The clouds did not roll in.
They descended.
Black lightning webbed across the heavens, not illuminating the sky but devouring it. The twin moons dimmed as though something vast passed between them and the world.
Ethan stood at the edge of the silver field, watching the horizon burn.
The System pulsed sharply.
[Major Calamity Confirmed]
Event: Abyssal Descent
Threat Level: Catastrophic
Survival Probability (Current): 3%
"…You've got to be kidding me."
In the distance, the torches he had seen earlier scattered in panic. A caravan—wagons, mounted guards, banners snapping in violent wind. The horn blasts turned frantic.
The earth split.
From the fracture crawled something that did not belong to any ecosystem.
A limb like molten obsidian pierced upward. Then another. A shape hauled itself into the world—towering, skeletal, wrapped in shadow-fire.
Its skull burned with hollow violet light.
[Entity Identified: Abyssal Harbinger]
Level: ???
Data Incomplete
Classification: Calamity-Class
Ethan swallowed.
"Three percent, huh?"
[Calamity Affinity Activated]
[Stat Growth Multiplier: x5]
[Emergency Evolution Available]
Pain surged through him again—but deeper this time. His mana core pulsed violently.
[Mana Core Resonance Detected]
[Rank Up Available → F+ to E]
Cost: Extreme Physical Strain
Proceed?
Ethan glanced toward the caravan. A wagon overturned. A guard was lifted screaming into the air by invisible force and crushed like paper.
He clenched his fists.
"Proceed."
Agony detonated in his chest.
Blue light erupted from his body, tearing through the grass in a circular shockwave. Veins of luminous energy etched across his skin before fading into his core.
[Mana Core: Rank E]
[New Skill Acquired: Grave Step]
— Short-range teleportation through shadow.
The Harbinger turned its skull slowly.
It saw him.
The violet flames intensified.
"Oh," Ethan muttered. "That's not good."
The creature raised one skeletal arm.
The sky screamed.
A beam of compressed darkness lanced downward.
Ethan moved on instinct.
"Grave Step!"
Reality folded.
He vanished—and reappeared twenty meters to the left as the beam annihilated everything where he had stood. The ground liquefied into black glass.
[HP Reduced: 41%]
[Damage Resistance Increased]
"That still hit me?!"
The System flickered urgently.
[Hidden Protocol Sync Attempt]
Authority Threshold Approaching
Ethan felt something else stirring beneath his ribs.
Not mana.
Something colder.
The Harbinger advanced, each step warping the land.
The caravan guards regrouped, loosing enchanted arrows. The projectiles dissolved mid-air.
One of the wagons exploded.
Screams filled the storm.
Ethan's jaw tightened.
"Fine," he whispered. "If disaster makes me stronger…"
He sprinted straight at it.