The first scream cut through the city like a blade.
In the heart of Ardamon, people froze as the night sky split open. The crimson crack widened, bleeding fire across the clouds. Alarms howled. Buildings shook as if giants walked beneath them.
On the 77th floor of a glass tower, office workers pressed against windows, their mouths open in horror.
From above, a column of fire erupted from the earth, swallowing the horizon.
The Abyss had opened.
The ground split in the eastern quarter, swallowing entire streets. Towers that had stood for decades collapsed in seconds, their steel skeletons twisting like paper. The air was thick with dust, ash, and the burning stench of sulfur.
And then they saw him.
Rising through smoke and flame, taller than ten men, his eyes burning like suns. His skin was black stone veined with molten fire, his breath a furnace. His presence bent the air itself, warping it with heat.
Rasan.
Panic detonated. Cars crashed as drivers fled blindly. Mothers clutched children. Soldiers fired rifles that sounded like toys against a god. Bullets sparked off his chest, useless.
The titan's laughter rolled across the city like thunder.
> "You think yourselves safe in your glass cages? You build towers to the sky, thinking you are gods? You are insects crawling on a corpse!"
With a sweep of his arm, he tore through three skyscrapers, their glass walls shattering in waves of light. Thousands vanished in fire and rubble.
Yet even in terror, humans resisted. From the military fortress at the city's edge, missile batteries launched. Streaks of light pierced the night, racing toward him.
The titan turned, raised a hand — and the missiles froze in midair, held by an invisible grip. For a heartbeat, all was silent. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent them spinning back, exploding across the fortress in a storm of fire.
The ground quaked with the slaughter.
And above it all, standing at the center of ruin, Rasan raised his voice, and every soul heard it, from the slums to the high towers:
> "Mortals, your age is over. The world is mine again. Kneel… or burn!"
As the flames consumed Ardamon, a new truth was written in fire across the night sky:
The Titans had returned.
And no one was coming to save them.
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