Pain.
It came in waves, drowning him. Every breath he took burned, his lungs filled with liquid iron. His body was broken, twisted at angles that should never be. Bones jutted through flesh. Blood spilled in thick, slow pulses, painting the cracked stone beneath him.
Elias Valtor tried to move—tried to crawl, to scream—but his throat was raw from the last time. His hands clawed at the ground, nails snapping as he dragged himself forward, inch by inch. Every nerve in his body screamed. Every instinct begged him to stop.
But he couldn't stop.
Because behind him, something moved.
A whispering, gnawing thing, shifting at the edges of his fading vision. The air around it shimmered, like heat warping the horizon—except it was not heat. It was absent. The absence of light, of sound, of reality itself.
The Calamity. Hollow titian.
A towering, faceless horror, its form constantly shifting—humanoid one moment, a writhing mass of limbs the next. It did not walk. It flowed, an unnatural distortion in the air, dragging the world into its nothingness.
And it was watching him.
Elias tried to scream. This time, sound came—ragged, desperate, filled with agony. "HELP ME!" The words echoed across the ruined street, but there was no one left to hear them. The city was gone. The people erased. Even their names were forgotten.
The void-touched thing reached toward him, its elongated fingers stretching too far, bending in ways that broke logic. It did not touch him. It did not have to.
The moment its shadow fell over him, his body began to unravel.
His skin turned to dust. His veins collapsed. The pain became unbearable, worse than fire, worse than death itself. He was being erased.
"No—no, please, I don't want to die!" he choked out.
The thing pressed closer. The agony reached its peak. His mind shattered—
And then the world turned white.
There was no pain. No sound. No air.
Only light.
A vast, endless white stretched in all directions. It should have felt comforting. It did not. The emptiness pressed against Elias like an unseen force, as if the light itself was a thing that watched, that waited.
And then he appeared.
A figure of pure white stood before him, shifting, flickering—its features changing every time Elias blinked. At one moment, it was a towering god-like presence, wrapped in flowing robes of light. The next, a child with hollow, empty eyes. And then an old man, a faceless statue, a woman with hair like threads of silver.
None of them were real.
All of them were.
Elias staggered back, trying to process what he was seeing. His voice barely worked.
"Who... what are you?"
The being tilted its head. "You do not recognize me?"
The voice was layered—deep, shallow, young, ancient. A thousand voices, all speaking in unison. It wasn't loud, yet it vibrated inside Elias' skull.
"That is understandable. Your kind has long since forgotten."
Elias' breath hitched. He took another step back, but the white void stretched infinitely in every direction. There was no ground, no sky—just emptiness.
The figure stepped forward. It did not walk. It did not glide. It simply... existed closer.
"Tell me, mortal. What is your name?"
The question sent a ripple through the space around them. Elias opened his mouth—but for some reason, the words felt distant. His name. What was his name?
He clenched his teeth. Fought against the haze. "Elias. Elias Valtor."
The figure paused, as if considering. Then it spoke again.
"And what is your goal?"
The words hit him like a physical force. His goal?
His mind raced, but nothing came. He had lived without purpose, without ambition. A scribe, a scholar, a man who wrote about heroes but never dared to become one. What was he living for?
Elias swallowed. Opened his mouth.
Nothing.
The white being stared at him, its shifting face unreadable.
"You do not know. That is why you are weak."
The words stabbed into him deeper than any blade.
"That is why you died."
Elias flinched. "I—I didn't want to die."
The figure exhaled, and though it had no true breath, the entire void shook with it.
"Wanting is meaningless."
It took another step forward. The glow around it dimmed. The whiteness of the space cracked at its edges. Something dark seeped through.
"This world is flawed, Elias Valtor."
The cracks spread. The whiteness peeled away, revealing something beneath—a writhing abyss, stretching beyond comprehension.
"Do you know why your world is ending?"
Elias shook his head, his pulse hammering.
The being gestured outward.
"Because it was never meant to exist. Not like this."
The words sent a chill through him.
"What... what do you mean?"
The figure did not answer immediately. Instead, it raised a hand. In an instant, the white void shifted—and suddenly, Elias saw everything.
The Eclipse.
The sky, breaking like glass.
Cities swallowed whole, their people forgotten as if they had never been born.
The Calamities—not invaders, but erasers—reclaiming something that should never have been.
The being turned back to him. "Your world is an error, Elias. A mistake. It was never part of the original design."Elias felt cold terror seep into his bones. "That's... that's not possible."
"And yet, here you are."
The cracks grew deeper.
The white void shattered.
The being's glow faded, revealing something beneath the light—something twisted, something with too many eyes, too many mouths, something that should not be.
"I ask again. What is your goal?"
The abyss pulsed. The darkness surged forward, consuming everything.
Elias couldn't answer.
The figure reached for him.
"Then you will return."
A hand reached out—grasped his forehead—
And Elias screamed.
Agony.
It was not like before. It was worse. It was as if his entire body had been pulled apart and stitched back together wrong. He convulsed, gasping, retching, clawing at his own skin. His veins burned, his bones twisted, his nerves caught fire.
And then, just as suddenly as it came, the pain stopped.
Elias lay on his back, staring at the blackened sky. His breath came in ragged gasps. His heart pounded. He was alive.
Something dripped down his cheek. He wiped at it, expecting blood—
Instead, his fingers came away marked in black ink.
Symbols. Strange, twisting letters that glowed faintly against his skin. They burned into his flesh, spiraling across his arms, his chest—an ancient script that should not exist.
A voice whispered inside his mind. Cold. Mechanical. Something not of this world.
[RUINSCRIPT ACQUIRED.]
[THE MARK OF RUIN HAS CHOSEN YOU.]
And beneath it, a final message, pulsing in his skull like a heartbeat:
"YOU WILL RETURN."
Elias Valtor gasped, clutched his head—and screamed.
Because for the first time in his life, he understood.
He could never die.
And that was only the beginning.