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The wind howled across the barren plain, carrying dust that shimmered faintly under a fractured sky. Shards of stars bled through the cracks in the heavens, scattering ghostly light across what remained of a city. Buildings leaned, their spines broken. Roads crumbled into rivers of ash.
It was not the first city to fall, nor would it be the last.
A group of survivors huddled near a collapsed wall, their breaths shallow, their eyes hollow. They had seen too much — families torn apart by the corruption, friends lost to the claws of beasts. They whispered not of salvation, but of endurance. If they could last another day, perhaps that was enough.
"Why is this happening? What did we do to this world to deserve such fate, cruel and restless fate"
Then the air… split.
Not like a tear of cloth. Not like glass breaking. It was more violent and yet more precise — a rift. Space itself opened, folding back like a curtain, revealing nothing but a void on the other side. The survivors gasped and drew back, expecting a monster to emerge.
Instead, a figure stepped through.
"Silence... I have but a word to hear from any of you"
Black leather, worn but unyielding. A mask of silver laced with violet that hid his face, oval and smooth, with faint chaotic patterns etched across it. His movements were soundless, his presence quiet, but his arrival carried the weight of inevitability.
The corruption sensed him.
From the ruins, shapes stirred — creatures of smoke and bone, their limbs too long, their eyes too hollow. They screeched and lunged, drawn not by hunger but by instinct. Evil always sought to smother light.
"Another one?"
The figure did not flinch. He raised his hand. Another rift cracked open, wider, darker, and the first wave of monsters fell into it, vanishing with shrieks that echoed into eternity. Those behind him gasped, unsure whether to fear him or thank him.
{[Im growing tired of this tirany}
The masked man walked forward, wordless, stepping past the survivors. A beast lunged from above, but the air twisted — a portal opened mid-strike, swallowing it whole. Another portal blinked open behind the man, releasing the beast's own strike back upon its kin.
"You've walked into the graveyard that's destined to be yours"
The battle was not long. Against him, it never was.
When silence returned, the survivors approached hesitantly. One among them — a young man trembling but brave enough to speak — asked,
"Wh-… who are you?"
The masked figure turned, the violet-silver mask catching the light of fractured stars. His answer was as quiet as it was absolute:
"…Prime."
He stepped into another rift, vanishing without another word. The survivors never saw him again. But they carried his name forward, and soon the whispers spread:
The Silent One walks among us.
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