When doubt arose, truth must be sought after. Sometimes, helplessness doesn't always mean hopelessness.
*****
The fragments of scattered scenes reassembled slowly, much like time itself moving in reverse—or perhaps racing forward fast enough to suture the bleeding wounds of reality and dream.
An eternity seemed to pass before the final shard healed, locked into a completely new scene. This time, in place of the vast, silent cosmic expanse, Morca found himself standing upon a crimson battlefield, heavily drenched in fresh blood and rain.
Broken tower constructs lay shattered across the landscape, dark blood splattering their heavy, cleaved stone walls. The muddy earth was painted a ghastly, wet crimson, entirely soaked through with the lifeblood of the fallen. Devastation and smoking wreckage stretched endlessly toward the horizon of the broken city. Scattered among the ruins lay the severed remains of various alien races—some completely headless, others torn limb from limb, reduced to unrecognizable remnants of what had once been living beings.
The sheer, monumental scale of the slaughter was enough to permanently haunt one's mind, a nightmare capable of robbing countless souls of their sleep. A cataclysmic war had clearly just concluded, judged by the chunks of alien flesh littering the field.
The rain fell in heavy, violent splatters. Each heavy drop struck shattered alien armor with a bone-piercing resonance that echoed through the unnatural silence.
Strangely, instead of the thick, iron tang of blood and heavy smoke, the air carried a faint, lingering after-scent of burnt paper and cracking lightning. It was the kind of smell that made those exposed to it remember the exact scent of everything they had ever lost.
An illusion of sudden weightlessness hung over the space, as if the entire battlefield were slowly collapsing inward.
Among the sprawling wreckage lay a single, untouched corpse: a young man's body, completely whole and unbroken—a stark, tragic contrast to the carnage surrounding him. A single, precise hole pierced clean between his brows, the unmistakable cause of his death. He had clearly died without ever realizing it. A single glance was enough to tell he wasn't the architect of this destruction; he was merely an innocent victim caught in its wake.
Kneeling beside the boy was a lean figure clad in tattered, blood-stained battle armor, dark streaks clinging to his handsome face. His right hand rested heavily on the hilt of a subtly vibrating black blade, its tip buried deep through the skull of a slain alien.
Fresh blood traced strange, runic patterns down the aura-shrouded weapon before dripping onto the lifeless head below. On his shoulders, a pair of broken blood-wings—resembling those of an ancient, primordial roc bird—trailed across the wet, crimson ground.
With a trembling left hand, the warrior gently brushed over the young man's face, closing the wide, unblinking eyes.
Rainwater slid down the lean figure's flawless features, as if trying to soothe the blinding storm of rage boiling within his chest. But he was not alone. Somewhere out there, hidden within the folds of space, an unseen audience was actively watching the tragedy unfold.
Suddenly, a single, enormous eye tore through the fabric of the sky, gazing directly down upon the blood-soaked city. Its massive crimson pupil glowed like a malevolent blood moon, casting an ominous, suffocating light across the ruined land. The mere presence of that cosmic eye was enough to instantly squeeze the breath from a mortal's lungs.
The lean figure slowly rose to his feet. Tiny red veins webbed his crimson eyes as his sharp, lethal gaze locked onto the hovering portal high in the sky.
"Hypocrite Heavens..." the warrior hissed, his voice cutting through the storm. "You tried to obstruct my ascension and failed. And now, you slaughtered the innocent."
A heavy pause hung over the field, measuring the cataclysmic weight of what had just been spoken.
An eerily cold aura seeped from his body. Standing with his spine perfectly straight, like a sharp blade resting within its sheath, his voice rang out with unshakable, terrifying resolve:
"Watch as I, Morca, swear by the blood of the dead—I will turn the Heavenly Court and the Abyssal Realms into absolute ruin! I shall be the retribution of thy ascension. I shall be the trial thy gods must overcome!"
He raised his right arm. A single, heavy drop of blood slid from his thumb, sealing the cosmic oath.
The moment those words echoed across the battlefield and the drop of blood struck the earth, the heavens roared. Blinding lightning split the sky, casting a harsh, jagged glare over the moody, broken city—as though the cosmos itself had signed as a witness to the blood-oath between man and the void.
Above the soaked ground, three ancient words materialized within the rolling storm, dripping with liquid crimson and wreathed in black-gold lightning:
ETERNAL DOOM CARRIER
The words shot downward like meteors, drilling directly into Morca's forehead before fusing into his primal soul. At once, an ancient voice—hoarse with the agonizing weight of uncountable millennia—stirred within his mind:
"Blaspheme the Heavens and the Abyss, and die by the very hand that birthed you. Wake, only to be watched. You are doomed from eternity to never end. The Heavens shall crucify you. The Abyss shall extract your specter spirit for eternal torment."
An indecipherable, primordial mark bloomed faintly upon his skin:
Doomed.
It carried no immediate physical harm, but its conceptual meaning was absolute.
From this moment onward, Morca is a marked enemy of both Heaven and Abyss.
"Is that all you have, nominal Heavens?" Morca's voice rose into a fierce war cry. "Watch as I take the first step toward your ruin!"
With his black blade gripped tightly, he lunged violently toward the hovering portal. But before his boots could even leave the ground—An ancient, suffocating aura descended upon the world.
Time froze. Space locked. Falling raindrops slowed to an absolute crawl mid-air.
Morca hung suspended in the sky, unable to so much as twitch a single finger. The entire universe had been forcefully paused by the newcomer's sheer presence.
Morca's crimson eyes rolled frantically in their sockets, searching for the source of the pressure, but he found nothing.
His very senses had been completely sealed shut. He tried to clench his fist, to tap into his spiral ring, but everything was beyond his reach.
He became a prisoner within his own skin, left with nothing but to stare diagonally at the portal and the lone eye, silently pleading for the void to swallow him.
His instincts screamed at him to move, but his body refused.
Then, a voice came.
It rolled through the vacuum of space like a deafening death knell, shaking the very bones of the ruined battlefield. It was a voice that would haunt him for lifetimes, assuming he could even escape:
"I must say... you are truly something. An unawakened child of Nothingness. The Carrier of the Eternal Doom curse. The Ninth that should never have existed. You almost slipped past my grasp—truly. Thank the Abyss I managed to project this clone into this barren realm in time, at great cost. But it was well worth it."
The weight of the entity's aura was crushing. Morca's heart thudded violently enough to cause physical pain. This wasn't a standard enemy—this was a primordial force that actively devoured hope itself.
"You've been marked by the Eternal Doom curse," the cold voice continued, dripping with malice. "Cutting off every possible avenue of escape. The eyes of Heaven and Abyss are firmly upon you. Do not waste your remaining breath thinking otherwise."
Shit... so this is how it ends? Morca thought bitterly. No! Not yet! I haven't avenged my brother... I still have to bring the Heavenly Titan Court to justice! I still have to find her!
Rage completely smothered his reason. He heard the words, but his mind was too busy cursing his own overconfidence. He had thought himself untouchable, a sovereign of his own path. Now, he finally understood: he was absolutely nothing before these ancient monsters. And this terrifying force was merely a clone.
So this is the end. Cold sweat traced a slow line down his frozen spine.
The voice returned, dropping into a darker, absolute register:
"Now, mortal... I will show you that you are truly nothing before the Most High Heaven and the deepest Abyss. I shall extract your specter spirit for eternal torment. Three circles of damnation; no rebirth, no reincarnation, nor shall there be transmigration for your soul. Only eternal doom."
A heavy black bottle, intricately inscribed with golden, pulsating ancient runes, materialized in the air above his suspended body. A sinister, irresistible magnetic pull tugged violently at his very specter spirit, dragging him upward toward the open maw of the flask.
Just as the spiritual extraction reached its absolute peak—
Crack. Thud!
A sharp, violent sound split the fabric of the illusion.
Thud!
Absolute darkness suddenly flooded the world. In a single fraction of a second, the entire vision vanished—the glowing alien clone, the crimson battlefield, the rain, and the black bottle were instantly erased.
Morca opened his eyes to a silent, blank void. He let out a faint, weary smile before his consciousness collapsed entirely.
Saved...? Or maybe... it was all just another dream.
Everything faded to black, leaving the final fate of the planet lost to the unknown.
*****
Far away, in the fathomless, untracked expanse of deep space, a towering dark cliff loomed silently over an endless ocean of burning stars. Mmm
At its jagged edge stood an alien figure, brilliant golden blood staining the corner of its mouth. The entity coughed violently, its once-commanding, planet-crushing aura dimmed to a pathetic flicker. Its cosmic body trembled, muscles and veins straining against absolute collapse.
"An anomalous being... has descended," it rasped into the void. "The Tri-Origin—Primal Origin and the two hidden voids... it has pulsed once more. The past has been branched. The future is broken. What, then, can the present possibly hold? A Great Desolation looms over us all."
Its voice was barely more than a terrified murmur, as if it feared that speaking too loudly might draw the immediate attention of the very catastrophe it dreaded.
Suddenly, a violent shiver rippled through its celestial frame.
"This... this suffocating breath? A Tri-scendant is appearing? Impossible! The Eighth has already awakened. How can there be another? The prophecy is already in motion!"
Confusion and profound panic clouded its pale, star-bright eyes. Its features tightened, the crushing weight of infinite horizons etching deep, ancient lines into its face.
With a frantic flick of its wrist, a tattered scroll materialized in its grasp—browned with age, brittle, and heavy with the suffocating scent of antiquity. Its fingers trembled uncontrollably as it shattered the ancient, glowing seal guarding the parchment.
The exact moment the seal broke, a blinding light erupted, hurling the alien watcher backward into the empty void.
Within that piercing light, glowing golden glyphs rapidly began to assemble. They were etched in the Ancient Trinova Galatux Ascent—a primordial tongue so old and complex that only a rare, exalted handful in the entire cosmos could accurately decode it:
PROPHECY LAMENTATIONS SEQUENCE
FRAGMENT 2:9
"Seven days shall pass.
A day to its Anomaly.
A being of Oblivion shall accompany each Dew's waking.
Seven across seven eras shall pass.
Yet the Eighth, The Dew Lord, shall fail to arrive.
Another three days shall come,
Not in peace, but in the sudden strike of fate's catastrophe.
When that day comes,
A new day shall birth seven Dew at once.
Then shall the Eighth, The Dew Lord, descend.
A new beginning shall be seen..."
The blinding light abruptly faded, plunging the cliff back into starlight.
Pure golden blood streamed violently from the seven vital points of the alien's body. It struggled to steady its footing, the conceptual weight of the prophecy pressing down upon it like a collapsing star.
The alien knew the text well; every single line had been handed down by the supreme higher hierarchy of the Heavenly Titan Court. But what it had just witnessed in the streams of time completely contradicted the holy flow.
It—a grand cosmic figure capable of peering into thoughts, mapping the past, observing the present, predicting the future, and invading dreams—had just suffered a near-fatal backlash from nothing more than a casual stroll through a mortal's mind.
"The Eighth Dew Lord descended not long ago..." the alien's voice was hoarse with absolute urgency. "And now, a Ninth Dew appears out of nowhere. An absolute anomaly—one capable of catalyzing cosmic disaster. This cannot be left unchecked. If ignored... a universal doomsday will surely come. History will repeat itself."
Without another word, the celestial entity dissolved, vanishing into the starry horizon to sound the alarms.
Unseen, completely unnoticed by the fleeing alien, faint, pitch-black letters materialized in the space where the golden prophecy had just faded, lingering like a dark promise:
"Should the Ninth Dew descend,The Fallers shall truly fall....
All praise the Mysteries of the Origins."