The air was choked with silence.
The soldiers had retreated, the voices had faded, and all that remained were Zain's ragged breaths, mingling pain with cold.
Alone in the deserted battlefield, his body was covered in wounds, his clothes torn and stained with blood, like the ghost of a child who had just crawled out of a grave.
His eyes were half-lidded, his face pale, his breaths slow... but deep within him, something began to stir.
He lifted his head slowly, and his eyes gleamed with a strange light, as if they didn't belong to this world.
He whispered, his voice hollow and barely audible, as if speaking to the earth itself:
- *"The time has come... awaken... you who sleep in the depths..."*
Then he knelt, driving his hands into the scorched earth, as if searching for something beneath.
---
He began muttering words no one in this age had heard, words that echoed like the drums of ancient temples:
- *"Oudhi Ibaris... Nalam Barsit... Deshia Kor Nara..."*
- *"Open the gates... break the chains... let the earthquakes see the light..."*
With each syllable, the earth around him trembled like a living heart.
The sky above darkened to the color of ash, and day turned to dusk. A crimson glow crept from all directions, intertwining with the shadows in a grotesque dance.
Then, with a deliberate, ritualistic motion, Zain plunged his fingers into the ground until his wrists disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed him whole.
His whisper became an internal hum:
---
< *"By the covenant of blood... I offer this body and bones, a key to your door..." (In the name of catastrophe, I call you by your ancient name... the name I knew in visions: Karunon... Karthabat... Karark... The Cataclysm.)*
And the moment he uttered the final name... the world exploded.
The earth beneath him shook with indescribable violence, the sky cracked like glass, and a massive fissure stretched from the horizon to the clouds, devouring light.
From the fissure came a breath unlike any other—black, cold air, scented with metal and fresh blood, as if the world itself were bleeding. And a sound...
A sound not heard with ears but with bones, whispers of overlapping voices laughing, crying, and screaming all at once.
And from the fissure, the entity's features began to emerge.
---
A massive hand, covered in scales like volcanic rock, slowly materialized from nothingness, groping the earth like a blind man feeling the walls of a dark room.
Then another hand, then twisted horns coiled like towers folding in on themselves.
But the entity didn't fully emerge... it remained half in another dimension, only extending a part of itself, as if a single finger was enough to crush the world.
Every step it took generated a real earthquake, splitting the earth for miles, and the ruins collapsed like paper castles.
As for Zain, he remained kneeling, his hands still buried in the earth, his face smeared with blood and sweat, but he smiled with chilling calm.
He whispered, as if what was happening was natural:
< *"Just as promised... you haven't changed."*
---
Finally, he lifted his head, his eyes glowing like embers beneath ash, and muttered the closing words:
- *"Release the shackles... and let the flood begin."*
In the next instant, a deafening earthquake erupted...
Fissures formed in the earth like knotted magical seals,
every nearby city began to crumble,
and the Cataclysm... had officially descended.
As the quake intensified and the sky split, while the colossal entity slowly emerged from the black void, at that very moment...
Koran was there, watching from behind the ruins of a shattered city,
his eyes wide, his face streaked with tears and ash, his body trembling.
---
He didn't understand what was happening before him. He couldn't even think anymore.
Everything was beyond his comprehension.
His chest trembled, and he fell to his knees, whispering soundlessly, as if the words couldn't find their way out:
< *(This isn't fighting... this isn't something humans can understand... What is this? What in hell is this?)*
His eyes locked onto the giant entity emerging from the fissure, watching as mountains shook like sand and the sky swallowed light.
< *(Is this... a dream? No... it can't be a dream. I'm awake, right? This isn't a hallucination... this is real.)*
Then he whispered inside himself, a sentence that escaped like the whimper of a lost child in a storm:
---
# *(I don't understand this world anymore...)*
And in his eyes... the glow of the Cataclysm was reflected, as if he were witnessing the end of life for the first time.
Everything stopped.
The world seemed to shrink to that small patch where Zain stood,
his hands outstretched, dried blood covering his calm features.
His voice was soft, distorted by a tone that didn't seem to come from his mouth alone, but from somewhere far deeper... from the depths of the earth itself:
- *"We opened the gate... You are the plague..."*
- *"I am the caller... and you are the answer..."*
- *"By the blood spilled, and the night that has fallen, rise, O Cataclysm of Earthquakes..."*
---
Even the sky itself seemed to listen.
The earth beneath his feet began to split with fine cracks, like wounds, and from them... the entity rose.
But this time, the Cataclysm didn't appear in its colossal form.
First, its shadow emerged, dancing on the ground, then it gradually condensed until it became a small creature the size of a dog—though its appearance was far from animalistic.
Its shape shifted into a being with four twisted limbs, its skin gray as if covered in ancient, petrified mud, its face featureless except for two black hollows where eyes should be, and a wide, toothless smile.
Koran, frozen in place, felt his heart stop. He didn't understand, but he sensed something deeper than fear—something primal.
---
< *(This creature... no, this isn't a natural being. It's... something that doesn't belong in this world.)*
The Cataclysm moved with agonizing slowness toward Zain,
each step producing a crackling sound like breaking bones, until it stood before him.
Zain didn't move. He merely tilted his head back and opened his mouth.
In a cold, wordless moment,
the small creature began crawling toward his mouth.
The first thing to enter was one of its limbs,
then its entire body slowly slid inside, as if Zain's body were absorbing it.
The scene was terrifying in its silence,
no screams, no resistance,
just a quiet crawl into the mouth of a teenage boy, his eyes completely shut,
his body rigid.
---
Koran, unable to move his legs,
whispered in his mind, breathless, as if his lungs had collapsed:
< *(What kind of sick ritual is this... Is this... human?)*
On the other side, Kinzawi watched intently,
his eyes narrowed, his expression cold,
yet he whispered to himself, this time with mockery:
< *(He's consuming his entity... his body has become the vessel. The ritual of full merging...)*
*(This kind of monster... isn't born easily.)*
*(A boy his age... did this to himself?!)*
The last part of the creature disappeared into Zain.
And in the next moment, his mouth closed softly,
and a deep silence fell, as if all sound had been stolen from the world.