The air in the Sunless Reach did not just sit; it pressed. It was a physical weight that could flatten steel, yet a sound tore through it that made the very atmosphere ripple like disturbed water.
"RAAAAAA-HAAAAAAAGH!"
The roar was cataclysmic. It vibrated through the jagged obsidian spires and sent tremors up through miles of rock, causing minor avalanches in the world above. In the darkness, a pair of eyes the size of lakebeds opened, glowing with a stagnant, ancient gold.
The Great Terror of the Reach, a creature of scales and shadow whose length could wrap around Baelkaar thrice over, exhaled a cloud of soot.
"Bored..." the beast's thought echoed, a telepathic rumble that would have burst a normal human's eardrums. "Ten thousand years of silence. Ten thousand years of watching the same blue flames lick the same dead stones. If the heavens won't send a God to slay me, they could at least send a jester to entertain me!"
The monster shifted, prepared to sink back into a century-long slumber, when a rhythmic thump-drag-thump caught its attention.
At the base of its colossal claw—a digit larger than a manor house—a small, pale speck was moving. It was the infant. The child was crawling, his tiny knees scraping against stone that was hot enough to melt lead, yet his skin remained unblemished. He wasn't crying anymore. Instead, he was looking up at the golden eyes with those haunting purple pupils, reaching out a tiny hand to grab a scale the size of a shield.
The beast snorted, a blast of wind that should have sent the child flying into the abyss. The infant simply blinked, his white hair fluttering, and continued to tug on the scale.
"A maggot?" the monster mused, leaning its massive head down. "No... a human? How did a hairless ape reach the floor of the Reach? Die quickly, little thing. The pressure here will turn your bones to dust in a moment."
But the child didn't die. One hour passed. Then two. The monster watched, fascinated despite itself, as the infant began to chew curiously on the edge of a crystalized Force-vein.
"...Huh," the monster rumbled. A strange, forgotten warmth stirred in its ancient chest. "Well. You're certainly more interesting than the rocks."
Time functioned differently in the depths. Years bled into one another, marked only by the child's growth.
The Great Terror no longer filled the cavern with its draconic bulk. To better traverse the narrow crags and interact with the boy, the beast had taken a humanoid form: a tall, imposing figure with sweeping horns, golden eyes, and robes woven from shadows. He called himself Khaos.
"Eat," Khaos commanded, dropping a fruit that glowed with the intensity of a dying star. This was a Void-Severing Peach, a natural treasure so rare that emperors would trade entire provinces for a single bite.
The boy, now five years old and standing with a grace that defied gravity, caught the fruit and bit into it. Pure, liquid Force exploded from the fruit, enough to cause a Master-level cultivator to self-destruct. Innominatus simply swallowed, his purple eyes flashing briefly.
"It's sour, Old Man," the boy remarked, his voice calm.
"It's a treasure of the First Era, you ungrateful brat!" Khaos barked, though his lips twitched into a smirk.
He had spent the last few years scouring the deepest trenches of the Reach for the most potent catalysts—Dragon-Marrow Marrow, Star-Fall Dew, and Heart-Blood of the Earth. He fed them to Innominatus like common snacks, building a foundation for the boy that was less like a human's and more like a primordial god's.
One evening, as Innominatus sat in a meditative trance amidst the blue inferno, Khaos decided to finally probe the boy's internal Force-circuits. He had always known the boy was special, but he had waited until his foundation was "robust" enough to withstand a deep scan.
Khaos placed a hand on the boy's shoulder and sent a sliver of his own ancient essence inward.
The moment the essence touched the boy's marrow, Khaos's golden eyes went wide. His hand flew back as if burned. Inside the boy, there was no standard "Force Sea." Instead, there was a swirling nebula of absolute nothingness, rimmed by a corona of violet light that seemed to devour the very concept of energy.
"This... this is impossible," Khaos whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of terror and manic glee. "It's not just a talent. It's a violation of the Laws."
Innominatus opened his eyes. "What's wrong?"
Khaos began to laugh. It started as a chuckle and grew into a roaring peal that shook the Sunless Reach to its foundations.
"The elders of the surface talk of the Holy Bodies and the Divine Bloodlines," Khaos shouted, grabbing the boy by the shoulders. "But they know nothing! You carry the Eternal Eclipse Physique—the one the legends said the Universe deleted because it feared its own end!"
Khaos looked up toward the distant, hidden sky, his grin jagged and wild.
"Let them sharpen their swords and polish their thrones! Let the Immortals preen in their high palaces! They have no idea that the greatest monster of Astra Noctis isn't me..."
He looked back at the white-haired boy.
"...it's you."