Time doesn't pass here.
Not in seconds. Not in hours.
Just in echoes.
And as I floated deeper into the nothing…the echoes became louder.
Not voices.Not words.
Moments.
Memories flickering like candles in the dark—too dim to trust, too sharp to ignore.
And then, one of them stuck.
A boy.
Ragged clothes.Hollow eyes.Bare feet on dirt floors.
I was looking at him.No.
I was him.
"They left you behind…"
The voice came from nowhere.
Or maybe it came from me.
The memory unfolded, slow and cruel.
I stood in the middle of a broken house—boards rotting, roof caved in.My hands were shaking, tiny and cold.My parents were gone.No note.No food.Just absence.
They had no choice.They were starving.We all were.
They left me to increase their chances.
They died two weeks later in the alleys of a border town I'd never see.
I wandered.
Alone.
For days.
Maybe weeks.
Begging.
Fighting over scraps.
Until I collapsed in a field where even the weeds were dying.
That's when I saw him.
A shadow at first.
Then a hand.
FAZE.
Not a priest.
Not a soldier.
Just a man with old eyes and a voice that cracked like ancient wood.
"What's your name?"
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
I'd forgotten how to speak.
So he sat beside me.
Didn't say a word.
Just waited.
That night, he fed me.
Not just food.
But truth.
"The universe has rules.But none of them are final."
"Even death forgets its place when the spirit is strong."
I stayed with him.
Weeks turned to months.
He taught me how to read.How to fight.How to listen—to the wind, the stars, the hum of the land beneath our feet.
He didn't call it "magic."
He called it resonance.
The rhythm of being alive.
"Find out what your soul is made of," he told me."Or someone else will."
Then came the invasion.
It started as whispers.
Then… fire.
Cities vanished overnight.
Skies turned to static.
People disappeared.
The Dracus didn't arrive in ships.
They tore through.
Through soil.
Through laws.
Through everything we thought made us safe.
Within weeks, Earth was broken into camps.
Survivors were either slaughtered or sorted.
Extermination.Or labor.
Faze and I… we were lucky.
If you can call chains lucky.
We were shipped to a zone near the coast, where salt corroded everything and the air always smelled like metal and dead water.
They branded us.
Tagged our backs with scalding iron—barcodes for suffering.
Faze stayed strong.
I did my best.
But I was still a boy.
And the monsters that watched us?
They weren't built to show mercy.
One night, the skies trembled.
Not from an attack.
But from how quiet everything was.
We'd just laid down to sleep in the corner of our mudstone cell when the walls trembled.
Then came the sound.
Boots.
Too many.
Voices.
Dracus. Laughing.
And then the door broke open.
I saw him rise.
Faze.
Old bones, cracked hands.
He reached for the staff he carved from ironwood, hidden beneath a loose stone.
I don't know what he was thinking.
Maybe he knew it was suicide.
Maybe he didn't care.
But he fought.
Gods, he fought.
He took one of them down in the first swing—cracked its skull open like a rotten melon.
The others didn't even flinch.
They swarmed him.
And I…
I couldn't move.
I just watched.
I watched them tear him apart.Piece by piece.Laughing while they did it.
They desecrated his body—tore him open long after he stopped breathing.
I remember the sound of his ribs snapping.
I remember the blood painting the walls.
I remember the smell.
And then—
I remember nothing.
Because something in me snapped.
Black.
Total.
A switch flipped inside my chest.
I couldn't tell you what I did next.
But when I woke up?
The cell was a slaughterhouse.
Blood smeared across every surface.
All 20 of them.
Dead.
Limbs torn. Skulls crushed. One stuffed into the ceiling like a twisted offering.
And me?
Standing in the center.
Covered in blood.
Eyes glowing.
"What am I?" I asked the silence.
And the silence answered with fire.
I ran.
For five years.
Through cities that weren't cities anymore.Through wastelands and silence.Through the Dunes of Death, where the storms sing and the sand buries time.
And that's where I found them.
The pyramids.
Submerged. Cracked. Forgotten.
But still breathing.
Still waiting.
The Eye of Ra carved into obsidian walls.The Eye of Horus sealed beneath gold plating.Triangles everywhere—symbols burned into memory.
I didn't understand them then.
But they knew me.
They opened when I touched them.
And something inside me…opened too.
"You were never just human," Nyxia's voice whispered.
"You were made for more than memory."
The Void rippled again.
Not like water. Not like smoke.
More like... grief.
Folding inward.
And pulling me back through time.
The pyramids were massive.
Not just in size—but in presence.
Buried under dunes that didn't just shift with the wind—they watched. Every gust carried something ancient. Every grain of sand felt deliberate—like it knew I didn't belong there yet.
But I went anyway.
Because I had nothing else.
The first pyramid was half-sunken—its apex cracked and jagged, a metallic triangle protruding from the tip, still gleaming beneath centuries of erosion.
I remember the heat.
It wasn't from the sun.
It came from inside the structure.
It hummed like it was alive—asleep, but aware.
I slept beneath its shadow for weeks.
Sometimes, I thought I heard whispers in the wind.Sometimes, I saw symbols light up on its walls when I touched them—triangles, spirals, eyes…
They meant nothing to me then.
But they made something stir in my chest.
It was around that time the visions began.
They weren't dreams.
They were reminders.
One night, I stood outside the pyramid under a blood-red sky, and the wind didn't move.
Everything around me stilled.
Even the dunes stopped breathing.
And that's when I saw it.
The Eye.
Projected into the sky—not carved, not built, but cast from somewhere beyond comprehension.
The Eye of Ra, massive and watching, suspended above the pyramid like a god's regret.
I dropped to my knees, shaking.
Not from fear.
But from recognition.
Something inside me resonated.
"You've seen it before," Nyxia whispered."You were made near it. Awakened by it. Broken beneath it."
My chest felt like it was splitting open.
Essence tried to claw its way out—but I wasn't ready.
Not yet.
I spent years wandering that region—following old symbols etched into cliffsides, bathing in sandstorms that turned blood to vapor. Surviving beasts that screamed with NULL in their marrow.
But I never left the Dunes completely.
I kept circling back.
Back to the pyramids.
Because they were tied to something I couldn't name yet.
Something the Dracus wanted buried.
One night, I touched the wall of the second structure and it opened.
Not like a door.
Like a wound.
Stone peeled back like petals, revealing a chamber inside— humming with lightless energy.
Inside, I saw a mural.
One that wasn't carved.
It was alive.
Shapes rippling. Stories shifting. Faces flickering.
And in the center of it all?
Me.
Or at least…
A version of me.
Wrapped in light.
Eyes closed.
Arms spread as if crucified, hovering above a sea of red and gold.
Behind me, four pyramids.Above me, the Eye.Beneath me, a sigil made of three interlocked triangles—burning.
"This is your legacy," Nyxia's voice whispered."Or your curse."
The mural collapsed seconds later—burned out by my presence.
And I knew…
I wasn't just meant to find these places.
I was meant to awaken something inside them.
"You are a soul too stubborn to die," Nyxia breathed, echoing through the Void."And a weapon they fear too much to remember."
The light faded again.
The memories quieted.
And I was left in the dark once more.
Alone.
But not empty.
Something was changing inside me.
I could feel it.
Not like a surge.
Not like a scream.
But like a pulse.
A breath I hadn't taken yet.
But soon would.
The black didn't vanish after the visions.
It just… shifted.
No longer oppressive.
Now it felt curious.
Like the Void had seen enough of my pain…and now wanted to know if I understood it.
I floated there, alone again.
No memories.No fire.Just a dull hum behind my sternum that felt like it was coming back to life.
A heartbeat.
Slower.
But heavier.
I reached inward—not physically, but with something deeper.
Essence didn't respond like it used to.
It didn't surge.Didn't flare.
It trembled.
And then… the symbols returned.
Not visions.
Not murals.
Floating.
Around me.Glowing white, flickering in and out of view like coded stars.
Triangular shapes pulsing like dying embers.
An Eye suspended upside down.
Three interlocking rings—fading in and out of each other.
I didn't recognize any of them.
But they recognized me.
"They've been waiting," Nyxia whispered."But you are not yet aligned."
Aligned?
Aligned with what?
I reached toward the nearest shape—an obsidian triangle spinning slowly in the dark.
My fingers passed through it…
And instantly, my mind was thrown backward again.
I stood in a temple.
Not a Dracus stronghold.Not one of the submerged shrines.
Something older.
Lined with sandstone.Ceilings coated in constellations.Torches mounted in rows, their fire silent, glowing blue.
And at the center…
A throne.
Empty.
There was a symbol carved into the back wall:
A triangle inside a circle, surrounded by seven smaller points.
Each point burned in my eyes the longer I looked.
Seven.
Like seals.
Or gates.
Or something waiting to be unlocked.
I turned around.
The room was empty now.
Except…
One shadow stood at the base of the throne.
Cloaked.Tall.No face.
But its presence…
It felt like mine.
"Not yet," Nyxia said."But soon, you will know who sat there… and why you were born in their shadow."
I blinked.
And the temple vanished.
Now I was floating again.
Void all around.
But something had changed.
This place no longer felt like death.
It felt like a incubator.
And I was beginning to stretch again.
I clenched my fists slowly.
Bones still broken.
Body still shattered.
But my soul?
It was piecing itself back together.
And I knew…
The next time I opened my eyes—
I wouldn't just be crawling out of that hole.
I'd be rising.