Duncan Carmichael paced furiously across the floor of his cramped logistics office inside the local Valor Guild branch.

He was a D Rank Appraiser a man who used his minor status as a logistics manager to bully anyone beneath him. He had spent years skimming off the top of dungeon payouts and making life miserable for the F Rank porters. But today he had been humiliated. The global Association council had bypassed the local branches entirely granting an Independent License to a slum rat. Glen Mcdonald the F Rank Mimic he had sent into a death zone weeks ago was now legally untouchable.

"It is a mistake" Duncan muttered to himself pouring a glass of cheap amber liquor. "The boy is a fraud. He got lucky in the tournament. I will find a way to revoke that license. I will have him thrown into a penal dungeon."

Duncan raised the glass and barked a bitter laugh into the empty office.

"You think a license means anything, boy?" he snarled at the air. "I’ve buried many’prodigies’ in penal dungeons. Association paper doesn’t stop accidents. Doesn’t stop gates ’collapsing’ on schedule."

He took a long drink, liquor burning his throat. "Let him have his fifteen minutes. Let the crowd cheer for the slum rat. I’ll file the paperwork. ’Training incident.’ ’Unforeseen corruption.’ Happens all the time to F Ranks who get above their station."

He slammed the glass down. "Untouchable? No one’s untouchable in Johannesburg. Not while I control the gate manifests."

The lights flickered once.

Before the liquid could touch his mouth the cheap fluorescent light bulbs in the ceiling flickered and died.

The temperature in the cramped office did not just drop. It plummeted to absolute zero in a fraction of a second. The amber liquor inside his glass froze solid expanding and shattering the cheap glass into a dozen pieces. The shards hung suspended in the air frozen by a sudden crushing pressure that filled the room.

Duncan dropped the stem of the glass his weak D Rank instincts flaring in absolute terror. He stumbled backward knocking over a stack of digital clipboards. "Who is there? The branch is locked down. Show yourself."

The shadows in the corner of the room did not move. They deepened.

A jagged bleeding tear in the fabric of reality ripped open. Black smoke poured from the spatial fracture smelling of ozone ancient dust and rotting flesh.

A figure stepped out of the tear.

It was tall draped in tattered robes that looked like they had been woven from the ashes of dead stars. Its face was hidden beneath a deep cowl but two pinpricks of pale dead light glowed from within the darkness. It did not walk. It glided across the floor bringing the silence of a graveyard with it.

Duncan felt his lungs seize. His D Rank mana pool which was barely larger than a normal human’s felt like it was being crushed into a singularity. He was paralyzed. He could not even scream.

"What are you?" Duncan whispered his knees buckling as he collapsed against his metal desk.

"I am the Wanderer in the end " the figure spoke.

The voice did not come from its throat. It echoed directly inside Duncan’s skull. It was a voice devoid of emotion devoid of anger and devoid of mercy. It was the sound of a closing tomb.

Duncan tried to crawl away his greasy hair plastered to his forehead with cold sweat. He had no combat skills. He had no weapons. He was just a corrupt manager who preyed on the weak. And now he was trapped in a room with a monster.

The entity did not rush. It simply raised a single pale skeletal finger and pointed it at the cowering man.

"Cease."

The word carried the weight of absolute law.

The moment the word was spoken Duncan’s D Rank mana core shattered. It did not break with a flash of light. It simply rotted turning to gray ash inside his chest.

Duncan gagged blood spilling from his lips. He clawed at his own throat but his fingers began to rot the moment the entity’s aura washed over him. His flesh turned black and withered his life force completely useless against the pure concentrated anti mana.

"You are a parasite among sheep" the entity whispered its dead pale eyes staring into Duncan’s terrified soul. "But you are still meat. And I require a vessel to walk among the cattle." 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Please" Duncan choked his vision going dark.

"Your heartbeat offends me. I drank stars, worm. You humans drank from the cup provided by the old ones. If not for their interference this world would have been a new home to my people. Rest now, worm. Rest beneath dead skies." The Wanderer spoke softly,

"Be gone."

The entity stepped forward and placed its pale hand over Duncan’s face.

Duncan did not just die. His soul was violently ripped from his body consumed by the ancient hunger of the entity.

The entity stood in the silent office holding the lifeless corpse of the logistics manager. Slowly the tattered robes and the skeletal frame began to melt and shift. The anti mana burrowed into Duncan’s flesh rewriting his DNA absorbing his memories his voice his pathetic D Rank class and his security clearance.

A minute later the office was completely silent.

The man standing in the center of the room was wearing the standard gray uniform of a Valor Guild logistics manager. He had greasy hair a permanent sneer etched into his face and stern brown eyes.

He looked exactly like Duncan Carmichael.

But his eyes were completely dead. They were the eyes of a predator looking at a world made of glass.

The Wanderer accessed Duncan’s memories sifting through the files with cold apathy. He saw the guild logistics. He saw the gate schedules. And then he saw an anomaly. The boy Duncan hated.

"The Sunken Necropolis" The Wanderer spoke using Duncan’s voice. It sounded perfectly normal but the air around him withered and died with every syllable.

The Wanderer turned and walked out the door.