Chapter 14: A Dark World
The world turned dark.
Not like the closing of eyelids, nor a slow fade into twilight—but sudden, absolute. As though reality itself had been snuffed out, leaving nothing behind but silence and a chilling stillness.
Avin stood there, the sword still warm in his grip. But it didn’t matter. Nothing moved. Not Bram—whose pose remained frozen mid-step, mouth parted in what looked like surprise. Not the crowd—rigid, breathless, petrified in time. Even the air had stopped; no wind, no scent of dust, no hum of insects. It was like time had been trapped in a crystal casing, and he alone was the crack in its perfect form.
"The hell is this?" he muttered.
His voice didn’t echo. It simply dropped off, like the space around him had devoured sound.
He stepped forward, cautiously, every movement exaggerated against the unmoving world. Bram’s face remained stuck in a look of surprise—eyes wide, brow raised, frozen in mid-reaction to something Avin couldn’t remember doing. Slowly, Avin reached out and tried to touch his opponent.
His hand passed right through him.
Like vapor. Like a ripple through glass. Bram’s form wavered, scattered with faint distortions that shimmered like heat over asphalt.
"What the hell..." Avin whispered again.
He tried once more—pressed his fingers toward the machetes gripped in Bram’s hands—but the result was the same. His hand phased through the weapons like they were projections and he, the only real thing left in a hollow shell of reality.
"This is interesting..."
He wasn’t afraid. Not really. There was confusion, but also a strange, rising calm. Like a lucid dream that had forgotten to wake up.
And then the world rotated.
Not literally—but it felt like his footing had shifted on a giant turntable, dragging his surroundings with it. Everything blurred. Reality dissolved at the edges, the sparring aren pulling away like wet paint being smeared across glass.
Then came a forest.
Black.
That was the first thing his brain could process. Every tree, every branch, every leaf—even the soil beneath his feet—was so dark, it was almost featureless. Not darkness from the absence of light, but a kind that swallowed the idea of light entirely. The trees towered overhead, their canopies blocking out a sky that didn’t exist. When he looked up, he saw the clouds—but they weren’t gray or stormy. They were just more black, stitched into a void.
And yet somehow... everything was visible.
There was no light source. No sun, no stars, not even a flicker of magic or fire. But he could see every branch, every outline of this eerie realm. A sight without illumination. A shadow world glowing with paradox.
"This is weird..."
His voice cut through the quiet—but even that felt hollow. He didn’t feel fear. Not yet. He was calm, eerily calm.
" It seems I’ve grown used to this shit," he said softly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Too used."
But as soon as the words left his lips, he blinked—and something changed.
A figure.
Black. Standing two meters away, almost too close. Avin’s chest seized up. He staggered back a step, but that was all his body allowed. Everything else locked.
The figure didn’t move—not at first. It just turned its head slightly, like a curious animal inspecting prey. Its shape was humanoid, but not really human. Its blackness was different—thicker, heavier, like a chunk of void carved out from space. No outlines. No light could hug its form.
Then-
Two white glowing eyes blinked into existence. A slit of a mouth carved its way across the face. A grin. Wide. Bright. Beaming so unnaturally it could be seen from miles away in this pitch black forest.
Avin’s heart screamed. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. He was paralyzed in place, his eyes glued to those twin stars glaring back at him.
The figure stepped forward.
Thump.
The ground trembled with the soft roar of its movement.
Another step.
Thump.
The earth rumbled again.
And then it was right in front of him.
The figure raised one hand and placed it on Avin’s forearm. Its touch didn’t feel like skin—it was something colder. The hand trailed up slowly, tracing the curve of his elbow to the hollow of his throat. Then fingers hooked gently under his chin, tilting his head upward.
Avin’s breath caught in his lungs. His eyes locked on the void-face.
And then it spoke.
"Clive."
The voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even heard. It landed inside his skull—like a memory, or a secret being whispered straight to the soul.
"The Lord will be happy to hear about you."
"What?" Avin thought.
"I don’t understand."
But the figure continued.
"It’s been a while since... @*%$@%&@^&@%."
The words turned to static. His head pulsed with a painful vibration, like the inside of his skull was cracking open. He tried to scream—but his mouth produced nothing. His body finally responded, but only to thrash, helplessly. Panic took hold.
Then the figure leaned in closer.
"This is strange... It seems to be ’His’ doing."
Something inside Avin stirred.
A warmth. Deep and buried, like a forgotten sun waking from hibernation. He couldn’t explain it—only feel it. It moved inside him, welled up, and then burst outward.
Symbols flared around him. Glowing red shapes wrapped in geometric patterns. A barrier rose up like fire laced with divine ink, drawn in a forgotten language.
The figure’s hand recoiled—its palm steaming.
It staggered back, eyes wide for the first time.
"The Primordial So—AAAHHH!"
It screamed. Not just in volume, but in frequency—piercing, layered with echoes, vibrating through every atom in Avin’s body. The figure writhed, clutched its head, and stumbled away like it was retreating.
Avin could only watch.
Smoke began to pour from the figure’s body—inky tendrils, writhing like worms as they stretched toward the glowing sigils around him. The barrier pulled them in, consumed them like breath into lungs.
Like an ’essence’.
That was the word. It popped into his brain as if whispered by some cosmic narrator.
"This is the essence it wanted..."
The figure backed away, disoriented, cracking like glass under pressure.
"I—I must go tell—!"
Everything snapped.
The wind returned. Birds chirped in the sky. Dust swirled lazily in the air. The arena’s color bled back into the world like water soaking a canvas.
And Bram—still frozen—blinked.