something he had long owed.

He closed his eyes.

"Dark Mother, who walks between shadows, who loves the forgotten and the lost, hear us."

The words came back like muscle memory. His grandmother’s voice echoed beneath his own, a ghost layered over the present.

"Thank you."

That was it. No request for more power. No plea for safe passage. Just gratitude, raw and clumsy, offered to a goddess who had given him everything when he had nothing left to lose.

The warmth bloomed against his cheek.

Soft and brief. Like someone had pressed their lips to his skin and pulled away before he could lean into it.

Ronan’s eyes snapped open.

But he saw nothing. Just the shrine, the altar, and the faint fading scent of flowers.

But then, there was a giggle.

Small and light. Like it had been carried on a wind that didn’t exist.

It came from nowhere. From everywhere. From the space right next to his ear, where warm breath should have been.

Ronan’s heart hammered against his ribs.

He wasn’t going crazy. He wasn’t.

She had heard him.

She had answered.

His hand dropped from his chest. His shoulders straightened. For the first time in forty-seven days, Ronan Night stood like someone who had something to live for.

"I won’t let your blessing go to waste," he said, loud enough for the empty shrine to hear, loud enough for her to hear, wherever she was hiding.