The void trembled like a living wound.
Where silence once ruled, faint echoes bled through—fractured whispers, not from gods nor mortals, but from something buried deeper. The air carried a weight so suffocating it felt like the abyss itself was listening.
Vemy's body burned with Prismarine fire still refusing to dim, every heartbeat laced with shards of the shattered ring. His aura had quieted, but not calmed—more like a blade sheathed, still thrumming with the promise of violence.
He glanced toward Akiar. The storm-bound warrior steadied himself on a floating fragment of broken voidstone, lightning crawling sluggishly across his battered frame. His eyes weren't on Vemy—they were locked on the rift still widening in the abyss.
"…That strike wasn't the end," Akiar muttered, voice low, almost afraid to raise it higher.
Vemy's jaw clenched. "Then what the hell was it?"
Before either could speak further, a sound tore through the void—like glass dragged across steel. The cracks left behind by the Abyssal Warden's defeat did not heal. They pulsed, spreading outward, seeping with lightless radiance.
Not divine.
Not Prismarine.
Something older.
[System Alert: Aberrant Frequency Detected.]
[Origin: Unknown.]
The system's cold words burned against Vemy's mind, offering no answers, only dread.
The fragments of the abyss shook again, this time violently enough that even Akiar faltered. "Vemy… look."
From within the rift, a hand pressed outward. Not a god's hand—no halo, no perfection. It was jagged, crystalline, composed of shards that refused to settle into a single form. The hand flexed, and with that motion alone, entire shards of voidstone dissolved to dust.
The whispers surged louder, every word layered, broken, incomprehensible.
Vemy's spear snapped upward, his body still trembling from Prismarine feedback. He forced his voice through gritted teeth: "Tell me I didn't just unleash another one."
But deep down, he already knew.
The abyss no longer belonged to the Warden. Something worse had claimed the cracks it left behind.
[System Notice: Entity Classification—Unavailable.]
[Threat Assessment—Impossible.]
Akiar's lightning flared again, teeth bared in defiance despite the exhaustion breaking his frame. "Then we do what we always do, Vemy—we stand. Even if it kills us."
The crystalline hand pushed further, and the rift widened into a jagged wound across reality itself. Shards of lightless fire dripped from it, forming into shapes that slithered and writhed, yet never settled.
And in the silence that followed, Vemy whispered to himself—words for no one but his own breaking soul:
"…What the hell did I just set free?"