The world disappeared. Stone, flame, sky all tore away into a rushing blur as Mira plunged into the abyss. Her scream ripped from her throat, swallowed by the storm roaring upward from the depths.Wind clawed at her hair, her clothes, her skin. Pain knifed through her chest where the tendril had pierced her, blood trailing in a crimson spray above her.She reached instinctively for Kael yet found only air. The bond that had saved her before still pulsed faintly, but it was stretched thin, as though she were dangling by a thread over the end of creation.The abyss below was not darkness. It lived.An ocean of light churned beneath her fall, no water, no fire, but something more ancient. A heart too vast for mortal eyes, each pulse shaking her bones. The source of the monolith’s power. The god’s core.Her body shuddered as fragments of visions clawed into her skull: fields burned to ash, cities overturned, skies broken and remade. The Sovereign’s laughter echoed through the abyss, molte

The first step shook eternity. The Sovereign’s colossal form tore itself free from its own Heart, as though it were being born again.Rivers of molten light cascaded from its shoulders, spilling into the void like oceans of fire. Its crown of flame split the emptiness, and every ember in Kael’s chest shrieked in recognition.This was no illusion. No voice in the dark. This was the god itself.The void bent with its breath. Stars that should not exist flared to life and were snuffed out in the same instant.The fragments of broken worlds drifting nearby twisted into spirals, drawn helplessly toward the entity’s gravity. Even Kael’s body strained toward it, as though every atom of him knew its master.Mira gasped, clutching his arm, her voice a whisper lost in the roar: “Kael… it’s real.”The Sovereign’s gaze descended upon them. Two suns of devouring flame, eyes older than time itself. It smiled though the gesture was not human.“You still resist,” it rumbled, its voice splitting into

The world broke. Kael and Mira were dragged into the Sovereign’s Heart as the void collapsed, fire and shadow folding into a singular vortex that consumed all reality around them.Phantoms screamed as they were torn into ribbons of ash, vanishing into the all devouring flame.Kael’s body strained, every tendon threatening to snap, as the gravity of the Heart crushed inward, dragging his bones and his will toward annihilation.“MIRA HOLD ON!” His voice was raw, shredded by the storm.Her hand clamped his wrist, tether-light sparking wildly as the collapse tried to sever their bond. She was half blinded, her shield buckling under the devouring pull, but her grip did not falter.Her tether dug into his flesh, keeping him from being swallowed whole. And then impact. They crossed the threshold of the Heart.The world snapped. Kael landed hard on obsidian stone, his ribs screaming, blood spilling from his earlier wounds. Mira crashed beside him, gasping for breath, her light guttering but s

The abyss did not fall, it devoured. Kael and Mira plunged, weightless, tumbling through a gulf of flame and darkness that refused to end.The Sovereign’s laughter thundered above, echoing down the chasm like a curse that stretched across eternity.Kael tried to flare his flames, to slow their fall, but the void swallowed fire itself. His sparks flickered uselessly, smothered by an unseen pressure pressing from every side.“Mira!” His voice cracked in the gale, reaching for her. Their tether shimmered faintly, a single thread of light holding them together in the vast dark. She clutched his arm, her face drawn tight with effort, her own glow fading.“This isn’t just a fall,” she gasped. “It’s pulling us deeper, it’s alive.”Alive. The abyss answered her words.From the black surged shapes vague, half-formed silhouettes with hollow eyes and mouths yawning wider than the void itself. They stretched long arms of flame and shadow, clawing toward the falling pair.Kael’s teeth clenched. He

The fire inside him screamed. Not with one voice. With hundreds. Thousands. Kael staggered back as the blaze within twisted into a storm of echoes. Their words clawed at his skull, overlapping, colliding, demanding.“Save them.” “Burn it all.” “We were betrayed, strike him down!” “Don’t fail us again.”Each voice carried a weight of grief and rage. Each one was a shard of a life extinguished, a will that had once resisted Sovereign and been crushed. And now, all of them lived inside him.Mira’s tether flared, anchoring him as he trembled, fists ablaze. “Kael! Stay with me!”He heard her but her voice was drowned in the tide. His vision warped. Flames became faces. The void became battlefields of memory.He saw cities razed. Rivers of molten blood. Warriors who burned as he burned, their embers devoured by Sovereign’s forge. He saw their last screams. Their last stands. Their last hopes.All of it lived in him now. And it was too much. His body convulsed, white fire spearing from his s