The wind screamed across the blackened plains as the knight pushed onward, armor rattling like bones in a graveyard. The path ahead was nothing but twisted silhouettes of dead trees and shadows that moved even without wind. Every instinct in the knight's body said turn back, but the vision from the Rift left no room for retreat—
Erynthos had seen them.
And worse:
He was waiting.
The sky above cracked like glass, streaked with unnatural lightning, illuminating the distant outline of a colossal structure—the ancient throne-tower of Eryndor. It used to shine white like pearls. Now it pulsed with a sick crimson glow, as though the building itself had been hollowed out and filled with blood.
The knight tightened their grip on the sword.
Faster. Move faster.
The ground trembled beneath their boots. Something was following. Several things.
Their shadows stretched across the landscape like spilled ink, gliding after the knight with impossible speed. At first there were only three. Then six. Then dozens.
Eyes appeared within the darkness—wide, lidless, hungry.
"Not now," the knight muttered through clenched teeth.
A whisper slithered across the back of their mind.
"You're late."
The knight froze. That voice. Smooth. Cold. Regal.
Erynthos.
But the king was miles away—sealed inside the throne-tower.
The knight forced shaky breaths and tried not to respond to the phantom voice. Shadow-things screeched behind them, their limbs stretching like ropes of tar.
The ground split open.
A scream tore out of the earth itself, and a colossal shadow-hand shot upward, grasping at the knight's legs. They leaped aside just in time, tumbling across jagged stone.
Another whisper curled around the air.
"You come to me… yet you run?"
The knight stumbled upright.
"Get out of my head!"
Not a single breeze stirred, yet laughter—dry and ancient—vibrated through the air.
The shadow-creatures surged.
The knight dashed forward, sword flashing. The first creature lunged—its face nothing but a hollow ring of teeth. The knight slashed once, twice—black ichor spilled across the ground, sizzling like acid.
But killing one meant nothing.
Twenty more swarmed.
The knight bolted, boots hammering the earth, refusing to look back. The tower's crimson light grew brighter with every step. The curse thickened, warming the air like breath against their neck.
Then—
Silence.
Dead, sudden silence.
The knight's feet slowed. Their pulse thrashed in their ears. The creatures behind them halted as well, as if frozen mid-lunge. Something stronger had claimed the air.
A presence.
A crushing, ancient awareness.
And then—
The world around the knight dissolved.
Grass vanished. The sky shattered. Darkness swallowed everything.
No ground. No air. No horizon.
Just an endless void and a single towering figure standing far ahead, carved out of starlight and shadow.
Erynthos.
But not the mortal king they knew—
This was him in his true form.
Tall as a mountain. Eyes like hollow suns. A body stitched together from constellations that moved unnaturally. His voice rumbled through the void:
"You have touched the Rift."
The knight's throat tightened. They couldn't speak even if they wanted to.
Erynthos drifted closer, each step silent, each movement twisting the void like fabric. He didn't look like a king. Not anymore. He looked like a god who had killed everything that came before him.
"You saw my creation," he murmured. "You saw what I was… what I still am."
The knight finally forced out words.
"I saw what you did."
Erynthos tilted his head.
"Did you?"
Images exploded in the knight's mind—
The mountains Erynthos shaped.
The rivers he carved.
The forests he breathed life into.
Then—
The god he chained.
The ritual.
The power he stole.
The moment Eryndor's doom was sealed.
The knight choked on the flood of visions. "You cursed your own world."
Erynthos smiled.
It wasn't human. It wasn't sane.
His teeth were the shapes of stars collapsing.
"Creation demands sacrifice."
The void trembled around him.
"Eryndor thrives because I command it. The curse is simply… a price."
The knight stumbled back, grasping their sword even though the weapon looked pitiful in the endless dark.
"People are dying," the knight said. "The land is rotting. Your kingdom lives in terror."
Erynthos's gaze deepened into a thousand burning suns.
"Fear," he whispered, "is loyalty."
The knight's blood froze.
Erynthos raised his hand. Darkness pooled in his palm, swirling with starlit veins.
"But you…"
His voice dropped to a quiet snarl.
"You are an anomaly—born outside my design. A mistake in the timeline."
The knight backed away—
But the darkness followed like a living tide.
"Stay away from me!"
"You slipped through the cracks of fate," Erynthos continued, ignoring their panic. "You were not meant to exist."
The knight's heart hammered.
"If I'm such a mistake," the knight hissed, "why haven't you killed me yet?"
Erynthos stopped.
A slow, terrible smile spread across his cosmic face.
**"Because mistakes,"** he said softly, **"are useful."**
Before the knight could move, darkness lashed out—coiling around their limbs, dragging them toward the colossal king.
They struggled, kicking, clawing, screaming—but it only tightened.
Erynthos bent down, his face filling the void, his voice vibrating through the knight's bones.
**"Come to my throne, little traveler."**
The knots of darkness pulled harder, ripping through air and time.
**"Your future,"** Erynthos whispered, **"belongs to me."**
The knight gasped—
And suddenly they were hurled backward through time.
Falling. Spinning. Breaking through centuries like glass.
The last thing they heard was Erynthos's voice, echoing through the collapsing void:
**"Run as fast as you wish… I will always find you."**
Then—
The knight slammed into a new time, hitting the ground with a sharp gasp.
They looked up.
The world around them was unfamiliar.
Untouched. Uncorrupted. Green. Alive.
For the first time in centuries… Eryndor was beautiful.
But a scream rang from a distance.
The knight's blood ran cold.
This was the era when Erynthos first began the curse.
And the knight was now trapped inside the moment the world began to die.