Chapter 71

  Raime spotted the old shed before the tree line even broke. The half repaired roof, the still open door, the rusted wheelbarrow left leaning against the wall—nothing had changed. Somehow that familiarity hit harder than what he thought it will. He guided the young drokhar toward it, and the beast slowed, sniffing the air warily before stepping around a pile of construction materials he and his father left there the day he entered the Rift.

  Raime guided his beastly friend to the dirt trail that from the shed went down the mountain and become a proper street later on. When they reached the main road he saw grooves like claw marks all around, a car lay half sunken in a ditch, windshield shattered inward as if something had slammed its way through.

  Raime swallowed hard.

  This is what the System did. What it dropped on everyone without warning.

  He urged the drokhar forward.

  The young beast obeyed instantly, muscles bunching beneath its armoured hide as it picked up speed. Raime clung with a bit of telekinetic assistance to keep himself balanced. Every bump of the ride sent pain crawling through him, but he grit his teeth. He needed to see home. He needed to see them alive.

  After a while, he realized there was something he should’ve addressed much earlier.

  “Hey,” he murmured, reaching down to lightly tap the beast’s neck. “Do you… have a name?” He communicated telepathically.

  The drokhar’s reply was a swirl of impressions—scents, colours, and an odd, almost tactile sense of identity. Something he could only describe as the flavor of its mind.

  No structured label. No clear word. They simply recognized each other.

  “Well, that won’t work here,” Raime muttered. “I can’t just keep calling you ‘young drokhar’ in my mind.”

  He took a slow breath, thinking.

  “In my world,” he explained, “we use sounds. A name you give yourself. Like mine”

  “Raime.” He said out loud,

  The beast tilted its head, then gave a low, curious growl.

  “We need to find a name for you too. No, yes… I know you have one, but here you need a sound too, my people will not be able to talk to you like I do. Why don’t you choose one for yourself?”

  The beast started making strange sounds, guttural and chirping, trying different kind and shaking its head often. Raime was getting the impression the drokhar had never thought of getting recognize by anything else, so it was trying to find a sound he liked enough.

  Raime tried a few possibilities, simple at first.

  “Kerr?”

  A rumble. Negative.

  “Tor?”

  The beast turned his head as if to say “How could you possibly think of that.” No.

  “Brakk?”

  The drokhar attempted the sound—“Brraghh”—garbled and guttural.

  Raime snorted. “Okay, not that.”

  He tried again.

  “How about… Varuk?”

  The beast’s mind pushed back with interest. It tried to imitate the sound—

  “Vaa…rrghh…”

  Close enough.

  Raime couldn’t help but laugh. The noise came out rough, tired, but genuine. The sound reminded him of the old internet clips of cats trying to say “hello,” except this big puppy could slice a truck in half.

  “Varuk it is,” he said, patting the beast’s shoulder. “Good. That’s your name now.”

  Varuk rumbled with what Raime recognized—through their bond—as approval. It was a good enough name apparently.

  They pushed onward into the outskirts of the city.

  The devastation worsened the farther they went. Cars abandoned in the middle of the road. Windows smashed. Houses dark and silent, doors left open as if people had fled without looking back. Some buildings bore scorch marks; others had walls torn open as though something large forced its way inside.

  He passed the body of a monster—dead and half-rotten—some insectoid thing with too many limbs. A crossbow lay snapped beside it.

  Someone fought back, Raime thought grimly.

  Probably someone died for it.

  Then more wreckage. More emptiness. More silence.

  A bluish humanoid salamander lurched out from behind the hedge of an empty house, jaw unhinging with a wet hiss. Varuk reacted fast—one scythe-limb lashed out and the creature split apart in a neat diagonal cut.

  A couple of minutes later, Raime sensed another presence. A mutated dog—some twisted thing the size of a pony—charged out from an open garage. Raime flicked two fingers. A razor of psychic force sliced through its chest, bisecting it cleanly.

  Neither monster had even come close.

  But the fact they existed? That they were here?

  It set something cold in Raime’s gut.

  A world like this would devour normal humans alive.

  He urged Varuk faster.

  At the same time he was thinking about his new core, the energy he was using now wasn’t the same old psychic one he was using before, no. Now his core produced something much more powerful, a direct manifestation of willed power, thought fused with his own soul and transformed by the light. He was not capable of tapping its full potential yet, but he was making slow progress, as soon as his injuries went away, and his core recuperated fully, he would have to address that too.

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  The sun hung high by the time they approached his neighbourhood. The familiar houses, all lined in rows, looked wrong—some with collapsed porches, others with broken windows or dried trails of blood on the pavement leading who knew where.

  Raime’s heart hammered in his chest.

  He pushed Varuk onward.

  His family’s house sat near the end of the street, but it was clearly different from what he remembered. It looked like a miniature fortress. The old fence now became a thick stone wall, tall and seamless, that curved externally at the top. The house had clearly been reinforced too, no paint was visible, now it was a very light shade of gray, nearly white, and veined like marble. It looked strange for sure, but the windows had been reduced to slits at the top floors, and covered at the ground floor, only the door and the gate were the same, the roof too Raime noticed, remained untouched.

  If there’s anyone who could pull something like that off now, it’s Dad. Give that man magic and he’d probably start building with it before lunch.

  Raime let out a tired chuckle. The world could collapse in on itself, but some things just didn’t change.

  His senses spread out instinctively—his mental perception brushing against walls, floors, and the familiar structure of the home he grew up in.

  He felt five presences.

  Five.

  He recognize his parents, his brothers.

  And—

  Raime blinked, startled.

  Alice.

  How the hell was she here? Still, a massive wave of relief spread through him, making him forget exhaustion and pain for a moment. His family was fine, more than fine, he could feel the energy in them, they were all Tier I, weak but all in full health. That was all that mattered.

  He proceeded forward, he told Varuk the people here were his family, they were not hostile.

  The beast sent back happy thoughts, he was happy for his friend.

  They were thirty meters from the house.

  Twenty.

  Ten.

  Then someone inside looked out the front window—Raime felt their presence snap sharply toward him.

  Vic. It appear I have been spotted. He thought while smiling.

  Victor was the first to see him.

  He had been checking the upper window, his new class allowed him to see better, notice threats faster than the others and respond quick. A shadow creeped up the street, giant now that the sun was starting to hang low, and Victor’s eyes flicked up to the figure that came into view soon after.

  He froze.

  “Mom,” he whispered. “Mom! Dad!—everyone!—come here. Now!.”

  His voice cracked halfway through, enough that the others reacted instantly. Chairs scraped. Footsteps rushed. Within seconds, the whole family crowded behind him—his parents, his brother, even Alice hovering close, all of them armed and ready to fight.

  “What is it?” his father asked.

  Victor didn’t answer. He just pointed.

  Because down the street, walking through the wrecked neighborhood like some eldritch vision pulling itself out of a war-torn dream—

  Was Raime.

  Or something that looked like Raime and something that absolutely shouldn’t.

  The beast beneath him moved with silent, predatory confidence. It was massive—six legged and broad as a rhino, plated in thick layered chitin that shone like wet obsidian. Its large jaw bristled with rows of dagger-like teeth, and two additional limbs folded at its sides like skeletal wings ending in scythe-shaped giant blades.

  Alice made a small sound in her throat.

  But none of them looked at the monster for long.

  Because Raime… Raime was sitting on it.

  Four days ago, he was slightly overweight, despite being tall, and strong, an impossible to hide belly had always accompanied him. Now every trace of softness was gone. His body was all corded muscle and sharp lines, like someone had carved him down to the essence for survival. His face looked colder, leaner—almost gaunt—but not sickly. Just… honed.

  His left eye was covered by a metallic silver cloth, tied into a makeshift eyepatch.

  His clothes were strange: flowing lines, long sleeves, open-chested robe layered like something between Chinese hanfu and a fantasy cosplay. Victor’s first thought was literally holy shit that’s cool.

  But his right sleeve fluttered empty in the wind.

  And his remaining eye—gods—his eye.

  The iris glowed a bright golden-white, pulsing faintly in and out, like a slow heartbeat of light.

  He looked like a warrior who had walked into a peculiar kind of hell and somehow found the exit.

  For a few frozen seconds, nobody moved. Then in a blur everybody descended to the ground floor and out of the house. Alessandro opened the heavy stone gate with a gesture and everybody saw the great beast stop not far from the entrance.

  Raime simply… floated off the beast’s back, lowering himself with a smooth, controlled levitation that made the twins jaws drop.

  He landed lightly, almost casually, but readyness was evident in every line of his posture.

  “Hi, everybody,” he said, his deep voice was rougher than they remembered, but steady. “I’m back.”

  The spell shattered.

  His mother and Alice launched themselves at him with enough force that Alessandro thought they might knock him over. The twins slammed into his sides, hugging whatever they could reach. Raime laughed softly but held them all, one-armed, wrapped in a tangle of desperate limbs and choked sobbing.

  Their father approached last. Without shouting or dramatic speech—just a slow, warm smile that carried every ounce of relief he didn’t say aloud.

  Raime met his father’s eyes and returned the smile—warm and full of emotions.

  A thousand questions hung between them, but his father didn’t ask. Not yet.

  It took minutes for the hug to dissolve. Tears, half-formed sentences, nervous laughter. When they finally stepped back, Raime gestured toward the beast waiting calmly behind him.

  “Everyone… this is Varuk.”

  The creature immediately perked up, making an attempt at saying its own name in a deep, rumbling growl that sounded like a demon chewing gravel. It projected a gentle telepathic wave into each family member—memories, scents, a soft emotional greeting.

  Everyone recoiled both at the sound and the sudden mental brush, but Raime soothed them quickly.

  “It’s okay. He’s friendly. Smart. And he knows he can’t hurt humans. I made sure.”

  Varuk huffed proudly, as if insulted by the implication he’d ever want to eat someone without permission.

  The twins were ecstatic. Their mother still clung near Raime like he might evaporate any second. Alice didn’t leave his side at all—half glued to him, half checking his wounds every three seconds.

  Father and son managed a hug just before everyone was pushed inside the house, Raime finally slowed down enough that they noticed something else: he had been talking too fast. Not just excited-fast—wrong-fast. Like a video on double speed, just clear enough to understand.

  “Raime, honey… are you alright? You’re speaking—strangely,” his mother said.

  He stopped for a second and then when he spoke again he sounded normal.

  “Right. My mind works a bit faster than before. I have to… adjust things so I hear and speak at the same speed as everyone else.”

  Everyone stared.

  He shrugged. “It’s fine. Just a side effect of high attributes.”

  Food was offered. Water. A thousand questions overlapped—Are you hurt? What happened? Your arm! How did you escape? Oh my God your eye! What was it like? Who is the beast? What is the beast? Are you sure you’re fine?

  Varuk prowled around the garden, occasionally sticking his head into the front door or nudging Raime mentally when someone outside got too close. Raime calmly explained that the beast wouldn’t kill anyone, no matter what.

  “There’s nobody in the city strong enough to hurt him anyway,” Raime added fondly. “You would need a missile to pierce his defences.”

  They all sat down at last, crammed together on couches and armchairs in the living room. The windows were no more, only rock was Alice pressed against his side, still trembling slightly.

  Raime exhaled, long and tired. Now that he was back and he found his family safe and sound, he only wanted to sleep. But they deserved at least an explenation, and he was curious too about what happened on Earth since he was stuck in the Rift.

  His family waited in breathless silence.

  He looked around at all of them—alive, safe.

  “Alright,” he said quietly.

  “Where do I start…”