Mist slid through the trees like pale smoke, carrying the sharp scent of damp stone and rotting leaves.
A boy no taller than a sapling stood in the center, bare feet dark with mud, black eyes empty as winter sky.
Opposite him, the serpent coiled and uncoiled, a mountain of midnight scales and muscle.
Three heads swayed in slow, deliberate arcs, their movements heavy enough to stir the very air.
The first head dipped, venom dripping in lazy strands.
The second flexed its horned crown, a low rumble vibrating through the earth.
The third, hollow-eyed and silent, fixed its void-like gaze on the boy.
The boy did not flinch.
He merely watched, face blank, every breath measured.
His body was frail, skin pale against the mist, but inside, something older than thought kept him perfectly still—listen, read, move only when the world moves first.
The serpent struck without warning.
A hiss like tearing iron split the night as the first head shot forward.
Instinct—not reason—pulled the boy aside.
The fang sliced empty air, the rush of wind cold against his cheek.
Another head whipped its tail through the undergrowth.
He ducked and rolled.
The ground shuddered when the blow landed, throwing up dirt and broken roots.
Still the boy's face stayed blank.
Heart quick, mind silent.
The serpent coiled tighter, three heads weaving a pattern of death.
It lunged again and again—testing, teasing, playing with prey so small it should not have survived the first strike.
Each time, Valen moved a fraction sooner than instinct should allow.
A step to the left, a tilt of the shoulders, a breath that carried him just beyond the sweeping tail.
Not speed. Not strength.
A precision as sharp as the silence within him.
The serpent hissed, amused.
This was no fight.
It was a game.
Then the third head darted forward, fangs bared to finish it.
Something broke.
It was not a sound at first but an absence—a sudden nothing that devoured the air itself.
The mist stopped moving.
The forest fell mute.
Light bled from the clearing as if swallowed by an unseen mouth.
Darkness pulsed outward.
No glow.
No shadow.
Only a void so complete it erased the thin moonlight, smothering every flicker of brightness until even the serpent's gleaming scales dulled to gray.
The ground trembled.
The serpent reared back, all three heads snapping upward as if struck.
Its hiss died in its throat, replaced by a low, guttural sound that had not left its chest in centuries—fear.
A second pulse followed, heavier.
The trees bowed as if a storm had passed, yet no wind stirred.
The darkness pressed outward like a living tide, sinking into bark and stone, bending the world into silence.
The serpent knew darkness; it was darkness.
Banished to the lower domain, stripped of half its strength, it had ruled shadows that swallowed empires.
But this—this black stillness that ate the very concept of light—was beyond even its oldest memory.
For the first time since exile, the great beast trembled.
It drew back its heads, coils tightening as ancient instinct screamed to flee.
But there was nowhere to flee.
The clearing itself had become the pulse.
The boy stood unchanged at its center.
No expression.
No effort.
Black eyes reflecting nothing at all.
Another wave spread from him, silent and perfect.
Leaves turned brittle and fell in showers of gray.
Stones cracked in hair-thin lines, their echoes swallowed before they could form.
The serpent lowered itself without thought.
Massive coils sank into the mud.
Three heads bowed until fangs scraped the soil.
Not a gesture of strategy.
A reflex—older than pride, older than the stars that had watched it rule—submission.
Valen blinked once.
The pulse faded, leaving the clearing drowned in a strange hush.
Mist drifted again, tentative, as though testing whether the world still allowed it to exist.
The boy exhaled softly, a sound almost lost to the quiet.
He felt no triumph, no surprise.
Only a faint awareness that something inside him had moved.
The serpent remained bowed.
Its minds—three and one—stirred with a single thought, ancient and fearful:
What are you?
The boy did not answer.
Perhaps he could not.
The night settled around them, thick and waiting, while the unseen power that had woken now slept again—silent as the void.