Vale lay slumped against the trunk of a massive oak, his back pressed into the rough bark as his lungs burned. He coughed violently, thick crimson blood splattering the grass beneath him as his trembling hands pressed desperately against the gaping wound in his stomach. Each breath came shallow and ragged, pain flaring like fire through his core.

  Before him, darkness stretched farther than he could see.

  Living shadows had consumed the forest entirely, trees, ground, and sky alike swallowed by an endless sea of black. At its center stood the fracture, no longer a mere tear but a grotesque wound in reality itself. It had been torn fully open now, its jagged edges writhing as it expanded at an alarming rate. Spawn poured from it in waves, twisted beasts, malformed horrors, but the moment they crossed into this world, they were met by a furious tide of shadow.

  Evelyn’s army.

  Shadows lunged and tore with savage obedience, ripping the spawn apart at her command. The forest echoed with roars, shrieks, and the wet sounds of flesh being torn asunder.

  Vale gritted his teeth and planted one hand against the oak, trying to push himself upright. The instant he moved, agony exploded through his abdomen. His vision blurred, and he retched again, blood spilling from his lips as his body betrayed him. He looked down weakly.

  The wound was catastrophic.

  His flesh had been torn wide open, muscle shredded, blood pouring freely despite his efforts. His metallic arm, its limited healing systems already pushed to their limits, glowed faintly as streaks of blue fluid coursed through his veins. It was doing everything it could, sealing blood vessels, slowing hemorrhage, but it could not replace what had been lost. The flesh was gone. The damage too severe.

  “I’ll die at this rate,” he thought grimly, a silent hiss escaping his lips.

  Another wave of nausea overtook him, and he slumped harder against the tree, barely conscious. Through blurred vision, he looked forward.

  Evelyn had fully joined the battle.

  She moved like a war goddess clad in shadow, her form almost indistinguishable from the darkness surrounding her. Each step she took crushed spawn beneath her feet. She tore through them effortlessly, blades, spears, and axes forming from the ocean of shadow at her command.

  “I’ll just…” Vale muttered weakly between coughs, blood dripping from his chin. “Have to hope… she succeeds.”

  Dozens of meters ahead, the ground trembled as a massive spawn forced its way through the fracture, a towering monstrosity nearly a dozen meters tall. It trampled lesser spawn beneath its bulk, uncaring as it emerged fully into the world.

  Evelyn responded instantly.

  From the darkness, she summoned a colossal axe, its edge humming with lethal intent. A dragon forged entirely of shadow lunged forward, its massive jaws clamping around the giant spawn’s neck. Evelyn leapt, raising the axe high, and brought it down in a single, devastating arc.

  The spawn’s head fell.

  Before its body could even collapse, the axe dissolved into darkness and reformed into a blade. Evelyn spun, cutting down two more spawn rushing toward her. Their blood splashed across her armor as their bodies fell, but the blood was wrong. Neither crimson nor black, its color seemed undecided, unstable, as though reality itself rejected it.

  The corpses were swallowed by the shadows moments later, their forms dissolving and rising again as shadow-servants, turned against what they once were.

  Evelyn scoffed beneath her mask, her gaze snapping toward the fracture.

  Her expression hardened.

  The signature was unmistakable now.

  Fourth rank.

  And rising.

  If it continued at this pace, it would soon reach sixth rank, the level of paragons like herself.

  This was no longer a fracture.

  It was a hell gate.

  A phenomenon so rare it was considered myth. A tear that escalated uncontrollably, feeding on chaos and atum, growing stronger by the moment. The only way to destroy it was to assault it directly, but doing so meant facing whatever lay beyond.

  Evelyn cut down another ten spawn as she advanced, but her army was beginning to thin. For every creature destroyed, more emerged. Her shadows were being overwhelmed.

  She hissed, eyes narrowing.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Then the fracture bulged.

  Something was pushing through from the other side.

  Her eyes widened.

  A monstrous devourer forced its way out, a massive hybrid of crab and lobster, its titanic frame armored in jagged red carapace. Its empty eyes burned with pure malice. A fifth-rank entity.

  A monstrous one.

  Its sheer size made it vastly more dangerous than others of its rank, its body overflowing with chaotic atum.

  But before it could fully emerge,

  A blinding beam of light tore across the battlefield from beyond the mountains.

  The devourer’s carapace shattered instantly.

  Standing atop the ruined shell was a man clad in onyx-black skin, his form gleaming like polished stone. His hair whipped violently in the wind, and his empty white eyes burned with unrestrained fury.

  Barbatos.

  His gaze flicked briefly toward Vale, narrowing as it took in the blood-soaked armor and the fatal wound. A snarl twisted his features.

  Then he turned to the battlefield.

  With a single wave of his hand, thousands of radiant rays erupted across the forest. Spawn were erased where they stood, their bodies disintegrating into nothingness.

  Barbatos turned, preparing to destroy the hell gate itself,

  And was struck.

  The impact was colossal.

  His body was hurled backward into a distant mountain, the stone cracking and shattering as he collided with it. Vale’s eyes widened in horror as dust and debris filled the air.

  From the fracture, something new emerged.

  A knight.

  Tall, slender, clad in white armor unmarred by corruption. Unlike the other spawn, it moved with purpose. With intent.

  It looked… human.

  Vale’s heart sank as understanding settled deep in his chest.

  A blight.

  A spawn with intelligence.

  A being equal to paragons in strength.

  The true battle had only just begun.

  Vale’s eyes widened, his entire body trembling as Evelyn launched herself toward the white knight.

  Their collision shook the world.

  The clash echoed like thunder through the mountains, a concussive shockwave ripping outward and obliterating nearly every tree within hundreds of meters. The ground heaved violently beneath Vale, and he was thrown backward, rolling across torn earth before slamming hard against broken stone. His vision blurred, ears ringing, but he forced himself to refocus.

  His gaze locked onto the black war maiden once more.

  Evelyn and the knight were evenly matched.

  Each strike carried the weight of a natural disaster, blade against blade, shadow against blinding white steel. Every collision bent the air itself, space warping briefly around them as if reality struggled to contain their power.

  But the hell gate remained open.

  Vale’s heart sank.

  From the writhing tear in reality, another horror emerged.

  A massive scorpion forced its way through, its armored body scraping against the edges of the gate as it descended into the world. With a screech that pierced the air, it lashed its tail forward, striking Evelyn mid-motion and sending her hurtling through the forest like a projectile.

  The knight followed immediately.

  Before Evelyn could recover, a colossal dragon of shadow surged forward, roaring as it lunged to defend its queen. Its jaws snapped shut around the knight,

  And were cleaved apart in a single, merciless slash.

  The dragon disintegrated into smoke and shadow as the knight advanced relentlessly toward Evelyn.

  Vale felt it then.

  Pure dread.

  The fracture’s signature surged violently, stabilizing into something far worse.

  Sixth rank.

  The rank feared by all, humans, Visorians, even paragons.

  His breath hitched as despair clawed its way up his spine.

  The knight and the scorpion closed in simultaneously.

  Evelyn reacted instantly, summoning a razor-edged shield and a blade of pure darkness. She met their assault head-on. The scorpion’s tail came down in a crushing strike, but Evelyn slipped aside at the last moment, slamming her shield down onto the appendage and severing it cleanly from the creature’s body.

  The scorpion shrieked in agony.

  The knight struck in the same instant.

  Evelyn caught the blade with her gauntleted hand, shadows wrapping tightly around the white steel. With a roar, she spun and hurled the knight skyward, hundreds of meters into the air, before a massive spike of shadow erupted from the ground and shot upward in pursuit.

  For a moment,

  Just a moment.

  It looked like she might win.

  Even against two beings equal to her in power.

  But Vale felt it.

  Something else was coming.

  Heavy footsteps echoed from the hell gate, each one shaking the earth beneath him. Vale’s blood ran cold as understanding clicked into place. He had noticed the pattern now, the higher a spawn’s rank, the more normal its shape became.

  Which meant,

  His breath caught in his throat as a massive, human-like face emerged from the gate.

  It was anything but human.

  An abomination, a chimera of countless animals fused together beneath layers of thick, jagged carapace. Its body unfolded slowly, impossibly large.

  Eighty meters tall.

  A colossal.

  One of the rarest, and most feared, spawn classifications in existence. Not merely because of its size, but because of its immense reserves of chaotic atum. At that scale, its very presence interfered with reality itself, suppressing enemies, destabilizing powers, and rendering even great elders vulnerable.

  Vale stared, frozen in horror.

  The battlefield was already ruined. Mountains shattered. Forests erased. The fact that he was still alive bordered on the miraculous, and he knew exactly who to thank for that.

  But even Evelyn,

  Even she,

  Could not protect him now.

  She was already engaged with two blights.

  Vale clenched his teeth, blood dripping from his lips as he looked upward.

  “Am I…” he whispered hoarsely, barely audible even to himself, “…going to die?”

  The colossal took its first step into the world.

  The entire mountain range shook.

  In that moment, when despair had fully hollowed him out, Vale heard it.

  A whisper.

  A familiar voice.

  One he did not recognize.

  “Poor boy,” the voice murmured softly beside his ear, its tone laced with quiet amusement. “Look how pathetic you are right now.”

  Vale’s breath stuttered.

  “I suppose I can’t blame you,” the voice continued calmly. “I did take all your memories from you, after all.”

  Shock flickered through Vale, but it was drowned beneath pain, fear, and exhaustion. Whatever this was, it felt distant, unreal. Death was already knocking.

  He tightened his grip on his wound, coughing violently as more blood spilled from his mouth.

  Then the voice spoke again.

  Almost kindly.

  “I wouldn’t be much of a teacher if I let you die now… would I?”

  Though he could not see its owner, though he sensed that the speaker did not truly _exist_—Vale felt it.

  The grin.

  “So,” the voice concluded softly, almost reverently, “just this once… I’ll allow it.”

  A pause.

  “I’ll allow you to remember.”

  The world seemed to hold its breath.

  “Remember everything.”