The fluorescent lights of the Sector 3 Rehabilitation Center hummed with a sterile, clinical indifference. Aris Thorne adjusted the collar of her scratchy, oversized orderly uniform. To the world, she was a mid-level bureaucrat named "Nurse Priya," but beneath the cheap polyester was the coiled strength of an SS-rank Guardian. Her palms were sweating—a sensation she hadn't felt since her first D-rank dungeon crawl.
She wasn't afraid of a monster. She was afraid of the anomaly currently eating a bag of cheap potato chips in Room 402.
"Status report," she whispered into a microscopic transmitter hidden in her tooth.
"Visual confirmed," her father's voice crackled in her ear. "The Pupil is still trying to bypass our firewall. Every major sect is currently parked outside the gates. Aris, get the reading. We need to know if we're dealing with a god or a glitch."
Aris pushed the heavy medical cart into Harish's room. The air inside didn't smell like the Abyss; it smelled like spicy seasoning and laundry detergent. Harish was sprawled on the bed, his eyes glued to a rerun of a pre-Fracture sitcom.
"Time for your baseline evaluation, Mr. Harish," Aris said, pitching her voice into a soft, helpful tone.
Harish jumped slightly, nearly dropping his chips. He didn't look at her face. Instead, he stared intensely at the wheels of the medical cart. "Oh... uh, okay. Do I have to... move?"
"Just place your hand on the Mana Capacity Crystal," she instructed, wheeling the device forward.
The crystal was a masterpiece of dwarven engineering and silicon technology—a 'blind eye' designed to measure the depth of a human soul. Inside his mind, Harish felt his Origin Power stirring. It was an ocean of starlight, a cosmic pressure that had once held together the crumbling foundations of the Obsidian Citadel. If he let even a drop leak, the crystal wouldn't just shatter; the entire fortress would be reduced to subatomic dust.
'Heavens, give me strength,' Harish thought, his inner voice a panicked contrast to his blank exterior. 'I just want to go home. If this thing says I'm an Emperor, I'll never see Mom's biryani again.'
He visualized a series of internal locks—seals he had perfected in the World of Eternal Silence. He didn't suppress his power; he simply shifted his frequency outside the spectrum of the machine. To the crystal, Harish became a ghost.
A soft, dull gray light flickered in the stone.
[Result: Mana Capacity – 5. Class: Commoner. Status: Unawakened.]
Aris stared at the screen. Her internal monologue screamed.
'Impossible. I saw him erase a Death Dragon. I saw the satellite feed. My own intuition—the SS-rank "Eye of the Hawk" skill—is telling me that the air around him is heavier than a mountain. And yet, the machine says he's a nobody?'
She looked at Harish. He was looking at his shoes, his face flushed a light pink. "Is... is that good? Am I healthy?"
"You're... remarkably normal, Harish," Aris lied, her eyes narrowing. She decided to push further. She leaned in, letting a strand of her hair brush against his shoulder—a classic psychological tactic to induce a "Mana Flutter" in males with hidden power. "You know, you're quite a mystery. Most Returnees are traumatized, but you seem so... sweet."
Harish froze.
In the Murim world, the Moon-Kissed Empress of the Nine Heavens had once tried to seduce him with a dance that could bewitch the stars. In the World of Swords and Magic, the Elven Queen Lyra had cornered him in a grove of silver trees, her voice a melody of pure desire. Soo-jin, the Analytical Martial Artist, had once studied his pulse under the guise of "medical training," her touch lingering far longer than necessary.
He had faced them all with the stoic dignity of a Sovereign. He had conquered their realms. He had led their armies.
But here, in a small room with a pretty woman in a nurse's outfit, the Great Sovereign of the Hundred Dimensions felt his brain turn into mashed potatoes.
"I... uh... I have to... go to the... bathroom," Harish stammered.
He didn't walk out. He practically blurred out of the bed, stumbling over his own feet and nearly taking the IV stand with him. He avoided eye contact so violently it looked like he was having a neck cramp.
"The bathroom is that way, Mr. Harish," Aris pointed, her confusion deepening.
'Is he acting?' she wondered. 'Is this the ultimate "High-Level Masking"? He's a Demon King who can't handle a nurse's compliment? Or... is he actually just a shy boy who accidentally became a god?'
Harish locked the bathroom door and leaned against it, breathing heavily.
'Focus, Harish. You've faced the Abyss Mother. You've killed the Void Serpent. You are the Sovereign. You do not run from a nurse. You...' His reflection in the mirror showed a face that was definitely not a Sovereign's. It was the face of a kid who had spent too much time in his room playing games. He noticed a bit of chip dust on his chin and frantically scrubbed it off.
"She touched my shoulder," he whispered to the tiled wall. "Why is Earth so dangerous?"
While Aris Thorne was having a crisis of faith in her surveillance van, the world outside Sector 3 was a boiling cauldron.
In the dark room of "The Eye," the Pupil was losing her patience. She watched the live feed of the medical test.
'Clever boy,' she thought, a cold sweat dampening her black robes. 'You didn't hide your power. You simply made the machine look at a reflection. But you can't hide your past.'
She turned to a holographic map of xxxxxxxxxxx. "Have the 'Cleaners' reached the residence yet? If the Alliance finds the family first, we lose our leash on the ghost."
"The Alliance is already there, Ma'am," a subordinate replied. "But they aren't there to arrest. They're there to... inform."
The air in the small, cramped apartment in xxxxxxxxxxx, India, was thick with the scent of marigolds and the bitter-sweet tang of burning sandalwood incense.
It was a somber day. The Shradh—the fifth-anniversary ritual for the dead.
Harish's mother, her hair now streaks of gray that weren't there five years ago, adjusted the framed photograph on the wooden mantle. In the photo, Harish was grinning, a cricket bat over his shoulder, looking like he didn't have a care in the world. A garland of fresh yellow flowers hung over the frame.
"Five years, Ravi," his mother whispered to her husband, who sat on the floor, his eyes hollow. "He would have been twenty-five now. Maybe finished his degree. Maybe married."
Harish's sister sat nearby, her eyes red. She had never forgiven herself for let him go for that walk alone. She looked at his old gaming PC, now covered in a thin layer of dust in the corner. She hadn't let anyone touch it.
The priest began to chant the Sanskrit shlokas, the ancient vibration filling the room. "Om... Shantih... Shantih... Shantih..."
The ritual was supposed to provide peace to the soul of the departed. It was a finality. A closing of a wound that refused to heal.
Suddenly, a jarring, high-pitched electronic trill shattered the sacred silence.
It was the "Emergency Response" phone—the one issued to all residents of the high-security sector.
Ravi, Harish's father, frowned. "Who would call during the ritual? The Alliance knows today is a day of mourning."
He picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Is this the residence of Ravi and Meena?" the voice on the other end was sterile, bureaucratic, and devoid of the weight of the news it was about to deliver.
"Yes. We are in the middle of a ceremony. Can this wait?"
"Mr. Ravi, this is the Department of Returnee Affairs, Sector 3 HQ. We are calling regarding the missing person file 4492-B. Name: Harish."
The mother froze, the ladle of ghee hovering over the small ritual fire.
"We... we closed that file," Ravi said, his voice trembling. "He's gone. We are performing his rites today."
"The file has been reopened, sir. At 14:45 hours today, a subject matching the biological and retinal profile of your son was processed through the Dead Zone gate. He is currently in stable condition at the Rehabilitation Center."
The phone slipped from Ravi's hand, clattering onto the floor.
The priest stopped chanting. The scent of incense seemed to vanish, replaced by the electric hum of the city outside.
"Ravi? What is it?" Meena asked, her voice a fragile glass thread.
Ravi looked at the photograph of his son. He looked at the marigolds, the symbols of death.
"He's alive," Ravi whispered. "The Alliance... they say Harish is coming home."
The sister burst into a sob that was half-scream, half-laughter. But the mother didn't move. She looked at the photo, and then at the door, as if she expected the boy with the cricket bat to walk through it any second.
Back at the Rehab Center, Harish had finally emerged from the bathroom. He saw Aris—Nurse Priya—waiting for him with a strange, intense look in her eyes.
"Is everything okay, Harish?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and tried to act 'Sovereign-like' for a second. "I've made a decision. I'm leaving. Now."
"You can't," Aris said, her Guardian instincts flaring. "You haven't been cleared for behavioral stability. The world is different, Harish. There are monsters, guilds..."
"I know," Harish said. He looked her in the eye for the first time. For a brief moment, the shy boy vanished. The air in the room didn't just get heavy; it stopped moving. The hum of the lights ceased. The dust motes in the air froze in place.
Aris felt a chill that reached into her marrow. 'There it is,' she thought. 'The Ghost. The Demon King.'
"I've spent three hundred years waiting to see my mother again," Harish said, his voice a low, melodic vibration that seemed to bypass her ears and speak directly to her soul. "If you try to stop me, I won't use a wooden stick. I'll be much, much more annoying."
The pressure vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Harish blinked, his face turning red again. "I mean... please? Can I go? I really miss my mom."
Aris Thorne stood there, a master of combat and a daughter of a General, completely speechless.
"I'll... I'll get the discharge papers," she whispered.
As she walked out, she realized her hand was shaking. She looked at the door to Room 402.
'He's not a Demon King,' she realized. 'He's a Living Ghost. He's a man who has outlived time itself, and the only thing that keeps him human is a memory of home.'