The sound continued to spread.
Not like a shockwave.
Not like an explosion.
It was an extended fracture—a colossal cracking, the groan of reality itself—stretched across kilometers of sky, as if the firmament were still resisting the inevitable. Each passing second added more tension, another constraint placed upon a structure already on the brink of collapse.
It was not a sound one heard only with the ears.
It vibrated through bone.
It crawled beneath the skin.
It made teeth tremble in their gums.
Pedestrians looked up.
Some froze in place, mouths half-open, unable to give meaning to what they were seeing.
Others instinctively stumbled backward, bodies reacting faster than their minds.
A few dropped to their knees without understanding why, crushed by a primitive intuition: something absolutely forbidden was taking place.
The sky was no longer a sky.
The fissure widened slowly, methodically, with almost cruel precision. Behind it, a shifting darkness was revealed, streaked with currents that obeyed no human geometry, no known physical law. Colors bent, twisted, vanished before they could even be properly perceived.
It was not the black of night.
Nor that of space.
It was a living void.
A void saturated with intent.
Wang Lin felt his stomach twist violently.
Beneath the blindfold, a painful heat pulsed behind his eyes. The abyssal seals reacted immediately—not with panic, but with an unsettling clarity. They did not scream. They observed. As if they recognized what was descending… and had always known this moment would come.
"Wang Lin…" Liang murmured, his voice hoarse.
Liang Feng did not answer.
He stared at the sky, perfectly still, as if frozen within a moment outside of time. His mouth hung slightly open, but no sound emerged. The calm hardness that usually defined his face had drained of all color. An abnormal tension ran through his body, visible even in his clenched fingers.
Something within him was resisting.
"This isn't… possible…" he finally whispered.
His voice trembled.
Then, the fissure gave way.
Not all at once.
But in successive layers, as if the sky were composed of strata being torn away one by one. Light folded inward. The atmosphere compressed violently. The air became heavy, crushing, difficult to breathe.
The last remaining clouds were sucked in like shreds of smoke, crushed downward by a new, foreign gravitational force—one that obeyed no terrestrial law.
And then—
It appeared.
The entity did not descend from the fissure.
It replaced what remained of the sky.
Its size defied all human scale. Not as large as a building. Not even as large as a mountain. It occupied an entire portion of the firmament, a presence so vast that the human mind instinctively refused to define its contours. Its shadow spread across entire cities, swallowed seas and mountain ranges alike, as though the world itself were nothing more than a fragile backdrop.
Its body seemed composed of an indefinable substance, oscillating between dark flesh and condensed energy. With each infinitesimal movement, space rippled around it, as though reality itself struggled to endure its continued existence.
Two gigantic horns rose from its skull.
Massive.
Twisted.
Ancient.
They were engraved with cyclopean patterns resembling primitive demonic scripts—symbols that pulsed slowly with a dull glow, like scars left behind by vanished worlds. They pierced the upper layers of the atmosphere and seemed to touch the very limits of the world.
An absolute silence fell.
Not a peaceful silence.
Not an empty one.
A silence of submission.
Even the wind ceased to exist.
Then, its eyes opened.
Two abysses.
No human pupils.
No sclera.
No gaze in any earthly sense.
Only two wells of incandescent nothingness, charged with a will so ancient, so heavy, that it crushed the soul before it could even be understood. The weakest minds shattered at that precise instant.
Wang Lin understood.
This was not a creature invading Earth.
It was something that should never have existed in this world.
An invisible pressure descended.
The oceans rose into monstrous waves.
Tectonic plates groaned like wounded beasts.
Mountains, thousands of kilometers away, trembled—rock fracturing like bone under unbearable strain.
Satellites in orbit ceased responding.
Then, one by one, they disintegrated.
Streaks of fire briefly tore through the atmosphere before vanishing, reduced to nothing long before reaching the ground.
"My God…" someone screamed.
The entity spoke.
Its voice did not emerge from a mouth.
It resonated directly within the structure of the world.
In the air.
In stone.
In water.
In the mind of every living being.
"Finally…"
A single word.
And yet, thousands collapsed instantly. Cerebral hemorrhages erupted without warning. Animals howled before dying. Plants withered, as if suddenly deprived of any reason to exist.
Wang Lin felt his skull on the verge of splitting apart.
The world blurred.
A sharp ringing filled his ears.
Warm blood slowly ran down his neck.
He fell to his knees.
Around him, the street had become absolute chaos: tearing screams, lifeless bodies, shattered windows, blaring alarms crushed beneath the overwhelming pressure. Some ran without direction. Others stood frozen, unable to move, crushed by a terror that surpassed the instinct for survival.
"Finally…" the voice murmured again.
"After all this time…"
The entity's gaze settled.
Not on the city.
Not on humanity.
On Wang Lin.
At that exact moment, Liang Feng screamed.
"Wang Lin!"
He staggered violently, clutched his mouth.
A spray of blood burst between his fingers and splattered onto the asphalt.
"Liang!"
Wang Lin caught him before he fully collapsed. Liang Feng's body was burning hot, wracked with violent convulsions. Each breath seemed to tear something more from inside him.
"It's… too early…" he murmured, his voice broken.
"What are you talking about?!" Wang Lin shouted.
Liang Feng lifted his eyes toward the shattered sky.
Reflected in his pupils were symbols Wang Lin had never seen before—ancient marks, deeply rooted, as if a buried truth had suddenly surged to the surface.
"It wasn't supposed to… come now…"
His fingers clenched Wang Lin's sleeve with unnatural strength.
"Listen to me… no matter what happens… remember… all of this… exists for you…"
The world trembled again.
The entity slowly raised an arm.
A movement so vast it produced visible gravitational distortion. The atmosphere compressed violently. Buildings groaned. The sky took on an unreal violet hue, as if reality itself were bleeding.
Its finger turned.
Toward the continent.
Toward something ancient.
Buried.
Sealed for ages humanity had long forgotten.
At that moment, lines of light burst from the ground.
Ancient runes.
Protective structures previously invisible.
Anchored within the very fabric of the Asian continent.
They vibrated.
Resisted.
Screamed silently.
Then, they cracked.
Liang Feng spat another mouthful of blood.
"The barrier…" he whispered. "It was… me…"
His eyes slowly clouded over.
"I'm sorry… I didn't hold out long enough…"
The entity's finger descended.
Without sound.
Without warning.
The runes exploded.
The barrier collapsed.
At that precise instant, the air changed.
Something was permitted.
Something entered.
The street vanished.
The screams.
The ground.
Gravity.
Everything was torn away in an absolute vertical pull.
In a single breath, Wang Lin found himself in the void.
Above the Asian continent.
He was not falling.
He was floating.
Held in place by an invisible force.
Before him, the entity slowly lowered its head.
Its eyes of nothingness fixed upon him.
And the voice resonated once more—closer, sharper, more terrible than before.
"Sacred vessel."
The cataclysm had begun.