The first impact shook the world. Far beyond the mountain ridge, a column of light tore through the clouds, slamming into the earth with a thunder that didn’t fade, it rippled.Waves of divine pressure spread outward, flattening trees, bending rivers, silencing even the wind.Adrian stood still, staring at the falling lights that streaked across the sky like burning angels. The storm in his veins pulsed uneasily, whispering warnings he didn’t yet understand.Emily gripped his arm tightly. “Adrian… what are those?”He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing. “Not stars. And not gods either. Something between.”A second explosion followed closer. The ground cracked beneath their feet, fissures glowing with white fire. The storm’s voice inside him hissed: “They’ve found you.”When the light faded, a figure stood at the center of the crater.Tall. Armored in white and shadow, skin glowing faintly as if moonlight lived beneath it. Her spear hummed with restrained power not lightning, not flame, but

The air was unnervingly still not even the faintest whisper of the forest wind stirred. Only the sound of slow footsteps echoed through the ruins of the old monastery where Adrian now stood.His boots crunched on the ancient stone floor, where moss and dust had mingled over centuries. Each step carried the weight of dread.The walls were cracked, the faint remnants of glowing inscriptions flickering weakly the mark of the Order of Dawn, a long-forgotten sect of healers and warriors who once opposed the Abyss.But tonight, this holy ground reeked of corruption. “Do you feel that?” Lyra whispered from beside him, her voice trembling slightly. “The mana here… it’s wrong.”Adrian’s eyes glowed faintly golden as he activated his perception. What he saw made his chest tighten veins of dark energy running through the stone, pulsing like living arteries.“This isn’t just corruption,” he muttered. “It’s feeding on something.”A low hum answered him. From the far end of the ruined hall, faint l

“In the silence after ruin, even the stars hold their breath.”The wind carried nothing but ash. Once, this place had been holy a sanctuary of the flame, where light met purpose and men prayed to gods who pretended not to hear.Now, it was only ruin and smoke. The earth still trembled from what had been born inside it. And at the crater’s center… Adrian stood no longer as a man.The light that had once flickered behind his eyes was gone. What looked back from his face was something ancient a layered consciousness, moving beneath his skin like waves in a deep ocean.Each breath he took distorted reality. The ground around him sank an inch with every inhale, then cracked outward as if rejecting the pressure of his existence.Lyra’s voice was hoarse when she spoke, barely audible above the whispering wind. “…Adrian?”He didn’t answer. Instead, the air itself rippled, a soundless vibration crawling through every living thing in a mile’s radius.Even the surviving spirits of the monastery

“Creation remembers its beginnings through those who dare to break its silence.”The night after the Watchers vanished, the world didn’t rest. It watched. Every tree, every stone, every whisper of the wind felt alert like the world itself was holding its breath, waiting for something it didn’t understand.Lyra had made a small fire in the ruins where the crater used to be. The flames crackled softly, feeding on roots that shouldn’t have burned but did. She sat close, trying to convince herself that the warmth was real.Across from her, Adrian sat in silence. His body looked human, but the light that pulsed beneath his skin said otherwise. That spiral mark over his heart the Seal of Creation glowed faintly with every breath he took.It didn’t just shine. It sang. Not loudly not even enough to hear. But Lyra felt it in her chest. A vibration, soft and infinite, like a heartbeat that belonged to the entire world.Finally, she spoke, her voice quiet. “You haven’t said a word since it happ

“Even gods can dream but only mortals awaken.”The world was quiet. Not dead. Not broken. Just waiting.Adrian floated in that stillness, suspended in light that had no color a place beyond perception. There was no sky, no ground, no sound.Only the steady pulse of something vast and ancient, like the slow heartbeat of the universe itself. For a long time, he didn’t move. He couldn’t. The silence pressed against him, dense and infinite.Then he heard it. A whisper. His own voice, fractured through a thousand echoes. “Do you remember what you chose?”Adrian’s eyes snapped open. The color in them crimson, gold, and white shimmered faintly, bleeding into the surrounding void.He tried to move, but his body dissolved, reforming as light trails that drifted like embers in water. “Where… am I?”The voice answered, overlapping itself, both thunder and breath. “You are where all beginnings rest. The core that remembers what the world forgets.”A faint tremor rippled through him as he recogniz