The corpse of Graveltooth had barely faded into nothingness when the silence of the ruined street returned. The shadows lingered around Harold like obedient hounds, waiting.
He raised his hand again, fingers curling. Darkness rippled in response, threads twisting into a blade so long and sharp it cut the air itself. He released it, and the shadows dissolved.
Fascination stirred within him. This wasn't simple manipulation. The shadows didn't borrow from the world. They answered him as though they belonged to him—no, as though they were him.
Harold's eyes narrowed. "This… isn't just a power."
He willed the abyss to form again, and the darkness stretched across the ground in every direction, swallowing the broken pavement, the corpses, the ruins. A perfect void. He felt it pulse, alive, endless. He could feel every grain of stone touched by shadow, every molecule of air trembling in the dark.
And then—
Memory.
From the depths of his first life, from idle conversations, comics his great-grandchildren had left around the house, fragments of a myth returned. A name, a story.
A god of darkness.
The one who slew the first light.
The creator of the Abyss and the symbiotes.
Harold stilled. His lips parted, breath shallow as realization bled into certainty.
"…No. Impossible."
But the abyss pulsed again, and the answer was clear.
He was not Harold Kingsley in truth. He was Knull.
Not a mask. Not a mantle. Not a legend.
The Primordial God of Darkness, reborn into this world of heroes and villains.
A laugh slipped from his throat — low, rich, resonant. It rolled into the silence like thunder. He touched his chest, savoring the sound. It was not cruel mirth, not madness. It was joy. A joy he had never felt in a hundred years of perfection.
"All those years wearing the mask of a man. Pretending. Smiling. Living a lie of kindness." His smile widened, cold and elegant. Shadows coiled around him like a throne rising from the earth. "And yet, fate rewards me… with truth."
He stretched out his hand, and the darkness obeyed. The abyss bled upward, coalescing into a blade of pure nothingness. He swung it once, and the nearest building collapsed in perfect silence, erased not by impact but by unmaking.
The sight made him tremble — not with fear, but with reverence.
"This is not power." His voice was reverent, soft as prayer. "This is creation's correction."
A hundred years of Harold's mask crumbled in that moment. There was no need for pretense. No need for false civility. The man who had played the gentleman was gone. What remained was Knull, perfected by a century of human cunning, patience, and restraint.
"I am no villain," he whispered to the ruined city. Shadows curled around his shoulders like a cloak, writhing with devotion. "I am inevitability. I am truth. I am the darkness that ends all masks."
The abyss expanded, consuming the street until nothing but void remained. And within it, Knull smiled, serene and terrifying.
The God of Darkness had awakened.