The darkness that had erupted swallowed them whole, curling in from every side as if it wanted to crush them.
Their bodies vanished into the void, and so did Malgareth.
In a blink, everything turned still—silent, endless, empty.
Then, sothing shifted.
They now stood sowhere else.
A realm drowned in shadow.
No land beneath their feet, no sky, just darkness stretching all around.
And above them, suspended in that false sky, was a massive, writhing eye—watching.
It blinked slowly, almost breathing, its gaze pressing down on them like a weight.
Venedix stepped forward, her boots not making a sound, her crimson blades still drawn and humming faintly.
Her expression didn’t change.
Cold eyes stared at the massive eye above.
"This eidra," she said flatly.
"It’s the one the old fools in the scholar circles are studying. Pri eidra has no effect."
She flicked her blade to the side, casting a sharp crackle of energy that quickly faded into the dark.
"It isn’t corrupted. This is sothing else. Sothing older. Pure darkness."
Her eyes slid to Troy with that sa bored, sharp look she always had.
"You’ve seen it before."
Troy held his staff close, shifting slightly.
"Yes," he said with a steady breath.
"It’s not just any dark eidra. It belongs to a primordial."
Venedix didn’t blink.
"Mhm."
There was no curiosity in her voice, just cold confirmation.
"Primordials existed long before the first empires, before eidra was shaped into form. They didn’t learn to use it. They are it."
Biyo stepped beside her, his expression tense.
"So the myths were real," he muttered. "The architects of reality... the ones even my gods avoided."
Venedix didn’t look at him. Her eyes were still locked on the writhing eye above.
"Of course they were real," she replied without a change in tone.
"Only fools think ancient power disappears just because it’s old."
She raised her sword slightly, crimson eidra crackling along the edge.
"If this is a primordial’s space, then the primordial must be here as well, or perhaps we need to kill Malgareth first to escape," she said, still emotionless.
Then she began to walk forward, slow and unfazed.
But before any of them could even speak another word, a massive explosion of black and corrupted eidra thundered from the distant horizon, the sound alone was enough to make several heads whip around in instinct, their eyes wide in sudden realization.
"Look!!" Kain shouted, his voice strained with urgency as he raised his hand to point toward the direction where the wave had erged.
The air began to shift, heavy and dense, as if sothing ancient and monstrous had awakened.
Then ca the sight—swirling black mists began to spill down from the monstrous writhing eye in the sky.
Slow at first like drops of water sliding down glass, yet unnaturally thick, as if the eye itself was weeping a sorrow far older than anything that was present.
And these tears flowed directly toward where Malgareth stood, as if pulled to him.
A mont later, it arrived—the sound.
The whispers.
Thin, slithering, hissing voices that crawled into the ears of everyone around, slipping into their thoughts, their fears, like insects under the skin.
The voices were unintelligible yet sohow terrifying, a foreign tongue that the soul understood but the mind could not process.
Many of them staggered, their knees weak, hands clutching their heads as the whispers tried to burrow in deeper.
*Thud!
But then a sharp thud echoed out.
Troy slamd the end of his staff into the ground with force, his eyes glowing as his eidra surged outward like a crashing tide, forming a do of protection around them.
A shimring barrier that pulsed and pushed away the invading voices, clearing the fog from their minds, allowing them to breathe once more.
Still, the eye continued to twist and writhe above them, its massive pupil dilating as if adjusting its vision.
Then ca the next horror—cracks ford across its surface, deep fractures that split across the monstrous eye like veins.
And from those cracks erged thin, spindly hands, dozens of them, each one gnarled and too long, twitching and flailing like blind worms searching for prey.
The hands clawed at the eye itself, forcing it to open wider, until a violent rupture tore through its surface,
*crack!
and from that gaping wound spilled a thick, almost liquid stream of dark corrupted blood that poured into the void below.
Like a grotesque waterfall.
And then... a figure descended.
Shrouded in darkness, cloaked in robes that billowed unnaturally as it floated downward, untouched by wind or gravity.
Its face hidden beneath the hood.
Its body masked by flowing shadows that never quite stayed still.
As it landed, the very ground beneath it cracked and bled mist, the shockwave of its arrival sending a ripple through the air that made the others instinctively take a step back.
Their instincts scread in warning even before their minds could make sense of what they were looking at.
Venedix stared at the being without blinking, her face expressionless yet firm.
Her eyes narrow and sharp, her swords lowered but glowing, crimson arcs of eidra dancing along the edges like restrained fury waiting to explode.
She had seen monsters, she had faced corrupted lords, beasts born of nightmare, but this—this was different.
This was not just corrupted.
This was a corrupted eidra given form.
A primordial presence that made the world feel... wrong, as if its re existence was a contradiction to everything that lived.
Yet Venedix did not flinch, her grip on both swords tightened slightly, golden cracks of eidra shimred from the blades, mixing with her own crimson eidra until it surged around her like lightning caught in a storm.
Troy saw it too, his staff now glowing faintly as he shifted his stance, his eyes locked on the figure as a drop of sweat ran down his cheek, not from fear, but from anticipation.
Biyo exhaled slowly, as he held each of his axe with his hands as he stepped up beside Troy.
anwhile, Garan’s tail flicked restlessly, his beastly eyes narrowed and alert, his body ready to move the second an opening appeared.
On the other hand, Vox, Orin, Ophelia, Hector, Kain, and Verhedyn stood behind the front line, all of them frozen for a mont as they stared at the figure that had descended from the broken sky.
Confused at what it was, their thoughts struggling to comprehend the weight of its presence.
But even in their confusion, they still reached for their weapons.
Still readied their eidra.
Still prepared themselves because whatever that thing was—it was not sothing that could be ignored.
And so they stood there, beneath the cracked heavens, staring at a being born of pure darkness, a creature that bled fear into the world around it, waiting for it to make its move.
Because now... the real fight was about to begin
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