Suddenly, the world seemed to halt. The breeze froze mid-whisper, the melody of battle strangled into silence, and even the endless march of time refused to move forward. What broke that silence was no natural sound, but a rupture of an echo dredged from the pit of hell itself. The sound did not merely ring; it invaded. It crawled into the marrow of gods and demons alike, stealing their breath, paralyzing their hearts. All eyes fixed upon the mask, and the mask, impossibly, was still.
It was a face carved between two realms—wrath and serenity stitched into the same flesh.
On the left, humanity had long since fled. What remained was lacquered armour masquerading as skin, the visage of a man reforged into a demon's icon. The brow and cheekbones were ridged with cruel, deliberate carvings, each line sharp enough to wound the eye. From the fractures seeping across its surface leaked faint streams of ember-orange light, like veins carrying molten fire. A horn's broken base jutted from the temple, its spiralled ridges burnt black at the root, paling toward an ash-white edge.
The forehead's jagged planes converged upon a third eye, rimmed in cracked, molten edges. Its iris burned alive—yellow feeding crimson, crimson sinking into black, a vertical slit slicing through the glow. The lids were scorched, blistered, torn raw, as though the eye itself had devoured them. Shadows pooled beneath a protruding brow ridge, casting the blood-orange eye into a hollow of menace. Even the nose sharpened into a blade, its angles cruelly predatory, while ornamental scars swept back across the cheek into darkness. The snarl below stretched cracked lips into lacquered shards, revealing an elongated canine slick with wet glint—yet the mouth behind it was not flesh, but void, a blackness that devoured the gaze.
On the right, serenity answered. The skin was unbroken, luminous with a faint inner glow, its surface soft and unscarred. Lines bent with gentleness, curving into balance. Light touched it like dawn on still waters, calm and undisturbed. Upon its smooth forehead, a second third eye blossomed: pearl-white layered in translucent ruby, haloed in rose light, its pupil perfectly round. It radiated composure, a jewel of quiet divinity against the ruin beside it.
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The first breath was wrong.
From the left mouth, a tar-black gas unfurled, curling like smoke yet heavier, sinking instead of rising. From the right mouth came its counterpart, a pallid, chalk-white vapor, soft as breath upon glass, but strangely cold, clinging to the air like frost. They wept together, although it was not with water. From the right eye, thin rivulets of red began to pour, not tears but blood in steady threads. From the left eye, something darker pressed forth, viscous, shapeless, like tar given life. The face was crying, but each stream contradicted the other, as though the halves of a single body belonged to different deaths.
Then the third eye quivered. Slowly, its sealed lid broke open, and from within surged a thick stream of blackened blood, the liquid searing as it rolled downward, soaking the cheeks and dripping onto the jaw. The entire face seemed to sag under the weight of this grief, flesh damp and glossy, a mask drowning in its own fluids.
Atop the head, something began to bloom. Pearlescent orbs swelled like tumours, each pulsing faintly with light before splitting open into bleeding blossoms. They were lotus, but wrong—petals lacquered in crimson, veins crawling with dark pus that seeped out in threads. The blossoms sprouted and tore as fast as they opened, leaving a crown of rotting flowers on the human skull.
The face shuddered, and with a groan like stone splitting, the two halves began to tear apart—not along the natural seam, but down the centre of the chin and skull where no separation should be. Flesh peeled, bone cracked, skin resisted then surrendered. The halves drifted apart like continents breaking away, and through the rift, nothingness waited.
At first, that flowing river was seen, but it started to dissolve into pitch black. But the darkness shifted. Hairline cracks spidered across the ceiling of that void, glowing faintly violet. Like the half-open eye of a colossal Buddha, the cracks widened, trembling. A slit opened, and through it poured a searing red radiance. The emptiness became a chamber flooded in crimson. A sea made entirely of blood, without shore or reflection.
The eye itself bled like a victim stabbed within its socket, and though it was divine in scale, its weakness was hideous, suffering made eternal. Its iris glowed not with colour but with burning galaxies, spirals of fire consuming themselves.
And then, without warning, five more eyes opened above it. Each peeled open like infected wounds in the sky.
The first eye glowed golden. From it trickled yellow ichor, thick and glowing faintly like melted wax. Its iris resembled fractured glass, shards rearranging endlessly.
The second eye was pale blue. Its blood was thin, almost watery, and each drop hissed as it touched the red ocean. The iris was a crystalline world, veins of frozen rivers branching like arteries through transparent stone.
The third eye shimmered green. Its tears oozed in thick vines, each drop trailing tendrils like roots. The iris pulsed with an image of endless jungle, but inverted, vines curling into galaxies of thorns.
The fourth eye burned violet. Its blood was darker than wine, streaked with sparks of light. The iris was a storm—clouds roiling inward toward an eternal spiral, lightning frozen within.
The fifth eye opened in sickly pink. From it spilled froth, bubbly and corrosive, that sizzled upon contact with the red sea. The iris resembled fleshy tissue, an inner world of membranes and nerves, like a living organ turned inside out, throbbing with whispers of joy and disgust at once.
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The eyes hung there in perfect geometry, six corners of a hexagon, all staring, all bleeding at once. The colours mixed in slow spirals, and where no mortal eye could track, infinitesimal seeds were born, each one splitting into more until the sea became thick with unseen life. The stench was unbearable, iron-rich blood curdling with the sour tang of rotting fruit, mixed with the raw musk of something recently slaughtered.
From that shifting soup, something began to emerge. At first, nothing but veins—endless cords of red, coiling like worms. They collided, bent, fused, tore, then merged again, a throbbing nest of organic ropes. They pulsed as though some colossal heart far below forced ichor through them. The sound of it was wet and suffocating: shlorp, crack, squelch, the veins tearing against each other like raw meat stretched too thin. Suddenly, one bulged upwards, straining, splitting open to reveal a grotesque bud.
It did not bloom like a flower. It unrolled like a rotten scroll, leaves curling outward, yet each leaf was nothing but layered horrors—bones pressed into veins, teeth lined up like pale midribs, skull fragments fused into ridges. Patches of skin stitched across the surfaces twitched as though still alive, gooseflesh rising. Within the folds beat embedded lungs, tiny hearts, tubes and valves sputtering out dark fluid. From the leaves sprouted ribs like spikes, and tiny suckers wriggled, glistening wet. The smell was overwhelming—blood warm and metallic, mixed with something acidic, almost chemical. Oozing from between the seams, fresh streams of gore dripped, as if the leaves themselves had been cut from screaming animals seconds ago.
Another bulge swelled, veins parting to make way for a second bud. This one grew larger, trembling with spasms before peeling itself open. A lotus—but no lotus ever looked like this. The bud-petals did not soften into beauty; instead, they yawned like worm mouths, ridged with thorns that tore the membrane apart. Other petals followed, not petals at all but skeletal hands—five-fingered bones curled outward, locked together, bound by ligaments stretched thin as paper. Translucent membranes connected them, quivering when the bloom breathed. And in the centre of this horrific lotus, the stamen swelled into a single, glaring eye, its iris burning with cruelty. It blinked with...
All across the blood-realm, more grotesque blossoms rose. One lotus grew from fiery feathers of birds, the barbs blackened and smoking, fused to skulls of sparrows and hawks, their beaks snapping soundlessly. Another swelled from veins that split into wings of bats, stretched and webbed, dripping black ichor that hissed as it hit the blood-sea. Yet another bloom bore animal heads grafted into its petals, deer eyes rolling, dogs' muzzles locked open in eternal howls, the stench of decay wafting from their mouths.
Each bloom pulsed, shuddered, then settled into place, feeding on the red sea. But their growth was not steady. Many swelled halfway, then split with a cracking noise, shattering into fragments of bone and tendon, dissolving back into the blood. The air was filled with the sound of splitting flesh, cracking bone, dripping pus. The void trembled with their birth and death, as if even this world rejected their existence.
Still, they multiplied, grotesque lotuses of bone, blood, and torn life, until the entire red world became a forest of horrors, a garden of abominations blooming in unending cruelty.
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Then a sudden shook happened, 6 giant pillars. The pillars groaned as they settled, cracking with the sound of marrow splitting inside them, as though they had been pulled directly from the spine of some colossal corpse. A tremor rattled through the sea of blood below, and then it came—the loon's roar. It was no bird's cry, but something lower, wet, like air being forced through a throat rotted with worms. From the surface of that endless crimson sea, six colossal loons rose, their bodies skeletal yet swollen with patches of festering skin, feathers slick with rot and clinging like mould to carrion. Their necks twisted unnaturally as they spiralled upward around the six bone pillars, beaks chattering like rusted blades grinding together.
When they reached the top, their skull-beaks locked into place, each aiming inward, and with another sickening bellow, they vomited beams of light. Not one colour but six, each hue writhing like it wanted to crawl off the light itself, sickly yellow, bruised violet, ocean-rot green, pallid white-blue, a flesh-pink far too human, and a final red that was not absence but anger. The beams converged, colliding in a convulsion of sound like teeth gnashing, birthing a flat plane of liquid darkness. It hardened, shivering as if alive, until it resembled a platform of black glass slicked with oil and blood.
On its surface something began to grow. At first, only outlines, vague contours like hands pressed against wet paper. Then came the skulls, five of them, enormous, each forcing its way out of the sludge of black like new-borns from a diseased womb. The first gleamed a pale silver that glistened like mercury; the second, golden but tarnished as if dipped in bile; the third bone-white, pitted with cavities as though eaten by insects; the fourth a deep charcoal, its surface cracking, dust spilling out like ash; the fifth shimmered magma blue, as though the marrow inside it still burned with trapped fire.
Their empty sockets were dark, but then, flicker. A hollow light seeped in, not glowing but oozing, as though some unseen organ behind the bone had ruptured. The sockets filled, then erupted. From them bled streams, not clear blood but viscous rivers of crimson too thick, almost gelatinous, sliding down in ropes. It poured across the black platform, spreading into patterns—circles, pentagons, hexagons, designs that twisted and shifted like living geometry. Each shape pulsed faintly with iron and rot. The smell was unbearable: copper of blood, sour of spoiled milk, sweetness of decay all suffocating at once.
The black substance across the platform began to flow, dragging everything toward the centre as though the ground itself were swallowing its own vomit. Slowly, piece by piece, a throne began to emerge. Not golden, not silver, but a throne of bone. At first, it was hidden beneath the black film, but as the sludge thinned, the truth came out: it was no crafted seat. It was a collection of bones ripped raw from animals, fused in impossible angles. Spines coiled upward like serpents, ribs interlocked into a jagged crown, femurs jutting like spears. The marrow within them still shone faintly, as though freshly gnawed.
The throne did not simply stand. It grew. Blood soaked it, filling its cracks, binding it tighter, and the black pus that had flowed earlier now hardened into resinous veins streaking the surface. It became majestic in the most grotesque way, like a carcass dressed in royal garb.
Behind the throne, a new structure rose, not carved but thrust from the very bones of the world. Spines elongated, curving into an arc that resembled a cathedral window, yet their tips were sharpened into hooks. On them were impaled the skulls of beasts. Wolves frozen in snarls, their teeth still wet with phantom saliva. Ravens with hooked beaks locked in eternal hunger. Rams twisted, horns coiling like blackened lightning bolts, charred from within. And worst of all, a bull's skull split jagged down the middle, as if some unseen god had smashed it in fury.
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Then the blood began. From each hollow eye, from each jaw split in perpetual scream, thick scarlet poured forth. The skulls vomited rivers of it until the throne seemed freshly dipped in dye, slick with crimson that dripped, pooled, and steamed. The blackened bone drank the blood greedily, as if feeding, as if preparing. The smell of copper thickened, suffocating, coating the tongue.
High above, the six dragons writhed as though seized by invisible chains. Their roars dwindled into choking gasps before they collapsed against the pillars, skulls pressed like trophies to the bone spires. Their lifeblood gushed from their jaws, cascading downward until the pillars themselves ran red, dyed as if baptized in carnage. The pillars moaned with the weight of their new inheritance, their surfaces warping with crawling veins of scarlet and black.
The sea below convulsed. From its depths rose bones—skulls, femurs, ribcages—erupting skyward in a frenzy, attaching themselves to the pillars with a wet cracking sound. What had been mere columns now twisted into demonic effigies, grotesque towers that seemed to pulse like living flesh.
The hall fell silent. For a moment it was as if nothing remained alive.
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When we stared upon the throne, at first there was only emptiness.
A blank silhouette, dyed a suffocating red, as though the world had bled itself dry to paint that seat of ruin.
Then the silence cracked.
The world twitched, shuddered—like a corpse remembering breath.
With the first blink of the new reality, we saw her.
A woman lay sleeping on the throne.
Her figure was swathed in garments not of silk or cloth, but of bone—polished ivory shards layered like petals of an infernal flower, and yet armoured, cruel. The gown seemed alive, fragments shifting with the faint rattle of death. Around her shoulders hung chains of vertebrae, forming a mantle that quivered faintly with every measured breath, each vertebra clicking together like teeth grinding.
A helmet crowned her head, carved from the massive skull of some long-forgotten beast. Its fangs fell downward into a jagged visor, shielding her face in the maw of a predator. Two horns, twisted and unnatural, jutted from its crest, their tips blackened as though scorched by fires older than time. Beneath this monstrous crown, only fragments of her humanity leaked through: pale lips, still as if carved from marble, and a single eye half-cracked open, glowing with ember light.
Her arms were scripture themselves. Black sigils, tattoos shaped like curling brands, wrapped around her flesh. They did not rest on the surface, but sank into the skin as though the body itself had agreed to bear scripture. Their faint glow pulsed irregularly, waking whenever her presence sharpened. It was as if the ink remembered torment.
Her hands rested delicately, but menace breathed within them. Fingers stretched long, tipped in claws that gleamed black and glassy, sharpened to pierce stone. Her hair, heavy and damp like congealed blood, flowed down her back in streams of crimson streaked with shadow-black, tangled with thorned branches and shards of bone that gleamed faintly, grotesque ornaments fashioned by death itself.
And then—
She woke.
Not all at once, but as if her awareness had always been awake and only her flesh remembered. She rose from the throne like a queen resuming dominion.
She did not open her eyes.
A grotesque sound ruptured the silence—a slithering, wet scrape, the rolling of a tongue stretched from the void. It unfurled across the floor, a red carpet of living flesh, glistening and steaming, trembling as though forced into worship. Her first step fell upon it with elegance, a heel gracing the muscle. At once, death-flowers bloomed along the tongue's edges—petals of rot and thorns shaped like jaws, flowers that cried with the voices of the damned.
On her second step, the lotus that had lingered near the pillars fled violently, dispersing into the black waters as if in terror.
On her third, two immense pillars of bone tore upward beside the road. They were not still monuments but writhing spines, human shapes half-merged, howling, their skulls tilted in agony as though begging to die yet forced to stand eternal. Their moans reverberated like the sound of marrow being chewed.
Step after step, her presence devoured the world.
On the thirteenth step, she reached the gate.
As her foot met the ground of this plane, the world convulsed.
The earth screamed with such violence that the air itself fractured. Black fissures split the space, white fire bleeding through like light escaping from broken glass.
Then, at last, she opened her eyes.
Two eyes, burning, unblinking, awake. The void behind them swam with a storm of red suns, eclipses overlapping one another endlessly.
A smile stretched across her lips. Pale, cold, and merciless.
She raised her hand, every movement deliberate, graceful—then with sudden cruelty, she thrust it downward.
Reality broke.
From above, a long sword fell. Not forged of steel but shaped from the abyss itself. The very sky screamed as it ripped open, the air twisting into ribbons as the blade plummeted.
Before her stood only a fragile figure.
A woman on a bamboo pole, carrying an umbrella. She moved with quiet futility, tossing the umbrella skyward in desperate defiance.
But there was no use.
The sword did not stop.
Without resistance, she was erased.
No scream, no blood—only obliteration, her existence crumbling into nothingness, scattered dust swallowed by the blade's shadow.
But the world followed.
It folded in on itself, its veins flooding red, until all that remained was a sea of blood.
And within it, her voice.
Smooth, elegant, dripping with the inevitability of fate.
"How are you… sister?"
From nowhere, from everywhere, a whisper answered.
"The Thirteenth Eclipse."
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The battlefield quaked with the ragged roar of a wounded tiger. Its striped body was torn and bleeding, yet its final strike had been delivered with desperate fury. The claws carved clean through the torso of the towering, spider-limbed monkey demon, splitting its twisted flesh down the middle. For one fleeting moment, silence followed—then the wound erupted.
Flames bloomed from within the demon's sundered body, spilling outward in a grotesque wave. The fire was unnatural, hungry. It seized not only the demon's flesh but also the world around it—latching onto nearby demons and even unfortunate humans. Screams bled into the air as the battlefield was swallowed in orange and black. The tiger, its aura guttering like a candle on its last breath, collapsed and vanished in the blaze, leaving behind only the scorched imprint of its struggle.
The cursed sword, once gleaming with terrible intent, could not withstand the eruption. With a sound like shattering bone, it fractured, fragments of black steel scattering like dying stars before dissolving into ash.
From the burning wreckage, the demon's form began to collapse inward. Its grotesque spider limbs curled and shrivelled, body shrinking, tightening, until it reassembled into something smaller, eerier—an echo of the jester it once had been. Ragged clothing clung to its body, patches burned away, black blood trickling from every opening. Fire still clung to its frame, crawling along his skin like serpents of flame. Panting, trembling, he knelt, clutching the haft of a jagged scythe. Then, with a sudden burst of motion, he staggered forward, toward the man who still stood amidst the ruin.
Before the strike could land, a single feather, descended between them. It was an owl's feather. It hovered, impossible, yet absolute.
A voice, cold and commanding, followed:
"I will allow only myself to kill him. Do not lay a hand on him."
The jester froze, scythe raised, chest heaving. His painted grin twisted as his gaze lifted. In front of him stood another man, calm and still. He did not flinch. His eyes fixed upon the jester with an unyielding expression.
That man's hand clutched that sword, that stabbed him. he used his energy to melt it down totally. Smoke curled upward, yet he laughed.
"You bastards. Do you think this will stop me?"
The words hung, brittle, until something new stirred. From the wound in his chest, a purple corruption began to seep, oozing like living tar.
A betrayer's voice, jagged with cruel delight, answered:
"Don't worry. Now it can stop you. Ah… ahahahaha…"
The man slowly turned, facing his so-called friend. His smile did not falter, though his eyes glinted with something colder.
"See, my friend. This is how it is. Life changes. Time ticks. The old rules… the old sentiments… they should have died long ago. A new law must rise. A new ruler must come."
He circled, rotating deliberately from right to left, his words dripping with venomous certainty.
"You cling to your brittle codes, your dying sentiments. It is your fault, brother. Your weakness, not mine. My friend, my friend…"
His voice broke into a staccato chitter, "chchchchcchh…" as he lifted both hands, balancing two small spheres of energy.
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The jester tilted his head, a grin carved too deep into his charred face, both scythes twirling between his hands like extensions of bone. His voice cracked but gleamed with delight as he muttered, "Well done, old owl."
From the shadows came a rasping chuckle, a whisper slithering through smoke. "Well done from you also. Good to see you… my new partner."
The jester stepped forward, hungry for blood, but the owl's feather brushed the earth in warning. The man in black feathers raised one hand, eyes like deep wells that had forgotten the light. "Anha… don't go. An injured tiger is still a tiger. Even wounded, it is more ferocious than a dragon. Be patient. Wait for the poison to chew him hollow. Until then, why not… a little fun?"
The jester's grin widened, teeth reflecting the fire around them. "Sure," he hissed, spinning his scythes once more, eager for games.
The broken man, standing amidst flame and ruin, coughed through a bitter laugh. His body trembled, but his eyes burned. "Why did you do this? We could have crushed them… annihilated everything together."
The old owl spread his wings slowly, feathers dripping ash. His voice came soft, but each syllable scraped like rusted metal. "Brother, brother. What a sweet sound you make. But what a dangerous meaning it carries. You use it wrongly… in the wrong place. I merely accepted a proposal. A command, from my lord who whispers beyond the veil. He offered to you as well, but you refused."
The man's lips curled, part sneer, part grief. "So this is it… merely ego? He ordered you, and you bent the knee. You even bartered with demons. Fool. Blind fool. You should know the truth of such bargains."
His voice grew louder, words cracking like thunder through the blood-choked air.
"If a demon saves you, do not rejoice. His claws are chains. His gift is no blessing, but a hunger, a slow consumption—until all that you are rots into ash."
His hands shook as he raised the shattered hilt of his sword, but still he spoke, burning each word into their marrow.
"If a god saves you, do not be blinded. His mercy is a brand, seared into your soul. His aid is a debt that gnaws forever, your essence woven into his throne as another ornament."
His final breath trembled into silence, the fire catching his shadow like a cage of its own.
"Both are prisons—one of flame… one of light. Salvation is never free."
He question again with half scorn and half amusement
"Do you think he will live well? Wait some years, you will know. One more thing…" He coughed, blood spattering, vanishing into steam before it reached the ground. His grin widened, teeth red, voice hoarse but sharp. "I have long known, never trust the owl folk. They always backstab when most needed. You all are weaklings, every one of you. That is why your powers were stolen… stopped by…" His laughter cracked into the sky. "Hehehe… hahahaha! I should have killed him when I had the chance. A single miscalculation… and here I am." Thunder rolled as if echoing his madness, the storm itself mocking his arrogance.
Old Owl tilted his head, eyes glimmering like two cold lanterns. "Ha, my friend—no, my brother, that will be better." His smile curved, merciless. "The rope may have burned, but its twists remain. What a shame. What a shame literally. Now, watch closely. Check your city with your own eyes, for it shall be reduced to ash. Do not fret, I will kill everyone and take care of everything… hahahaha!"
At his words, the heavens split. Fire rained down, each blazing shard like a meteor cutting through the clouds. The city below shuddered as seal masters rose, their hands glowing with ancient runes, weaving barriers to hold back the storm. Yet against Old Owl's troops, their defiance looked fragile, sparks in a hurricane.
Two generals, broken and bleeding, refused to fall. Wounded, staggering, they carved through the enemy ranks like lions in a coop of chickens, desperate to reach their betrayer. Their blades sang of loyalty and rage but their breaths ragged with their resolve unbroken.
Futility weighed heavy. For every soldier they struck down, the Jester's laughter followed, echoing like a curse. His lips moved in a rhythm of dread, weaving mantras in a tongue older than stone. From corpses rose blackened sigils, spreading like roots across the battlefield. The dead twisted, their flesh unravelling into shadows, birthing horrors once buried in nightmare.
Then, another roar. The sound cleaved the chaos. Every gaze turned. The betrayed man, thought finished, stood again. His body shuddered, wounds weeping blood that hissed away into steam. Purple veins crawled beneath his skin like serpents, only to falter—then retreat, withdrawing into the wounds as if reversed by some unseen miracle. His eyes, once clouded with weakness, now burned with a vigour that should not have been.
Only a sound came... "He went beyond it..."
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What is beyond it? What truly happened in that split second? Why did the purple veins retreat, as though obeying some hidden command?
The answers lie ahead… in Nirbindra.
To be continued…