Zawish and the Hollow Storm…!
The Earth hadn't healed from the last war. Craters still smoked. Cities still mourned. But peace? Peace was already a memory.
It began with a tremor.
Small at first, just a ripple across the Atlantic. But within minutes, the tremor turned into a worldwide quake. Clocks stopped. Satellites spun out of orbit. Birds fell from the sky like rain.
In Washington, sirens wailed. In Tokyo, lights blinked out.
In the Arctic, a deep humming began—an ancient sound, like a tuning fork of the gods, awakening something that should have never been disturbed.
Zawish stood at the edge of the Swiss Alps, glove in hand, watching a mountain collapse in the distance. The sky was cracked open above it—not metaphorically. Literally. A jagged line had appeared in the clouds like shattered glass, and from it leaked a darkness so dense it absorbed light.
He felt it in his bones.
Not just power… but hunger.
"Whatever you are," Zawish whispered, gripping his glove tighter, "you picked the wrong planet."
But the universe didn't answer him.
Instead, the crack widened—and from it, descended Varnok the Hollow.
He did not roar. He did not speak. He floated, wrapped in a robe of moving void. His face was a swirling mass of shadow with two deep-set eyes glowing like red suns. Behind him followed his heralds: six creatures, faceless and armorless, their limbs elongated and twisted, dragging massive swords made of blackened star matter
Zawish didn't wait.
He launched himself into the air like a comet, punching through the clouds, crashing into one of the heralds mid-descent. The impact caused a sonic boom that shattered nearby windows.
One herald screamed, a psychic scream that echoed through every human mind on Earth, sending people into unconsciousness. Zawish drove it into the ground and crushed its core with the force of a collapsing mountain.
But the others swarmed.
From the skies, the Dark Pillars emerged—ancient alien monoliths that burst from the earth and hovered like cursed obelisks. Each one pulsed with the corrupted energy of the Dark Dimension.
And Earth was now surrounded.
From deep beneath the ocean, the Vault of the Hollow opened—releasing billions of microscopic Spinecrawlers, black insects that tore through cities and absorbed life energy on contact.
In New Delhi, people vanished in clouds of ash.
In Berlin, buildings folded into themselves as if reality was forgetting them.
"Where is Zawish?" people cried. "Where is the Guardian?"
He was already fighting. Bleeding. Ripping through the sky like thunder incarnate. His glove, powered by Dar Metal, screamed with pressure as he battled the heralds one by one. Each punch ripped apart air. Each scream triggered avalanches.
But Varnok hadn't even moved.
He floated still. Waiting.
Watching.
"You're not the savior," Varnok finally said. His voice didn't echo—it reverberated in every living mind. "You're the key. The mistake. The door to the prison my people were cast into."
Zawish wiped blood from his chin and growled, "Then let me show you what kind of key I am."
He hurled his glove into the air, and from it, dozens of projections fired—replicas of himself made from raw energy. They clashed with the remaining heralds mid-air, forming a cyclone of light and shadow.
Zawish followed with a charge that broke the sound barrier five times over. He slammed into Varnok—and was instantly repelled. Not punched. Not blasted. Just rejected, like a virus being denied access.
His body flew across miles, tumbling through trees and metal, until he slammed into a church in northern Italy, reducing it to rubble.
He groaned. "Okay… that was new."
From behind the dust, a civilian stepped out.
A girl. Maybe 10 years old. She looked at Zawish with wide eyes.
"You're him," she whispered. "You're real."
Zawish struggled to stand. "Not… for long, kid. Get out of here."
"I prayed for you," she said, tears forming. "When my papa disappeared. I prayed you'd come back."
He looked at her—and in that moment, the war paused. The world shrunk to just one protector. And one innocent life.
He touched her head gently. "Then I'll make sure no one else disappears."
Suddenly, alarms began to ring across every government facility.
A new spike in radiation.
The Dark Pillars are absorbing nuclear cores.
Estimated countdown to detonation: 45 minutes.
Zawish rocketed into the sky again, faster than ever before. But his glove was now overheating. Too much use. Too much pressure. Dar Metal itself was vibrating at frequencies unstable even for divine materials.
And from orbit, Varnok unleashed his final card:
A sword. Not made of metal—but compressed void. Forged in the center of a dead star from the Dark Dimension.
He hurled it toward Earth.
Its tip alone caused a heat wave that incinerated the upper atmosphere.
Zawish screamed. "NO!"
He launched himself upward, glove fully activated, pushing every last drop of energy.
The impact happened mid-air.
Glove against voidblade.
The explosion was visible from the Moon.
The Earth shook. And in the crater of clouds, Zawish stood—half his glove broken, body cracked, bloodied—but the sword stopped, hovering an inch from the surface.
But then—
Varnok appeared behind him. No words. No taunts.
Just one move.
A fist through Zawish's back.
The hero coughed blood, eyes wide, glove flickering.
"You are not enough," Varnok said. "You never were."
He dropped Zawish like a puppet and vanished.
As Zawish lay dying in a shattered crater, his vision blurred. But then…
A spark.
The glove pulsed.
And through the haze, a voice—an ancient, booming voice that came not from outside, but from within the metal.
"Zawish. You are the last flame. And this is not the end. This… is the beginning."
The glove reassembled, melting into his skin.
And Zawish's eyes lit like suns.