It began with silence.
The kind of silence that isn't heard, but felt — as if the air itself had stopped breathing, as if the world, for one brief moment, had forgotten how to move.
The ground was still trembling beneath their feet, and the sky kept shifting colors unnaturally fast. Ash drifted down slowly from above, like gray snow burying the remains of everything that had existed only minutes before.
The place where the distortion had exploded was no longer the same.
The rocks had twisted into overlapping circles, refusing to return to their natural shape, while a thick, dark cloud of smoke covered half the horizon.
There was no sound except the faint crackle of distant fire and the whisper of a wind that had lost its direction.
The team was scattered among the wreckage, moving sluggishly, shouting each other's names to make sure no one had died — but even their voices sounded muffled, swallowed by the heavy air.
And amidst the chaos stood Nofan.
He didn't move.
His body looked carved out of the silence itself. Ash clung to his clothes, and his eyes were fixed on something far away — a point only he could see.
No one knew if he was alive, but he was standing, and somehow, that was more terrifying than death.
Siran approached him cautiously, searching for any sign of consciousness, but something in the air around Nofan stopped him.
It was cold — not the kind of cold born from wind or weather, but a sharp, unnatural chill that radiated from within the boy himself.
Then the earth began to glow.
Faint light pulsed beneath their feet — thin, luminous cracks spreading outward like veins of some buried creature.
It wasn't natural light. It wasn't bright or warm. It was a dead color — somewhere between metallic gray and faded violet.
And then, the ground began to whisper.
It wasn't a single voice — it was dozens, layered over one another, speaking in a language that didn't belong to sound.
Everyone felt it — not through their ears, but through their bones.
A pulse that crawled through their veins, leaving behind nausea and trembling.
Siran shouted,
"Nofan! Stop whatever you're doing!"
But Nofan didn't move.
He stood in the center of the glowing fissures, and the air around him began to warp, twisting like smoke rising from invisible fire.
His features shifted — a faint shadow spread across the left side of his face, pulsing like a living thing. With every pulse, the world around him seemed to flinch.
And then he saw it.
Things no human should see.
The world split open in silence — walls breathed, the ground swelled and shrank, and the sky rained symbols made of inverted light.
Hallucinations poured into his mind like waves of alien memories — bodies dissolving into darkness, faces without features, a city built from black light stretching endlessly across a void.
And within him, a voice — distant yet unmistakable —
> "You've returned… half flesh, half echo."
He tried to scream, but the air strangled his breath.
A dark pulse burst from his chest, echoing through the earth like the heartbeat of something colossal.
The cracks widened, and the violet light turned into swirling dust — alive, slithering up rocks and walls, tracing unknown sigils before sinking back into the ground.
From afar, Marin watched, gripping her weapon.
Her voice was a hiss between her teeth:
> "That's not energy… it's something trying to be born."
But what emerged wasn't a form — it was a feeling.
The whole place filled with an alien awareness.
Something unseen was watching them — not from above, but from within.
It studied them, touched their thoughts like fingers made of mist.
The team stumbled backward.
The air grew heavier — so dense it was hard to breathe.
Voices filled their minds, fragmented syllables of an ancient tongue repeating in meaningless cycles, echoing like the memory of a language long forgotten.
Then, Nofan fell to his knees.
A dark vapor streamed from his chest — not smoke, but a moving substance that twisted as if searching for form.
The air tore open around him, and the ground beneath his hands turned to boiling ash.
Darkness spread fast.
It wasn't shadow anymore — it was alive, crawling over shapes, devouring outlines.
Siran shouted, pulling Marin back,
> "Get away! That's not Nofan right now!"
But it was too late.
The dark light erupted — like a star being born inside the void — shards of something crystalline flew through the air, floating rather than falling.
Each fragment reflected distorted images of them — themselves, but wrong: faces cracked, eyes inverted, mouths whispering soundless words.
Then, silence again.
Not the kind that comes after noise, but the kind that follows the breaking of reality itself.
Something in the world had cracked — and reassembled, imperfectly.
When the haze cleared, Nofan was kneeling in the center of a glowing circle of ash.
His breath came in sharp, uneven gasps. His eyes were empty — like someone who had fought a war inside his own mind.
Marin stepped closer, while Siran kept his spear raised.
The ground around Nofan still radiated faint heat.
In the center of the circle was a small fissure, pulsing with dark light — like a buried heart still beating beneath the earth.
Nofan's lips moved. His voice was low, rough,
> "That wasn't an explosion."
Siran frowned.
> "Then what the hell was it?"
Nofan looked up, his eyes dim but focused.
> "Something… woke up."
No one understood. But the ground did.
A hiss rose from the cracks — thin vapor escaping, followed by a thick, black substance that crawled upward.
It wasn't smoke.
It wasn't mud.
It was something in between, moving with a mind of its own.
The shape it formed was hideous — a face without features, shifting and pulsing, dragging itself across the ground as though learning how to move.
When the light touched it, the thing melted slowly, leaving behind a dark handprint etched into the ash.
Siran whispered,
> "It's… a new curse."
But Marin said nothing.
Something in Nofan had changed — not his body, but the space around him.
The air itself seemed cautious now, as though the world was holding its breath.
Everything felt too quiet.
In the distance, dawn returned — but its color wasn't the same.
The violet sky was now tinged with black, like the heavens themselves remembered what had happened.
Nofan stood at last.
He gazed at the corrupted horizon and murmured,
> "The curse that woke up… it's not foreign to me."
He paused.
> "Maybe it's part of me. Or maybe…" — his voice lowered —
"…I was part of it all along."
The wind swept through the ruins, carrying a new whisper — one that didn't belong to this world.
It wasn't a voice of warning… but of promise.
That night, none of them slept.
Because when they closed their eyes, they all saw the same vision:
A figure covered in ash, a dark light pulsing in its chest like a second heart — opening its eyes beneath the fractured twilight… and smiling at a world beginning to crack from within.
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