The Scorched Threshold
Ash stained the sky above Eldenfall.
Jack stood on a cliff's edge, overlooking the cursed forest surrounding the city. The shard beneath the city pulsed — not with divinity or sin, but silence. Hollow, humming, and hateful.
Behind him, Mira and Kaelis argued in low, sharp whispers. Seraphina sat sharpening her blade, her eyes watching the clouds.
Lira didn't speak. She hadn't since the Cradle fell.
Jack didn't care.
Not anymore.
> "The Null Choir wants the shard," Mira said. "And if what Sable told us is true—"
"Then they're not just after the shard," Jack interrupted. "They're after me."
He turned to face the others. His voice was colder than the mountain wind.
> "This is no longer a war between Heaven and Hell. This is a reckoning of all things divine and damned. The Choir wants the world empty. I won't let them have it."
Lightning crackled behind the clouds.
Eldenfall was waiting.
Hymns in Hollow Tongues
The city of Eldenfall was dying.
Not burning. Not bleeding. But… hollowing.
Windows stood open, curtains unmoving. Streets echoed footsteps that no one made. Bells rang with no ropes pulled. The closer Jack and his group drew to the city center, the quieter everything became.
Even their breaths felt stolen.
> "Where are the people?" Kaelis asked, hand on his blade.
> "Gone," Seraphina said. "Or hiding."
> "Or singing," Mira added softly.
They heard it now — a melody with no source. A choir with no mouths.
Jack stopped.
> "It's them."
From the center of the city, a cathedral long swallowed by ivy and dust rose like a dagger pointed at Heaven. Its doors were open.
And the song was louder now.
Jack clenched his fists. The Devil's mark on his chest burned in silent warning. Whatever was inside that church… it wasn't waiting to be found.
It was already watching.
---
The Voice of Silence
Inside the cathedral, the altar was shattered. Statues of saints had been turned inward, facing the walls as if ashamed. Candles flickered with black flame.
And at the center stood a man in a gray coat.
No wings. No halo. No horns.
But Jack knew instantly who it was.
> "Ashen Vox," he said.
The man turned slowly, his face devoid of expression, his eyes the color of void-washed marble.
> "Jack," Vox said, as if tasting the name. "God's mistake. Hell's deviation. The Devil's heir."
> "You're hunting shards," Jack said. "Why?"
Ashen Vox didn't blink.
> "Because your kind built ladders to Heaven and called it hope. And your enemies crawled out of Hell and called it freedom. I am here to end the architecture of both."
He raised a hand.
> "You should not exist."
The world trembled.
---
Shatter the Sky
Jack moved before Vox did. Fire burst from his palms. The Devil's mark blazed like a crimson sun.
But the flames vanished mid-air, devoured by silence.
Reality groaned.
Ashen Vox walked forward, unharmed. Runes of negation spun like halos behind him. Space trembled around his body like warped glass.
> "Your power," Vox whispered, "is still part of the problem."
Jack's body cracked as he forced his own Reality Distortion to break the choir's suppression. The cathedral exploded outward in a sphere of force.
Seraphina leapt through the rubble, sword drawn.
Kaelis followed, cloaked in smoke.
And above them all, Mira hovered, eyes lit with witchfire.
The battle began.
But Jack didn't join it.
He stared at Vox — and Vox stared back.
The rest of the world didn't matter.
Not in that moment.
It was tyrant versus tyrant.
Not for victory.
But for the right to shape the silence that would come after everything burned.
The Tyrant and the Hollow King
Jack blurred forward — not teleporting, not flying — just moving with impossible force, his fist wreathed in devilfire.
Ashen Vox did not block.
He simply vanished.
The impact shattered the cathedral floor.
> "You can't erase me," Jack growled, voice low and venomous. "I was made from the blood of a god you couldn't kill and a devil you never understood."
Vox's voice returned from above — from every direction at once.
> "And yet here you are… afraid."
From the shadows of the high arches, six Choir-hunters descended. Each wielded a different void-crafted relic — blades of prayer-etched glass, whips of hollow light, flutes that summoned ruptures in space.
Kaelis met them mid-air, dancing with flame and death. Seraphina's blade shone silver, a comet of steel. Mira unleashed unholy spells of entropy and rage.
But Jack didn't look back.
His eyes found Vox again, who floated above the altar, the runes around him spinning faster now — dozens of them.
Each was a silence given form.
Each could unmake gods.
---
The Death of Sound
Ashen Vox raised both hands.
And sound died.
Completely.
The wind. The blades. The screams.
Gone.
A wall of anti-sound expanded outward, swallowing the world. Seraphina dropped mid-leap, stunned by the null pressure. Kaelis screamed, but no sound emerged. Mira's spells fizzled, broken by cancellation.
Jack alone remained standing.
The Devil's mark glowed, shielding him in a crimson shell.
Vox landed across from him, the altar cracking beneath his boots.
> "You are immune," he said with curiosity. "Not through faith. Not through purity. But through defiance."
Jack grinned, the air warping around his teeth.
> "I'm not trying to save the world," he said. "I'm just here to break anyone who tries to claim it."
He lunged.
They clashed — not with sound, not with spectacle — but with pure, unseen force. Vox's null-fields collapsed as Jack punched through the silences. Every strike rewrote the rules. Every counter shattered probability.
The cathedral trembled.
The city shook.
And finally, the mark on Jack's chest cracked — just a hairline fracture.
And from it, something woke.
---
Something Beneath the Shard
Far below Eldenfall, in the chamber where the shard pulsed like a wounded heart, a ripple echoed.
The shard turned black.
A symbol burned into its surface.
Not divine.
Not infernal.
But Jack's.
The Choir's Fury
As Jack's punch tore through the silence, the Null Choir's hunters surrounding the altar roared—if such a thing was possible in their realm of soundless death. Their void-forged weapons ignited with savage energy, red and black flames licking out to consume the space around them.
Kaelis, still struggling against the null pressure, summoned a tempest of fire, swirling around her like a beacon. Seraphina danced between shadows, blades striking with desperate precision. Mira unleashed a wild torrent of flame and fury, igniting the darkness with raw power.
Toren and Jinx, newly arrived with reinforcements from the Black Bastion, cut through the Choir's lines, their teamwork seamless — lightning and shadows tearing the enemy apart.
But the Choir's numbers were relentless.
With a harsh cry, Sable Wren emerged from the shadows, her daggers flashing like twin comets. She moved like liquid silence, striking deep and swift. She eyed Jack briefly — not with hatred, but with cold calculation.
---
The Silent Duel
Jack's gaze locked with Sable Wren's.
She was the Choir's blade made flesh — silent, deadly, and relentless.
Without a word, she lunged.
Blood and shadows collided.
Jack's blood magic flared as he parried her strikes, the air charged with violent energy. Each movement was a clash of wills: his fury, her cold precision.
"You fight well," Jack admitted between blows.
Sable smiled faintly beneath her mask.
"Better than most."
Their dance was a deadly ballet — one neither wanted to end.
---
The Awakening
Suddenly, a shockwave rippled through the altar chamber.
The fractured mark on Jack's chest flared — cracking wider, spilling tendrils of crimson and void energy.
Jack staggered, vision blurring.
Behind him, the shard pulsed violently — its black surface glowing with new runes.
"It's reacting to you," Kaelis shouted, struggling to maintain her wards against the Choir's assault.
Jack's breath came heavy.
"Not me," he gasped. "Us."
The shard shattered, shards spiraling into the air.
From the broken relic, a voice echoed inside Jack's mind — ancient, deep, filled with power and warning:
"You are the key... and the end."
---
The Aftermath
The Choir's forces faltered, sensing the shift.
Sable Wren froze mid-strike, eyes narrowing beneath her mask.
Ashen Vox's eyes flared.
"This changes everything."
Jack stood tall, the fractured mark now glowing with unearthly light.
He looked at the broken altar, then to his allies.
"We're no longer just fighting for survival," he said, voice steady.
"We're fighting for control."
Lira stepped forward, her eyes fierce.
"Then we take it."
The battlefield was silent for a heartbeat.
Then the war raged on.
---
The Fractured Mark
Jack's body throbbed with power and pain. The fractured mark on his chest pulsed rhythmically, like a heartbeat syncing with the shard's broken magic. Every breath he took felt like inhaling both fire and void.
Kaelis moved beside him, her voice calm but urgent.
"The shard's energy is bonding with you. You're becoming something… more."
Jack clenched his fists.
"Or something worse."
Lira's eyes searched his face, wary but unwavering.
"We'll face it. Together."
Jack nodded, but his gaze was distant, already wrestling with the dark whispers threading through his mind.
---
The Retreat
The battle was turning. The Null Choir, shaken by the shard's reaction, began to pull back, retreating into the shadows from which they'd emerged. Ashen Vox gave a silent command — a wave of black mist swallowing their retreating forms.
Sable Wren lingered, eyes locked on Jack with a flicker of something unreadable — respect, regret, or perhaps a warning.
She vanished into the gloom just as Jack raised his hand, blood dripping from his fingertips, the mark flaring bright.
---
Burning Resolve
Under the dying light of Eldenfall's shattered cathedral, Jack gathered his battered allies.
"We've won a battle," he said, voice gravelly but fierce, "but the war is just beginning."
Kaelis stepped forward, studying the shards of the relic scattered at their feet.
"If the Null Choir wants all the shards, we have to find them first. Every one of them."
Seraphina sheathed her daggers, nodding.
"We'll strike before they can."
Mira's flames flickered low, then blazed.
"The world will burn if we let them."
Lira's gaze hardened.
"We'll make sure it's us holding the fire."
Jack's smile was cold but genuine.
"Good. Because I'm not just fighting to survive. I'm fighting to rule."
---
A New Dawn
The group moved out as dawn bled red across the sky, their shadows long against the ruins.
Jack's fractured mark burned steadily — a constant reminder that he was no longer just a man, but a nexus of ancient power and fractured destinies.
The first rays of sunlight caught the broken shards, glinting like the promise of war to come.
And somewhere, deep in the silence beyond worlds, the Null Choir's hymn began again.