Requiem of the Awakened

It began with silence.

Not the kind found in empty halls or hushed forests.

This silence bled.

It carved through frequencies, consumed spell-scripts mid-cast, devoured breath before it reached the air.

Naomi dropped to one knee, flame snuffed out like a candle. Elaris clenched her blades tighter, eyes flaring as her inner resonance buckled. Even Anacaona, the most composed among them, staggered back a step—her spear vibrating in warning.

Only Malik stood unmoved.

Because he recognized the silence.

He had heard it once before—just before he died.

The sky split above the canyon.

Not with thunder.

Not with light.

But with absence.

A figure descended—genderless, faceless, made of mirror and static.

It shimmered between shapes: sometimes a child, sometimes a beast, sometimes a star collapsing into itself.

An Unknown.

But not just any.

This was a Herald.

Elaris hissed under her breath. "That's not a scout."

"No," Malik said quietly.

"It's a warning."

Naomi managed to rise. "We fight?"

Malik didn't answer immediately.

His eyes locked onto the Herald, who floated without motion, its presence swallowing Echo, time, and space.

Then he spoke.

"We survive."

The Herald opened its mouth—but no sound emerged.

Instead, a vibration rippled through the earth, splitting stone and time itself. The canyon around them fractured, as if reality had lost interest in coherence.

Malik activated a shielding glyph, weaving it into the very breath he exhaled.

"Form up," he ordered. "Anacaona, rear guard. Naomi, keep fire close but controlled. Elaris—cover the angles."

The team moved, bruised but not broken.

They had trained for this.

They just hadn't expected the enemy to be a Herald.

The entity moved—not with speed, but inevitability.

Its form unraveled mid-flight, becoming a spiral of concepts: grief, hunger, time denied, futures stolen.

Malik recognized the strategy.

The Unknowns didn't kill with claws.

They killed with meaning.

"Don't let it inside your thoughts," Malik warned. "It'll twist memory into knives."

Too late.

Naomi screamed.

Malik turned just in time to see her drop to her knees, eyes wide with horror.

"I'm back in the fire," she gasped. "The day I lost them…"

Malik's hand clamped onto her shoulder. "Look at me."

She couldn't.

Her body trembled, caught in the past.

"Naomi!"

He forced her gaze to meet his.

"Remember who you are now. Not then. Now."

The fire in her veins reignited.

And with it, so did her will.

Naomi stood, hands blazing, jaw set.

The Herald flinched.

It noticed.

Elaris struck next, vanishing from view with a flash of violet steel.

Her twin blades carved toward the Herald's shifting torso—but met resistance not like armor, but ideology.

The weapon clanged off a memory of peace never granted.

Her foot caught a ripple in gravity mid-turn, nearly throwing her off-balance, but she redirected the motion into a backflip, landing in a crouch.

"Not physical," she snarled. "It's defending with… beliefs."

"Then we break those too," Malik said, stepping forward.

He called on the Fourth.

And the world shivered.

Lightning in spectral form surged around him.

Not striking the Herald—but disrupting the plane.

The battlefield groaned under the clash of unreconciled realities.

Malik moved with measured precision, drawing a sigil mid-air and launching a controlled resonance wave toward the Herald.

The echo hit—

—and cracked its form.

For a second, the Herald screamed.

Not with sound, but with dissonance.

The air warped.

Birds fell from the sky ten miles away.

And the Herald... bled.

Shimmering ichor of colorless color, too wrong to be perceived, dripped into the air and reversed direction.

Malik pressed the attack.

The Fourth surged beside him, its wings carving reality with every beat. It fought with no elegance—only overwhelming conviction, a storm of contempt and power incarnate.

The Herald retaliated, forming a concept blade of stillbirth and broken oaths.

It clashed with the Fourth's chained talon, a soundless explosion rippling across dimensions.

Anacaona's voice rang out. "Malik! Its echo density just tripled! It's trying to invert the Rift!"

Malik's eyes narrowed. "No."

He drew from the deepest memory.

Not power.

Not cultivation.

But purpose.

"Obsidian!" he called.

From the darkness, the massive beast launched into the fray, jaws wide, aura coiled in ancient death.

Obsidian bit down.

Not on flesh.

But on the future the Herald was trying to construct.

And it screamed again.

The ground splintered. Time twisted.

Malik took the opening.

And moved.

He struck not with a blade, but a command.

One word.

Spoken in the tongue of the old Sovereigns.

A word that had ended empires and birthed new echoes.

"Kneel."

The Herald froze.

Its form flickered.

Child. Star. Beast. Silence.

Then—

It knelt.

The canyon exhaled.

The sky corrected.

And the Herald spoke.

"One of the Forgotten rises again."

Malik approached, each step radiating quiet menace.

"You came to warn."

"Yes."

"Speak."

"The Crown watches."

"Which crown?"

"There is only one."

The Herald raised its eyes.

Behind them, Malik saw a void of endless cities, dead suns, and something far more ancient than Echo.

"You must not ascend again," the Herald said. "You broke the symmetry once."

Malik's voice was low.

"I intend to shatter it."

The Herald dissolved.

Not fled.

Just ceased to exist.

For several seconds, no one spoke.

Then Naomi said, "What the hell was that?"

Malik didn't answer.

He turned toward the horizon.

"Now we know," he whispered. "They remember me too."

The battle had lasted five minutes.

But by the time it ended, every major Guild alert system had pinged red.

High Sovereigns across the globe activated vault protocols.

The Guilds called it a "Dimensional Breach."

But those who knew better…

Called it a warning.

Later that night, in the ruins of a forgotten bunker, Malik stared into the fire.

The others rested.

Elaris sharpened her blades. Naomi traced glyphs into the dirt. Anacaona meditated in stillness.

And Malik?

He thought.

About what came next.

About the "Crown" the Herald had mentioned.

He'd heard the term before.

In the moments before his last death.

A throne that no one sat on—but every Sovereign feared.

A title without a bearer.

But with a price.

He whispered to himself.

"The Empty Crown."

Suddenly, the mark on his palm pulsed.

Not in warning.

In resonance.

The Fourth spoke.

They will come now.

Malik looked at the stars.

"They already are."