Kael's body trembled, cracks of golden light spreading through his form like fractured glass. His once-absolute void energy was collapsing, unable to withstand the divine force tearing through him.
Alden kept his spear firmly lodged in Kael's chest, his heart pounding. He should feel relief—this battle had cost him everything. But instead, all he felt was a strange sense of unease.
Kael lifted his gaze, his lips curling into something between amusement and resignation. "You really think… this is the end?" His voice was quieter now, weaker, but it still carried the weight of something beyond mere mortality.
The battlefield shuddered.
Alden's fingers tightened around his weapon. He could feel it—the remnants of Kael's power were not fading away. They were gathering.
Kael exhaled, the air around him warping. "I am Kael, the harbinger of the void. I do not die."
Alden ripped his spear free, leaping back just as Kael's body erupted into pure darkness. The world around them twisted, space itself bending and breaking as Kael's form dissolved into a swirling abyss.
Then—he reformed.
Not as flesh. Not as something human.
But as something else.
A mass of shifting, infinite blackness, barely holding the shape of a man. His golden eyes were now nothing more than two burning embers in the void.
Alden's stomach twisted. This wasn't resurrection.
This was something worse.
Kael's new form hovered above the shattered battlefield, his voice an echo of what it once was. "You have forced my hand."
The sky ripped open.
A massive rift spread across the heavens, revealing an endless, writhing darkness beyond—a sight so unnatural it made even Alden's divine energy waver.
And then—they came.
Shadows. Thousands of them. Twisted creatures that had never belonged in this world, all descending from the abyss Kael had unleashed.
Alden clenched his jaw. This battle wasn't over.
It was only just beginning.