The world didn't just break; it screamed. A force descended that was more than sound, it was a physical law rewriting itself.
The pressure slammed down, driving the air from my lungs and sending violent shockwaves through the chamber.
The stone floor beneath my feet buckled, spiderweb fractures racing out in every direction as if the ground itself was recoiling in terror.
I…!
[Warning]
Di…!
[Sudden unknown interference detected]
…ing!
[Forced entry detected…]
…ng!
[Absolute Tame… Can…celed]
The dungeon system shattered into digital static.
Glitches of crimson text flickered and overlapped, a chaotic symphony of errors.
The invisible strings that had been pulling my limbs, the foreign will that had hijacked my own, snapped.
Just like that. The suffocating presence vanished.
I gasped, a raw, shuddering breath of true air, my body my own once more.
Evelyn was a statue of terror beside me, her face pale, her body trembling so violently she could barely stand.
There was no time for explanations. I lunged for her, my fingers closing around her wrist in a iron grip.
"If you want to survive, move!"
She didn't argue. A spark of primal instinct overrode her shock, and she stumbled after me as I hauled her across the fractured chamber.
My every sense was a blaring alarm.
Danger. Overwhelming, absolute danger.
I scrambled for cover behind a massive, newly-fallen chunk of the ceiling, pulling Evelyn down with me.
"Give me a break. What now?"
Through the swirling clouds of dust and debris, I saw him.
A man stood at the epicenter of the destruction, where the floor was most shattered.
He was tall, with a lean, muscular build that spoke of contained power.
His hair was a shock of deep crimson, and his eyes glowed with a dark, smoldering red light.
He wore simple black and white clothes that should have looked mundane but instead seemed to drink the chaotic light of the chamber.
He was perfectly, unnaturally still, yet his mere presence felt like it was bending the geometry of the room, warping reality around him.
He did nothing. He simply stood. And watched.
And the entire chamber continued to tremble in his wake.
Then, a response.
From the far end of the chamber, the throne of jagged black stone groaned.
The figure seated upon it, the Sixth Orc Lord, the architect of this nightmare, slowly rose.
The thick, abyssal mist that formed its body began to writhe and expand, a living void that consumed the very light around it, a negation of existence itself.
A voice echoed, not through the air, but directly into my consciousness.
It was deep, guttural, and layered with an ancient, bottomless malice.
It wasn't a shout. It was a statement. A recognition.
"Harbinger of Oblivion."
The red-haired man's lips curved. It was barely a movement, the faintest hint of a grin.
It wasn't kind. It wasn't arrogant. It was something far more disquieting, the cold, satisfied smile of a hunter who has finally cornered his prey.
A smile that silently said, "Got you."
The ruler of this chamber, the being that had tamed me like an animal, had just acknowledged this newcomer with a title...
Harbinger of Oblivion.
A deep, unnatural silence gripped the chamber, so profound it felt like the air had been stolen, leaving only a vacuum in its wake. It was the calm before the cataclysm.
Then, the Sixth Orc Lord moved.
It wasn't speed. It was a violation of physics.
One moment it was a swirling pillar of abyssal mist on its throne, the next, it was directly in front of the red-haired man.
There was no transition, no blur of motion. It simply was elsewhere.
Its massive fist, a concentrated vortex of nothingness that seemed to devour the light around it, drove forward.
The punch wasn't aimed to kill; it was aimed to unmake, carrying a force that felt like it could shatter the very concept of existence.
Evelyn's nails dug into my arm, her body rigid with a terror so complete it was paralyzing. The impact was inevitable.
BOOM!
The sound was not a sound. It was the surrounding groaning in protest.
A concussive wave of pure force erupted from the point of impact, ripping through the chamber.
The stone floor beneath the combatants vaporized.
The walls on one side of the cavern simply ceased to be, sheared away into a swirling, formless void.
A storm of dust and shattered rock filled the air, a chaotic blizzard of destruction.
A shimmering barrier, cast by Evelyn at the last possible second, flickered around us, absorbing the brunt of the shockwave that felt like it was trying to tear my existence.
But then… something was wrong.
I expected to see the red-haired man obliterated, his form scattered to the cosmic winds by a blow that could unhinge reality.
That didn't happen.
As the dust and chaotic energy began to settle, he stood there. Unmoved. Unharmed. Unshaken.
And the Sixth Orc Lord was gone.
Not thrown back. Not struggling. Not even dead in a conventional sense.
It had been erased. The space it had occupied, the very patch of reality where it had thrown its world-ending punch, was simply… absent.
A perfect, smooth scoop of nothingness now existed where the lord of this chamber had stood moments before.
The stone floor, the air, the Orc Lord itself, all of it had been cleanly removed, as if reality had been edited and that part deleted.
My mind reeled, trying to process the impossible.
It was as if the Orc Lord's own attack had turned inward, consuming its caster with absolute finality.
But I knew what I had seen. The Harbinger of Oblivion hadn't lifted a finger. He hadn't even flinched.
Evelyn's grip on my arm was a vise, her rapid, shallow breaths hot against my skin.
The chamber, already mortally wounded, let out a final, agonized groan.
Massive chunks of the ceiling began to calve off, plummeting into the abyss below.
The system messages in my vision glitched erratically, unable to categorize the event that had just transpired.
The dungeon was dying.
I heard him then. A low mutter, barely audible over the roar of collapsing reality, yet it cut through the noise with crystalline clarity.
"He escaped. Did that guy just outsmart me again?"
Escaped?
The Sixth Orc Lord was erased, but somehow to him it was an escape.
But how?
And then… he turned.
Slowly, with a deliberate, almost lazy grace, the Harbinger of Oblivion shifted his gaze.
Those dark red eyes, burning with a light that seemed to see through layers of reality I didn't know existed, locked onto me.