The next dawn never came.
For three days, the sun failed to rise.
The world lingered in a dull half-light — that colorless state between waking and dream where time felt uncertain. Rivers still flowed, but their reflections showed inverted skies; mountains loomed like sleeping giants under a permanent eclipse.
And in the middle of this false morning, Sid opened his eyes.
He was lying in what had once been a temple — the kind that had no gods left to pray to. Its marble was cracked, veins of black moss creeping through old carvings. The air smelled of salt and ash. Somewhere distant, waves broke against invisible shores.
Nox sat beside him, resting against a shattered column, sword across his knees. He hadn't slept — his eyes were hollow, but steady.
"You're awake," he said quietly.
Sid took a slow breath. His chest ached — as if something alive was moving beneath his ribs. The hybrid flame still flickered faintly in his veins, but now… it had a pulse that wasn't his own.
"I heard it again," Sid murmured, voice hoarse. "The heartbeat."
Nox didn't respond at first. He just stared at the broken sky through the open ceiling. "It hasn't stopped since the rift closed," he said. "Like the world itself is breathing wrong."
Sid sat up. His shadow stretched unnaturally long, reaching up the wall like a climbing hand. "It marked me," he whispered. "The Sovereign… it used me as a vessel. Not to control me — to remember itself through me."
Nox turned sharply. "That's not possible. You resisted it."
Sid gave a bitter smile. "You can resist fire. Doesn't mean it won't leave a scar."
Nox helped him stand, and for the first time Sid saw it — a faint sigil glowing across his chest, where his heart should be. It wasn't divine or demonic. The mark was geometric, spiraling inward infinitely, lines that refused to end.
"It's alive," Nox said, voice low. "It's… writing."
The mark pulsed faintly, each beat sending a whisper through the air — not words, but impressions: fragments of forgotten languages, screams of dying stars, laughter of things that never were.
Sid pressed a hand over it. "It's trying to speak."
Nox frowned. "Then don't listen."
Sid looked up, eyes unfocused. "I don't think I have a choice."
For a heartbeat, Nox thought the mark blinked — like an eye opening under Sid's skin. The temperature dropped. Shadows deepened.
Then Sid gasped — a sudden rush of memory that wasn't his own. He saw visions spilling across his mind:
The First Flame, Eryon, standing at the dawn of worlds;
Ravh'Zereth chained beneath the oceans of time;
And beyond them all — the Sovereign, watching, patient and untouched, as creation unfolded like a story already written.
He stumbled, clutching his temples. "It's showing me… the beginning."
"The Sovereign was there before anything," Sid whispered. "The gods didn't create existence — they occupied it. They found the remnants of its void and carved their thrones into its skin."
Nox's grip tightened on his sword. "So the Sovereign isn't a destroyer. It's what was left before creation."
Sid nodded weakly. "And it wants to go back to that silence."
Outside, thunder cracked — but the sound didn't echo. It bent inward, drawn into the mark on Sid's chest. The temple's shadows began to move, swirling like black smoke caught in reverse wind.
Nox stepped between Sid and the encroaching dark. "Don't move."
But the shadows didn't attack. They gathered — forming faint shapes: outlines of people. Dozens. Hundreds. All whispering the same word.
"Unbound."
Sid's breath caught. "They're… memories. People erased by the Void."
Their faces flickered in and out of focus — gods, demons, mortals — all swallowed during the Sovereign's last awakening. The mark was calling them back, turning them into echoes that clung to Sid like ghosts desperate for recognition.
He closed his eyes and whispered, "I can feel them. All of them. They remember dying."
Nox reached forward, grabbing his shoulder. "Then don't let them rewrite you."
Sid opened his eyes — they burned faintly now, gold ringed in black. "What if I already am them?"
By nightfall — if it could be called that — Sid's perception began to slip.
He saw more than one world at once: layers of reality overlapping like reflections in shattered glass. In one, the temple was in ruins. In another, it was still whole, filled with priests chanting names of gods long forgotten. In another still, it was a wasteland under a sky of screaming stars.
He stood in all of them at once.
Nox watched, horrified, as Sid began to split. Each shadow of him moved a fraction too slow, lagging behind — three Sid's, five, ten — each one a different version flickering between worlds.
"Sid!" Nox shouted. "Anchor yourself!"
Sid's voice came from all of them at once, layered and distorted. "It's hard… when you see what you could be."
The mark glowed brighter, each line pulsing faster. The Sovereign's voice echoed faintly through the distortions.
"Do you see, little contradiction?
Even now, you mirror me.
You contain what should not coexist."
Sid screamed and slammed a hand against his chest — Shadow Dominion erupting in a wave that shattered half the temple. The shadows dispersed, reality snapping back like an elastic band.
For a few seconds, the world steadied. Sid collapsed to his knees, coughing blood that shimmered faintly with light. "I'm… still me."
Nox knelt beside him. "For now."
The next day — though days had no meaning anymore — they made camp in the ruins. Sid tried to meditate, focusing on his breath. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw the Sovereign's realm again: an ocean of glass filled with corpses that smiled when they sank.
He heard Ravh'Zereth's voice faintly, slithering in his mind.
"You're becoming like it, you know. A god that remembers everything, even what should be forgotten."
Sid gritted his teeth. "Then I'll remember choice."
"Choice is a flame," the daemon whispered. "And flames always die."
Sid snapped his eyes open. The mark's glow dimmed slightly — as if retreating. He realized then that even the daemon feared the Sovereign's influence. That fear gave him leverage.
He turned to Nox. "If this mark connects me to it… then it connects it to me."
Nox blinked. "You mean—"
Sid nodded. "I can pull its gaze."
That night, they stood at the edge of the Hollow Plains — the ground shimmering like liquid obsidian. Sid focused on the mark, letting it pulse freely for the first time. The air thickened. The stars dimmed. A cold wind spiraled inward.
And then, the sky opened.
The Sovereign's presence poured through the rift like pressure, bending reality around Sid's body. His hair lifted, eyes burning gold and black. His voice was his, yet not.
"Sovereign," he said. "I know you can hear me."
The air itself seemed to kneel.
"You call to what cannot answer."
Sid smiled faintly. "You already did. You marked me."
"You misunderstand. You were not chosen. You were remembered."
Sid's expression hardened. "Then remember this."
He unleashed Shadow Dominion — the hybrid force surging outward, wrapping the world in an inverted halo. For a moment, even the Sovereign's vast shadow wavered.
"You would bind what binds all?"
The voice thundered.
"You cannot cage truth."
Sid's reply came through clenched teeth. "No. But I can refuse it."
The hybrid flame collided with the void's essence, producing a light so alien it was neither bright nor dark — simply absolute. The world screamed.
And then… silence.
The connection snapped.
Sid collapsed, the mark dimming to a faint ember.
When he woke, Nox was kneeling beside him, relief and exhaustion etched into his face.
"You're insane," he muttered. "You just shouted at the source of all existence."
Sid gave a weak smile. "It listened."
Nox blinked. "It what?"
Sid looked down at the mark — still glowing faintly, but slower now. "It flinched. For a moment, I felt it hesitate. Like it didn't expect to be talked back to."
He looked up at the horizon, where the rift shimmered faintly, smaller than before. "Maybe that's all it takes — to remind the universe it's not a one-way story."
Nox chuckled softly, though it sounded more like a sigh. "You're turning philosophy into a weapon."
Sid's smile faded. "If that's what it takes to stay human… then yes."
That night, while the half-light still lingered, Sid sat by a dying fire. The mark no longer hurt. It pulsed quietly, almost like a heartbeat that had learned to coexist with his own.
He took out something small — a broken locket. Inside was a photo, old and burned at the edges: Alfred, Peter, Elira. The people who reminded him who he was before gods and daemons and flames.
He whispered to the air, "Don't let me forget."
The mark flickered once — as if answering.
Nox watched from a distance, thinking how small Sid looked in that moment — not a vessel, not a god, not a weapon. Just a boy holding a memory against the void.
And somewhere, in the silence that followed, even the Sovereign paused.