In the jagged heart of ancient Turkey, there stood a city that time itself seemed to have forgotten: Syzespol. It was a fortress forged not of brick or mortar, but of black stones that felt colder than a dead man's skin. These stones were predatory; they didn't just sit there—they seemed to swallow the sunlight, leaving the city in a perpetual, suffocating twilight. Above every arched doorway and at every crossroads, a single decree was carved in gold that bled with the weight of centuries: "The Great Gate Shall Never Be Opened."
The law was absolute. The city was a cage, and its jailer was King Kabil, a man whose heart was as jagged as the mountains surrounding his throne. Kabil didn't rule with wisdom; he ruled with a cruelty that had become the city's heartbeat. He whispered to his people that the world beyond the walls was a rotting curse, a wasteland of demons. To even look at the Great Gate was a sin; to touch it was a death sentence. His guards, the 'Iron Order', moved through the streets like ghosts, their arrows dipped in the neurotoxin of vipers and their daggers forged from the dark, soul-chilled iron of the deepest mines.
It was a Monday—a day that began with a silence so heavy it felt like the city was holding its breath. Then, the sky broke.
Without a single gust of wind to warn them, the heavens began to bruise. The familiar blue was devoured by a swelling, visceral crimson—a deep, angry red that looked like raw blood boiling in a cauldron. The sun was snuffed out in an instant, plunged into a supernatural darkness where the only light was the eerie, pulsing glow of the sky above. Then came the wind. It roared through the narrow alleys, carrying the suffocating stench of scorched iron and the bitter sting of brimstone.
Terror, cold and sharp, gripped the citizens of Syzespol. Screams echoed against the black stone walls as mothers clutched their children, convinced that the ancient gods had finally come to collect their debts. But amidst the panicked wailing, a sound unlike any other shattered the firmament—a roar so massive it felt as if the fabric of reality was being torn apart.
BOOOOM!
An object of terrifying power plummeted from the heart of the crimson vortex, a streak of white-hot fire that slammed into the earth just yards away from the forbidden Great Gate. The impact sent a tremor through the very bones of the city, cracking the ancient pavement like dry parchment.
As the thick, black dust began to settle, the guards of the gate approached the crater, their breath coming in ragged gasps. Inside the smoldering pit lay a man. He was fair-skinned and strikingly handsome, but it was his aura that truly paralyzed them. Even covered in soot and blood, he possessed a divine radiance that made him look like a god who had been cast out of paradise.
THE SCORCHED SKY
Chief Captain Vargas was not a man of mercy. He was a mountain of muscle and scarred skin, his hand never more than an inch away from the hilt of his dark-iron blade. As he peered into the crater, the heat rising from the cracked earth singed his eyebrows, but he did not flinch. His eyes were fixed on the stranger—this "Brant" who had dared to fall from a sky that belonged to King Kabil.
Ten guards of the Iron Order fanned out around the rim of the pit, their spears lowered and shaking slightly. The divine aura radiating from the fallen man was so heavy it felt like a physical weight pressing against their chests. It was a presence that didn't belong in a city built on shadows and secrets.
"Do not... kill me..." the stranger whispered.
His voice was not a mere sound; it was a resonance. It didn't just hit the soldiers' ears—it vibrated within their ribs, an echo of a power that felt both ancient and exhausted. It was the sound of a falling star trying to catch its breath.
Vargas roared, masking his own sudden fear with aggression. "What is your name, creature of darkness? What curse have you brought to the gates of Syzespol?" He gripped his sword so tightly his knuckles turned white, ready to plunge it into the heart of the divine interloper.
"My name is... Brant," the man managed to choke out. Each syllable seemed to cost him a piece of his soul. As soon as the name left his lips, his electric blue eyes rolled back into his head, and his body went limp against the scorched soil.
The silence that followed was even more terrifying than the crash. Vargas looked at the Great Gate, then back at the unconscious man. If King Kabil saw this man as a threat, everyone in this courtyard would be executed for allowing him to land so close to the forbidden threshold.
"Seize him!" Vargas barked, his voice cracking the tension like a whip. "Drag him to the deepest dungeons—the 'Pit of No Return'—where even the rats cannot survive the damp and the dark. Bind his neck, his hands, and his feet in the heaviest iron chains we possess. If he so much as breathes without my permission, break his ribs."
The soldiers moved in, but they did not touch him with their bare hands. They used iron hooks and chains to drag Brant's battered body out of the crater. The handsome face of the stranger was now smeared with the soot of a dead world, his tattered clothes leaving a trail of blue embers on the black stones of the city.
As they hauled him toward the subterranean prison, the crimson sky above began to pulse, as if the heavens were watching their prize being stolen. Vargas watched them go, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm. "Interrogate him the moment he stirs," he whispered to himself. "And if he fails to provide the answers our King demands, his body shall become nothing more than food for the vultures of Syzespol".
The descent into the 'Pit of No Return' was a journey into a cold, wet silence. The guards moved with a mechanical rhythm, their boots clacking against the damp stairs of the subterranean dungeon. Brant remained limp in their grasp, his divine radiance flickering like a candle in a gale-force wind. They threw him into a cell carved directly from the bedrock, where the air tasted of salt and ancient decay.
"Chain him," Vargas commanded, his eyes never leaving the prisoner's pale face.
The iron hit Brant's skin with a hiss, the metal reacting to the residual energy still humming in his veins. Heavy shackles were clamped around his neck, wrists, and ankles—forged from mountain iron meant to hold beasts twice his size. As the soldiers retreated and the heavy iron door slammed shut, the only sound left was the slow, steady drip of water from the ceiling.
Brant's eyes flickered open in the absolute darkness. He could feel the weight of the city above him, thousands of tons of black stone and fearful hearts. But more than that, he could feel a presence approaching. It wasn't the heavy boot-steps of a guard. It was a soft, predatory slide of silk against stone.
A sliver of orange light cut through the dark as a small viewing slit in the door opened. Behind it stood a single eye, golden and slit like a serpent's.
"So, the sky finally vomited its secret," a voice whispered. It was a voice of velvet and broken glass—the voice of King Kabil.
Kabil did not look like the monster the stories described; he was lean, dressed in robes of midnight blue, with a crown of jagged obsidian resting upon his brow. He stared at Brant not with fear, but with a terrifying, hungry curiosity.
"You survived the fall," Kabil noted, his voice echoing in the small cell. "No man survives the crossing from the Outside. Tell me, Brant... did you come to save my city, or to witness its end?"
Brant raised his head, the iron collar bruising his throat. His blue eyes met the King's golden gaze. "The Gate..." Brant rasped, his voice a mere ghost of a sound. "You have to... let them in."
Kabil's face twisted into a grotesque, thin-lipped smile. "Let them in? I have spent a lifetime keeping the world out. Syzespol is mine. And now, you are mine too."
The King turned away, the slit in the door snapping shut and plunging Brant back into the suffocating dark. Outside, the crimson sky continued to burn, and for the first time in seven hundred years, a tiny crack appeared on the outer surface of the Great Gate.
The countdown to the descent had officially begun.