The world held its breath.
The fissure convulsed, its glow writhing like a living thing. The swarm had gone silent, their countless eyes locked on the light, trembling—not in rage, but in anticipation.
Vemy staggered back a step, every instinct screaming at him to pull away. The abyss inside him, once so loud, so commanding, had gone eerily quiet.
It was afraid.
Jaylin gripped his blade tighter, sweat streaking through the soot on his face. His voice was low, hoarse. "Vemy… do you feel that?"
Vemy's claws flexed, black lightning crackling faintly between his fingers. "It isn't the abyss."
The cloaked figure laughed softly, a sound that slithered across the battlefield. His flames curled around him in delighted patterns, coiling like serpents preparing to strike.
"Correct," he whispered. "The abyss was only ever the soil. And what grows in soil, children?"
The fissure split wider.
A shadow pressed against the light, immense and fluid, its outline shifting with every pulse. Sometimes it looked humanoid. Other times serpentine. Then insectoid. Then something far worse, a form that had no name.
Every time the shape changed, the monsters bowed lower, their bodies shuddering with ecstasy and terror.
Vemy's claws dug into his palms until black blood dripped. His breath came ragged, his body trembling as if caught between fight and collapse. "I… can't control it."
Jaylin stepped closer, putting himself between Vemy and the gate, his stance rigid though his legs threatened to buckle. "Then we don't let it through."
The cloaked figure tilted his head. "Don't?" His voice carried mockery, amusement, certainty. "The birth cannot be stopped. It was written long before either of you crawled into existence."
The ground heaved. The mountains cracked. The sky dimmed until only the fissure's glow remained.
Then—
The silhouette's hand pressed against the barrier.
A hand with too many fingers. A hand that bent in ways bone should not.
The barrier shuddered. The world screamed.
Jaylin's blade blazed to life in defiance, fire erupting as he planted himself before it. "Then I'll cut it down before it takes one step into our world!"
The cloaked man's laughter rose, full and unrestrained. "Yes… yes! Struggle harder! Rage louder! This is the moment the abyss dreamed of—the moment the world breaks its chains!"
The hand pushed again.
The barrier cracked.
Vemy's heart slammed in his chest as his abyssal aura surged uncontrollably, shadows writhing around him like a storm trying to tear him apart. He screamed—not in defiance, not in submission, but in raw, breaking desperation.
Because whatever was coming through… was not his.
And when it stepped free, nothing would be.