The sea was not made of water.
It churned red, thick with the blood of gods and monsters—centuries of war liquefied into an eternal ocean. Above it, the sky was black and weeping, void of stars. The air was motionless, heavy with screams that had long since decayed into echoes. Amidst it all, he floated—alone—on a shard of a shattered island, the last remnant of a forgotten realm.
The Nameless.
He did not bleed. He did not breathe. And yet, he endured.
Monsters—once angels, once men—slithered through the crimson tides, snarling and clawing, drawn to him. But none reached. None could. Not yet.
He stood motionless on the blood-slick rock, eyes dull, blade buried in the heart of the stone. The stone pulsed faintly beneath him, as if even the island remembered war.
"I have fought for days. For months. For years… No. Time itself rotted away before I could count it," he murmured, his voice dry and hoarse—not from pain, but from something far deeper. Soul-deep.
"Was I forged only to bleed? To stand guard at a gate that births nothing but monsters? Every body I cut down… sinks, yet the tide never thins. It drowns me in silence."
He stared at his hands. Empty. Still. Always still.
"I do not hunger. I do not sleep. I do not even remember what it was to feel pain. And still… I am weary. Weary of existing."
There was no answer. Only the distant shrieks of creatures circling ever closer.
His grip on the blade tightened, stone trembling under its weight.
"If there is one who can hear me…" His voice cracked like dry bone. "One who dares… free me."
The words bled into silence. He had whispered them before—countless times. And the world had never listened.
Until something tore it open.
A scream. Raw. Human. Female.
It splintered through the broken arches of the cathedral ruins, echoing like a forbidden hymn abandoned by heaven.
Elara was chained to the earth.
Not by metal. By something older. Hungrier.
Black tendrils of demonic power slithered from the ground, burrowing into her wrists, her ankles, her spine—pinning her down like prey offered to forgotten gods. Her body lay in a twisted sprawl, robes torn and soaked in blood, breath shallow, eyes cracked open just enough to know she still existed.
But that was all she did. Exist.
Her body convulsed as the chains fed on her—burrowing deeper with every breath.
Her flesh ruptured. Then knit itself again.
Her ribs cracked. Then sealed.
Her veins boiled. Then froze.
She died. She lived. She died again.
Each return was dimmer, her soul scraped thin against eternity.
Immortality was never her gift.
It was her torment.
For she could not die unless she wished it. And only then—only in surrender—would her curse break. Only then would her memories return. Only then would she be mortal again, if only for her final breath.
That was the cruelty: to endure forever until she begged for nothingness.
Her lips trembled as the thought bled through her agony.
Why… won't I die?
Not to the cult. Not to the demons. Not to the gods who had long stopped answering. She asked herself.
And for the first time in uncounted centuries—she let go.
She stopped fighting.
Her head slumped forward, breath shallow, her soul flickering like a candle smothered by wind.
The chains quivered. The seals hissed and split. Tendrils recoiled, screeching, burning as if her surrender itself was poison.
In that surrender, memories rushed back.
A name. A face. A blade drowned in blood.
Him.
Her trembling hand rose, drawing in the air. A sigil formed—jagged, broken, forgotten. A war god's rune, unseen since the world buried its strongest soldier alive in an endless prison of war.
Her lips cracked into a whisper.
"Return to me… I remember now. Forgive me for forgetting."
Blood spilled down her chin. Her chest rattled with every breath.
"Please… find me."
Her words carried on the ash like prayers too heavy for heaven.
Beneath mountains of corpses in a realm where war never ended, something stirred.
The ground trembled. Crystals buried in a warrior's spine flared with light, screaming against centuries of silence. One of the Seven—dormant no longer.
The sea of blood convulsed, as if an unseen hand had reached through it, clawing for him. The prayer that had broken chains in one world now split another. The ocean shrieked, parting in a spiral of crimson, dragging him down into a void not his own.
For the first time in eternity, the prison spat him out.
He rose, not in the shattered island of endless war, but upon blackened stone beneath a sky strangled by chanting. Cloth clung to him like smoke. Blood dripped from his skin as if it remembered every death he had ever dealt. His hair was drenched, matted to his cheeks.
And his eyes…
They burned. Not with power. Not with life.
With wrath. A fury so ancient it shamed the gods.
The cult fell silent. Their chants stuttered into terror as his shadow bled across the cathedral floor.
And then he saw her.
Elara.
Broken, body cracked from centuries of dying and returning. Her lips trembled still with the last breath of her prayer.
Something fractured in him. A thought surfaced, fragile, trembling.
Someone I was… loved you.
The memory itself was gone, but its truth struck like thunder.
His feet moved before the thought did.
Toward the beasts that bound her. With intent to kill.
A demon turned, lips curling.
"Another corpse who—"
It didn't finish.
Its throat burst open from within.
Blood sprayed the walls like a dying chorus.
The Nameless didn't blink.
Another reached for a blade.
A rib pierced its heart before it even moved — sharp and wet with the marrow of the fallen.
A third fled.
It was smart.
But not smart enough.
The Nameless raised a hand.
Behind him, droplets of blood floated — like stars caught in orbit.
He closed his fist.
And the fleeing demon detonated from the inside.
"I don't remember her. Not yet."
His voice was low, unshaken.
"But I remember how I function. My reality has always been war."
He walked.
Each step like a judge's hammer.
"And I…" His eyes burned, cold and final.
"…am death to the ones who touched her. How stupid—how cruel—must one be, to leave her in this state?" He glared at them.
The robed beasts felt the fear.
Their chants broke.
Their illusions melted.
Their fire died.
They ran.
But it didn't matter.
He moved through them like a god through ash.
Limbs bent the wrong way.
Eyes imploded.
Souls were ripped clean from flesh.
The puppets—the human ones—he spared.
They were victims, not enemies.
But the others?
The ones who rejoiced in her agony?
He peeled them apart.
Slow.
Precise.
Like unmaking art.
And when the silence finally came, when the hall was painted red, he reached her.
Elara.
She was lying still.
Skin pale, body flickering between life and death.
He knelt.
Touched her face with bloodstained hands.
Her breath caught.
Eyes fluttered.
And something passed between them.
It felt like a memory.
A spark.
Recognition carved into the marrow of their souls.
"You remembered me… when the world didn't."
His words trembled, almost reverent.
"I don't understand how you have summoned me. But if you still remember, then you must mean something… something I cannot yet name."
He gripped her hand.
"I swear to the shattered sky…"
His voice hardened.
"…I will not forget you."
A faint smile touched her lips.
But it was too late.
He looked up.
There was no sky, it was dark.
Only the void.
But on his spine…
A crystal pulsed.
One of the seven.
And far away…
Something ancient stirred.
Something that recognized his return.