The winds howled across the battleground, carrying the ash of a dying world.
Azarath — the realm of balance, of elemental harmony — was crumbling.
In the heart of the ruined temple, eight warriors stood, their bodies battered, their spirits barely holding together. They were the last defense, the final thread between survival and annihilation.
Among them, Max shivered beneath his frost-worn cloak.
He glanced around at his comrades — the chosen, the powerful:
Aria, whose flames could devour armies.
Sylas, who could move mountains with a single thought.
Luna, who danced with the winds like a spirit.
Dante, the stormborn tactician, his eyes crackling with lightning.
Kaela, the gentle giantess who made forests bloom even in wastelands.
Talon, the silent one, whose presence flickered like a dying candle.
Mira, calm as the oceans she commanded.
And then there was him.
Max. The boy who could barely summon a shard of ice without trembling.
The ground trembled beneath their feet. Across the ruined fields, the darkness surged again. A massive figure — black as night, crowned in a helm of bone — advanced with slow, deliberate steps.
The Oblivion King.
The Devourer of Worlds.
"Form up!" Dante shouted, electricity leaping from his fists.
Aria lit up the air with a spiral of fire, Sylas raised walls of stone, and Luna vanished into the winds.
Max tried to steady his breath, to summon his ice. His fingers sparked a thin sheet of frost... and then cracked apart, too weak to hold.
I'm not ready. I never was, he thought.
But it didn't matter.
This was the end. They would fight, or they would fall.
The Eight charged.
The battle was chaos.
Fire clashed against shadow. Stone slammed into the roiling void. Lightning tore holes in the black sky.
Max moved, barely able to keep up, freezing patches of ground to slow the Oblivion King's advance. His attacks were little more than distractions — buying seconds for the others.
Seconds that cost lives.
Aria was the first to fall.
In a scream of rage, she unleashed all her flame in a final, searing explosion that tore a hole into the enemy's heart — but left nothing of herself behind.
Where she died, the air twisted, forming a Door of burning gold and crimson, floating where her soul had fled.
Max stumbled back, heart hammering.
A Door?
Next came Sylas.
He held the line with his bare hands, earth rising to meet him — but the Oblivion King crushed him under a collapsing mountain of void.
A Door of stone and obsidian rose from the rubble.
One by one, the others fell.
Luna, dancing with wind until the darkness pulled her away forever — and her Door, light as a feather, formed in the sky.
Dante, who laughed even as his body shattered under lightning strikes of his own making — his Door sparking with eternal storms.
Kaela, who let herself be swallowed by vines that wrapped the battlefield in a final act of defiance — her Door blooming with endless green.
Talon, whose last whisper became the night itself — a Door so black it absorbed the stars.
Mira, who summoned a tidal wave taller than mountains to wash away the enemy — before vanishing into the mist — her Door dripping eternal rain
Max stood alone.
Seven Doors now surrounded the shattered temple, humming with dormant power.
Seven fragments of lives, of memories, of sacrifices.
He looked down at his trembling hands.
His ice magic flickered weakly at his fingertips.
Why am I still alive?
He should have fallen with them. He should have died an honorable death alongside the ones who had believed in him.
Instead, he stood surrounded by silence.
The Oblivion King — wounded, but not dead — turned his hollow gaze upon Max.
A low growl shook the world.
But something had changed.
The Seven Doors pulsed in rhythm with Max's heartbeat.
A new chill filled the air, sharper, heavier. It was no longer the weak frost he had known.
Max straightened.
For the first time, the fear left his chest.
He could hear them — the voices of the fallen — whispering through the Doors.
Not gone.
Not lost.
Waiting.
"You are the Key," the voices said as one.
And Max, the weakest among them, understood:
He was not meant to fall.
He was meant to rise.
Across the battlefield, ice spread outward in jagged veins, freezing the ground, the sky, even the empty air itself.
Max's eyes gleamed an unnatural, cold blue as he stepped forward — no longer shivering.
The Oblivion King hesitated.
Max raised his hand.
Behind him, the Seven Doors lit up — a halo of fallen power.
And for the first time in his life, Max smiled.
A slow, quiet smile, sharp as a blade.
"I am the Keeper of the Seven," he whispered.
"And your end begins with me."
[End of Chapter 1]