The screams of the Void still echoed behind me as I stepped into the light.
Light.
It was a wound torn across the skin of reality, and I stepped through it.
The first touch of it burned—not pain, but rejection. The world itself resisted me, as though the laws here remembered purity and wanted no part of what I was.
I lifted my gaze. Above me hung a broken sky: shards of continents drifting in a gray firmament, threads of faint lightning binding them together. The ground beneath my feet was the color of dead ash. Rivers wound through the cracks, glowing faintly like veins of molten glass.
Everything smelled of endings.
I listened. The air carried whispers—voices from distant ages, memories buried under the weight of time. The Fractured World murmured its own requiem, and I stood amid the sound as its final verse.
The Void had been endless silence; this realm was dying noise.
Each step I took pressed a shadow into the earth, and the soil blackened, recoiling as if the concept of life itself could not stand beside me.
It was strange—after so long in eternal darkness, I had expected the presence of light to feel alien, maybe even beautiful. Instead, it felt fragile. A trembling candle before a storm.
I moved toward the horizon. There were ruins scattered along a ridge—what remained of a city built from crystal and bone. The spires still hummed faintly, refracting dull light into the mist.
Another civilization that believed it could outlive gods, I thought. They all do.
The air shivered.
A harmonic pulse rippled through the valley, bright and cold. It was not sound as mortals perceive it; it was resonance—light given voice.
I stopped. Shadows folded around me like wings. The pulse came again, followed by movement.
From the haze stepped five figures—slender, tall, their bodies carved from translucent crystal that shimmered with inner radiance. Each of them glowed with a different hue, like fragments of a rainbow forged into living beings.
Elarin.
Their eyes—faceted prisms—narrowed when they saw me. The lead one raised a hand, and the air sang. Light condensed into spears that hovered around them like an orchestra of blades.
I said nothing.
Their thoughts brushed against mine, sharp and brittle. Identify yourself, the resonance demanded. This realm forbids aberrations.
I tilted my head. The gesture alone caused the air to quiver. "Aberration," I repeated inwardly. In the Void, everything had been an aberration. Here, even that title felt small.
They did not wait. The first note struck—pure white energy streaking toward me. The ground erupted; dust and molten glass spiraled into the air.
I did not move. The light dissolved before it touched me, absorbed into the shadow that clung to my form. The void aura whispered back—a low, endless hum.
Another volley. Another note. Each impact brighter, sharper, until the valley burned with song.
Then silence.
When the dust settled, I still stood there—untouched, surrounded by trembling light that refused to fade.
They wield resonance, I thought. Vibrations of existence itself. But they sing only in one direction.
I extended my hand. The aura around me stilled; then, slowly, I reached into the memory of their attack—the echo that still lingered in the air.
The rhythm revealed itself. Frequencies, patterns, harmony. Life and death were just opposing wavelengths waiting to be tuned.
I altered mine.
The world convulsed. The remaining spears of light bent inward, twisted, their music collapsing into a discordant shriek. The Elarin staggered back, clutching their chests as cracks spread through their crystalline skin.
For the first time since birth, I felt something akin to fascination.
Resonance Manipulation, I named it silently. The ability to absorb, distort, and command the frequencies that bind creation.
Their leader screamed—not with a mouth, but with the splintering of his form. The others joined, a chorus of breaking glass. Their light imploded, dragged toward me as if gravity had reversed.
When the glow faded, all that remained were shards scattered at my feet.
The silence afterward was profound. Even the wind refused to speak.
I crouched and lifted a fragment—smooth, still faintly warm. Within it pulsed a flicker of color, fighting to stay alive. It reminded me of a heartbeat.
I closed my fingers around it. The light dimmed, then vanished.
So fragile.
Above, the fractured sky trembled. Somewhere in the distance, I sensed attention turning toward me—ancient eyes opening. The world itself had felt what I'd done.
Good.
I let the last echoes of their energy sink into me. The frequencies hummed inside my chest, merging with the abyss of my being until they belonged to me. The air grew heavier, the horizon darker.
I looked toward the ruins again. In the far distance, beyond the gray dunes, I saw faint structures—towers, floating citadels, lights that still dared to burn.
So there were others. Races. Kingdoms. Perhaps even gods that ruled them.
The thought stirred nothing inside me. Only purpose.
I walked for hours—or maybe moments. Time flowed strangely here, as if the world itself were struggling to remember how to move. The ground shifted under each step, veins of dead light cracking open.
The sky deepened to black. The Black Sun I carried within my soul pulsed faintly, answering some cosmic rhythm beyond sight.
That was when I heard it: a whisper, carried by wind and memory. He has come.
It was not spoken by living mouths. The world itself had said it.
I smiled.
The expression felt unnatural, yet inevitable.
A pool of glass lay before me, its surface reflecting the shattered heavens. I approached and knelt beside it. For the first time since birth, I saw my reflection under true light.
My hair—black as absence—fell to my shoulders, faint streaks of violet tracing the edges like veins of dark fire. My horns curved back elegantly, their surfaces carved with shifting runes that pulsed when I breathed. My eyes were endless pits, swallowing every glimmer that dared enter them.
Beautiful. Terrifying. Both were the same word here.
The reflection spoke without voice, its mouth forming my thoughts before I did.
You killed your creators. You shattered your home. What will you break next?
I touched the surface; ripples distorted the image. "Everything," I whispered.
The word carried—not through sound, but through existence. The valley shook. Mountains cracked. Somewhere far above, clouds that had not moved in centuries scattered like frightened birds.
For a moment, even the light seemed to flee.
That was my single word to this world, and it remembered.
When silence returned, I rose. The fracture in the air behind me still burned faintly—the doorway to the Void closing like a dying star. I did not look back.
Ahead stretched the endless remains of civilization: forgotten monuments, dead skies, echoes of power waiting to be claimed.
The whispers of other Void bloodlines stirred faintly in the distance. I could feel them now—kin born of darkness, scattered across realities, perhaps unaware that their origin still existed.
They would learn.
The Void had birthed many, but it had crowned only one.
I spread my hand toward the horizon. My aura expanded, merging with the world's decay until the landscape itself began to breathe with me. The air grew thick, trembling between collapse and worship.
"This realm," I said—my second word, quiet yet infinite—"will kneel."
The syllables struck the dying sky like thunder.
The first storm in centuries formed above me. Black clouds rolled across the fractured heavens, swallowing the pale remnants of day. Lightning—dark, soundless—cut the air, and rain began to fall, each drop a spark of fading light.
I walked into it, leaving footprints of shadow that never filled.
Behind me, the pool of glass shattered, scattering the last reflection of light across the plain.
Before me stretched the world that would soon remember its master.
I have killed gods in the womb of the Void, I thought. Now I shall conquer the worlds that dare to dream.
End of Chapter 5 — The Fractured World Beckons