The air turned thick—not with heat, not with moisture, but with meaning. As though the Wilderness itself dared not breathe. Snow froze mid-fall, suspended like ash from a world already burned. The wind choked on its own voice, and silence spread its reign.
Above the jagged cliffs, the sky fractured. Stars that moments ago had shimmered with impossible clarity blinked out, one by one, like the universe had lost interest in watching. What remained was not darkness—but the negation of even that. An emptiness so deep it whispered.
The ritual had not ended.
Something had begun.
Reynard Ashford, champion of Primordial Academy, stood at the front line. His stance was flawless, a picture of elegance and readiness—until it wasn't. His body did not shake, but his thoughts did. They slipped from his grasp like oil, recoiling from the pressure of what now unfolded before them.
It did not walk.
It unfolded.
A tangle of limbs and angles that betrayed dimension and order. Shadows bled from its joints. Light oozed from its seams—light that moved sideways, bent backward, spiraled into the void. It had no face, and yet each who looked saw one—a mask carved from their worst memory. A personal apocalypse in the guise of a god.
Reality faltered where it stood. Snow didn't melt—it fled. Trees didn't burn—they rotted in an instant, blackening from the inside. The earth groaned like a violated body. Veins of crimson light cracked through stone. Nature's logic screamed.
And the Cultists laughed.
Their mouths stretched open, teeth cracked and tongues chewed to pulp. They howled, voices soaked in blood and reverence. They had succeeded. The ancient pact—once forged in the earliest ages by mortals and unknowable things—was broken.
And from that fracture had spilled a fragment.
Not a being.
A concept.
A violation given flesh.
Students scattered, their screams drowned in psychic static. Some ran. Most fell. Some did not move at all. They had not fainted. They had disconnected—souls torn from the scene before them.
The elite, the strong, the titled—they all fell too. Warriors of high Houses, of honored academies. They collapsed under the weight of a fear their minds could not house.
Even Reynard.
The carefree genius, whose mind danced where others trudged, clenched his fists until they bled. His bonded Drifter screamed through the channels of his soul: flee, vanish, grovel. And still, he stood—frozen. Not by cowardice. But because instinct screamed, You do not fight this. You survive it.
But one moved.
A boy.
Once a cripple, Now a hero.
Dawn.
His stance was crooked, not by flaw, but by choice. His fists, bandaged and raw, did not tremble. They tightened. He breathed slowly, methodically—his lungs remembering the rhythm of agony.
Inside, his shell wailed. The Mortal Shell, once broken and forcefully mended, threatened to crack again. But it held—for something far deeper braced it now.
Not just resolve.
Hatred.
Pure. Radiant. Hatred.
Not born of vengeance. Not bred from fear.
But from memory.
The twisted fragment reminded him. Of the day he was reshaped. Of the rituals that pulled at his marrow. Of the monster he was almost forced to become. Of the creature that had replaced him, if only for a moment.
He had felt this before—the stink of the unnatural, the breath of something that should not exist. It had once lived inside him. And though purged, its remnants still flickered in his shadow.
That part now shrank. The curse within him retreated—not from fear—but from guilt.
Because its origin had returned.
And Dawn did not run. He did not yield.
His muscles coiled. Battle intent bled from his skin, distorting the frost around him. The air curved, bent by the density of his will. Even the fragment of the transcendent paused—as though confused that this one had not fallen.
And then—
Something watched.
Not from above, nor below. Not from behind the stars or beneath the crust.
But from elsewhere.
A wisp.
Not divine. Not damned. Alive. And waiting.
It had slept through calamities. Through the rise and fall of narions. It had obeyed the pact when all others defied it. Because it waited for something rare.
A mortal who would look upon the abyss—not with reverence, nor with fear—but with disgust.
Dawn was that mortal.
A thought cut through the planes of reality. Not a whisper, not a call, but a declaration—older than time, yet freshly spoken.
"Once more, a mortal seeks to wound the sky. To break what was unbreakable."
"You wish to sever reality? To tear the sky asunder? Then take this Radiance—one that can sever the Sky itself."
The voice was not heard. It was imprinted. Etched into every cell of his flesh. Branded across the shadow of his soul.
Dawn did not answer.
He accepted.
And the Wilderness screamed.
Light—no, Radiance—poured toward him. Not beams, but truths. Memories of ancient suns. Screams of forgotten constellations. The blood of dying stars.
They wrapped around him—not to protect. But to promise.
It did not forge a weapon.
It became one.
A blade not made of steel, but of concept. It shimmered, not with fire, but with intention. It pulsed, not with energy, but with the certainty of death.
A hymn, shaped to kill gods.
It hovered beside him like a verdict.
The cultists fell silent.
Even the fragment rippled. Its limbs spasmed, as if rejecting a presence it could not consume.
Because something in Dawn had changed.
He was not stronger. He was not faster.
He was simply ready.
He took one step forward.
The cliff cracked.
The Radiance followed, a ghost of vengeance at his side.
The battle had not begun.
But the impossible had already started.
---
To be continued