The sky was tinted with the soft orange hues of dusk when Harun returned from the marketplace, a small basket of wild berries and mangoes cradled in his arms. The village was quiet. Birds chirped softly. Somewhere in the distance, temple bells rang, their echoes bouncing across the trees like whispers of forgotten gods.
"Mother will like these," he muttered to himself with a faint smile.
But something felt… odd.
The air shimmered faintly. A low pressure, like the kind before a storm, prickled across Harun's skin.
As he turned into the narrow alley that led to his house, he paused. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a familiar figure moving quickly down the main road.
"Leena?"
She didn't look back. Didn't wave. Didn't even seem to hear him.
A strange chill ran down his spine. Leena was always friendly, always talkative—this silent urgency was unlike her.
" LEENA.!! HEY!!!... he called out, louder now.
No response.
Curiosity flared into something else—concern, maybe. Or the stirrings of something deeper. Harun hesitated, then placed the fruit basket on a neighbor's porch and silently followed her.
Through winding paths and narrow trails, he tailed her. She moved like someone with purpose—urgent, deliberate. Finally, she disappeared into the dense forest at the village's edge.
Harun slowed his pace, careful not to snap twigs or step on dry leaves. He didn't know what he expected, but what he saw next nearly made him cry out.
In the center of a clearing, under a half-dead oak, Leena stood with a cloaked man. They were whispering—but the man looked uneasy. Nervous. He kept glancing around. Then Leena drew something from her satchel.
A Dravillian stone—dark crimson with flickers of fire.
Harun's eyes widened. Flame level…
She chanted something in a tongue he didn't recognize. Suddenly, she grabbed the man's wrist, drew a blade, and slit his palm open. Blood dripped onto the Dravillian stone, which glowed brighter with every drop.
Then—without hesitation—she stabbed him in the chest.
Harun clamped his hand over his mouth, a scream choking in his throat. The man collapsed. Dead.
And the storm began.
Thunder roared from nowhere. The sky blackened like ink spilled across parchment. Wind shrieked through the trees. Lightning didn't flash—it cracked open the sky like shattered glass.
Harun stumbled backward. "What are you doing?!"
But no one heard him.
A massive rift split the air. From it descended a nightmare.
Fifteen feet tall, black armor laced with violet veins of void energy. Its limbs were long, with blade-like appendages extending from its arms, and its face—if one could call it that—was a swirling abyss of eyes, each blinking out of sync.
Leena dropped to her knees, trembling. "Please, great Kael'Thar… transform my Dravillian flame to the Void level!"
The creature's laughter chilled the marrow in Harun's bones.
Kael'Thar. The Void Reaper. An Agya-class monstrosity.
Harun's heart pounded. He had read about such things in ancient scrolls, myths passed down through hunters. Creatures from other dimensions, older than the stars.
He didn't think they were real.
Kael'Thar raised a clawed hand toward Leena—but instead of blessing her, he slashed.
Blood sprayed. A heartbeat later, Leena's body crumpled, split in half.
" NOO..!!!". Harun screamed, rushing forward.
But it was too late.
Kael'Thar turned his thousand eyes toward him, void tendrils licking the air like serpents. Harun froze. Every muscle screamed to run, but his legs betrayed him.
From above, a sharp whistling sound—then a crash.
A figure had landed between them.
A hunter. Vayu-level. Cloaked in wind energy, blades of air crackling around him.
Kael'Thar roared, and the battle began.
It was chaos. Trees exploded. Earth trembled. Lightning danced like snakes around them. The hunter fought valiantly—swift, agile, powerful—but Kael'Thar was too strong. His void blades pierced even enchanted armor. The hunter was bleeding, broken…
…and yet he smiled.
"You'll never touch the boy," he whispered—and drove his last breath into one final strike that scorched Kael'Thar's chest and threw Harun away from the blast.
Then… silence.
Harun coughed violently. Smoke stung his eyes. His ears rang. His arms were trembling.
He sat up—and saw the hunter's body, still and lifeless.
Kael'Thar stepped through the smoke, unfazed.
Harun's heart stopped.
"Now," Kael'Thar said in a voice like cracking bones, "it's your turn."
He lifted a finger.
And unleashed voidfire.
It wasn't like normal fire. It devoured instead of burned. Trees vanished. Air twisted. Space shattered.
Harun screamed and threw up a barrier—a weak one, barely enough. The force knocked him to one knee, blood trickling down his mouth.
He looked up.
Kael'Thar was floating again, laughing. "I expected more from you. Or was that Vayu hunter your only hope?"
Harun gasped, fingers clutching the ground. He couldn't win. He couldn't run. He wasn't strong enough.
But then—
The stone in his chest… pulsed.
Not with light—but darkness.
Thick, ancient, heavy.
Kael'Thar paused. His smile faltered.
"What… is that?"
Harun didn't know. He only knew that something inside him was stirring. Something cold, powerful… and angry.
Shadows rippled around him. His eyes turned into blue-black slits. His veins glowed with abyssal energy. The air around him hummed with pressure.
Harun floated up.
"I'm not done," he said.
And then—
He moved.
Faster than light. Kael'Thar didn't even react in time. Harun's fist slammed into his chest, sending out a wave of pure voidshock. Kael'Thar crashed back, trees falling around him.
Harun landed softly, shadow tendrils curling around his arms like living armor. He could feel Kael'Thar's currents—and control them.
The Void Reaper rose again, snarling. He opened rifts, launched multi-dimensional spears—but Harun moved like he could read time. Each strike missed. Each rift bent before touching him.
Then—
Harun reached forward and twisted the air.
Kael'Thar's own attacks reversed.
They struck him.
The creature staggered, roaring in disbelief. Never—never—had his own power betrayed him.
But Harun wasn't done.
He dashed again, faster than thought, and struck Kael'Thar's jaw. The Reaper flew across the forest floor, tearing trenches as he fell.
Harun hovered above, panting.
But his body… shook.
> "You're not ready to use more…"
"This… is just 4% of what sleeps within you."
A voice. Inside his head. Deeper than thought.
He clutched his skull. "What… what are you?"
> "I am what you sealed away… I am what they feared… I am the Dominion. And you… are my vessel."
Harun's vision blurred. His muscles strained.
Kael'Thar rose again, cracked and bleeding, but now wary. "You… you're no ordinary hunter."
Harun didn't answer.
He was trying not to fall apart.
His arms burned. His lungs felt like fire. His thoughts were spiraling.
Kael'Thar snarled and began charging a dimensional spear—massive, unstable, with stars dying at its core.
And Harun—shaking, sweating, burning from within—knew this battle wasn't over.
No.
It had just begun.
Kael'Thar stood still, his monstrous form cracked and dripping with black essence. Gone was the pride in his jagged smile, replaced by a tightness in his expression — not of rage, but of something older… fear. His claws twitched, eyes narrowing at the boy before him. Harun's aura had dimmed slightly, its brightness flickering like a dying flame — yet something about him was now utterly wrong. Not just wounded, not just empowered. Possessed, perhaps. Or changed from within.
It was like he wasn't the only soul inside his own body anymore.
Kael'Thar hissed through clenched fangs. "This vessel… he's becoming something else."
He looked down at his hands — claws once indestructible, now hairline fractured, thin black smoke rising from his veins. The Abyss had never betrayed him before. Never bent before a mortal. But now… now the air itself bent away from Harun.
The realization chilled him: If this continues… he will surpass me.
No more games. No more waiting.
Kael'Thar raised both arms and began to chant — not in any human dialect, but in the forgotten, fractured tongue of the void gods. The language itself seemed to crack reality with each word.
> "Mar'Zul Dranak...Fos Valrun...!!!!
I summon the sleeper...
I call upon" DREADMAR..."!!
Instantly, the sky writhed like a wounded serpent. Not just dark — void. All color bled from the world like paint washed from canvas. The blue of the sky, the green of the grass, the blood on Kael'Thar's claws — all gone. Replaced with shades of uncolor, indescribable in the language of light.
The ground shattered, not with fire or magma, but with shadow that bled upward like liquid gravity. Trees withered into husks, their bark splitting to release ethereal screams. Even time slowed, skipping seconds like a broken film reel.
Then…
A claw the size of a house emerged from the chasm Kael'Thar had created. Ancient, not flesh but armored in bone-like obsidian — etched with lines that refused to be understood. A head followed — featureless, smooth like stone worn over eons, but covered in endlessly shifting runes that moved as if alive.
And then a voice — no, not a voice, a reverberation across existence — echoed in every plane, every soul, every atom:
> "Who disturbs my slumber...
for a second time?"
Harun stumbled back. His Abyssal Dominion flared in response, but for once it felt fragile. Even with the power of shadows coursing through him, this presence wasn't just overwhelming — it was wrong. Ancient beyond ancient. Older than fear. Older than time.
Kael'Thar fell to one knee, his head bowed. "Lord Dreadmar… I offer this battlefield to you. Grant me strength. Help me destroy this boy."
The entity's neck cracked as it tilted, studying Harun. Its gaze — for it had no eyes — pierced through him like needles of infinite judgment.
> "Interesting vessel...
Half-awakened...
Shall I test your worth?"
Without warning, a black tendril burst forward — a wisp of anti-reality, aimed straight at Harun's heart.
And just as it was about to touch him — a scream echoed within his mind. Not his voice. But his own, somehow.
> "DEFEND YOURSELF.
He is beyond Kael'Thar.
You must survive — no matter what it takes."
Harun roared.
His Abyssal Dominion exploded outward, but it wasn't just shadows this time. A phantom creature — something barely visible to mortal sight — flickered behind him. It was massive, wings shaped from luminous runes, a body made of spectral energy and bound fury. A guardian, perhaps. Or something even he didn't understand.
Harun raised a hand and blocked the tendril — but barely.
It stopped an inch from his chest, quivering, then retracted.
Dreadmar's voice returned, colder, intrigued.
> "Hmm… you blocked 4% of my touch.
You may live… for now."
And then came the three words that cracked the realm further:
> "Let the game begin."
The earth rumbled.
The battlefield was no longer earth, no longer forest or plain — but a void arena, suspended in nothing, with hexagonal platforms of reality barely held together by runes. All life had fled. All light had died.
Harun stood between two monsters now: Kael'Thar, the abyss-born prince of shadow, and Dreadmar, the Sleeper Beyond Time.
And both had set their eyes on him.
Kael'Thar rose slowly, the Void god's presence infusing him with pale fire. His wounds stitched shut with writhing tendrils, his body pulsing with newfound dread. "You see, boy?" he growled, voice distorted by the god's echo. "You may have scratched me… but I have the favor of the Sleeper."
Harun didn't respond. His eyes were distant — as if seeing not the world, but something through it.
Something inside him whispered again: He is not your final enemy. Dreadmar watches for more than battle. He tests your soul.
The phantom behind him stirred, letting out a silent screech as if reacting to some unseen challenge.
Kael'Thar charged — no longer arrogant, but empowered. His first blow was faster than lightning, but Harun dodged, countering with a sweep of Dominion that cut through dimensions. Sparks of black and white clashed — but even their war was only foreplay for the true terror looming above.
Dreadmar hovered, immobile. Yet with every breath, reality flickered. His tendrils wrapped around the edges of the void arena like strings of a puppet master, tightening the stage.
> "Show me what lies beneath your fear…
Or be consumed by it."
Kael'Thar roared. "I will finish this, my Lord. I—"
But Harun moved. Faster than thought.
He slammed Kael'Thar with a fist that shattered the abyssal armor on his chest — then spoke for the first time.
His voice was layered.
His voice was two.
" I WILL NOT FALL,"Harun said.
> "Not now.
Not before I know what I've become."
Kael'Thar screamed — a mix of rage and desperation.
The battle resumed.
And above them, Dreadmar smiled.
Though it had no mouth.