The year 2026 arrived not with a bang, but with a terrifying, crystalline silence.
Following the Great Reset at the ruins of Ashvamedha, the Dominion had transformed. The chaotic red mists of the Dom Crisis had been replaced by a shimmering, translucent veil known as the Aether-Firmament. To the common folk, it was a miracle—a era of peace where the beasts grew docile and the soil yielded obsidian grain. But to those who could feel the pulse of the world, the silence was a held breath.
Ray, now known in hushed whispers as the Third Sovereign, lived in the solitude of the Obsidian Peaks. He was no longer a boy, nor a beast, but a living bridge between the Saffron Plane and PatalLok. The twelve unified shards rotated slowly within his spirit, a silent engine of balance. Yet, even as he sat in meditation, he felt the fraying edges of reality.
"The balance is a cage," a voice echoed from the stars—not the voice of Bali or Raghav, but something colder, older.
High above the Aether-Firmament, beyond the reach of the strongest tamers, the Heavens were watching. For two millennia, the "Celestial Directorate"—the true architects of the Dom energy—had used the Dominion as a farm, a closed ecosystem to harvest the soul-essence of evolved beings. Ray's act of unification hadn't just saved the world; it had stolen the Directorate's harvest.
On January 19, 2026, at 7:09 PM IST, the first "Stellar Nail" fell.
It descended from the zenith of the sky—a spike of pure, white-hole energy that pierced the Aether-Firmament like a needle through silk. It struck the Azure Sea, boiling away leagues of water in an instant and revealing the entrance to the Varuna Trench once more. But this time, it wasn't the Abyss that was being summoned. It was the Void.
In the Obsidian Peaks, Ray opened his eyes. They were no longer saffron or black, but a deep, terrifying violet that mirrored the stars. Beside him, Meera—her Blue Phoenix now a creature of starlight—stood up, her flute glowing with a warning hum.
"They're coming, aren't they?" she asked, her voice steady despite the trembling of the earth.
"The farmers have come to claim their crop," Ray replied, standing as his cloak of shadows and light billowed in the solar wind. "They think we are still the beasts they created. They think the Requiem was just a song for the dead."
He looked upward as the sky began to crack, revealing the silver citadels of the Directorate floating in the vacuum of space. The "Void-Born" were descending—beings of pure logic and light who viewed the Dominion as a broken experiment to be purged.
Ray reached into the air, and a weapon manifested in his hand—not a fang, nor a blade, but a staff of unified gravity. "Volume 4" had begun. The battle was no longer for the soul of the Dominion, but for the right of the world to exist at all.
"The Requiem is over," Ray whispered, his voice vibrating through the foundations of the world. "Now, the Heavens will learn to scream."