"Run! Hurry to the caves!" Voices cried into smoke and blood. Yet many could not. Some froze, clutching their children as though accepting death would be easier than fleeing.
Others stumbled forward, desperate to see one more sunrise. And all asked the same silent question: Would the caves protect them? Or were they only tombs waiting to be sealed?
Creatures from legend walked the earth once more. They were nightmares carved into flesh, forms twisted by madness, towering bodies that defied nature. Some crawled on too many limbs, and others dragged swollen hides streaked in colours that shimmered sickly against the dark. Their skins glistened with crimson shells, obsidian scales, and veins glowing green and blue like corrupted rivers. Wherever they moved, the land warped, mirroring their grotesque design. They did not kill for hunger. They killed because existence itself recoiled in their presence.
Thalor Zephyris stood at the edge of the city, his white-bluish hair catching the flames, his eyes glowing faintly as he watched the horizon burn. Behind him came two women: Nyra, his wife, heavy with child, and his mother Myrrin, her red hair bound in haste. After an intense pause, he beckoned to them to move forward, but their path faltered.
Before them loomed, a towering silhouette cloaked in mist, its body pure obsidian, swallowing light like a void. From the shadows, two eerie pale voids glowed where eyes should have been, piercing and otherworldly. A veil of smoke‑like fabric drifted around it, thrumming with ancient silence.
Myrrin's jaw dropped. "Sēndra! The Guardian of Sealed Knowledge!"
Myrrin gasped. "Don't look into its eyes, Nyra! If you do, your memories will be devoured!"
But Nyra's gaze was fixed, her voice dreamlike. "Where am I? Where is my husband?"
Thalor turned to her and grabbed her face. "I'm right here Nyra. You have you snap out of it."
A piercing cry suddenly escaped her lips as she doubled over as another wave of labour pain tearing through her body, shattering the trance.
Thalor! She's been in labour for three hours, and we can't wait any longer!" Myrrin clung to her daughter‑in‑law, her voice cracking with desperation.
Thalor drew his sword and slashed, but all it met was mist. Then claws erupted from the haze, wicked and glistening, striking for Nyra.
But just then, a sudden roar of flames split the night. Then followed by blood spraying in a crimson arc as a massive head, as large as a wagon front, crashed to the ground.
From the smoking neck, Varek Blackthorn, Thalor's sworn brother, descended in fury, flames coiling from his blade as he cleaved the shadow.
He barked at Thalor, "What do you think you're doing standing there dazed while your wife is in labour?"
He turned toward the crowd, commanding. "To the caves! Move! Now!" Yet chaos swallowed his words. Hunters fell, friends slain in flashes, blood soaking the earth. Still, he stood against the tide.
He shouted a man's name. "Hunter Kael, where are the others?!"
But before Kael could answer, a spear tore through his skull with brutal precision before anyone saw where it came from.
Varek cursed, rage burning in his chest. "Move your wife out of here, Thalor!" he growled, frustration spilling over as he had no idea where his wife was, and she too was pregnant.
Thalor gave a single nod, clutching Nyra in his arms as he whispered under his breath, "I owe you one, Varek."
He veered into the woods as the city behind him burned in chaos. Strange creatures prowled through buildings etched with glowing runes. Fire licked across shattered stone, blood slicked the streets, bodies lay in heaps. With his blade ready, he plunged deeper into the forest, eyes darting between the trees.
Nyra's cries grew weaker, her body failing as the child demanded its way into the world.
Myrrin's voice trembled as she spotted a cave. "There, I see a cave up ahead. Hurry!"
"Take her, I'm right behind you," he answered quickly.
But just as he turned, hot blood splashed across his back. He immediately spun to find Nyra on her knees, yet the blood wasn't hers.
Before them, another beast rose; towering, and monstrous in sight. A colossal crocodile‑lion hybrid, its jagged stone‑like hide pulsed with eerie green veins, and twisted ivory horns curled along its skull. The beast roared, a thunderous bellow that shook the trees just after swallowing Myrrin.
Nyra sobbed, each breath ripped from her as waves of labour agony crashed through her body. "Thalor! Where is Dorian? Tell me he's safe." Sweat drenched her skin, her face pale and drawn, yet her eyes still burned with the will to endure even as her strength bled away.
Thalor roared, his voice clashing with the monster's thunder, his eyes glowing bluer as his blade flashed in sudden brilliance, cleaving the abomination into shredded flesh.
He barely had a moment to wonder how it had happened before more abominations surged from the darkness, glowing eyes fixing on him.
He urged Nyra toward the cave, but her limbs would not move. Her world had collapsed into pain and exhaustion.
Grinding his teeth, he tried to carry Nyra again, but chains of shadow coiled about his ankles, rooting him to earth.
From the darkness, a woman appeared, swift as a blade drawn from its sheath. Her eyes burned with resolve as she seized Nyra, dragging her toward the cave. She was Elunara.
Inside the cavern, Nyra tried to push through the agony, but even the thought of lifting a finger felt impossible. Her body trembled, trapped between despair and a faint spark of hope. "I… I can't push…" she sobbed, her voice cracking.
Elunara's voice snapped like thunder, echoing through the stone. "Then do you want to kill your child?!"
Her words struck like a whip, but Nyra only wept harder, choking on her sobs. "I can't… I have nothing left…"
Outside, the sky bled crimson, shadows writhed like living things. Thalor carved through the horde, his blade flashing again and again. Yet for every monster he felled, two more clawed their way forward.
-----
And in that very moment, another child was being born, in a hospital laying in ruins, swallowed by devastation. Only half its walls stood, jagged and broken, while the roof had collapsed inward, exposing the sky above.
Amid the debris and dust, a nurse knelt beside a woman writhing on the cold, cracked floor.
The woman screamed that the baby wasn't coming, her voice raw with desperation. The nurse urged her to push, her own voice barely rising above the distant chaos. Outside, hunters clashed with monstrous creatures, steel meeting shadows in a war that had no end.
Amid all of it, the woman never gave up on pushing, her body trembling with strain and agony. Her cries rose with the explosions in the distance. Then, at last, the child came.
A newborn with soft light green hair, but as he entered the world, he cried. His cry was no ordinary sound. It tore through the air like a rupture.
The vibrations shook the dust from fractured beams, shattered the few remaining windowpanes, and echoed like thunder trapped in stone. The nurse staggered back, her ears ringing, eyes wide with disbelief.
The sound was too loud, too deep, too real.
Even the creatures beyond the broken hospital faltered. Their monstrous forms recoiled, sensing something they didn't understand. One by one, they began to retreat, uneasy.
The woman tried to hold the child, but the cry pierced her bones. The nurse could no longer hear her own thoughts.
The infant's wail was raw like mourning, like something ancient had been awakened. But more importantly, what shocked the nurse more was the boy's hair colour.
-----
Nyra clenched her teeth, tears streaking down her face as she pushed not for herself, not for her breath, but for the fragile life she carried.
And the world outside changed.
Every creature froze mid‑snarl. Ears twitched, claws hung motionless in the air. A silence fell so heavy it crushed the battlefield.
Then, one by one, the beasts stepped back, their eyes never leaving the cave as they retreated, sinking into shadows, into soil, swallowed by the trembling earth itself. They felt a presence of something far greater coming.
Nyra let out one last, soul‑rending scream, and then he was born. A child with hair of shimmering white‑blue strands, glistening like frost under moonlight, eyes as clear and endless as the sky.
He lay still in Elunara's trembling hands. No cry left his lips. For one breathless instant, they thought him lifeless.
Then, from his back, burst a red glow that lit the cavern with radiant crimson as shadows fled.
Elunara's breath faltered. "No… it cannot be… The Nine Pillars Binding Seal."
Outside, the world had changed, and the creatures were gone as if they had never been. Even the abominations that ravaged the city had begun to flee like rats before a storm, vanishing as if pursued by something far greater than death.