Thunder rolled across the heavens, each rumble chased by blinding veins of lightning that tore through the sky. Within the heart of the storm, swirling ashes rose to meet the bolts—gray spirals clashing with white fire, the elements colliding in bursts of chaotic, luminous energy.
Dragged from beyond the veil of his own plane, Anastomus tore through the void screaming, his body half-submerged in the ashen mire of the Fields. Shadows with twisted faces clawed at him—Daimons, cursed remnants of forgotten souls, their forms flickering between smoke and flesh. They hungered for the entropy that pulsed within his mystery, drawn to it like moths to dying light, yet recoiled from the same force that could unmake them.
His blade ignited with gray luminescence as he slashed upward, each swing cutting through a Daimon's shriek and scattering it into vapor. But for every one he felled, three more clawed out from the ash, their whispers rising into a choir of curses.
Then, without warning, the ground beneath him gave way. He fell hard, the air torn from his lungs. Ash and blood smeared across his face as he rolled to his knees, coughing against the storm's metallic scent. His silver eyes—cold and unblinking—scanned the new realm before him: a horizon drowned in crimson haze, the sky a writhing tempest of shadow and lightning.
The storm above howled like a living thing, and in that chaos, Anastomus realized—he was no longer anywhere mortal.
"Ashborn… where have you sent me?" Anastomus muttered, his voice barely audible against the moaning wind.
He stood atop a jagged mountain peak, the world around him soaked in the stench of fear, blood, and decay. The air trembled with an ancient dread. Etched across the broken stone at his feet were runes and sigils older than memory, their faint glow pulsing like dying hearts. Far below, other peaks jutted through the crimson mist, forming an archipelago of ruin beneath a storm-wracked sky.
Then, from above, streams of darkness began to descend—long, fluid tendrils that carried whispers within them. The voices were countless, murmuring in tongues that gnawed at the edges of thought. They circled him like vultures of shadow, vestiges of beings from an age when gods still bled.
Anastomus watched them, blade at his side, unmoving. The shades writhed, weightless and endless—until one dared to drift closer.
Before it could touch him, another shadow fell from the heavens, tearing through the air with a force that made the world lurch. Time itself seemed to freeze. The newcomer struck the first shade aside, its hiss splitting the mountain's silence and shaking the fabric of the realm.
Then it turned its formless gaze upon him. The pressure that followed was suffocating. Anastomus's knees buckled before his will could resist. The weight of its presence crushed the breath from his chest.
"That look in your eyes…" the voice resonated, deep and echoing from everywhere at once. "I like it. You have done well, Jason of Magnesia."
Anastomus's fingers tightened on his sword hilt. "What… do you want from me?" he hissed through clenched teeth. The shade leaned closer, and the sky cracked with a thunder that wasn't sound but the tearing of existence itself.
"Resurrection," it whispered—and the plane erupted, storms birthing from the clash of abyssal energies as light and shadow collided in divine discord.