I didn't blink.
I couldn't.
Antoine's scream still rang in my ears as he collapsed against a rock, trembling like a child, mumbling to himself, clawing at the dirt as if it would swallow him to safety.
"He's coming… he's coming… don't let him see … please don't let him see …"
The rest of us stood frozen. Carn held onto my arm so tightly my skin burned. Cealith's hand hovered near his blade, though we both knew it wouldn't matter. Amina and Daisuke were dead silent, wide-eyed and pale. Antoine looked like he'd seen hell—and left part of himself behind.
Then I felt it.
Not heat. Not sound.Absence.Like sothing had eaten a piece of the world whole.
The clouds shifted.
But there was no wind.
Carn whispered, "What the fuck is that…"
Then the horizon broke.
A rift opened, tearing sideways through the air like soone had drawn a jagged line through existence itself. No fire. No lightning. Just—pure void, outlined in a glowless black that shimred without color. It looked wrong. Like a part of the world that had never been rendered.
My knees almost gave out.
"Cealith," I said, turning to him, heart pounding like a war drum. "Take a horse. Get the fuck out of here. Tell the other units about it. Tell everyone."
He blinked. "Aleks, no—"
"Go!" My voice cracked. "We don't have ti!"
He hesitated for half a second—too long—but then he nodded, grabbed the reins from a fallen riderless mount, and vaulted into the saddle. His eyes locked on mine one last ti, and I saw it:
He didn't think we'd survive.
But he rode anyway.
The sound of hooves faded fast. Then silence.
Only Antoine still muttered on the ground, repeating fragnts like a broken record. "He's here. He's here. He's here."
Then we saw it.
At the center of the rift… sothing stepped through.
Slow. Purposeful. Tall—too tall—with long limbs that bent wrong, like it had learned how to move by watching corpses. Its body was a mosaic of jagged stone and raw sinew, black and gray, but not natural—more like sculpted from broken nightmares. No face. No mouth. Just a cracked, expressionless skull with a single, pulsing chain hanging from its neck.
My throat closed.
Carn stumbled back. "Aleks—"
"I see it."
It didn't look like a monster.
It didn't even look alive.
It looked like a concept, like sothing soone tried to forget but couldn't quite erase. Its steps didn't echo—but each one made the dirt decay beneath it.
Antoine curled into a ball. "He sees … he sees …"
The creature stopped walking.
Its head tilted—slowly, like an insect studying prey.
And then—
It scread.
Not out loud.
In our minds.
A rupture of noise tore through , a pressure like my skull was cracking open from the inside. Carn scread. I fell to one knee. Blood trickled from Daisuke's nose. Amina threw up. The air itself bent. Trees in the distance ignited without fire.
And then—
The explosion.
It wasn't fire.
It was sothing different.
Light and dark collapsed into each other, forming a blast that slamd into the ground just ters away from us and swallowed everything. The ground beneath my feet gave way. The world twisted. My ears rang.
And then—
Silence.
Pure. Total.
The kind that makes you wonder if you're dead.
The world vanished.
There was no light. No sound. No feeling.Only the cold.
Not physical cold—sothing deeper. The kind that crept into your soul and hollowed it out from the inside, leaving nothing but numbness behind.
I blinked.
I was sitting.
On my bed.
In my room.
The familiar buzz of my phone echoed in the quiet. Faint blue light lit up my dark ceiling. TikTok notifications. My lock screen. Battery at 12%.
What?
I reached for it. My hand trembled. The mont my fingers touched the screen, a video started playing. A cat falling off a table. Laugh track. I didn't laugh. I didn't even blink. I just stared.
Was this… real?
I looked around. The sa posters. The sa worn-out hoodie on the floor. The faint sll of dust and cheap shampoo.
I was ho.
I was… back?
But it didn't feel like ho. It felt like a mory soone else had forgotten to let go of.
I stayed in my room all day.
Didn't speak. Didn't eat. Just sat there, knees pulled to my chest, watching the hours bleed together through the blinds. My phone buzzed, again and again—ssages, s, sothing about a party. I didn't read any of it. I didn't want to see anyone. I didn't want to think.
Because if I did, I'd rember that scream.
That faceless thing.
That…
No. Don't think.
Just wait.
But even when the sun went down, I didn't sleep.
I couldn't.
Because part of knew that if I closed my eyes again… I wouldn't wake up here.
Next morning.
School.
Sa hallways. Sa lockers. Sa sick fluorescent lights.
I walked with my hood up, backpack slung low, head down. I kept telling myself to breathe, but my chest felt too tight. Too hollow. Like sothing important had been scooped out of and replaced with glass.
Soone bumped into . I staggered. A voice laughed behind .
"Watch it, dumbass."
I kept walking.
I passed a group of guys by the lockers. The usual crowd. One of them smirked when he saw .
"Hey, look who finally showed up. The silent creep."
My stomach twisted. I kept my head down.
Another voice—aner, more bored.
"Why do you always look like you're gonna fucking cry, huh? Got sothing to say?"
They shoved . My shoulder hit the wall.
I didn't fight back.
I never did.
Another push. My books spilled.
Laughter.
"Yo, you gonna pick those up? C'mon, freak. Cry for us."
My heart pounded.
I bent down, reached for a notebook.
Water splashed across my back.
Soone had dumped a bottle over my head.
I froze.
A beat passed.
Then a fist hit in the side. Hard. I collapsed.
The hallway spun.
I covered my face, curled up, waited for it to stop.
They laughed.
And I said it.
Softly.
Broken.
"…Please. Stop."
The laughter didn't stop.
And then—
I ca back choking on ash.
Was this a dream?
My lungs burned. My throat tasted like iron. I gasped once, twice—and then the world returned, in broken pieces.
Black rain fell around .
Not heavy. Just constant. Steady, thin drops of darkness, seeping into everything. It stank—like rot, sulfur, burned skin.
I lay on my back.
I couldn't move.
Sothing sharp pressed into my spine—shattered stone, maybe a blade—but I didn't care. My ears rang. My mouth was dry. My skin tingled like it had been shocked.
Then I turned my head.
And I saw her.
Carn.
Or at least… her face.
Just the face. Staring back at . Lifeless. Eyes glassy and wide, locked in whatever horror they'd seen before the end. Her long hair matted with blood, strands stuck to her cheek. Her mouth half-open.
Detached from everything else.
My stomach flipped.
I didn't scream.
I couldn't.
I just lay there.
Staring.
Rain tapped against her skin. A slow rhythm. Too calm. Too soft for what it was falling on.
I turned away—and puked. Hard.
My whole body trembled. My hands scraped at the ground.
No.
No, no, no.
I looked down.
My legs—
Gone.
There was… nothing.
Below my knees, just ripped cloth, blood, and mangled stumps. The pain hadn't even hit yet. Just cold. A dull, creeping cold.
I tried to crawl.
Pulled myself an inch. Then another.
My elbows sank into wet ash. I dragged my ruined body forward, every inch making bile rise in my throat. I moved past a shredded banner—Unit 27. I moved past a burned arm still clutching a blade.
I saw Daisuke's glasses.
Cracked. Bloody. Bent.
Amina's scarf tangled in a pile of rubble.
My voice cracked.
"What the fuck…"
I laughed.
A weak, pathetic sound.
"This is how we die?"
"This is how I die?"
I looked up at the sky.
It wept black.
And I closed my eyes, waiting to be taken.
And then—
Sothing noticed .
I didn't hear it approach.
I didn't feel footsteps. No roar. No scream. Just—
Presence.
My body tensed.
Then—without warning—a hand closed around my throat.
I choked, eyes bulging, as I was yanked off the ground like a broken doll. The force sent pain searing through what was left of my body. Blood dripped from my stump of a leg. My ribs scread. My vision swam.
The thing that held —no.
The thing that owned the battlefield—towered above .
Ten feet tall. Maybe more.
A twisted humanoid silhouette, its body an abomination of cracked obsidian plates and sinew that pulsed like it was stitched from shadows. No eyes. No face. Just a split down the center of its head, tearing open into a cavern of fangs, rows and rows stretching too deep, too wrong, too endless.
Its skin radiated hate.
Its breath reeked of rot, smoke, and the kind of endings no story should have.
I couldn't breathe.
It tilted its head.
The gaping mouth opened wider.
It laughed.
A noise that didn't co from its throat, but from inside my head, like a mory I never had. Deep. Hollow. Cruel. It didn't laugh like it found sothing funny.
It laughed like it already knew the ending.
My vision blurred.
I kicked with the leg I didn't have. My fingers clawed at its wrist. Useless.
The black crept in again.
My lungs burned.
Everything—fading.
Then—
A flicker.
A glow.
On the creature's chest… chained to its collar… sothing shining. Sothing alive.
A crystal.
Pale green. Imperfect. Cracked.
Familiar.
I rembered.
Lydia's voice."Free him. His chain."
I didn't think.
Didn't breathe.
Didn't hesitate.
I reached into my pocket, fingers shaking, and pulled out the shard—the glass fragnt from the ruins. I didn't know why I'd kept it. I didn't care.
I raised my arm.With everything I had left—
I slamd it into the crystal.
The mont the crystal cracked beneath the glass shard, ti shattered with it.
A pulse of blinding green surged from the creature's chest, and it staggered backward like sothing ancient waking from a dream it never chose. Its obsidian skin splintered, dust falling from its limbs in slow, floating ribbons. The air vibrated—not with magic, not with divine power, but with the weight of sothing that wasn't supposed to exist anymore finally collapsing.
I dropped to the ground, coughing, vision sared with blood and light. I dragged myself up just enough to watch it unfold.
From within the crumbling husk, two massive wings unfurled—white, not pure or glowing, but frayed and gray at the tips, like parchnt left in the rain. They spread wide as the body split apart, and standing there, where the monster had been, was sothing else entirely.
A man. Or what was left of one.
He was tall, but fragile. Glowing faintly, like a candle nearly burned out. His hair fell in strands of silver, and his robes—if that's what they had once been—were tattered and faded, clinging to him like mories. His eyes… his eyes were hollow, deep, older than ti, filled with a sadness that didn't belong to any single mont. It was the sadness of everything lost.
He stepped toward slowly, breathing like it hurt.
"You broke the chain," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it sank into the world around us like gravity. "I didn't think… anyone still rembered."
I couldn't speak. My throat was raw, my chest shaking. I couldn't tell if I was alive or still dying.
The figure knelt beside . Not out of reverence, but exhaustion.
"I don't have much ti," he whispered. "And neither do you."
I blinked, confused, heart racing. "What the fuck are you?"
He smiled faintly—like a man rembering how to smile.
"I was once… a reminder," he said. "A breath of Him, left behind when everything else was erased."
His hand rested lightly on my shoulder. Cold. Gentle.
"What you call the Darkness," he continued, "isn't a force. It's not a god. Not even a monster. It's his absence."
My breath caught. I didn't understand.
He looked up, toward the broken sky. "God has vanished" he said quietly. "He was erased. Removed. Every mory, every trace. This world… your world… every world… it's bleeding because of that. The absence is spreading. The places where He was—it's like holes in reality. And that absence is hungry."
I stared at him. My body trembled.
"So… what, all of this… all of this war, all this death—"
"It's the universe collapsing inward," he said. "And the heavens—what you'd call angels, guardians, remnants—we've been fighting it. But it's not a war we're winning."
He touched the center of his chest. His body flickered. His wings dimd.
"I can't fight anymore," he said. "But the storm will return. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But when it cos back, this world will need soone still standing."
He didn't ask.
He didn't wait.
He placed his hand over my heart, and began to speak words I couldn't understand. His voice echoed, low and rhythmic, vibrating through my bones. The ground pulsed with each syllable. My skin lit up. My chest tightened.
Pain surged through my body—pure, searing, holy pain. I scread as my nerves ignited. My legs—my fucking legs—twisted and reford, bones stretching, muscles stitching themselves together from nothing.
Light surged through my chest, through my throat, my fingertips, my spine.
He exhaled as he gave the last of whatever he was.
"You are not the chosen one," he murmured. "You were never ant for this. But you survived. And that… that's enough."
I collapsed forward, gasping, whole again. Alive again. My hands touched the mud. My knees didn't buckle. I could breathe.
But he… he was already crumbling.
His face sunk inward. His ribs showed. His skin grayed and flaked like ash. Each second aged him decades. His wings folded, feathers drifting down like snow.
He looked at one last ti, as the wind began to pick up.
"I will send you forward," he said. "To when the next wave cos. When this world needs you most."
I shook my head, trying to speak, to ask, to say no, not again—
But he raised his hand.
And with one final whisper, he sealed .
"The world ends when no one rembers. So rember."
Light swallowed whole.
The wind stilled.
The angel was gone. Dust scattered in the wind like old paper. My hands trembled as I looked down at the strange shard still pulsing in my palm.
Then—sothing shifted.
The ground groaned beneath . The sky above began to fracture. Not cloud, not storm—crack.
Like glass under pressure.
My breath caught.
Stars blinked out, one by one, like dying embers.
And then—
A whisper.
Not from outside.
From inside my head.
"Ten thousand years."
My vision blurred. My legs buckled. The earth twisted below, the sky above.
"No… wait—what the fuck is happening—"
Pain.
Not burning. Not cutting.
Erasing.
My body… pixelated. Fading. Not dying. Not breaking. Just—being taken.
"STOP—"
I scread.
But it ca out warped. Like sound underwater.
I clawed at the dirt, but my fingers passed through it.
I saw the battlefield stretch around , blurred by rain, blood, smoke. Dead bodies. Crushed armor. Torn flags.
Then, it all fell away.
I wasn't standing anymore.
I wasn't falling, either.
I was… suspended.
A shell of crystal ford around —slow and silent. Smooth. Cold.
I pressed my hands against it. My face.
It didn't crack.
Didn't echo.
Didn't let scream.
I was trapped in stillness.
Not dead.
more like asleep.
Beneath the battlefield.
Beneath everything.
Ti stopped being real.
10 000 Years Later
They say the dark dungeons rember the old wars.But sotis… they rember sothing older.
Dust clung to the stale air, thick and undisturbed for centuries. The corridor narrowed as they moved forward, boots crunching over ancient bone fragnts and cracked tiles. The torches flickered against cold stone walls, casting four moving shadows across the decay.
"Why do these places always sll like dead rats and wet socks?" Kaelin gagged softly, flicking a small ember off her glove.
"It's a dungeon," Gorrun replied dryly, his hamr slung across his back. "Not your goddamn perfu closet."
Serenya giggled, the light from her staff bathing her in a soft blue glow. "At least it's not crawling with ghouls this ti."
"Yet," Darian muttered, his hand on his sword. His voice calm, but eyes sharp. "Don't get comfortable."
They were an odd team.
Kaelin, the impatient one—fire mage with a sharper tongue than spell.Gorrun, the old-school dwarf—grumbling through life but the first to swing when shit went sideways.Serenya, the gentle elf—healer, cheerful, but alert.Darian, human swordsman—ex-noble, calm, the one they all quietly followed.
They passed through two more archways. The path grew colder.
Then… silence.
The chamber they entered was different.
No monsters. No traps.
Just one thing at its center: a boy, lying on the stone floor. No armor. No weapons. Just a simple, torn shirt and dark pants, half-covered in dust, like he'd been there for centuries—or just collapsed seconds ago.
He looked… out of place.
"Wait," Serenya said, rushing ahead. "There's soone there!"
"Serenya—slow down," Darian warned.
But she was already kneeling beside him, brushing dust and soot from his face.
"It's a boy. Maybe sixteen? Seventeen? He's breathing."
Kaelin scoffed. "Yeah, well, so are most corpses before they sit up and kill you."
"Then you stay back," Serenya shot back. Her fingers hovered above his chest. "Let do this."
Gorrun grunted. "I swear, this is exactly how cursed shit starts."
"I know," Darian muttered, stepping forward anyway.
Serenya exhaled. Focused. Her hand glowed faintly—just a soft shimr.
"If you're hurt… let this light find you."
The boy flinched.
Then—his fingers twitched.
His eyes blinked open.
Like soone waking up from a verly long dream.
He looked at Serenya. Then at the others. He didn't speak.
Didn't scream.
Didn't move.
He just stared—like none of them were real.
Like he wasn't sure he was real.
Kaelin´s hand hovered over her dagger. "What the fuck…"
Then the boy slowly sat up.
Cracked his neck. Looked at his hands as if they didn't belong to him.
A faint glint of white shimred in his eyes.
And then—he whispered sothing. So quiet, Serenya had to lean in to hear it.
"…Where am I?"
End of the Prologue
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