Requiem of the Awakened

It didn't come with footsteps.

It didn't come at all.

One moment, Malik stood at the edge of the cliff overlooking what was once the city of Vhal-Zur. The next—

The stars blinked.

Every. Single. One.

And when they returned—

So did it.

Soline stood first, her shadow twisting away from her instead of behind.

Naomi flared instinctively, flames trembling in the air.

Even Anacaona whispered a name under her breath, one only Obeah priests still feared.

Elaris drew both blades—then froze, unable to move them forward.

Because forward wasn't real anymore.

Malik didn't blink.

The air in front of him rippled—not like heat, but like memory unspooling.

And then—

A shape emerged.

Impossible to describe.

Too many angles. Not enough mass.

But Malik saw it.

And worse—

It saw him back.

It didn't speak in words.

It simply was.

A pressure.

A wound in perception.

A distortion so vast it made time uncertain and space irrelevant.

But still—

It spoke.

Not aloud.

In everything.

"We watched your beginning."

Malik stood his ground.

His mark pulsed.

Behind him, the Fourth shrieked—not in rage, but in warning.

The Fifth hovered, blade form flickering.

Soline stepped beside him, her hand already glowing with sigils he couldn't read.

"You burned too bright."

"What are you?" Malik asked, not expecting a real answer.

"We are what wakes when fire forgets how to sleep."

Naomi gritted her teeth.

Elaris whispered, "We can't fight that."

Anacaona responded with a prayer to no god—only to memory itself.

The Thing didn't move closer.

It didn't have to.

Because the world bent toward it.

Soline held her ground.

Her voice cut through the distortion like obsidian.

"Leave him."

The Unknown shifted. The air didn't respond—reality did.

"He crossed the line first."

"What do you want from me?" Malik asked.

"Not want."

"Witness."

And then—

It did something no one expected.

It bowed.

A single fracture in the air.

And the world wept.

Malik stumbled back, breath shallow.

Soline caught him.

The Unknown was gone.

No sound.

No light.

No afterimage.

Just… emptiness.

Like something had never been there.

But everyone had seen it.

And Malik's eyes bled.

They returned to the main chamber beneath Vhal-Zur's ruins. A long-forgotten stronghold Malik had once built with his own hands in a past life—now taken over by his coalition.

Everyone waited.

And everyone knew.

Because they'd felt it.

Elaris broke the silence.

"Did that thing… kneel to you?"

Soline replied before Malik could.

"It acknowledged him. That's worse."

Anacaona sat slowly, as if the floor might vanish.

"That wasn't a being. That was a judgment."

Malik said nothing for a long while.

Then he spoke.

"They're watching. They've always been. They were here before the Guild, before cultivation, before Obeah, before time."

Naomi frowned. "So what now? We fight gods?"

"No," Malik said.

"We become incomprehensible."

The next day, the coalition fractured.

Not from fear—but from awe.

Some wanted to worship him.

Some wanted to flee.

A few wanted to kill him.

One faction—Echo's End, a group of Sovereign exiles—demanded he submit to a trial.

Malik refused.

And in doing so—

Made his enemies afraid to ask again.

That night, he dreamed of Vhal-Zur's final collapse.

He saw himself standing in the exact same spot, watching the city burn around him.

Only…

It wasn't him.

It was the other one.

The Malik who never fell.

The version of him who had never died.

And he was smiling.

"About time," that version said.

Then disappeared.

Malik awoke to fire.

Not metaphorical.

Literal.

The outer wall of the ruins had been breached.

Three of the coalition's sentry teams were gone.

Not dead.

Removed.

Echo logs recorded them blinking out of memory.

Only one survived long enough to scream.

One word:

"Refraction."

They tracked the anomaly to a crater two miles east.

Naomi and Elaris led the approach.

Malik followed, arms bare, summons swirling.

What they found…

Wasn't a creature.

It was a man.

Or rather, the idea of one.

He wore a Guild uniform that shimmered with code not written by any known script.

His eyes glowed black.

He stood calmly amid the crater, whispering to the air.

Malik stepped forward.

"Are you the Guild's next mistake?"

The man smiled.

"No. I'm yours."

He moved.

So fast, so fluid, the Fourth didn't react in time.

The man struck Elaris once—and half her aura shattered.

Naomi launched flame.

The man inhaled it.

Exhaled lightning.

Malik called the Fifth.

The blade struck true.

And stopped halfway through the man's chest.

Because the man wasn't there.

Only mostly.

Soline's voice rang out from the edge.

"Don't kill him."

Malik glanced back. "Why?"

"Because if you do—you'll finish the loop."

The man looked at her.

"You remember."

She nodded.

"Unfortunately."

Malik's mind raced.

This wasn't just a sent assassin.

This was echo interference.

A living ripple from a future not yet decided.

The man confirmed it with a whisper.

"You become worse than the Guild."

"I don't believe that," Malik said.

"Yet," the man replied.

The Fifth withdrew.

The Fourth hovered.

Malik stepped back.

"You were sent to warn me?"

"No," the man said, fading.

"I'm what comes after."

And then—

He vanished.

No sound.

No flash.

Just gone.

That night, Malik sat alone.

Soline approached.

"They're testing you."

"They always are."

"No," she said.

"They're testing whether you'll break."

He looked up at her.

"And will I?"

She knelt beside him.

"I don't know."

Before dawn, he carved a sigil into his chest.

A name.

His own.

As a reminder.

Not to others.

To himself.

Because the farther he walked…

The more the world bent.

And soon—

He'd have to choose between being understood or being real