The light swallowed him whole.
For an instant, there was nothing.
No blood.
No bone.
No gravity.
Then
George stepped forward onto stone.
Four Years Later
The world had changed.
So had he.
George stood atop a ruined skyscraper overlooking what had once been the eastern edge of the Kingdom of Veyra now a hybrid sprawl of steel, magic, and scarred land. The modern world had not ended in those four years… but it had been reshaped.
Dungeons rose openly now, no longer hidden.
Earth-Level existences walked the surface without disguise.
Kingdoms had learned painfully that humanity was no longer at the bottom of the food chain.
And at the center of many of those changes stood a single name, spoken quietly, reverently, or in fear.
George.
His coat fluttered in the wind, woven from adaptive mana-thread and reinforced bone-fiber beneath the cloth. Beneath his skin, faint crimson lines pulsed slowly steady, controlled, no longer volatile.
His aura was invisible now.
