At the castle of the Void Anchor, in the royal meeting room, Zephyrion, Old Man Obsidar, Nihara, and Umbrazel sat around the big, ornately carved marble table. A thick cloud of anger, rage, and sorrow hung in the air above them, twisting expressions of confusion and grief. Thick and suffocating, it was like a storm held just before its breaking.
Zephyrion, beyond consolation, had suddenly brought his fist crashing down onto the marble table with such force that it had cracked and shattered, pieces flying everywhere like shards of his emotions.
"You ought to calm down," whispered Nihara, sounding like a thin thread of sympathy that cut through the choke of silence.
"You want me to relax? " Zephyrion had bellowed, anguish making his voice shiver. His eyes, wide and bloodshot, smoldered with a fire of fury inside his being, as if his body could hardly bear the weight of his wrath. His chest heaved, and for a moment, it looked as if he might choke on his anger and expel it like poison. He pointed a trembling finger at her. "What do you know? Can you even fathom how it feels to always lose our Primordial babies to those cursed creatures?"
He shot up from his seat, his voice growing louder, his movements frenzied like a wild storm tearing through the room. "If you don't get..."
"Zephyrion," Old Man Obsidar's calm yet firm voice broke through the chaos like a hammer against glass. Zephyrion froze mid-sentence, his gaze flickering to the old man. The room fell silent again, save for Zephyrion's ragged breathing. Swallowing back the bitterness rising in his throat, he lowered his hand and forced himself to look at Nihara. His voice was quieter now, though still tinged with frustration. "I'm sorry. I said too much.
I forget…this is a crisis that weighs on all of us." He sank back into his seat, his rage simmering, yet restrained. "Yeah, I know," Nihara responded, her voice steady but laced with underlying pain. "Even though this tragedy strikes us all, your burden is heavier as one of the heads who rule over part of the race."
Two days previously, the twelve Primordial clans, their race's heart, welcomed new life into their sacred birth pools-a rare, blessed moment. But joy had quickly turned to despair: a day later, all the newborn Primordials vanished, stolen like whispers carried off on the wind. Whole clans were left clutching empty air, shattered hope, and the Nihilith Clan was not an exception. This was a pattern all too familiar to them, one that had become a never-ending curse.
Countless times they had changed the newborns' locations, and even hid them as well as they could, yet kidnappers always seemed to find out. It was if invisible eyes watched their every move. "Compared to other clans who lost all of their newborn Primordials, we are fortunate to have two hidden in advance.". It would appear that their plan did not factor those in," Old Man Obsidar said, his voice breaking the silence like sunlight cracking through storm clouds. His voice, though calm, held in it a slight quaver of unease.
He turned to Nihara, his eyes inquiring.
"Have you heard anything about this incident from your clan, or has your connection to them been completely severed?"
The brightness fled from Nihara's face as shadows danced in her eyes, and the memories seemed to well up. "Although I was cut off from the clan after the strange phenomenon that bound me to Zephyrion, I still have a trusted subordinate who checks on me from time to time." She paused, seeming to weigh her words. "According to her, the clan, too, lost their newborn Primordial. I suspect that this is also happening with the other clans.
The room fell into a deep, unsettling silence, as though their voices had been snatched away to leave only the sound of heavy, labored breaths. Old Man Obsidar let out a deep, rumbling sigh; age-worn shoulders sank under the weight of a race.
Umbrazel suddenly rose to his feet, his movements sharp with purpose. A determined aura flared around him like the glow of a dying star refusing to fade. "I will step out and try to gather a clue, even though we've tried and failed before."
The others looked at him now, the weariness of their eyes carrying faint embers of hope. Quietly, they nodded. Their gestures spoke louder than words. He turned toward the grand doors, his stride firm, as if each step held a promise in itself. Just as Umbrazel reached for the handle, Zephyrion's voice stopped him.
"Umbrazel."
He paused, turned, and stood tall in response. "Yes, Void Archon?
Thank you," Zephyrion said, his voice softer now, though a lingering frustration still threaded through it like an unhealed wound. "Thank you for your devotion to the clan and to our people. On the face of Umbrazel, there was no arrogance-just quiet resolve. "It is my duty as a Void General," he replied simply. Turning, he stepped out, and with a heavy thud, the heavy doors closed behind him, the sound reverberating within the hollow silence of the room. The unshakeable quietness, thick as fog, weighed on the three remaining persons in the room: every breath heavy, every heartbeat loud as distant thunder.
Meanwhile, back in the ancestral world, inside what used to be called the dark bottomless pit, Nyxander came to his senses after briefly fainting from his heavy fall over hundreds of feet from the face of the cliff. "Kuff, kuff," he coughed, the sound barely echoing in the cavernous void as he struggled onto his feet.
His gaze flitted about, a look of wonder and befuddlement on his face. To his surprise, though the pit above him remained shrouded in darkness, like a starless night sky veiled in green mist, the interior of the pit was as bright as day, its walls shimmering with the light reflected from countless solid gem-like formations embedded within.
Lured by the dazzling glow, he moved closer to the wall but stopped abruptly as something soft shifted beneath his feet. His gaze fell, and he was shocked. Lying there, lifeless, were a number of dead rhinoceroses, their huge bodies outlined in earth cracks, telling of an immense and brutal fight. Fractured bones and mangled forms told a grim tale of their end, as if utterly overcome, with no fighting back.
"What could have killed them so brutally? Nyxander muttered, his voice little more than a whisper, as he scanned his surroundings for an answer. His gaze fell on the curving tunnel ahead, its pathway shrouded in an ominous dark mist, alive in its forebodingness. Yet, despite how eerie that sounded, he shrugged off the thought and returned to the problem at hand.
His self-made cross bag, filled with essentia crystals, was gone, likely detached during his fall.
Undeterred, Nyxander set to work. He skinned the dead rhinoceroses with a proficient ease, bonding their hides together in an attempt to make a new bag while removing the essentia crystals caught in their heads. His hands moved relentlessly as he followed the trail of dead beasts, extracting crystal after crystal. The rhythmic motions of his task anchored him in this surreal environment, every glowing shard of essentia adding weight to his makeshift bag.
Time passed, and Nyxander stood still for a moment, surveying his handiwork. He had just extracted the 1,520th crystal. The huge cross bag slung across his broad shoulders now bulged like a war rucksack carried by a soldier into battle, its sheer size dwarfing his already towering frame.
"Wow," he grunted heavily, stretching his arms to their fullest capacity with a look of satisfaction. "Who would've thought there's fortune behind misfortune?" His voice sounded so funny as he gazed at the treasure he had collected so easily. But his moment of joy was cut short by a guttural sound, deep and thunderous.
"Mooorrrrrr…"
Nyxander's head snapped up; his eyes narrowed as he fixed his gaze on the direction he had been walking. There they stood, ten Ascendant Realm rhinoceroses, their massive forms bristling with rage, their auras seething with a sinister energy which vibrated the very air.
His instincts flared in a warning of the danger ahead. These were no ordinary beasts. Their bloodlust was palpable, their rage seeming to burn with purpose. Nyxander, ever the survivor, raised his hands in a gesture of peace, his tone calm but wary. "I… friends. I just arrived here, falling from high up," he began, pointing his right index finger toward the shadowed heights above.
"Just extracting essentia stones, I mean, crystals." He raised both hands higher, his stance a picture of innocence.
But a nagging thought clawed at the back of his mind. "Wait…" he muttered, his voice tinged with suspicion. "Why didn't I think of this before? Vacu? No… that's impossible. He couldn't handle this many-over a thousand. Who else could it be?" His gaze flickered to the enraged rhinoceroses, their hostility unmistakable. "They seem to recognize me as someone else. But why?
Before he could gather his thoughts further, one of the rhinoceroses bellowed loudly, its bellow cutting through the air like a raging storm. The echo was loaded with a mighty gust of wind that whirled up dust and stones in a gale that charged at Nyxander. Yet, he did not budge a hair, his towering frame unmoving against the onslaught, like a mountain that has weathered many a hurricane.
"It seems you've all made up your minds," he said, his voice low and steady, tinged with resignation and anticipation. "There's no backing down until one side falls, huh?" Slowly, he clenched his fists, raising one across his face as his muscles coiled with readiness. His neck cracked audibly as he tilted it to one side, his smirk breaking into a daring grin.
"Bring it on."