Nightblade (Darkest night)

"No, no, NOOO!"

Morgan mentally screamed even as he plummeted rapidly towards the ground.

"Not again!"

Falling through the bottomless pits of darkness was quickly getting old.

One moment Morgan had been on the lip of the collapsing stone floor, staring down into the lightless abyss as the titan’s waking gaze locked onto his soul, Valerius had pulled him away, before blurring off into the distance —and the next, the stone beneath his boots simply ceased to exist.

​And so he fell. Again.

"Damn it!"

A mixture of horror and annoyance fought chaotically for dominance in his mind.

It almost seemed as though he had an uncanny affinity for these kinds of unsavory situations.

​The air rushed past his ears with a deafening, violent roar, scechimg and wailing with a vegeance.

The temperature plunged instantly, stripping the warmth from his skin as the dark abyss swallowed him whole.

Stone walls, jagged outcroppings, and shattered pieces of ancient, carved architecture flashed past him in the pitch blackness—glimpsed only as blur-like shadows through his enhanced senses.

His eyes pierced through the deep darkness with startling clarity.

A moment later, his instincts screamed at him.

With a grunt, Morgan turned his body mid-air, a jagged slab of falling granite missing his shoulder by inches, brushing against his coat before plunging deeper into the dark below.

"Crap,crap, CRAP!!!"

​He couldn’t see the bottom.

His newly awakened perception stretched outward, but the abyss seemed infinite, a vertical tunnel carved into the very bowels of the world.

Dust and grit stung his face. The air grew thick, ancient, smelling of crushed slate, dry bone, and something metallic.

He tried to gather the Void beneath him to slow his descent, but the sheer speed of his fall disrupted his focus.

His stomach lurched into his throat. The wind tore at his clothes, dragging him down at lethal speeds.

"​I’m going to smash into the bed of the mountain, "he thought, his heart hammering against his ribs.

"Even with the tangible increase in my strength... from this height, my bones will shatter."

​Then, through the howling tempest of rushing wind and falling stone, a sound cut through the chaos inside his mind.

​

In that chaotic moment, a ripple gently pulsated outward in his consciousness.

​A soothing whisper in the cold, endless darkness.

​"...Master..."

Morgan’s eyes snapped wide in the darkness.

​The voice was faint, raspy, echoing from a depth within his soul that had been dead and silent ever since his desperate, bloody battle against Sye and Valerius.

​"Kazarax?" Morgan called out mentally, his voice echoing in the internal expanse of his mind.

​Silence answered him for a agonizing second, save for the roaring wind of his fall.

​Then, a second voice answered, smoother, colder, laced with the dry, terrifying elegance of the ancient king of the Drayghar.

"Did you miss us?"

Sarenus.

​Morgan’s breath hitched in his throat, nearly choking on the rushing air.

​During the fight at the ruins, when he had pushed himself and the Void past its absolute limit, his connection to his two loyal Void Walkers had seemingly shattered.

They had been dragged back into the dark, nebulous depths of the Void realm, silent, unreachable, leaving him utterly alone in his own head for weeks.

He had believed and perhaps feared, deeply that he had permanently destroyed the bonds that allowed him to manifest them until the point that Sarenus had spoken to him.

And even then, the Voidwalker had remained silent ever since.

"My Lord, it seems you’re in quite a unique predicament," Kazarax’s guttural voice rasped, clearer now, rising above the storm of worry and relief in Morgan’s mind.

"I daresay, you seem to be a magnet for the most troublesome events," Sarenus with a hint of amusement in his voice.

I can’t stop the momentum!" Morgan thought back desperately, the sheer speed of his descent pressing down on his chest. "

"Allow me..." Sarenus murmured.

​Instantly, the Void inside Morgan’s chest exploded outward.

The Golden Sun at the center of his core pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm, acting as a brilliant, unyielding core around which the darkness draped itself like liquid silk.

​A agonizing, brilliant heat flared between Morgan’s shoulder blades.

​From the fabric of his coat, two massive, silent eruptive bursts of absolute darkness tore outward.

The force of the air striking the dark constructs was instantaneous and violent.

They flexed with impossible elasticity, catching the upward draft of the abyss and instantly arresting the dire momentum of his fall.

Deep within the shifting blackness of the dark wings, faint, luminescent veins of vibrant violet light throbbed in tandem with Morgan’s heartbeat.

Below him, the floor of the abyss finally emerged from the absolute blackness.

​It was a vast, ancient plain of dark, polished slate, strewn with shattered stalagmites and the remnants of colossal stone pillars that had fallen thousands of years ago.

With one massive flap, ​Morgan angled his wings downward.

The dark constructs beat once banking his body through the darkness before he flared them wide to kill his remaining momentum.

​Within moments, his boots touched the gilded stone floor.

​

​The impact was silent. A light dusting of ancient powder swirled outward from his feet as he settled into a low crouch.

For a long moment, Morgan remained still, his chest rising and falling, his hands pressed against the ancient stone floor.

"I’m alive..." His chest heaved as he took deep ragged breaths, savoring the air in his lungs with relief, then remembered where he was.

He turned his attention outward, warily observing his surroundings from the sport where he’d landed.

"This place..."

​Slowly, he stood upright. As he did, the colossal shadow wings behind him dissolved, breaking apart into fine, violet-tinted dark motes that bled back into his skin, returning to his chest without leaving a trace.

"Damn..."

​Morgan flexed his hands, looking over his shoulder.

From the looks of things, his connection with the Void hadn’t just returned. It had evolved.

Sarenus hadn’t simply answered the summon, he had acted through Morgan’s body, using the synchronized energy of the Void and the Golden Sun as a bridge to manifest an intricate physical form directly into the real world.

​"Sarenus..." Morgan whispered into the dark. "Kazarax... you’re truly back."

"My liege..." Kazarax whispered.

"It’s good to be back," Sarenus murmured.

Morgan nodded, acknowledging his presence. With the two Voidwalkers now at his beck and call, the qualitative power at his disposal had more than tripled.

If anything, it was quite comforting.

Morgan turned his attention outward, taking in his surroundings. The place he had fallen into was not a simple cave or a subterranean ravine.

It was a vast, lightless ocean of stone beneath the roots of the mountain range. The air here was utterly dead.

There was no wind, no dripping water,no echo of the world above. The collapse of the ceiling far above had been buried under miles of rock leaving only a faint, lingering haze of grey dust that drifted down through the high darkness like frozen rain.

​His newly awakened senses expanded, pushing past the absolute blackness.

Where normal eyes would see nothing, Morgan’s vision laid bare the contours of the abyss.

The floor was paved with gargantuan, interlocking stone slabs, so ancient that the seams had fused together through sheer pressure and time.

The architecture was towering, brutalist, and entirely inhuman, vast archways that led to nowhere, massive stone steps meant for beings four times the size of a man, and high, sweeping friezes that had been ground down by time until only smooth, curving stone remained.

Then—he felt it. The familiar dreadful pulse.

This time, it was a low, heavy, terrifying vibration that made the dust on the floor dance.

The small pebbles and motes of dust convulsed uncontrollably, reacting tremulously to the titan’s presence.

​Deep within Morgan’s chest, the Golden Sun flared instantly, burning with an intense, fiery hostility that made his throat taste of iron.

Beside it, the Void expanded, wrapping around the golden light, its violet veins pulsing in dark, aggressive recognition.

They synchronized, standing ground together against an external pressure that was trying to crush Morgan’s mind.

​Nythrakar.

Up above, in the ruined cavern with Valerius and the others, Morgan had felt a mere fragment of this pressure, merely a stray whisper drifting through a crack in the seal.

But down here, at the true bottom of the mountain, the presence of the sleeping titan was suffocating.

​It felt less like a creature and more like an entire atmosphere.

It was a cold, suffocating blanket of absolute malice, so old that it made the ancient ruins around him feel like they had been built yesterday.

​Morgan lifted a hand to his chest, feeling the rhythmic, synchronized pulsing of his core.

​He remembered Azrael’s voice from the visions, the cold, weariness he exuded:

​"I am the cage it has spent eternity trying to break... And it is the anchor that prevents me from fading into nothingness."

"You carry the light that builds civilizations, and the darkness that swallows them whole."

Morgan took a slow, deep breath, his knuckles whitening as he clenched his fists.

"What the hell was that supposed to mean?"

Valerius’ rason for this expedition had to been to dind answers but now Morgan foubd himself with a mixture of both answers and questions in equal measure.

Every enlightening answer he’d received, courtesy of the black mist, had raised even more damning, accursed questions.

"Azrael..." he grunted, "bastard..."