By neuraX
The battlefield was already dying when I arrived.
Flames the color of fractured suns tore through the clouds. Mountains were no longer whole; they groaned as if the sky itself crushed them from above. Hundreds of thousands of mortals screamed below—voices of every race colliding into one endless, pitiful sound.
I descended through it.
The void around me bent in ripples, swallowing the light. No wind touched me. No blade dared. Every step I took left a trail of black fractals spiraling through the dust, eating the color from the world.
They had gathered all their gods, their saints, their banners.
Humans with spears of lightning. Elves burning with lightcraft. Beastkin armored in bone and faith. Dragons that had sworn to no master but the fear of extinction.
All of them together—and still, they trembled when I appeared.
Their chants broke mid-syllable. The sound of their courage ended, as if the air itself forgot how to carry it.
One elf whispered, "The Void has taken form…" before his own resonance collapsed inward.
So fragile.
The thought echoed in my mind like a song without sound. My gaze passed over them, dissecting every pattern of energy they carried. Their "magic" was crude resonance—light vibrating against matter. The weakest frequency of all.
I raised my hand.
The sky fractured into silence.
Through the void currents I whispered a single command: [N'hal suvr aethel].
The resonance around me inverted. Where light had once existed, absence grew. Whole formations of soldiers fell without impact—soundless, weightless—like glass dust scattering in a vacuum.
Their souls flickered for less than a breath before the silence consumed them.
A scream rose—a thousand of them—and then, above them all, a single voice of defiance.
"Stand firm! The Light does not kneel!"
She stood upon the remnants of a broken spire. Golden hair shimmered even through the smoke. Her aura burned pure white, so bright that it dared to challenge the black.
The High Priestess.
I felt the resonance of her faith before I saw her. It pulsed across the battlefield like a heartbeat refusing to die. Her energy was ordered, perfect, a lattice of conviction.
Beautiful.
Pointless.
She raised her staff. Rings of light descended from the sky, forming a dome of brilliance that held my shadows at bay. For the first time since my birth, light did not retreat instantly.
"You," she said, voice steady but strained. "You are not of this world."
I tilted my head. The void behind me shimmered, pulling inward like a lung drawing breath.
"I am of no world," I replied, voice calm as falling ash. "I am what remains when all worlds end."
Her eyes widened. "A god, then?"
I took a step forward. The ground beneath us cracked, folding into a spiral of nothingness.
"Gods die," I said. "I do not."
She struck first.
Light screamed from her staff—pure, ordered resonance designed to erase chaos. It collided with my form, splitting into shards that hissed and dissolved.
I reached through it. My hand pierced the air between us, fingers brushing the light itself. It burned, briefly. Then it obeyed.
Resonance adaptation complete.
Her power flowed into my veins, trembling as my essence rewrote its law. The white energy turned black, then purple, then vanished.
Her lips parted in horror. "You… devour divinity."
"I devour error," I said simply.
Then I moved.
The mortals saw only a blur—shadows blooming like ink across their ranks.
To me, every heartbeat was a century.
Every scream, a vibration to study.
They attacked with everything—steel, flame, faith. All of it met the same end: silence.
I wove through them, tracing patterns with my hands, leaving sigils of absence that devoured resonance on contact. When I whispered [Vehl'tra nox], the ground itself folded inward, pulling them into unseen depths.
No blood. No corpses. Only dust and memory.
The Priestess watched as her armies faded. Still, she did not retreat.
"You could unmake the heavens with that power," she said, voice shaking. "Why this slaughter? Why us?"
For the first time, I paused.
The void around me pulsed, echoing her words in reverse. Why this slaughter?
I did not understand the question.
Purpose… irrelevant.
"You exist," I said. "That is reason enough."
Her light faltered. The dome cracked.
Still, she whispered a prayer—not to me, but to something beyond comprehension.
"Elaris of the Dawn, let my light—"
Her words dissolved as I reached her.
I looked into her eyes—saw the reflection of my own emptiness there. She raised her staff one final time, trembling not from fear, but from exhaustion.
"You'll never understand what it means to love," she whispered.
I said nothing.
My hand passed through her chest. Her body didn't fall—it turned to motes of light, unraveling in perfect silence.
The sky dimmed.
The battle ended.
Only silence remained—pure, absolute.
And within it, I heard something faint. A pulse, distant, soft. Not from this world.
A resonance not born of fear… but of something else.
I turned toward it, eyes narrowing.
What is that?
The void around me trembled—not in anger, not in hunger, but in something unfamiliar.
I whispered a final phrase into the emptiness: [Sha'len vihr] — the silence breathes.
Then I began to walk toward that faint pulse, leaving the dead world behind.
"Silence is the truest echo of death."
The battlefield was still breathing. Not with life — but with the memory of it.
Chunks of radiant flesh and fractured crystal littered the wasteland, each shard humming with the dying resonance of the Elarin. The air shimmered, trembling under the weight of what I had done.
Their light was gone. Their screams — absorbed.
I stood in the midst of it all, unmoving. My body dripped with their fading essence, the once-blinding luminance of their kind now dimming around me like the last flicker of a dying sun.
["⟟⧫⟟∴ᚠᚢᛁᛞ."]
The Void words slid from my tongue like a blade through wet silk. Meaningless to mortal ears — but the resonance within them carved new channels through my veins. I could feel the hum of power trying to find form.
Resonance Manipulation.
Not simply absorption, not consumption — but redirection.
As I exhaled, their pain became a frequency that vibrated within me. Every death, every scream, every ounce of terror rippled like a note plucked from an unseen string. And I tuned it. Shifted it.
Bent it to my will.
The world itself seemed to recoil. The dead crystal plains pulsed — once, twice — as if it recognized me. As if it feared what it had birthed.
I extended my hand, and the fragments around me lifted.
Hundreds of glass-like shards floated in silence, refracting the darkness like broken mirrors. Within each one, I saw myself — a thousand reflections of the same hollow god.
"Beautiful," I whispered.
The word was foreign to my mouth. It scraped against my tongue like it didn't belong there.
I crushed my fist.
Every shard shattered, releasing a cascading wave of distorted resonance that rolled outward in a silent explosion. The horizon cracked, light and void colliding in a storm that tore the sky apart.
When the distortion cleared, I was alone again.
Or so I thought.
Something lingered in the air — faint, fragile, and yet distinct.
A resonance unlike any I had tasted before. It was not light, not void, not flesh. It was… alive in a way the others were not.
The frequency trembled against mine, like a whisper brushing the edge of thought.
Feminine. Gentle. Infuriatingly pure.
My jaw tightened. My platinum fangs glinted as I tasted the hum through the air.
"…Who dares?"
The voice that left me was no longer quiet. It carried weight — a resonance that made the ground pulse in rhythm with my words.
Across the ruins, creatures that had survived my massacre collapsed instantly, their bodies imploding under the sheer density of the sound.
Yet the frequency did not break.
It danced around my presence, teasing me, almost playful.
["ᚨᛉᚨᛖᛚ… come find me."]
The glyphs formed in the air for an instant — symbols that should not exist in this world — and then vanished like smoke.
I tilted my head, watching the distortion fade.
That voice. That pull.
It was not from this world.
My chest tightened — not from pain, but from something dangerously close to interest.
Unacceptable.
The void inside me stirred, and the black sun within my consciousness pulsed once — a heartbeat of creation and destruction colliding.
"I will find you," I murmured, the words low, certain.
"Even the light will kneel."
The fractured sky groaned above as I extended my hand and tore open a new rift — the edges bleeding with black and silver light. Beyond it, another Fractured World awaited.
A dying wind swept through the wasteland as I stepped forward.
Every trace of the Elarin — every fragment of their light — was devoured by my shadow.
The moment I crossed through, the rift sealed behind me, leaving nothing but silence.
The world exhaled.
And then died.
The next world greeted me with ash.
Blackened clouds swirled overhead, slow and heavy, bleeding faint light through their scars. The air was thicker here, steeped in decay and memory.
The ground beneath me cracked like old glass, veins of dying energy spreading outward where my feet touched.
I inhaled — and the world shuddered.
This realm was fractured beyond repair.
Entire mountains floated in pieces across the sky, suspended by invisible forces, humming with broken resonance. Rivers of molten crystal cut through the earth, whispering the names of things long dead.
I could feel the eyes of the realm on me — not beings, but the world itself watching.
Trembling.
A storm gathered in the distance, dark and spiraling. I sensed them within it — presences vast and ancient, creatures that should not exist in a world this fragile.
The resonance that had called to me still lingered faintly, like a scent on the wind. It was buried deep, beneath the noise of dying stars and screaming earth. But it was there.
The voice.
The pull.
Her.
I stepped forward, the sound of my movement echoing unnaturally, like time itself bent to amplify it.
My shadow stretched impossibly far, and with each step, the world cracked more.
The sky dimmed to near-black, and in the distance, the storm began to sing.
A haunting, beautiful note of resonance — the same frequency that had whispered my name.
I smiled.
A small, cruel, knowing thing.
"This world will burn before I reach you."
The storm's song wavered — as if it understood.
And when I raised my hand, the black sun above my soul flared again, splitting the clouds with violet veins of voidlight.
A new war had begun.
"Silence is the truest echo of death."
The battlefield was still breathing. Not with life — but with the memory of it.
Chunks of radiant flesh and fractured crystal littered the wasteland, each shard humming with the dying resonance of the Elarin. The air shimmered, trembling under the weight of what I had done.
Their light was gone. Their screams — absorbed.
I stood in the midst of it all, unmoving. My body dripped with their fading essence, the once-blinding luminance of their kind now dimming around me like the last flicker of a dying sun.
["⟟⧫⟟∴ᚠᚢᛁᛞ."]
The Void words slid from my tongue like a blade through wet silk. Meaningless to mortal ears — but the resonance within them carved new channels through my veins. I could feel the hum of power trying to find form.
Resonance Manipulation.
Not simply absorption, not consumption — but redirection.
As I exhaled, their pain became a frequency that vibrated within me. Every death, every scream, every ounce of terror rippled like a note plucked from an unseen string. And I tuned it. Shifted it.
Bent it to my will.
The world itself seemed to recoil. The dead crystal plains pulsed — once, twice — as if it recognized me. As if it feared what it had birthed.
I extended my hand, and the fragments around me lifted.
Hundreds of glass-like shards floated in silence, refracting the darkness like broken mirrors. Within each one, I saw myself — a thousand reflections of the same hollow god.
"Beautiful," I whispered.
The word was foreign to my mouth. It scraped against my tongue like it didn't belong there.
I crushed my fist.
Every shard shattered, releasing a cascading wave of distorted resonance that rolled outward in a silent explosion. The horizon cracked, light and void colliding in a storm that tore the sky apart.
When the distortion cleared, I was alone again.
Or so I thought.
Something lingered in the air — faint, fragile, and yet distinct.
A resonance unlike any I had tasted before. It was not light, not void, not flesh. It was… alive in a way the others were not.
The frequency trembled against mine, like a whisper brushing the edge of thought.
Feminine. Gentle. Infuriatingly pure.
My jaw tightened. My platinum fangs glinted as I tasted the hum through the air.
"…Who dares?"
The voice that left me was no longer quiet. It carried weight — a resonance that made the ground pulse in rhythm with my words.
Across the ruins, creatures that had survived my massacre collapsed instantly, their bodies imploding under the sheer density of the sound.
Yet the frequency did not break.
It danced around my presence, teasing me, almost playful.
["ᚨᛉᚨᛖᛚ… come find me."]
The glyphs formed in the air for an instant — symbols that should not exist in this world — and then vanished like smoke.
I tilted my head, watching the distortion fade.
That voice. That pull.
It was not from this world.
My chest tightened — not from pain, but from something dangerously close to interest.
Unacceptable.
The void inside me stirred, and the black sun within my consciousness pulsed once — a heartbeat of creation and destruction colliding.
"I will find you," I murmured, the words low, certain.
"Even the light will kneel."
The fractured sky groaned above as I extended my hand and tore open a new rift — the edges bleeding with black and silver light. Beyond it, another Fractured World awaited.
A dying wind swept through the wasteland as I stepped forward.
Every trace of the Elarin — every fragment of their light — was devoured by my shadow.
The moment I crossed through, the rift sealed behind me, leaving nothing but silence.
The world exhaled.
And then died.
The next world greeted me with ash.
Blackened clouds swirled overhead, slow and heavy, bleeding faint light through their scars. The air was thicker here, steeped in decay and memory.
The ground beneath me cracked like old glass, veins of dying energy spreading outward where my feet touched.
I inhaled — and the world shuddered.
This realm was fractured beyond repair.
Entire mountains floated in pieces across the sky, suspended by invisible forces, humming with broken resonance. Rivers of molten crystal cut through the earth, whispering the names of things long dead.
I could feel the eyes of the realm on me — not beings, but the world itself watching.
Trembling.
A storm gathered in the distance, dark and spiraling. I sensed them within it — presences vast and ancient, creatures that should not exist in a world this fragile.
The resonance that had called to me still lingered faintly, like a scent on the wind. It was buried deep, beneath the noise of dying stars and screaming earth. But it was there.
The voice.
The pull.
Her.
I stepped forward, the sound of my movement echoing unnaturally, like time itself bent to amplify it.
My shadow stretched impossibly far, and with each step, the world cracked more.
The sky dimmed to near-black, and in the distance, the storm began to sing.
A haunting, beautiful note of resonance — the same frequency that had whispered my name.
I smiled.
A small, cruel, knowing thing.
"This world will burn before I reach you."
The storm's song wavered — as if it understood.
And when I raised my hand, the black sun above my soul flared again, splitting the clouds with violet veins of voidlight.
A new war had begun.