The void was cold, silent, and absolute. Kael was a single, tiny point of heat in a sea of unending nothing. The tumultuous, life-threatening rip in reality had spat him out, leaving him battered, disoriented, and tasting the bitter tang of blood on his tongue.
He was on a ground of solid, crystalline ice that pulsed with a faint, internal starlight. The air was thin, devoid of mana or life, and his breath plumed into a cloud of frozen vapor. He looked up, but there was no sky. Only the swirling, inky blackness of the abyss. This wasn't a world. It was a shard of one, a desolate, frozen heart torn from the cosmos.
He was alone. But the solitude was a lie. He could feel it. A cold, alien presence in the center of his soul, a tiny, gnawing emptiness. It was the Archon's mark. A brand of ownership. It wasn't just a beacon; it was a parasite. It drank his very essence, a constant, low-level drain on his mana and his will. He gritted his teeth, his body already fighting the insidious corruption. He had survived the Archon's grasp, but the Archon had left a part of itself inside of him.
Run, little Player. The hunt has just begun.
The Archon's voice echoed in his mind, its tone a terrifying blend of amusement and hunger. It wasn't a memory. It was a live connection. Kael's heart hammered against his ribs, not with fear, but with a cold, desperate resolve. The rage that had fueled him for a year was now replaced by the grim, quiet fury of a man on the run.
His only source of information was the Heavenly Ledger. He willed the screen to life.
[Location: Uncharted Vestige Core]
[Status: Dormant Epoch]
[Threat Level: Low]
The threat level was a lie. The Archon was out there. That was the only threat that mattered. He needed to find a way to sever the Archon's mark before it consumed him. He started walking across the frozen landscape, his footsteps silent on the crystalline ground.
The world was a beautiful, terrible corpse. Towering spires of light-infused ice rose and fell in the silent landscape, and in the distance, a massive, shattered moon hung in the abyss, its surface riddled with cracks that glowed with a faint, crimson light.
Kael walked for what felt like hours, his mana reserves slowly depleting from the mark's constant drain. He knew he couldn't survive here for long without finding a source of power. Just as despair began to creep in, he saw it. A single, small object half-buried in the ice. It was a fragment of a crystal, about the size of his fist, glowing with an inner light.
He knelt, his fingers, numb with cold, brushing against its surface. As he made contact, a torrent of chaotic, fragmented data flooded his mind. It was not a message but an echo. A scream of a being long dead.
...the hunger... it consumes... the hounds... they follow the scent... there is no escape...
The scream cut off abruptly. Kael jerked his hand back, gasping. This crystal wasn't a relic. It was a tomb. It held the final, terrified thoughts of a previous Player who had been hunted by the Archon. The Archon hadn't just defeated this Player; it had consumed them, and their final moments were now crystallized in this desolate realm.
He looked down at his hand, at the cold, insidious mark in his soul. This was his future. He would be hunted, and eventually, he would be consumed, leaving only a crystal shard behind.
A sudden, sharp bolt of pain lanced through his mind. It wasn't just a mental drain; it was a sensory link. He saw a flash of a distant, swirling nebula, felt the cold void of space, and heard the roar of cosmic winds. He was seeing through the Archon's eyes, an impossible, terrifying perspective that spanned galaxies. The Archon was not just watching. It was actively searching, its consciousness a cosmic net cast across the universe.
And Kael, a single, glowing point of light, was caught in the net. He was not a person to the Archon; he was a valuable prize, a delicious meal.
He felt the Archon's will, a distant, terrifying hunger, focus on his location. He had to sever the connection, but he didn't know how. The mark was fused with his very soul.
Just as he was about to give in to the overwhelming dread, he felt a new vibration. Not from the Archon, but from the ground beneath him. A low, rhythmic tremor, growing steadily louder. It was a physical vibration, a sound that carried across the desolate, empty realm.
He didn't need the Ledger to tell him what it was. The Archon's voice, now tinged with a predatory delight, confirmed his fear.
"Run, little Player. The Hunt is a test of stamina. And I have sent my hounds. They are very, very hungry."
In the distance, on the horizon of crystallized ice, a new light appeared. It was not a single point of light but two. Two pairs of glowing, crimson eyes, like twin suns of blood, breaking through the silent void. And they were getting closer.