The Black Continent did not sleep.
Its forests grew in twisted spirals beneath a dim violet sky, their roots breaking through the ruins of cities nobody remembered building. Cold ash drifted across the ground like snow. Somewhere far beyond the dead trees, something enormous called out—and the sound made the earth hum beneath Kael's boots.
At his feet lay the remains of three fully corrupted beings.
They had worn human shapes when they found him. They had spoken in human voices, pleaded in human voices, and then changed when they realized he would not let them pass. Black growths had split through their skin; their limbs had lengthened; their eyes had emptied into the same starving yellow glow Kael had seen too many times.
Kael stood among them with his golden staff resting against one shoulder. Its surface was clean despite the fight, catching the faint light from the poisoned sky.
One corrupted figure still clung to life near a fractured stone wall. Its mouth moved with effort.
"I'll see you in Hell…" it rasped.
Kael looked down at it without interest.
"Whatever you say."
He turned and walked away before it could speak again.
The voice within him stirred as he crossed the ash-covered road.
Why are you doing this?
Kael did not slow.
"Because I'm bored."
Bored? You came to the Black Continent alone to hunt fully corrupted beings because you were bored?
Kael adjusted his grip on the staff.
"I wanted something to do."
The inner voice fell silent for a few steps, apparently deciding that arguing with him was not worth the effort.
Ahead, the land rose toward a jagged ridge. Beyond it waited Voidspire—Kael's current home. A black tower visible even through the continent's permanent haze, built into cliffs overlooking a sea that reflected no sky.
From its highest observatory, he could watch the tournament.
Watch Arthur, Alex, the Midnight Church, and whatever disaster Aris allowed to unfold next.
Kael glanced once at the distant blood-coloured horizon.
"Time to go home," he said. "The tournament is getting interesting."
Behind him, one of the corrupted bodies twitched.
Then the ground beneath it opened its eyes.
The ground beneath the corrupted body opened its eyes.
Kael stopped.
The thing's remains began to drag themselves toward him, black fingers digging furrows through the ash. Its mouth had split too wide for a human face, but it still managed a wet, broken laugh.
Kael raised his golden staff.
Usually, an attribute required personal aether—power drawn from within the user. The aether in the world around them could only strengthen an ability already awakened and fueled by its owner.
Kael used neither.
He reached outward.
The ash-laden air around him trembled. Stray aether gathered from the Black Continent itself: from poisoned roots, dead stone, old battles, and the corrupted things buried beneath the soil. It spun around the end of his staff in a dense, glowing current.
Then Kael spoke one word.
"Burn."
Fire erupted.
It was not the warm orange of an ordinary flame. This blaze burned gold at its core and deep crimson at its edges, climbing over the creature in a spiralling column. The corrupted being screamed once before the fire consumed the corruption holding it together.
Within seconds, nothing remained but scorched ash and a faint smell of metal.
Kael lowered his staff.
His inner voice went silent for a beat.
That should not be possible.
"I know," Kael said.
To use fire, you should need your own aether first. Ambient aether is a supplement—not a source.
Kael began walking toward the distant silhouette of Voidspire.
"I didn't use an attribute," he replied.
That was all he offered.
Behind him, the burnt ground continued to glow for several seconds—as though the Black Continent itself had remembered being commanded.
From Voidspire's high observatory, Kael would be able to watch the tournament. But after that impossible flame, the question was no longer whether he would see the others.
It was whether something watching the Black Continent had seen him.
Kael — The Fire That Wasn't His
Kael kept walking through the ash toward the distant silhouette of Voidspire.
His inner voice lingered in the silence.
That fire was impossible. You used no personal aether.
Kael rested his golden staff over one shoulder. "Because it wasn't an attribute."
Then what was it?
"An old spell."
His true attribute was Thunder. Normally, he needed his own aether to awaken it before drawing ambient aether to reinforce its force. But the flame he had used was something older—ancient fire magic, learned long before he understood what immortality would cost him.
For a moment, the Black Continent disappeared.
(Years Earlier)
A younger Kael sat beside a campfire at the edge of a mountain pass, his golden staff still too large for his hands.
Across from him, his master laughed so hard that beer spilled down the front of his travel-worn coat.
"You nearly set your own boots on fire," the old adventurer said.
"I controlled it," young Kael insisted, holding a cup of juice in both hands.
"You panicked, shouted, and ran in a circle."
"I was underage. I wasn't allowed to drink beer and make better decisions."
That only made his master laugh harder.
The old man lifted his bottle toward the fire. "Magic is not always about having more power, boy. Sometimes it is knowing what power already exists around you—and asking it to remember its nature."
He showed Kael the old words that night.
Not an attribute.
Not a borrowed blessing.
A way of speaking to fire itself.
The memory burned away.
Kael's face stayed calm as he crossed the blackened road, but his grip tightened around the staff.
His master had died long ago.
Like everyone else.
Friends. Allies. Teachers. People who had laughed beside him, bled beside him, promised to see him again.
Immortality had not made loss easier. It had only made it repetitive.
His inner voice broke the quiet.
Will you help Arthur on his path?
Kael looked toward Voidspire.
"I don't know."
Why not?
"Because without the Book of Records, it is all meaningless."
The wind dragged ash across the road.
Kael's belief had never changed. If someone read every verse within the Book of Records, they could see the past, present, and future—and alter them as they wished. They could create whatever they desired.
But the Book of the End was different.
Far more dangerous.
Kael believed that its completed verses could also alter past, present, and future—but its scope was destruction rather than creation. With it, one might erase dimensions, fracture reality, and end far more than a single world.
"Arthur's path may matter," Kael said quietly. "Tom may matter. Alex may matter. But if the Records are real, everything changes when I find them."
His inner voice did not argue.
Ahead, Voidspire rose over the dark sea: a black tower built into the cliffside, its highest windows glowing like watchful eyes.
Kael walked toward home, carrying an ancient spell, a dead master's lesson, and the terrible possibility that every future could be rewritten by the right book.
The first nightmare-ranked beast did not enter the recovery wing.
It forced its way through it.
The exterior wall folded inward beneath its weight. Concrete dust rolled across the corridor. When the emergency lights cut through it, Arthur saw the thing clearly.
It had once been shaped like a ravager.
Now it was too large to be called one.
Its shell was layered in black, overlapping plates—thick as vault doors and veined with a dull red glow. Several half-formed human faces strained beneath the armour along its neck, mouths opening and closing soundlessly. Its front limbs ended in hooked claws, while a second set of smaller arms dragged along its underside, grasping at the broken tile. Its head had no eyes. Only a vertical slit ran from brow to throat, packed with teeth that turned inward like a grinder.
Then the slit opened.
Every stolen face along its neck screamed.
Arthur moved first.
He drove a broken metal support into the creature's chest. The strike should have pierced anything human.
Instead, the pole bent.
The nightmare beast swung one plated arm. Arthur threw himself aside as it tore through the recovery beds behind him. Mattresses burst open. Steel frames snapped. The floor cracked where its claws landed.
Arthur struck again—at its knee, then at the narrow gap under its jaw.
Nothing.
His weapon skidded over the shell with a sound like steel dragged across stone.
"Arthur, move!" Vaelis shouted.
The beast's smaller arms snapped forward and caught Arthur across the ribs. He was hurled into a medical cabinet hard enough to cave in its doors. Pain emptied the air from his lungs. For a second, he could not stand.
The creature came for him anyway.
Sunny and Lola
Sunny tried to raise a wall with the Creator.
Pale matter flickered into existence between the nightmare beast and Arthur—but Sunny had not recovered enough aether. The wall formed unevenly, cracked immediately, and shattered when the creature struck it.
The backlash threw Sunny across the room.
He hit the far wall and fell among broken glass, coughing blood into his sleeve as the light in his hands died.
"Sunny!" Lola cried.
She forced herself up despite her drained reserves. Fire gathered around her arm in thin, unsteady bands. She released it anyway.
The flames struck the beast's shell and spread over it.
For a hopeful second, it worked.
Then the black plates opened.
The fire vanished into the seams as though the creature had inhaled it.
Its claw swept forward.
Lola barely lifted her arms before the impact caught her and slammed her through a row of treatment beds. Metal shrieked. She landed beneath a twisted frame, dazed, one side of her face bleeding, her hands shaking too violently to summon another flame.
Arthur tried to rise.
The nightmare beast placed one massive clawed foot against his chest and pressed him into the shattered tiles.
The shell did not crack.
His strength did not matter.
And the tooth-lined slit above him widened.
A White Blade in the Dark
A flash of white crossed the room.
The creature's head snapped sideways.
A clean line appeared across its eyeless face, not deep enough to kill it—but deep enough to make every mouth in its neck scream at once.
Layla stood between Arthur and the nightmare.
Her white sword trembled in both hands, its blade bright against the ruined recovery wing. She had entered through the broken emergency doors without waiting for permission, her fear written plainly across her face.
But she did not step back.
"Get up, Arthur," she said.
The nightmare beast lunged for her.
Layla met it.
Her white sword struck the creature's claw, and light burst across the black shell. The impact drove her backward across the tile, heels scraping through blood and broken glass, but she held the blade in place long enough to divert the strike away from Arthur.
She was not stronger than it.
She was simply refusing to let it reach him.
Alexi's Water
Behind Layla, Alexi raised both hands.
Water spilled from the burst pipes overhead and twisted through the air at her command. It gathered into a narrow, shaking current—not the crushing flood it might once have been, but enough to wrap around the nightmare's lower limbs and drag its footing sideways.
Her face tightened with the strain.
She had almost lost her powers during her battle with Veydras, the Demon of Denial.
Veydras had not tried to overpower her. It had whispered that she was weak. That she had failed Arthur. That her water had never mattered. By the time she fought free, her ability had become fragile—like a river reduced to a broken stream.
Still, Alexi held the water in place.
"I can't hold it long!" she shouted.
The nightmare beast tore one leg free.
The current broke apart and sprayed across the tiles. Alexi staggered, blood running from her nose, but she forced the remaining water into the creature's joints again.
Arthur finally got to his feet.
His ribs burned. His weapon was nearly useless against the shell. Sunny was down. Lola was hurt. Layla was one missed strike away from being crushed. Alexi was draining herself to buy seconds.
And the nightmare was still barely injured.
Then Arthur saw it.
Not a weakness in the shell.
A rhythm.
Each time the brown book in the red-masked handler's hands turned a page, the creature's plates shifted—opening for a fraction of a second along the throat slit.
Arthur looked past Layla, through smoke and broken lights, to the robed figure with the Midnight Church symbol painted across his back.
"The monster isn't the target," Arthur rasped.
The nightmare beast turned toward him.
Arthur tightened his grip on the bent support pole.
"The book is..."