The air grew heavy, trembling like a living thing. Above the ruins of the lost citadel, clouds twisted into shapes that resembled faces — sorrowful, screaming faces. The wind didn't howl; it whispered, carrying fragments of forgotten prayers.
Eris stood among the ruins, every instinct in his body screaming to move — to run — but his legs refused to obey. The horizon had darkened completely, not from nightfall, but from the thing crawling out of the sky.
It wasn't falling. It was descending. Slowly. Deliberately.
The Herald of the One Being — the harbinger of extinction.
Where it passed, the light fled. Not dimmed, fled. The stars blinked out one by one like candles smothered under invisible hands.
The world didn't roar or quake. It listened. Every living thing paused, sensing the approach of something that existed before the concept of mercy.
Behind Eris, Liora shivered. Her voice came as a fragile breath:
"Is that… a god?"
Eris couldn't answer. His hand clenched his weapon until the metal began to weep light.
The Herald had no face, only a mask of shifting voids — a thousand forms trying to emerge but none succeeding. And when it finally spoke, its voice was the sound of pages burning.
> "The Sovereign's seed… still clings to this world."
The ground split beneath them, bleeding black ichor.