The sound came first.A low, bass heavy groan that did not belong to wind or stone. It was the kind of sound that made the stomach clench and the teeth ache, a noise that spoke of things older than language. Vael staggered as the subspace around him thrummed like a drumskin struck by a god.Outside the translucent bubble, Malakar began to die.The sky fractured into jagged seams of red and violet light, splitting like old pottery. Black rivers boiled upward, hurling columns of steam and molten rock high enough to pierce the clouds. Entire mountain chains twisted like bread dough before collapsing into holes that had no bottom. Cities, distant spires Vael had once marched past with Kirin and the army tilted like falling towers and then slid sideways, swallowed by gaps that rippled as if the world itself were a pond struck by a thrown stone.Vael’s knees buckled under a sudden wave of gravity. It felt as though the realm itself had turned against him, pressing down with the weight of a

Vael POVThe first sign was the silence.Not the silence of peace, this was the silence of a world trying to swallow its own death. The groaning of mountains, the shrieks of breaking rivers, even the guttural wails of the Demon Lords, all fell into a terrible stillness, as if Malakar itself held its final breath.Inside the translucent sphere of subspace, Vael pressed his bloodied forehead against the trembling wall. His ears rang with the memory of sounds that no longer existed. Beyond the barrier, Yose stood at the center of the dying realm, calm as a priest before a sacrificial altar. Chains of living sigils still held the Demon Lords frozen in grotesque poses, but the world around them had begun to unravel into pure distortion.The black sky was a shattered mirror now, each crack leaking pale light from a void Vael could not name. Entire mountain ranges floated like broken teeth, their roots dangling in the nothing beneath. Rivers boiled upward and dissolved into threads of color.

The first thing Kirin felt was weight. Not the crushing kind that meant danger, but the soft, confusing weight of being again. His eyelids fluttered open to a twilight sky so vast and strange it stole the breath from his lungs.It wasn’t night, not exactly. The sky above was a deep violet shot through with shimmering seams of silver, like someone had stitched the heavens back together with wire and moonlight. The air itself glowed faintly, an endless dusk that had no source and no end. And the ground, if you could call it that was an endless meadow of obsidian grass, blades of black crystal that refracted the violet light into glittering shards. Every step gave a brittle, musical chime as though the earth was a giant, fragile instrument.Kirin sat up, wincing as the chime beneath him rang out like a struck bell. Around him, the survivors of Malakar were scattered across the strange meadow, soldiers in dented armor, scholars clutching battered scrolls, civilians blinking in mute disbel

The first dawn in Erebo was not a dawn at all.It was a bruise of light bleeding through a ceiling of violet haze, a twilight that refused to commit to either night or day. The survivors of Malakar woke beneath it with stiff limbs and hollow stomachs, their breath curling in the air like smoke from a slow burning candle. Nothing here obeyed the rhythms they knew.The Black Perch, the floating terrace where the army had pitched their makeshift camp hovered hundreds of meters above a black glass meadow. Jagged columns of obsidian rose in silent defiance of gravity, casting thin, sword like shadows that cut across the air itself. From below came the faint hum of Erebo’s heart, a soundless vibration that made teeth ache and blood pulse out of rhythm.Kirin stood at the edge of the terrace, watching the fractured horizon. His boots scraped the dark crystal floor, the sound sharp against the muffled quiet. The realm stretched endlessly, stitched with hovering islands that drifted like slow

The fourth cycle in Erebo began with a sound no one could name.It wasn’t thunder, though the air trembled like a struck drum. It wasn’t wind, though every soldier on the Black Perch felt it slide across their bones like a cold finger. It was a pulse, deep and wet, as if the realm itself had a heartbeat and it was suddenly aware of them.Kirin woke with his heart already racing. The resonance in his chest, that restless storm of Chaos Lightning, answered the pulse with a flare that made the walls of his tent quiver. For a sick instant he thought he had triggered another uncontrolled discharge. But the energy wasn’t his. It came from below the Perch, from Erebo itself.Outside, soldiers were already gathering at the terrace center. The Wardens waited, black robed silhouettes against the endless violet haze. Their presence always carried weight, but today the pressure was heavier, sharper, like the moment before lightning splits a tree.The tallest Warden raised one pale, long-fingered