NARAK: The Blood Covenant

The air cracked again.

This wasn't a storm. It wasn't a natural disaster.This was a war against reality itself.

In the shattered ruins of Naraya Dharma International School, two forces collided.

Avici, his flame roaring.Arkana, his frost chilling everything in its path.Narayana, a divine anchor amidst the chaos.Hiranyaksha, bone and fury, refusing to die.

And then—the Ashen One.

It was waking.

Vicki gripped the ground, his head spinning.

He had no control.

He couldn't even hear Avici.

Everything was breaking down.

"Avici, what's happening?" Vicki shouted into the void.

Avici's voice—barely a whisper—cut through his mind:

"It's... him. The Fifth Seal is waking..."

"The Ashen One will consume us all."

Hiranyaksha smiled.

The Bone General didn't look hurt. He didn't even look worried.

"Let the flame burn out. Let the ice freeze it forever."

"The Ashen One is inevitable."

Arkana stepped forward.

His presence was colder than any blizzard, more final than death itself.

He reached out with one hand, his eyes glowing with ancient power.

"Avici…"

"You cannot stop what is coming."

The Fifth Seal cracked open above them.

It wasn't just light.

It wasn't just energy.

It was the erasure of all things.

A force that could tear through the very fabric of time and reality.

A concept made flesh.

The Ashen One wasn't a being. It was a force.A cosmic law that was both destroyer and creator.

"No..." Vicki whispered. "Not now. Not like this."

"We were born to stop it."

Narayana stepped forward.

His rings flared bright, blinding even the shadows around him.

"Then we fight."

His voice was deep, filled with divine resonance.

He raised his hand to the heavens, and divine energy poured from him, blasting toward the Ashen One.

But the moment the light touched the rift…

It stopped.

A force so powerful—so pure—that even Narayana's divinity buckled under its weight.

"NO!"

Narayana collapsed to one knee.

The divine light faded, and the sky above the battlefield flickered—showing glimpses of the void.

Vicki's voice broke through.

"I can't… I can't hold this much pressure!""This isn't my war!"

"Then let it be ours," Arkana's voice echoed coldly, as his ice began surrounding the entire battlefield."This is the end of everything."

And just then...

The Ashen One—a dark silhouette in the form of an enormous creature made of frozen nothingness—emerged from the rift.

Its eyes were empty voids.

Its form wasn't physical.

A being born to erase and replace.

Vicki screamed as his body went cold.

The ground cracked beneath him.

"WE NEED TO MOVE!"

But it was too late.

Hiranyaksha lunged forward, reaching for Narayana, the Bone General's claws glowing with darkness, full of despair.

The Ashen One's whisper reached into Vicki's mind:

"You do not belong here."

The void swallowed his words.

And just like that...

Time fractured.

Space twisted.

Reality itself bent.

The Ashen One's void form loomed large, an all-consuming cold that bent the air.

It towered above the battlefield, its very presence beginning to erase concepts like time and space.

Vicki stumbled backward, unable to move fast enough. Every breath he took froze in the air before him.

"It's too much…" he whispered, panic lacing his voice. "I can't hold this together!"

Avici's flame flickered in his chest, fighting against the suffocating cold.

"I can't do this alone." Avici's voice was desperate, too—something rarely heard from the fire entity. "This—this isn't a battle anymore. It's a concept war."

But just as the air seemed to crush them, something shifted.

[NAYLA'S AWAKENING]

Nayla stood apart from the chaos—her fingers twitching as she held the Echo Core.

The silver rod Anata had given her now hummed violently, its light pulsing with a heartbeat that didn't belong to any mortal being.

"You wanted logic? Let me show you chaos…"

Nayla's voice echoed with a new intensity, as if the entire Archive was whispering in unison.

She raised the Echo Core to the sky.

"Give me the truth."

The ground beneath them trembled.

"What... are you doing?!" Vicki asked, confusion rising as she raised the Core higher, her eyes glowing silver, almost as if the entire school's secrets were passing through her mind at once.

The Echo Core pulsed.

Not just with information—but with power.

Not raw magic, but the raw truth of existence itself.

It was as if every timeline, every lie ever told, every secret buried within the whispers of the dead now belonged to her.

She could see it all.

Every spell.

Every ancient incantation.

Every truth hidden in the walls of Naraya Dharma.

Nayla felt the power surge through her.Her hand trembled—not with fear—but with understanding.

The Archive had always been more than a library.

It was a weapon, a weapon of truth.

She closed her eyes for a moment, her mind syncing with the Archive in ways Vicki or even Avici could never imagine.

She wasn't just reading information anymore—she was becoming it.

"The truth isn't just knowledge. It's power."

"I can rewrite this. I can rewrite the rules," she said, as her voice deepened, filled with new, cosmic authority.

A deep, unnerving hum spread from her hands.

She was becoming the Archive.

And with it, she was becoming the weapon they so desperately needed.

[THE ARRIVAL OF ANATA DHARMA]

At that precise moment, the field of frozen destruction began to crack open.

A portal—no, a rift—ripped through the sky, revealing the ever-so-familiar silhouette of Anata Dharma, the information broker.

But this time, he wasn't just watching.

He wasn't just a spectator, waiting to trade in secrets.

No, this time, he stepped in.

"You can't let the Ashen One rewrite everything..." Anata's voice was calm, but the tension in it was undeniable. "Not now."

The sky rumbled in response to his presence.

"You should have stayed neutral," Raka said, disbelief written on his face as the man they knew for selling secrets now joined the fray.

Anata's smile was slow, calculated.

"There's no neutrality left in this war, Raka. And I've just sold the truth you'll need to win it."

He raised his hands, and arcane symbols of power, written in the same secret language of the Archive, began swirling around him.

"Don't just burn or freeze, use it."

The frozen sky cracked above them as the Ashen One roared, sending waves of pure conceptual destruction at them.

But Nayla, with the Echo Core in her hand, held it back.

She wasn't just defending anymore.

She was rewriting the rules.

The Ashen One's attacks froze mid-air.

The air rippled like liquid, as if time itself couldn't decide where to go.

Anata Dharma's power bent reality just enough to keep them all alive—if only for a moment.

"Use it, Nayla," he said, voice quieter now. "This is the last chance."

Nayla nodded slowly.

Her voice, amplified by the power of the Archive, rang out:

"Return what was lost. Rewrite the truth."

A massive shockwave erupted.

Not fire. Not ice. Not light.

But truth.

Truth itself broke free from the chains of time.

The Ashen One's form began to crack, the void itself starting to unravel.

But just as it seemed like they might win—

The ground shook violently.

The Fifth Seal was beginning to act on its own, a countermeasure to their resistance.

"It's too late," the Ashen One whispered, its voice echoing through all minds.

"I am inevitable."

The sky cracked open.

The Fifth Seal trembled like a god on the edge of memory.

The Ashen One screamed—not with rage, but with denial. It was unraveling.

Because of her.

Nayla stood firm, surrounded by a storm of golden glyphs—echoes of everything Anata Dharma ever recorded. The Whispered Archive was no longer a library.

It was her.

She raised her hand, and reality bent around it.

"You were never meant to exist," she said to the Ashen One.

"You're a contradiction."

The void flared—fighting back.

But Nayla's grip on truth was unshakable.

Avici burned beside her. Arkana froze everything around them. Narayana held the barriers up.

And at the center of it all, Anata Dharma stood still.

Watching.

Calculating.

Smiling.

"You've done it, Nayla," he said softly.

"The Archive is yours."

"What?" she turned, shaken.

"No. No, we're not done."

"No, Nayla," he said calmly."It's just started."

"What are you—" she stepped forward.

"The Archive was never meant to be wielded by a broker," Anata said.

"Only by someone with a future."

He turned slightly, his usual smirk fading just enough to feel like grief.

"I've always been a man of the past."

"I'm not the story. I'm just the footnote."

He stepped forward. His coat flared.

His sigils burned red, gold, and ink-black.

Symbols that weren't made to be read—but ended.

He smiled at Vicki, at Raka, at Nayla.

"You'll remember this day."

"I just won't be in it."

Vicki tried to step forward.

"Don't you dare go full noble sacrifice on us."

Avici's voice sharpened inside him:

"Anata. Don't you dare do this."

Anata turned to face them both, his coat swirling in the chaos.

"Come on, Avici. You of all people know how this works."

"We barter. We trade. We lose."

"And this… is the final deal."

"I've read your Archive. I am your Archive now," Nayla snapped, tears in her voice.

"We can rewrite it. We can find a loophole—"

"You're the loophole, kid."

Anata looked at her, softly.

Like a teacher.

Like a father.

Like a secret.

"You're the one who walks away with everything."

"I'm the one who leaves... with nothing."

The Ashen One was forming again, fighting to reconstitute itself from the unraveling void.

"You're stalling," Avici said.

"Of course I am," Anata smiled faintly.

"I'm a man of words."

He paused. Then looked directly at Vicki.

"Take care of her. Take care of them. Don't forget the cost of knowledge."

"Anata—"

"And you," he said to Avici, tone suddenly dry.

"Try not to burn every solution just to prove it was flammable."

"Screw you," Avici muttered.

Anata grinned.

"You already did."

Anata Dharma raised both hands.

And whispered, "Memory is sacrifice."

"Information wants to be free."

The world convulsed.

Hiranyaksha exploded.

Not into flames—into conceptual shards.

The Bone General didn't die.

He was erased.

The Seals followed.

All of them. Each one snapped like thread, collapsing into themselves in an instant.

The Ashen One didn't roar.

It simply faded—because it never finished forming. It was unmade.

Arvanu Shura's mirror cracked.

He stared at the collapsing battlefield, fury and awe in his eyes.

"This… this wasn't in the Archive…"

He and Shadow Vicki were pulled back into the mirrored dimension, disappearing behind the last crack of silver glass.

The silence that followed… was horrifying.

Anata was gone.

No body.

No dust.

And all that remained was a blank, fluttering page.

Still warm with the echo of sacrifice.

On it, written in black ink:

"In stories, heroes win."

"But in truth?"

"We disappear between the footnotes."

"For those who rewrite the world… leave ink."

[AFTERMATH]

The battlefield slowly returned to peace.

The school's foundation stood broken, until Nayla, now holding the Archive within her, pressed her palm to the ground.

Sigils burst forth, restoring walls, halls, and memories.

Narayana stood beside her, guiding the energy.

"You've inherited something terrible," he told her.

"Yeah," Nayla said."But it's nothing compared to my biology final."

Vicki sat on the cracked steps.

Avici burned low inside his chest.

"So this is us now?" Vicki asked aloud.

"Until the next fire," Avici replied.

A few feet away, Raka sat, staring into his own palm.

The frost hadn't left.

"You're here too," he whispered.

Arkana said nothing, but Raka could feel the ancient pulse in his blood.

Three students.

One vessel of flame.

One vessel of frost.

One living Archive.

And one school, returned from the brink.

Until—

A ripple.

A flicker of motion.

A shadow outside the ruins.

Someone stepped out from behind the veil of dust.

No face visible. Only a voice.

In his hand…

He held something.

The Nameless Balance.

"Enjoy your balance," the figure said, voice smooth, amused, ancient.

He turned.

"Because I'm preparing chaos... for your balance."

END OF ARC 1 - The Forgotten Oath

See you in ARC 2 ^^