(From beyond the veil… they came.)
Far beyond the last whisper of galaxies, where neither gods nor stars dared to shine, a war raged.
Not for power.
Not for conquest.
But for the right to exist.
There, where the edges of all realities fray into nothingness, ancient horrors moved.
They had no language, no thoughts, no names of their own.
Only an endless, all-consuming hunger.
The few who stood against them—those who even survived long enough to witness their shape—gave them a title forged in terror alone:
The All-Devourers.
They came from the void between truths, tearing at the seams of the known, seeking to consume the very foundations of creation—not from malice, but from pure, insatiable instinct.
Against them stood a last line of defense:
The Wardens of the In-Between.
Warriors, sages, anchors of order itself—tasked with preventing the merging, corruption, or collapse of the veils between worlds.
At their head stood a name still whispered among forgotten planes:
Antares.
The battle burned through endless twilight, across fractures of collapsed time and blinking motes of star-dust. Blades of light clashed with void-born claws. Screams echoed without sound.
"Hold the formation!" a Warden shouted, his voice cutting through the psychic static. "They're breaching on all flanks!"
"Reinforce the barrier, now!"
But for every creature that fell, a hundred more pressed in—amorphous, reality-draining things that moved like shadow and struck like silence.
Antares fought at the center, a whirlwind of force and will. He carved through shapes that had no form, holding the gate alone. But even he—the First Warden—could not stand forever.
A tendril, unseen, unspoken, struck him from behind. It pierced not his flesh, but his being.
He did not bleed. He unraveled.
Power. Memory. Purpose. Identity.
All slipped away, thread by thread, like smoke in a collapsing star.
And then—
A flash. A push. A scream.
"Not today—I won't let them have you!"
Durann, his closest comrade, unleashed a shockwave that tore back the Devourers for a heartbeat. In that breath, he opened a tear—an unstable portal—to anywhere beyond their reach.
There was no time. No debate.
"Live," he said, voice breaking. "You have to live."
And with that, Durann cast Antares into the breach.
He fell.
Through layers of broken realities, echoes of dying universes, past rules that no longer applied.
Then, silence.
Then—pain.
— — —
Antares awoke to the taste of dust and blood. The sky above was red and dim, filled not with stars but drifting smoke. The land was cracked, lifeless—a graveyard of time.
He felt weak. Hollow. Stripped of everything but breath.
"…Where… am I?"
His voice rasped. Then darkness claimed him once more.
— — —
Time passed. How long—none could say.
From the nearby hills, two figures emerged.
Short, hunched, with mottled, swamp-colored skin and limbs knotted with sinew and bone. Their faces were mockeries of humanity, with too-wide mouths, slit pupils, and sharp tusks jutting from dark lips.
One sniffed the air. "He's still breathing."
The other crouched beside the fallen figure, poking him with a crude spear. "Not from any tribe I know. Skin's too clean. Bones too tight. Could be noble-blood?"
"Or cursed."
They paused. Then grinned with jagged teeth.
"Doesn't matter. The Red Eye pays for meat like this—especially if it's rare."
They bound him with rough cords, one laughing gutturally as they dragged him toward the trade road.
No destiny awaited him here.
No crown. No prophecy.
Only chains.