Nightblade (Darkest night)

The whisper came from one of the First Awakened.

The warrior had dropped his sword.

It clattered uselessly against the flagstones, his entire body quivering almost feverishly as he lost the will to fight.

"Impossible," another breathed, her voice cracking as she took a trembling step backward, her golden aura sputtering out entirely.

"The seals... the Vault was supposed to hold the power of the progenitors...but then...how..."

"It wasn’t a vault," a third whispered, his face devoid of color, his eyes wide with a horror that eclipsed anything Morgan felt in that moment.

"We weren’t searching for a weapon... We opened a prison."

He looked at his companions, his lips pulling back in a grimace of pure panic.

"We weren’t supposed to wake it."

"No, it wasn’t them..."

Morgan turned his gaze to the distant rooftop, scanning for the mysterious figure. Sure enough, the man in the gray cloak had vanished, no doubt after finishing his objective.

He turned his gaze back to the monstrosity that was still rising from the depths of what was surely the abyss.

"How are we supposed to even fight this thing?"

Morgan pursed his lips, his face paling more and more by the second.

"How the hell was Modric even supposed to survive this..."

The Zeregran Ranges still existed, which attested to the fact that they’d survived the harrowing encounter with the titanic creature of myth that was now, slowly and surely ceiling its way around them.

Around the entire city of Elaris.

In its eyes, they truly were nothing more than insignificant bugs.

One deadly twist of its massive coils was probably more than enough to wipe out the invading force of awakened and put the entire city out of its misery.

Permanently at that.

The serpent did not move to attack, but its mere presence was a physical calamity.

The air grew thick, choked with an ancient, ozone-heavy pressure that burned the lungs.

All around Morgan, dozens of surviving royal guards dropped to their knees, vomiting blood before collapsing unconscious as their bodies gave out under the ominous strain of beholding the living calamity that was leisurely continuing its ascent.

The ambient magic in the courtyard warped, twisting into useless, chaotic sparks.

"Crap—"

Within Morgan, the Void went completely insane. He could feel his connection to it once more, stronger than ever even in this strange state.

His vision doubled.

The world turned to a smear of dark violet and suffocating gold before his eyes.

A moment later, Morgan found himself standing in the lightless world of the Void.

His eyes burned with white fire as he stared straight ahead.

Within the lightless world within him, a golden sun bloomed into existence within the darkness.

The sun pulsed, sending a brilliant ripple through the darkness, then a moment later, the Void responded.

Slowly at first. Thin tendrils of darkness began drifting toward the Golden Sun, curling around its radiance like enormous ribbons suspended within an invisible current.

Morgan instinctively expected them to collide.

But they didn’t. Instead, the darkness touched the golden light.

And instead of destroying it, the two forces intertwined.

Another massive pulse rippled through the lightless world, and with it an audible hum surged through the lightless sand.

At the heart of the Void, the golden sun brightened, and the void deepened.

Deep within his ears, past the sound of collapsing masonry and screaming wind, a sound began to echo.

It wasn’t a voice in a language he knew, nor was it a physical sound. It was a slow, rhythmic vibration that resonated with the hum within him, creating a terrifying thread of familiarity.

Somewhere, deep within the marrow of his bones, or perhaps deep within the memories of the boy whose life he was living—he recognized it.

"How...How is this possible..."

Slowly, deliberately, the colossal head turned, almost as though sensing the profound change that had washed over him.

The golden eye, vast and pitiless, locked onto the courtyard. It ignored the First Awakened. It ignored the shattered palace. It ignored the King.

It looked directly at Morgan.

The world vanished. The sounds of destruction muted into a dull, distant hum.

Morgan felt as though the physical reality of his flesh was being peeled back layer by layer, exposing the absolute core of his consciousness to a gaze that had watched continents rise and fall.

His mind fractured. A flash of a vision hit him with the force of a hammer strike.

It was a primeval Elaris, lush and green, untouched by white stone or golden spires.

The serpent coiled deep within a cavern of raw, pulsing glass.

Figures in simple, unadorned robes standing before the beast, holding raised basins of black liquid.

A blinding flare of golden light cutting through an absolute, swallowing darkness.

A contract. A theft.

The vision shattered as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Morgan gasping, clutching his head as blood began to trickle from his left nostril.

Then, a voice echoed, impossibly deep, infinitely ancient, and perfectly calm.

"Modric."

Morgan froze, every nerve ending in his body screaming in terror.

"How does it know him?"

The question tore through his mind, tearing at the fraying edges of his identity. He had spent weeks swimming in Modric’s memories, struggling to keep his sense of self separate from the ancient prince.

Was the serpent speaking to Modric? Or was it speaking to him?

Before he could process the thought, the deep voice vibrated through his consciousness once more.

"You have returned."

A cold spike of pure horror impaled Morgan’s chest.

Returned?

He had never seen this creature. He was an outsider, a soul dropped into a dead boy’s memory. He didn’t belong here.

Did he?

"Modric!"

A heavy body slammed into him, shoving him backward against the cracked marble of a fallen pillar.

King Aldren placed himself directly between Morgan and the gaze of the god, his broken body trembling, his arms spread wide as if his fragile flesh could shield his son from an entity that could crush the mountain with a shift of its weight.

The King’s posture was pure panic.

"Father!" Morgan yelled, his voice cracking as he grabbed Aldren’s shoulder.

"What is that thing?! What did your ancestors do?!"

Aldren didn’t look back. His eyes remained fixed on the golden orb hovering above the city, his voice barely a gasp against the rising wind.

"That... is why Awakening was never meant to be inherited. The first awakened, as you know them, are merely replicas. Pale imitations of the real thing. Their silver eyes speak for themselves."

A movement near the ruined entrance of the Vault caught Morgan’s eye. Amidst the absolute chaos, where guards lay dead, the First Awakened cowered in terror, and the mountain itself was tearing apart, one figure stood completely still.

The third figure—the cloaked stranger who had slipped into the background during the initial breach, he now stood atop a pile of shattered masonry. Their hood was pushed back just far enough to reveal the lower half of their face.

The man was looking up at the colossal serpent, a faint, sharp smile resting on their lips.

As if sensing Morgan’s gaze, the figure shifted their head slightly.

For a fraction of a second, across the ruined courtyard, their eyes met. There was no surprise in those eyes. Only a calm, terrifying satisfaction.

"He had expected this. They had wanted this."

Before Morgan could draw a breath to yell, the stranger turned and stepped backward into the rising cloud of stone dust, vanishing into the shadow of the Vault.

High above, Nythrakar moved. It was simply a change of posture. The colossal head shifted eastward, and a lower coil of its immense body flexed, drawing itself tighter against the roots of the mountain.

In the wake of that simple movement, Elaris shuddered.

The great aqueducts, built to last an eternity, collapsed like hollow reeds.

The central plaza, the great marble square where Morgan had stood alongside Lysara, watching the sun rise over the pristine white banners of the city, simply vanished as the earth folded inward, swallowed whole by the chasm opened by the serpent’s tail.

The grand avenue, the ancient archives, the residential terraces, thousands of years of history, beauty, and life were pulverized into fine grey powder in the span of a heartbeat.

Morgan knew this was the past. He knew these buildings were dust, that the people who lived here had been dead for millennia, that he was merely a ghost wandering through a memory sealed in stone.

And yet, the grief that tore through him was violently, undeniably real.

He felt Modric’s anguish bleeding seamlessly into his own. He remembered the smell of the spiced wine in the lower market.

He remembered the sound of laughter echoing off the white stone walls during the summer festival.

He thought of Lysara—her quiet strength, her sharp smile, the way she had looked at him before the sky broke open.

Where was she? Was she buried beneath the rubble of the outer wall? Was she alive?

The memory hadn’t shown him her end. And that missing truth turned in his chest like a jagged blade.

The colossal serpent slowly straightened, its body stretching so far into the ash-choked sky that its upper coils vanished into the dark atmosphere.

Its shadow swallowed the remains of Elaris completely, plunging the ruined realm into a cold, sunless twilight.

The massive golden eye turned back down, anchoring Morgan to the spot.

The voice returned, heavy as falling mountains, echoing through the empty halls of his mind

A sharp, agonizing ache burst in Morgan’s chest.

"You have forgotten."

Morgan stared up into the burning light of the god’s eye, his breath caught in his throat, unable to move, unable to look away.

"But I remember."