Silence.
As Nameless knelt beside the body — still warm, still bleeding — as if death had yet to decide whether to take her.
Elara...The only soul who had remembered him when even time forgot.
The "sky" was not a sky at all.
It was a ceiling of endless black depth, rippling faintly, as though it were the skin of some vast, sleeping thing. From it, motes of dim light drifted downward — not snow, not ash, but something in between. Each glowed for a heartbeat before fading into grey dust, vanishing into the soil without a sound.
"I don't know how I broke free," he murmured, voice low and ragged, every word scraping his throat raw. "One moment I was drowning in that endless sea and war… and the next—I was here. Because of you. Somehow, even in death, you reached for me."
He touched her face with a trembling hand, thumb smearing the blood from her lips as if she might still flinch at the gentleness. But she didn't.
"I should thank you," he whispered, his chest heaving with a breath that felt like it might break him. "But what does it matter now? You gave me back my breath only to lose your own."
His head lowered until his forehead rested against hers, his words spilling into the silence she left behind.
"You summoned me too late. I should have been here… I should have been your shield. And instead, I stand over your body, alive, because of you—while you…" his voice fractured, "…while you will never hear me say the only words that mattered."
"I don't know what drove me to that rage," he murmured, voice rough as stone. "The fire in my bones, the hunger to tear every beast apart around you. But it didn't matter. I was late. Too late."
"Why did you die before I could ask you anything? Before I could even know you?"
There was no scream. No sob. Only that still, sharp ache — the kind of silence that could break a world.
Nameless rose.
The ground trembled at the weight of his grief. He raised a hand, and a faint, black shimmer bled from his palm — not flame, not light, but something colder, heavier. His sorrow carried shape.
The soil responded. It cracked apart in silence, opening cleanly as though the earth itself had been commanded to yield. Ash drifted upward, curling away from the hollow as if repelled. Slowly, the land lowered itself into a grave, edges too precise to be natural, too reverent to be chance.
It was not a spell of destruction, nor of war. It was simply his will made real — the world reshaped by his mourning.
A grave, born of grief and silence.
He lifted her in his arms for the first time, or for the one last time and stepped forward. Her weight was nothing. Her absence was everything.
Gently, he placed her within the hollow. Her hair spread like ink in water. Her arms folded over her chest.
The soil closed in silence, sealing her from the falling ash. A ripple of energy sank into the ground, leaving the earth smooth and undisturbed.
The winds here carried no scent, but the silence that followed pressed against his ears.
When he straightened, he was bloodstained — his face cold, eyes burning faintly red. His hair was long like a warrior. His clothes, black as shadow, clung to him in ragged layers, their edges torn but still carrying the weight of something regal. His hands dripped with blood that wasn't all his.
And yet, he stood like a man unbroken.
Behind him, out of the seven crystals over his spine... Only one glowed faintly. The rest stayed normal, as if waiting.
As he was standing there no knowing what to do and where to go,
A voice broke the silence as he kept walking some distance.
Lazy. Unafraid.
"Took you long enough, though i myself just got here"
Nameless turned.
A young woman sat with a calm that felt older than the ruins around her, robed in pale silks bound at the waist with a muted sash. Her posture was unhurried, every motion measured — as though the world itself moved too fast for her liking.
Her hair, long and black as midnight, spilled over her shoulders and down her back, the strands catching the faintest gleam of light like threads of ink. There was nothing ornamental about her, nothing that sought attention — and yet, the stillness of her presence drew the eye as surely as a blade half-drawn from its sheath.
Her face was serene, but her eyes carried something colder: the quiet sharpness of a woman who had seen too much to be surprised by endings. She looked less like a warrior waiting for battle, and more like one who had already survived it — unyielding, poised, and unreadable.
In her silence, she seemed untouchable. Beautiful, yes, but in the way of storm clouds on the horizon: something distant, inevitable, and meant to be feared.
"You're prettier than the stories," she said, her voice low, tinged with a mocking amusement. "But far more broken than I expected."
Nameless said nothing. His gaze lingered, tracing her face as though trying to pull truth from it.
"Who are you?" he asked at last.
She stepped closer, boots crunching the ashen soil.
"You're the great enigma. Me? Just the fool who decided to walk into this hell instead of away from it."
She tilted her head, studying him, then circled slowly, eyes catching on the crystals embedded in his back.
"So… only one awake? That means six more waiting. Six more storms chained and dreaming."
Nameless stood still, his silence heavier than her words, gaze hardening into judgment.
"What is this place?" he asked.
Her lips curved, not into warmth, but something sharper.
"You really don't know, do you?"
She gestured toward the horizon. Towers of charred flesh and twisted steel clawed upward, burning without smoke, as if they were alive.
"This is the First Realm — Fleshfire. Where the dead walk, demons reign, and humans… forgot what being human even meant."
Then her hand lifted higher, pointing toward the sky — or what should have been one.
"That isn't heaven. It isn't a sky at all. It was torn apart centuries ago. Your war did that."
His fists clenched, jaw tight.
"My war?"
"Yeah," she said, stepping close enough for her shadow to fall over him. "The Great Collapse. Seven realms. Seven gods. Seven betrayals. And you—" her voice dropped to a blade's whisper, "you were the center of it all."
His eyes flicked toward Elara's grave. Then back to hers.
"Then they failed. Because I am here now."
Behind him, one of the crystals pulsed — faint, fleeting, like a memory trying to breathe.
Ryne's gaze lingered on it before she turned away, her tone shifting, quieter but still edged.
"They erased you. Burned your name. Shattered your crystals. Thought you'd rot forever in that prison sea." She looked back over her shoulder. "But here you are. Standing. Breathing. Dangerous again."
Her eyes narrowed, measuring him, weighing whether she believed in what she saw. Then, without ceremony, she motioned toward the wasteland beyond.
"Let's discuss all that later, for now come with me."
He hesitated, but she kept walking.
"Unless you'd rather wander blind. Every mile here devours the unknowing. You want answers, you follow."
Nameless stood in silence. The world here was alien, the air itself whispering of things that wanted to eat him. He had no choice. His steps fell in behind hers.
Ash drifted endlessly from the void above. And somewhere far ahead, the world stirred.
They walked across the black desert, where bone jutted from the ground like shattered monuments. The horizon shifted with every step, and far above, the torn heavens wept fire without heat.
Ryne hummed under her breath — not a song, but something closer to an old prayer, forgotten and jagged.
Then the ground trembled.
At the crest of a ridge, the landscape opened. Below sprawled a nightmare: a city of towers made from fused flesh and stone, hooked chains dangling like spiderwebs, every structure breathing in uneven rhythm.
And at its heart — an arena.
Vast. Beating with noise. Crowds roared from the balconies. Drums thundered like war-hearts. Something writhed inside, unseen.
Nameless stared, his gaze narrowing, searching for sense in the chaos.
Ryne only folded her arms, a half-smile cutting across her face.
"Welcome to Ghastmaw," she said. "The City of Chains. Built on bones. Ruled by beasts."
"They don't eat flesh here. They eat what you remember."
Nameless didn't flinch, but his eyes darkened.
"Why?"
"Because memories are sweeter than blood," she said. "And twice as dangerous."
As they approached the massive gate, two grotesque wardens stepped forward. Their eyes hollow, tongues too long, blades slick with fresh blood.
One hissed, "Names. Offerings."
Nameless did not answer. He walked past.
The guards froze. Their blades corroded to rust in their hands. Their knees hit the earth, trembling not from fear — but recognition.
One croaked, choking on the words: "Y-you… you were never meant to return…"
Nameless's eyes were cold as stone. He looked down at them with nothing but disgust.
Above, the chains rattled violently, like even the city itself remembered him.