The sky was bleeding again.
A jagged tear cut across the heavens, pulsing with silver fire. Every drop that fell set the clouds aflame. Beneath that dying sky, the city's ruins stood like gravestones — silent, broken, forgotten.
And through that silence walked a ghost.
Isaac Killoran moved soundlessly over the cracked stone, his white coat fluttering in the ash-choked wind. A black blindfold covered his eyes — not to protect him, but everyone else. Behind it burned the Abyssal Gaze, a curse that dragged souls into the endless dark.
He stopped before the shattered doors of a cathedral.
Bones littered the floor. A blood-drawn sigil glowed faintly across the entrance — fresh, hurried, desperate.
"Cultists," he muttered. No fear. No surprise. Only certainty.
With a flick of his wrist, shadows rippled together, forming a black curved blade that pulsed like something alive. The Blade of Hollow Echoes.
He stepped inside.
The chanting stopped. Eyes turned. Too late.
A whisper of steel — and the room erupted in screams. Flesh fell apart before sound could follow. Those who tried to run met the dark behind his blindfold. No one survived the stare of the Abyss.
Moments later, only silence remained.
Isaac sheathed his blade, stepping over the dead. "Messy," he said flatly.
A faint crackle broke the air. His earpiece buzzed to life.
"Report."
He tapped the side of his neck. "Crown cult. Purged. Third nest in this sector."
"Any survivors?"
"No."
"Understood. Return to Zone V. You're being reassigned."
He frowned. "To what?"
"Escort duty."
He hated that word. It made murder sound like paperwork.
"And who," he asked, voice edged in boredom, "am I escorting?"
Silence.
Then, the voice came again — calm, measured, deliberate.
"Lucien Arclight."
Isaac stopped moving.
For a moment, even the ash seemed to hang in the air. The name cut through the quiet like a blade — bright, righteous, hateful.
The son of the man who captured him. The hero's heir.
"You're joking," Isaac said.
"Orders are sealed. Meet him at the Skywall in two hours."
The signal cut.
Isaac stood alone among the corpses, the smoke curling around him like ghosts.
He whispered, barely audible — a thought, a warning, or maybe a curse.
"Light burns fast."
And then, he was gone.