Year – 7002 A.A | Location – The Scarlands of The North, Narn (Memory Recollection)
As told by Trask
From the very first moment my eyes opened to this world, I was baptized not in milk nor warmth, but in blood. That taste—metallic, raw, and unyielding—has never left me. It is the ghost that haunts the edges of every breath I take, the reminder of a beginning drenched not in innocence, but in consumption.
They will never understand it—my kin, my accusers, those who spat upon my name before I even knew what a name was. They called it hunger, savagery, monstrosity. But in truth, I never knew why I did it. Was it instinct? A cruel joke of nature? Or the echo of some ancient curse that clung to my bloodline? I only know that I fed—that I devoured my siblings, my mother, my kin—before I could even speak.
To the clan, that was enough. Enough to brand me "Horrible." Enough to strip me of brotherhood, of belonging. Enough to declare my very existence a blight. They made my name into a challenge, a whispered prize: Whoever slays Trask the Horrible will be revered among the clan.
I became a rite of passage for them, a living quarry. My heartbeat was their drum of glory. My suffering, their inheritance.
And so, even among outlaws, I was an outlaw. Even among predators, I was the prey.
Exiled from Narn, hunted by the very hands that should have shielded me, I wandered the cold plains and blistered valleys with a single question gnawing at the pit of my being: Why?
Why was I born? For what purpose was I cast into this cruel theatre of teeth and claw? Was my fate simply to destroy, to be remembered only as a monster gnawing on the bones of his kin?
Those were the days when silence was my only companion. Long, bitter silences broken only by the rasp of my breath and the quiet shame of survival. Yet even silence can become a tyrant. It presses on the soul, suffocating, until one longs for even the cruelty of another's voice.
And then, one night, in the hollow of a ruined den beneath a dead tree, the silence broke.
"To survive," it whispered.
My blood stilled. The Shadow thickened, as though listening with me.
"That is the only reason to exist."
I remember how those words sank into me—not as comfort, but as a revelation, brutal and absolute. It was as if someone had peeled back the skin of my wandering and shown me the bone beneath: survival. That was all I had done, all I had ever been doing.
The voice pressed closer, curling through the darkness, threading itself through the marrow of my thoughts.
"If you feel you have no other reason to live, then you exist to survive. Join me, and I will show you how to survive on your own terms."
I should have run. I should have fought. That voice was no mere whisper but a presence, vast and suffocating, heavy as the night sky itself. It was the kind of voice that could unravel a man from the inside out, leaving him hollow, pliant.
But I did not run.
Because in that voice, I heard something I had never known before: understanding. Not the empty judgments of kin, not the scorn of clans, but recognition.
The Shadow spoke not to condemn my hunger, but to crown it. Not to erase my bloodied beginning, but to declare it my truth.
And so I reached for the hand that I could not see.
And when I clasped it—oh, the world itself seemed to change.
That day, I bound myself to the Shadow. That day, I let go of questions, of guilt, of the suffocating silence that had dogged me since birth. From that day forward, my reason was singular, my purpose sharpened to a single edge: to survive.
And I have never—never—let go.
___________________________________
Year – 7002 A.A | Location – ArchenLand Front
The ground cracked beneath my weight as I forced my body upright, fragments of earth cascading down the crater Darius had driven me into. Pain should have torn through my body, but pain had long since become my native tongue; it was no longer something to endure, but something to drink, to consume, to wield. My aura burst outward, dark green tendrils writhing like a living storm, thickening the air with their suffocating presence.
The chitin that wrapped my form darkened from blood-red to the deepest black, streaked with veins of luminous green, like corruption made flesh. My pincers—shattered, broken, lost to his strike—twitched and reformed, sprouting anew with a grotesque flourish. The regeneration was not merely flesh mending flesh; it was hunger answering hunger. This was the Shadow's gift, the Arya of Emotion coursing through me, my veins singing with its merciless rhythm.
I felt whole. No—more than whole. I felt inevitable.
My antennae flicked, tasting the air. The battlefield reeked of iron and mana, of broken oaths and bleeding soil. And standing before me, framed by that ruin, was the one they called the First Lord.
Darius.
The bull of legend. The cornerstone of men's courage.
And I saw him falter.
It was slight—so slight another might have missed it. But my eyes, sharpened by malice, caught everything. His breath hitched, his body stiffened, and in the barest crack of his composure, I saw it: pain. His lips trembled as blood slipped down, staining the proud line of his jaw. Red welled from his ears, from his nose, and then, in a moment almost obscene, tears of blood glazed his eyes. His knees bent as though the weight of the world had finally found its mark.
And I laughed.
It was not the laugh of joy, nor of triumph, but of vindication—raw, hollow vindication. The sound echoed like splintering bones, filling the basin with its resonance.
"You made a mistake, First Lord," I rasped, my voice a rumble of chitin and venom. "You allowed that attack to touch you. That… was no ordinary poison."
I stepped forward, deliberately slow, savouring the sight of his struggle. Every pace I took was a sermon in cruelty, my aura gnashing against his with a hunger that no sword could quell.
"You've been bleeding yourself thin, haven't you?" I continued, the accusation laced with venom. "Healing your soldiers, pouring your mana into their broken bodies… spreading yourself across all of ArchenLand like a fool father trying to cradle too many children at once."
I tilted my head, mandibles twitching, voice dropping to a hiss.
"That means when you and I clashed… I wasn't even fighting you at your best."
The thought sickened me, burning through my chest with fury. I had fought, I had bled, I had risen from exile and curse to carve my existence into this world. And now this titan, this lord whom history sang of in tones of awe, had faced me with a portion of himself. I was cheated. Robbed. Insulted.
"That," I growled, my laughter dissolving into a trembling rage, "infuriates me. To have stood in battle, and yet be denied the fullness of your strength… I refuse it. I will not wear the shame of being measured against a weakened bull."
I lifted my pincers—newly forged, sharp as judgment.
"I will make you pay, Darius. I will make you pay for daring to make me feel worthless."
Darius still bled.
Every rational instinct told me he should have collapsed by now—poison coursing through his veins, his very blood rebelling against him, his body cracking beneath the weight of his sacrifice. Yet there he stood, battered and bleeding, eyes fixed upon me with the quiet steadiness of a mountain that refused erosion.
I lunged, the fury of my hunger sharpened into a single strike. My pincer shot forward, aimed straight for his throat—the neck of the great First Lord, the point where history itself would bleed if I severed it.
But in that moment, he moved.
It was not the desperate reflex of a man cornered, nor the stagger of one barely clinging to consciousness. No—it was the motion of inevitability, the simple declaration of one who has chosen to remain unbroken. Darius flipped Baltacek with a calm precision, bringing the hammer side down upon the earth.
The ground itself answered him.
A deafening crack split the air, a tremor surging outward like a roar from the deep. My pincer—my weapon, my pride, my devouring limb—shattered as if it were no more than brittle glass. The force sent me skidding back, claws raking trenches into the earth, my body jarred with humiliation as much as pain.
When my vision cleared, he was standing taller.
Slowly, deliberately, he wiped the blood from his chin, the crimson smearing against the ridges of his weathered hand. His chest rose and fell in steady rhythm—not a gasp, not a wheeze, but the measured breath of one who would not give ground.
"To be honest," he said, his voice carrying with it no boast, no desperation, but only truth, "I didn't think there'd be a need for this."
His lemon-green eyes narrowed, steady and unyielding.
"I underestimated the Shadow."
And then it began.
The ring in his nose—simple, unassuming until this moment—ignited with light. It was no ordinary glow, no trick of mana or sorcery. It resonated with him, with his very marrow, as though it had been waiting, dormant, for this moment of decision. A radiant lemon-green brilliance poured outward, enveloping his massive frame.
"UNLEASH… GRAND BOGA."
The words cracked like thunder, yet they were not shouted. They were spoken, firm and resolute, carrying more weight than any roar could hold. And the world obeyed.
A pillar of radiant energy erupted from his body, so sudden and fierce it split the night itself. The battlefield—once drenched in the darkness of my aura, thick with venom and threads of despair—was illuminated in a light so pure, so blinding, that for the first time in countless years, I recoiled. My antennae curled back, my mandibles clenched against the holy sting of it.
The pillar rose heavenward, painting the broken valley in hues of emerald and gold. The oppressive dome of my presence—the Shadow's poison lingering in the very air—shuddered under its touch, as though even my corruption knew it was dwarfed.
When the radiance receded, what stood before me was no longer merely a bull, nor a man. He was reborn.
Darius, the First Lord of ArchenLand.
His bare chest gleamed, etched with scars that seemed not like wounds but like inscriptions of history itself. His frame, towering and unyielding, was now adorned with pauldrons of gold and green that curved with majesty, not vanity. His belt cinched green battle-trousers woven with threads of ancient craft, and his knees—reversed and powerful—were encased in golden guards that gleamed like sunlight refracting off marble.
And his horns—oh, his horns!—shone like polished marble, radiant and untouchable, the very image of an unbroken covenant.
Baltacek, his weapon, pulsed in his hands with emerald fire, no longer simply a tool of war but the embodiment of his resolve. Each pulse was steady, rhythmic, echoing like the heartbeat of the earth itself.
For a moment, I could not speak.
It was not fear, not yet. No, fear comes later. It was something else, something I despised even more—awe. My hatred snarled against it, yet awe coiled around my throat, refusing to be denied. I had seen power before—The Shadow, the endless hunger of the Children, my own devouring fury. But this… this was different.
This was not hunger. This was not despair.
This was faith embodied.
The faith of a nation that had named him Lord. The faith of men who had bled under his command and found life again by his sacrifice. The faith of a land that had chosen not to yield, not to scatter like prey before wolves, but to stand as bulls do—horns lowered, hooves planted, unmovable.
And for the briefest instant—an instant I hated myself for—I felt small.
I clicked my mandibles in irritation, the sound sharp as bone striking stone. Rage swirled in me, a familiar refuge from the gnawing feeling his presence stirred. "Tch. You're desperate. With your current mana reserves, you can't maintain that form for long without killing yourself."
It was not just an insult—it was truth. I could feel it in the rhythm of his aura, that steady pulse beginning to strain. The poison I had fed him, the threads of my corruption in his veins, the weight of his own sacrifice—it was all there, clawing at him even as he stood in that radiant form. He was breaking, even if he refused to show it.
And yet, Darius only smirked. His lips curved, his eyes gleamed—not with mockery, but with calm, terrifying certainty. "This is now a battle of survival, Trask," he said, his voice steady as a drumbeat. "Let's see who lasts longer."
Something in me recoiled. He spoke of survival as if it were his creed, his birthright. Survival was mine. Survival was the only truth I had ever known, the only law that had kept me breathing since I first devoured my kin. How dare he take that word upon his tongue, as though he understood it better than I!
I surged forward, fury propelling me. My body blurred, a storm of chitin, mandibles, and venom. Every muscle strained, every thought sharpened into killing. The ground split beneath the force of my steps, the basin trembling with each lunge.
But he was faster.
"ARCEM: Intibak!"
His body shimmered, warping like heat over desert stone. He did not dodge me—no, worse than that. He let me strike, but my pincers found only futility. My blades scraped against him and slid away as if I were slashing at a mirage. My venom dripped against him and found no flesh to consume. It was like striking against inevitability itself.
"Damnit! Curse that Arya of yours!!" I bellowed, my mandibles snapping in fury. My aura flared, sickly green light spilling across the battlefield in violent waves, but still, he endured.
Darius tightened his grip on Baltacek, the weapon pulsing in harmony with the beat of his heart. "This is a race against time, Trask. You can't hurt me anymore, and I can't comfortably fight with my remaining mana. So who will run out first?"
He lowered into a stance, every line of his body radiating discipline and resolve. He was no longer reacting to me. He was waiting. Daring me to waste myself against him.
And then he moved.
"First Strike: Yumruğu!"
Baltacek swung in a perfect arc, not wild, not rushed, but deliberate—an arc so precise it seemed to cut not just through the air, but through the moment itself.
I braced, folding my pincers across my body, my chitin thickening, prepared to absorb the crushing impact. My carapace had endured countless blows, had shattered bones, had outlasted storms of arrows and rivers of fire. I would not break to a single swing.
But the blow never came.
The hammerhead stopped short, just a breath away. The energy that had gathered within it dissipated—no, transferred. It slid past the weapon, past the air, and lodged itself directly into me. My body convulsed as the force detonated from within, an explosion of power erupting through my frame.
"What?!" The word tore from me, more a roar than speech.
The world spun. My body, built to devour and endure, was hurled like refuse, my limbs flailing against the impossible blast. I struck the ground with bone-crushing force, the earth shattering beneath me as though I were no more than a child's toy cast aside.
And then his voice came.
"Right back at you."
I clawed at the ground, dragging my body upright, mandibles twitching in rage and disbelief. He stood there, calm amidst the ruin, Baltacek still humming with that steady emerald rhythm. My own words thrown back at me, turned against me as surely as the force of his blow had been.
For the first time in centuries, I realized what it meant to be trapped in someone else's game.
Both of us were panting now, our bodies trembling beneath the weight of the battle. My aura flickered with strain, the green veins of poison across my chitin pulsing unevenly. His light—radiant though it was—quivered at its edges, as if each pulse cost him more than he could afford.
We were both breaking.
But he broke with dignity.
And I—I broke with hunger.
I snarled, my mandibles clattering like war drums. My fury boiled, no longer containable, spilling from me in a torrent of venom and madness. "Enough!!!" My voice echoed across the basin, carrying the weight of centuries of hatred, of hunger, of a life cursed to consume.
"TUTULMA HALI!!!"
At once my body convulsed, swelling with hideous power. My limbs split and reformed, jagged pincers erupting where hands had been. Wings unfurled from my back—vast, leathery things that bled a corrosive miasma into the air, turning stone to liquid beneath their shade. My chitin thickened, streaked black and green, glowing with veins of foul mana that pulsed in rhythm with my rage. My size doubled, tripled, until I towered over him—a grotesque monument to the creed of survival.
This was my true self. My perfect form. The shape that had once humbled an entire clan, that had silenced their jeers and turned their reverence into fear. This was what it meant to devour. To survive at any cost.
I roared, the sound a shriek of chitin and thunder. "This is the form through which I humbled my entire clan!!! I will end you, First Lord!!"
For a heartbeat, silence hung in the air—silence, and his steady breathing.
Darius exhaled slowly, gripping Baltacek with both hands. His shoulders straightened, his horns gleamed, and in that moment he looked less a man and more a pillar—an unbreakable thing carved by the will of creation itself.
His lips moved, his voice calm, yet unyielding:
"8th and 9th Strike: Sarsılmaz Dayanak + Aşırı Güç!!!"
The basin trembled. His aura erupted like a volcano, lemon-green light shattering the gloom. The power gathered into Baltacek until the weapon itself seemed to quake under the weight of it. I could feel it from across the field—his mana pressing down upon mine, steady, immovable, absolute.
I would not be outdone.
With a scream, I unleashed my storm—dozens of massive pincers tearing through the air like a swarm of blades. They rained down upon him, venom dripping from every serrated edge, enough to blot out the sky. The miasma of my wings spread with it, corroding even the light, as if to swallow him whole.
But he did not falter.
He met the onslaught head-on.
Baltacek swung, not once but many times, each strike a thunderous answer to my hatred. His blows crashed against my pincers, breaking them, splintering them, yet each time I regrew, I struck again. The clash was a storm of steel and venom, of light and shadow, of survival against endurance.
And then—
The world ended.
The explosion was not sound but force. A wall of light and venom tore through the valley, flattening mountains as if they were mere hills of sand. The ground itself split open, rivers of molten stone spilling where once had been solid rock. The shockwave raced outward, a roar that threatened to reach even Valoria, carrying with it the fury of two titans locked in hatred.
I staggered forward, wings tattered, my chitin cracked and oozing green light. Venom dripped from my mandibles, but I still stood. I still breathed. I still survived.
He was there as well, his body battered, his aura flickering, but his stance unbroken. His grip on Baltacek was firm, his eyes unyielding.
We were both alive.
I sneered, my mandibles twitching in bitter triumph. "I can't believe you survived that too. But I win this one..."
And then I called her.
Behind me, the shadow took form. A queen insect, vast and terrible, rose from my aura. Her silhouette loomed over the battlefield, her mandibles wide, dripping with the promise of finality. This was no trick, no feint—this was the end. One bite, and the First Lord would be crushed, consumed, forgotten.
I roared in triumph as her maw descended.
And then—
KRAKRA BOOOM!!!
The sky itself split open.
Lightning, pure and merciless, cascaded down like the wrath of the heavens. It struck the queen, incinerating her form in a blinding flash. Her scream was brief, swallowed by the roar of thunder. In an instant, my victory, my certainty, my survival—was reduced to ash.
My eyes widened, mandibles frozen mid-snarl. "What—?!"
The storm gathered into a shape. Lightning condensed, solidifying until it was no longer formless but a man, descending upon the field as though the heavens themselves had lent him to the cause.
Darius smirked, his lips curling into that same infuriating calm. "Took you long enough."
The figure spun his staff, sparks leaping in playful arcs around him, his eyes alight with mirth. Trevor Maymum.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, twirling the weapon as if the battlefield were no more than a stage. "You know how traffic can be."