Nightblade (Darkest night)

The words hung in the sulfur-laden air, heavy and absurd.

Morgan stared at the colossal beast, his mind momentarily grinding to a halt.

"Devour... you?"

Is this thing insane? Morgan thought, a phantom spike of hysterical laughter catching in his throat.

"Absorb an entity the size of a mountain range into my core?"

"You’re telling me," Morgan said aloud, his voice dropping into a flat, skeptical tone, "that you—an ancient god—want me to eat you?"

"I desire an end," Nythrakar stated coldly.

"Devour my essence into your Void. My physical form will crumble into the earth. The cycle will shatter. The cage will break forever."

"My power will become your foundation... and Azrael’s eternal burden will finally come to an end."

...There’s something within you that perhaps could end this tenuous journey of mine...

Azrael’s quiet, exhausted voice echoed from the depths of Morgan’s memory

. The phantom’s words suddenly carried a horrifying, literal weight.

Azrael hadn’t sent Morgan down here to fight. He hadn’t sent him to reinforce the seals.

He had sent him down here because Morgan was the only thing in existence capable of consuming Nythrakar.

"If it’s that simple," Morgan said slowly, his voice hardening, "why haven’t you offered this to the vessels before me? Why didn’t you let Modric absorb you?"

"Because they would have burned," Nythrakar rumbled softly. "Modric was purely light; the darkness of my essence would have shattered his soul in a heartbeat.

"The others were weak fragments, merely shadows of Azrael’sformer glory. "

"But you... you were forged in the Void, and tempered by the Golden Sun. You are an anomaly."

The ancient titan paused. The colossal eye narrowed, the slitted pupil focusing on Morgan’s chest with razor-sharp intensity.

"Yet, carrying the world is different from surviving it."

Morgan’s jaw tightened.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I will not hand my essence to a vessel that will burst upon receiving it," Nythrakar whispered, a terrifying, predatory cadence seeping into the stone-grinding voice. "I will test you first."

Morgan barely had time to react.

"Wait—"

Nythrakar didn’t strike him with its fangs nor with its tail.

It simply released its aura.

BOOM!

An invisible, kinetic wall of pure, unadulterated primordial pressure slammed into the ledge.

The slate floor beneath Morgan’s boots shattered instantly, exploding into a cloud of pulverized grey dust.

The sheer atmospheric weight hit Morgan like a falling meteor. His breath was violently driven from his lungs, his collarbones creaking under the sudden, agonizing strain.

"Gagh!"

Morgan’s knees buckled. His left knee slammed into the cracked stone, the impact sending sharp spikes of pain shooting up his leg.

The air around him turned into solid lead, pressing down on his skull, his shoulders, his spine, trying to force his forehead flat against the dirt.

...Refuse to kneel!!! His mind screamed.

"Not... again..." Morgan gritted out, blood trickling from his nose, painting his upper lip a dark crimson.

His instincts shrieked at him to move, to fight back, anything!

Deep within his core, the golden sun flared with brilliant, defiant radiance.

All around it, the Void expanded, its violet-tinted dark energy coiling around the golden light like a protective, fluid shell.

Instead of fighting the pressure, Morgan let the two synchronized forces flow outward through his veins.

A shockwave of blended golden and violet aura erupted from his body, expanding outward in a perfect, shimmering sphere.

The violent force in its wake forcibly lifted the oppressive weight pressing down on his shoulders for air, his chest heaving, his boots digging into the stone as he pushed himself up off his knee.

His body shook violently, muscles screaming under the strain, blood dripping from his chin onto his coat, but he stood.

Nythrakar watched him, the slitted eye unblinking.

"You’ve done well to endure..." the titan observed, its voice vibrating through the shimmering sphere of energy around Morgan. "But that was merely the tip of the iceberg."

The pressure doubled.

Morgan cursed, grasping at his head with one hand while clamping down on his mouth with the other.

He bit back a scream, biting down on the inside of his cheek until he drew blood.

"Aaargh!!!"

The entire edge of the basalt cliff gave way, plunging tons of rock into the chasm below.

Morgan felt his vision blur, red specks dancing before his eyes as his internal organs compressed under the suffocating intent.

The aura around him hissed and sparked, golden light and violet shadow warring against the sheer, weightless malice of an ancient god.

Sarenus’s voice screamed in his mind

"...Morgan! His presence alone is crushing your physical frame! The Void is intact, but your flesh—!"

"...Draw upon the Void! Release us! Let us bear the weight!"

"No," Morgan choked out through bloody teeth, his jaw locked in an iron grip of pure, stubborn defiance.

"If I... can’t handle... this much... then I won’t be able ... to contain...his soul..."

He wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his gloved hand, staggering slightly, but keeping his feet planted on the crumbling edge.

He looked up into the colossal, golden eye above him, a painful, sarcastic twitch touching the corner of his bloody mouth.

"You know..." Morgan rasped, coughing up a small spray of crimson onto the stone. "...most people... just ask... for a resume..."

Nythrakar silently stared at him.

Then the colossal titan slowly pulled its massive head back.

Miles of obsidian scales shifted in the darkness.

The glowing, molten-orange fissures across its body flared with a blinding, terrifying brilliance, illuminating the vast expanse of the abyss in a fiery, apocalyptic light.

The ground began to tear itself apart, massive fissures snapping across the ancient slate plain behind Morgan as the titan prepared to unleash the might of its power.

Nythrakar’s slitted pupil contracted into a needle-thin point.

"Then prove to me that you’re worthy, Morgan," the titan rumbled, the sound vibrating with a cold, terrifying finality that shattered the remaining stone pillars around them.

"Or become the dirt beneath me, like your predecessors before you."

The abyssal darkness surged forward.

This is the link to some of the art I’m coming up with for this volume.

You can also check out more on my instagram

Shadow777732