The nameless one sat at the center of a collapsing throne of stone. Around him, the palace he had built from mountains groaned and crumbled, molten rivers seeping through cracks. His skin peeled like ash, drifting away in flecks that glowed before dissolving into nothing.
He had ruled his world for centuries, bending earth, air, fire, and water to his command, reshaping continents like a sculptor with clay. Oceans parted for him, storms bent their knees, mountains rose and fell with a gesture. Yet even he could not command time.
His body, once eternal, had begun to betray him. Dust crept through his veins, spreading faster each day. He had tried—gods, how he had tried—to reverse it. To rewrite his flesh, rebuild his marrow. But even mastery of all elements bowed before the weight of decay.
And so he built his final creation.
At the heart of his shattered palace stood a machine unlike any forge or temple. A lattice of crystal veins, pulsing with fire and lightning, curved into an obsidian chamber. Runes carved into steel sang with ancient power, drawn not from his world, but from beyond.
A soul anchor.
Not a prison. Not a weapon. A bridge.
It would rip his essence from his dying body and cast it into another realm, one where matter and spirit intertwined differently. He would not be bound to the dust of this world. He would live again.
---
His voice cracked as he whispered the words that ignited the machine. "Not the end. Merely… a vessel."
Light swallowed him. His body sloughed away entirely, scattering into a storm of dust, until only his soul remained—a sphere of flame and storm, roaring with untamed elements. The anchor pulsed, and then—
He was gone.
---
Elsewhere.
Delilah had been mid-stride, her usual fire in her veins, her sharp eyes set on the horizon. Then the world froze. For one endless second, her breath hitched, her body seized, her heart hammered against her ribs.
And then he was inside her.
A flood of power unlike anything she had ever known crashed through her veins—oceans, earthquakes, wildfires, thunderclaps, all at once. Her scream tore through the air, shaking the ground beneath her.
She collapsed, clutching at herself, as though her body might split apart. Her skin flickered with light, shifting between flames and stone, water and shadow. Her reflection—if she had looked—would not have been her own.
In her mind's eye, she saw him.
Not fully formed, not flesh, but a presence of impossible weight. His voice echoed like crumbling cliffs and roaring storms.
This vessel… yes. Strong. I will endure here.
Delilah's eyes snapped open, blazing with elemental fire. Her hands clenched as earth shifted beneath them, water rose into the air around her, lightning crackled at her fingertips.
But her voice, when it came, was her own—angry, trembling. "Get out of me."
No, he said, calm, inevitable. We are bound now. You are my survival. And I… am your power.
---
Somewhere across worlds, the Black Serpents would feel the ripple of his arrival. A new force had entered this war—one ancient, broken, but unwilling to die.
And Delilah had just become his unwilling host.