The sounds of battle hadn't fully faded yet,
but that strange silence began to settle over the battlefield—
a silence of a different kind...
a silence that crept in with the ash.
Koran had left long ago,
and the fleeing soldiers were now distant phantoms dissolving into
the burning mist.
At the heart of the devastation,
Zain Falim knelt on the ground,
exhausted, half his body covered in bruises and scars,
breathing laboriously as if every particle of air turned to stone in
his chest.
He had spent everything...
his body, his strength, even his breath.
Standing over him was a man who seemed to have emerged from an ancient volcano,
a giant among men,
his body saturated with lava, clad in armor of molten rock,
his eyes glowing with a deep red light like embers beneath ash.
It was Dabmos Falim.
Dabmos didn't glance at the enemy.
Instead, he looked down at Zain lying before him,
approaching slowly, his footsteps alone enough to tremble the earth beneath them.
Then, through the smoke and ruin, he leaned slightly toward Zain and whispered in a tone neither angry nor pitying...
but calm, like the sound of a river flowing under ice:
*"Don't despair, Zain."*
Dabmos's voice was deep, as if the earth itself were speaking.
*"The truth is... you haven't refined your Kannen enough."*
He raised his massive hand and passed it gently over Zain's sweat-drenched head.
*"You're still young...*
*And in this world, as long as you're young... the possibilities for evolution are endless."*
His words weren't ordinary—
they seemed to pierce bone and soul alike.
Zain couldn't respond.
His trembling eyes stared up at Dabmos,
but all he saw was a reflection of himself...
weak, helpless, crushed under the shadow of a giant he could never match.
Inside him, a voice began to whisper:
*(I... am nothing before them.)*
*(I... am just a child pretending to be strong.)*
He felt a weight that nearly shattered him,
not just from the battle,
but from the naked truth Dabmos had coldly thrown in his face.
Dabmos straightened and stepped forward,
moving past Zain toward the other enemy,
his voice growing colder with each step:
*"As for me... I've reached the limits of the end."*
He raised his hand, and from his palm, small black flames began to coil,
while the ground around him groaned and ignited.
He didn't look back at Zain again.
But before he walked away, he said coolly, without even turning:
*"Watch closely, and learn."*
Then he continued, striding toward the heart of the battle,
while Zain remained behind,
kneeling on the fractured earth with shaking hands,
staring at Dabmos's massive, flaming back,
his heart squeezed by defeat.
Inside, he whispered hollowly:
*(I... am weak.)*
*(I... am nothing.)*
And that sentence alone
hurt more than all his wounds.
Dabmos stood there now, at the center of the battlefield,
and everything around him crumbled slowly,
as if the earth itself knew his name and feared it.
The heat in the air intensified—suffocating, primal,
ash falling from the sky like black snow,
the rocks beneath his feet cracking and melting like wax before an unquenchable fire.
The fleeing soldiers, even the seasoned fighters in the rear lines,
stopped unconsciously,
no one daring to interrupt now.
Dabmos slowly raised his right hand,
every muscle in his body moving with deliberate precision,
his voice emerging, deep and low, yet reaching everyone—
not as a shout, but as a whisper from the belly of a volcano preparing to erupt:
*"Hear me... O slumbering entity in the depths of fire."*
The echo of his voice reverberated through the earth itself,
as if the rocks whispered along with his words.
*"Hear me... O eternal volcano... O ember hidden in shadow."*
In the next moment,
the air shuddered violently, and from between his feet, a dark red aura erupted,
liquid lava boiling up from beneath his skin.
His voice grew slower... as if speaking into the abyss:
*"Let our bodies be one,*
*let my breath be your breath,*
*let the lava flow through my veins as it burns in your core."*
At his final word,
the earth beneath him exploded in silent fury,
and the entity... emerged slowly.
From the depths of the lava, a colossal shadow rose,
a body of molten rock and flame,
its features indistinct,
with two horns curving backward like a dragon's,
and eyes like two spheres of pure, glowing ember,
every step dripping fire that scorched the ground.
But instead of attacking,
the creature moved with unnatural grace for its size,
approaching Dabmos as if it knew its fate.
Dabmos didn't move.
He stood there, arms spread wide,
and as the entity reached him,
its form began shrinking rapidly.
In moments, it was the size of a small fiery bird, then a flickering wisp of flame in the air.
With a single motion,
Dabmos slowly opened his mouth...
and swallowed the entity whole.
No noise.
No howl.
No explosion.
The moment the creature was consumed,
Dabmos's body transformed abruptly...
his skin now veined with dark crimson fissures,
his eyes burning with pure flame,
smoke seeping from every crack in his flesh,
his chest pulsing slowly, like the heart of a living volcano.
The air around him grew thick, every breath tasting of death.
He stood there...
the very earth itself fearing him.
Finally, he whispered, his voice barely audible,
yet carrying the weight of centuries of pent-up fury:
*"I have returned."*