The abandoned house simmered with the scent of scorched stone and burned flesh, the last embers crackling beneath ash. The world had gone still — unnaturally still — as if holding its breath in the wake of the storm.
Zenith stood in silence, two crystals orbiting him like twin moons of a cursed planet. The first flickered with shadow. The second — freshly awakened — pulsed with the faint glow of absorbed souls. The bodies of the fallen World Eaters had already sunk into his shadow, merging with something deeper… darker.
Kira tossed the scroll bag at him, her voice low. "Hide it. Before more of them come."
Zenith caught it mid-air. It was heavier than it looked — not just in weight, but in presence. As he pulled the strap over his shoulder and latched it across his chest, the crystals flickered… and vanished inside, sealed beneath the ancient binding runes Kira had activated.
Instantly, the air lightened. The pull in the atmosphere faded.
Kira gave a short nod. "That should muffle the signal. For now."
Ires, breath still heavy, stepped beside Zenith. "We shouldn't stay here."
Zenith looked at the scorched ruins of what was once a village. Burned-out buildings. Craters where portals had opened. Charred bodies — human and inhuman — lay broken in the rubble.
He nodded. "Where do we go?"
Kira stepped forward, her blade sheathed on her back but hand still resting near it. "There's a safe path through the broken gorge east of here. A few hideouts from the old rebellion still stand. If the wards held, it'll be safe."
Zenith eyed her warily. "And you're just going to help us now?"
Kira didn't flinch. "I'm not helping you. I'm helping keep this world from crumbling beneath another tear in reality."
She paused, gaze flicking to the scroll bag on his back.
"Whatever this is… whatever you are… it's tied to the end of everything. And I'm not ready to die yet."
"Charming," Ires muttered.
They began to move — slowly, cautiously — weaving through the ruins. The silence between them was tense but fragile, like a truce forged in blood and held by exhaustion.
As they passed a broken tower, Ires glanced back at Zenith.
"You okay?"
He didn't answer right away.
Chaos was still quiet. Not gone — just distant, like a giant lurking beneath deep water.
"I don't think this power is mine," he said finally. "It's his. I'm just the carrier."
Ires shrugged. "Well, if you can carry two crystals without blowing up, I'll keep walking with you."
Kira scoffed up ahead. "Let's see how long that lasts."
They traveled in silence after that. The sun had begun to set — not that it meant safety. In this world, night didn't bring sleep.
It brought hunting.
They reached the shattered cliffs just as the sky began to darken, the last gold of day bleeding into purple.
Kira stopped near a jagged wall, reached behind a fallen statue, and pressed her palm against a symbol etched into the stone.
The earth shuddered slightly.
A metal door slid open — hidden in the rock, untouched by the devastation outside.
She looked over her shoulder.
"Welcome to the edge of nowhere," she said. "Try not to bleed on anything."
Zenith stepped inside last, hand brushing the scroll at his back. The crystals stirred faintly, sensing each other.
And for just a moment, he felt it again — a whisper at the edge of his mind.
Not words.
Just… hunger.
A hunger that was no longer just Chaos's.
It was his, too.
______
Six days earlier :
High above the storm-shrouded mountains of Veyrund, nestled into the jagged rock like a scar of purpose, stood the ancient Temple of Wyrn. Black stone towers clawed at the sky, their tips lost in swirling clouds. Wind screamed through narrow passes, but within the fortress-like monastery, there was only silence.
Sacred silence.
Broken by the sound of a foot tapping against stone.
Riven Solari sat sideways on the edge of a circular platform, legs dangling over the abyss. The temple courtyard beneath him echoed with the hum of low chanting — rhythmic, controlled, ancient.
He hated it.
The crystal — the object of their worship, devotion, and generations of secrecy — hovered at the center of the courtyard, encased in a suspended shrine of silver roots and golden chains. Even sealed, it pulsed faintly, as though aware of the air shifting around it. It had not stirred for centuries.
But tonight, it did.
Riven tilted his head as the pulse grew stronger.
Another rhythm. A beat. A calling. Distant, but certain.
"You feel it too, don't you?" he murmured.
Behind him, the temple's inner doors groaned open.
A robed monk stepped out, face weathered with age. "You should not be out here, Riven."
"I'm always out here, Elder Keth," Riven replied, still staring down at the courtyard. "But today… the crystal is humming louder."
The monk approached him with soft steps. "It is reacting. We've felt it in the sacred chamber. A tremor, not unlike the stories from the First Awakening."
"Then it's real," Riven said, voice calm but edged. "The old myths. The return."
"It may be nothing," Keth said gently.
"You don't believe that," Riven said.
He finally stood, dusting off his dark trousers. Unlike the others, he wore no robe. No ceremonial beads. His arms were marked not with ink but with scarred tattoos — burns from failed rites he never followed through.
He was a monk by bloodline. Not by belief.
"You've always defied the ways," Keth said, watching him carefully. "Why now do you care?"
Riven didn't answer immediately. His gaze shifted to the crystal — glowing brighter now than it had in decades.
"When I was a boy," he said, "my father told me this place was the spine of the world. That the balance of light and shadow rested here. But I think it's just one vertebra in something much, much bigger."
He looked back at the monk.
"I think this place is a cage."
Keth stiffened. "Mind your words."
"Why?" Riven asked, stepping past him. "You'll punish me with silence? With chants? With more days meditating in front of a thing we don't understand?"
He pointed down at the crystal.
"That's not a god. That's a signal. And something is answering."
From deep within the temple, a sudden vibration quaked through the stone. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. The chanting monks below stopped in unison.
Then the chains around the crystal shuddered.
Not once.
But continuously.
The glow intensified — once pulsing every minute… now every ten seconds. Every heartbeat.
"It's begun," Riven whispered.
Keth turned, worry cutting through his calm. "What do you feel?"
Riven looked into the storm beyond the open windows.
"Something's coming."
And for the first time in generations, the monks of Wyrn fell silent —
Something or someone was coming.
The sky over the Temple of Wyrn darkened unnaturally, thunder rumbling not from storm clouds but from the rippling air itself. What had once been sacred silence now cracked with the unnatural shriek of something breaking — not stone, not wood, but reality.
A jagged tear split through the mountain's mist, and from it poured the impossible.
World Eaters.
The monks had always believed the temple was beyond reach. That their wards, chants, and generations of quiet worship were enough to keep the darkness at bay. For over a thousand years, they were right.
Until now.
The first creature landed in the courtyard with an earth-shaking thud, its form larger than any that had ever been recorded in the ancient scrolls. Fleshy wings. A face like shifting bone. Its scent carried death.
Then came the others. Dozens. Falling from the sky like raining knives, crawling from cracks between stones, screeching like tortured metal.
Panic shattered the order.
Screams tore through the temple as monks rushed to the sacred hall, only to find its silver chains snapping — the crystal pulsing violently at the center of the shrine, glowing like a bloodied sun.
At the top of the stone stairway, Riven Solari stood, muscles coiled, his sword drawn. He did not wear robes. He did not chant. But he was no coward.
Keth had already disappeared from his side to sound the alarm
"Riven!" came the voice of his father — the High Monk — emerging through the chaos, a line of blood trickling down his brow. "You must take it. Now."
Riven didn't hesitate.
He leapt down the steps, dodging one of the fallen beams as the main tower split from the assault. His father had already torn the final seal — the crystal no longer hovered in sacred air. It sat inside a worn scroll bag, glowing through the canvas like a buried star.
"Take it far from here," the old man said, shoving the bag into Riven's chest. "Go! The barrier has broken — they will not stop!"
"But what about you—!?"
"I have lived for this purpose." His father's voice was unshakable. "Now you carry it. Go!"
A screech overhead.
Riven turned just in time to see a World Eater diving toward them. His father raised his hand, chanting ancient words, and the creature was caught mid-air in a blast of divine fire. It screamed — but it wouldn't be enough.
The courtyard was already lost.
Riven gritted his teeth, clutched the scroll bag tightly, and turned — sprinting through the crumbling halls, past the dying chants of brothers he barely spoke to, past the shattered statues and fractured pillars of blind faith.
Stone fell behind him. One beast lunged. He rolled, sword flashing upward and slicing through its arm — ichor splattered the wall. He didn't look back.
Down the escape passage carved generations ago. Down into the hidden tunnels beneath the temple. Out into the open ridges of the mountain.
He didn't stop running until the fires of the temple became smoke behind him.
He didn't speak a word for hours.
Only when he reached the edge of the cliffs, breath ragged, eyes burning, did he look at the scroll bag pulsing faintly under the moonlight.