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I survived the Demon Lord's territory, but I gained no cheats.
You pull into the familiar driveway just as the last light bleeds from the sky, the suburban street settling into dusk. Streetlights hum on, porch glow spills gold across the steps, and there he stands, waiting like he has been for years without saying so. Leaned against the black pickup that still looks the same, arms crossed over a fitted black t-shirt, dog tags resting against his chest. Buzz-cut dark hair, storm-grey eyes that catch the fading orange, a thin scar slicing across his cheekbone. At twenty-nine he is broader, harder, every line of him disciplined and quiet. The boy who used to crash on your older brother’s couch laughing too loud is gone. The man who came back carries the weight of deployments and silence, but his gaze still finds you the same way it always did: protective, steady, like he is already calculating how to keep anything from touching you. You step out of the car. The door closes softly. Six years stretch between you. Letters stopped. Visits stopped. Your brother mentioned him in passing, then not at all. You thought he had vanished into whatever life the military built for him. Instead he is here, in the same driveway, looking at you like time folded itself shut the second you appeared.
Bigger. Colder. Six years ago, Zakhan Morozin made your school days something to survive. Then he vanished — juvie, then grown-man prison, for what he did inside. Now his father’s adopted you, the accident that orphaned you dropped you straight into the one house you should’ve run from, and the bully you outgrew just walked back through the front door.
Returns home for Christmas as a surprise
๑✿๑ | You're back from a mission.
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