Iris sat alone in the data chamber, screens flickering in the dark, their light dancing across her expressionless face.
Her eyes moved rapidly, scanning lines of fragmented archives, encrypted files, and long-erased names. Then... she found it.
Jack.
Not a soldier. Not a weapon. Once... just a miner. Quiet. Faceless. Lost in the noise of a forgotten incident.
A report flickered onto the screen.
Cave Collapse. Zone D-19C.
Routine dig. Sudden quake.
All workers accounted for—except one. Jack.
Only remains recovered? A severed leg near the corpse of an unclassified beast, charred beyond recognition, next to a volcanic chasm that went deeper than sensors could read.
The official stamp read:
"Presumed Dead."
End of record.
But Iris's eyes didn't move. She had seen something else. A secondary name.
Jasmine. Age: 17.
No blood tie. No listed relation. Yet... her name appeared beside his. In old school registries. Civil tags. Residence overlap.
Subtle, almost hidden—like the system itself was unsure whether to keep them linked... or erase the thread.
She leaned back slowly, her hand brushing her lips, her gaze distant now.
"...He was buried long before the cave ever collapsed" she whispered.
Not a tragedy.
A cover-up.
---
A swirling, black-edged portal tore open at the edge of the 67th floor—unstable, cold, ancient.
It did not hum with magic. It bled absence.
Jack stepped through without hesitation.
The world behind him blinked out of relevance.
An endless city lay before him, drowned in snow, its ruins locked in a moment that never finished dying. Shattered towers rose like frozen screams, glazed in spectral frost. Pale blue light washed over everything, lifeless and patient.
The wind howled through hollow streets, whispering names no one remembered anymore.
Time here felt… wrong.
Not slow. Not fast.
Paused.
From the mist, they emerged—the Guardians.
Massive silhouettes advanced through the blizzard, bone-thin yet colossal, their frames wrapped in ancient hair and frostbitten flesh hardened into armor. Cyan eyes burned within hollow sockets—not feral, not blind.
Sentient.
Aware.
They stopped when they saw him.
Not because they were ordered to.
Because something in them recognized a boundary.
Then one moved.
A snarl ripped through the air, shattering the stillness. Magic surged like a siren scream. Claws tore forward, rending space as the Guardian lunged—
Jack did not react.
No stance.
No shift in breath.
No acknowledgment.
Reality reacted instead.
The space around him folded inward, compressing as if the world itself had inhaled and refused to exhale. The Guardian froze mid-lunge, its mass arrested by an invisible verdict.
Crack.
Not outward.
Inward.
Its body collapsed into itself, bone and frost imploding like porcelain under planetary gravity. No explosion. No debris. It simply ceased to be whole.
The second Guardian tried to retreat.
Space denied it.
The third never finished forming the intent to attack.
One by one, they vanished—no screams, no final defiance. Just absolute structural failure, erased so cleanly that even the snow refused to scatter.
Jack had not lifted a finger.
He wasn't exerting power.
He was exerting presence.
The snow beneath his boots did not shift. Not a crunch. Not a trace.
It was as if the world had quietly agreed not to record his passing.
From beneath the shadow of his hood, his eyes glowed—not merely red, but contained. Sealed. Like a star locked behind restraint, waiting for permission to burn.
They did not blaze.
They judged.
The ruins leaned—subtly, imperceptibly—not physically, but instinctively. Like prey angling away from something they knew they could not escape.
Jack stepped forward.
Slow.
Soundless.
Final.
The remaining Guardians did not attack as he passed.
They stood frozen, claws trembling, eyes wide—not in rage, but in submission. Fear was no longer an emotion.
It was a command.
The towering doors ahead groaned open on their own, ancient stone yielding without resistance, as though the palace itself understood what refusing meant.
Beyond lay the throne room.
Cold here was not temperature.
It was sentence.
A vast chamber of fused bone and abyssal frost stretched outward, shadows coiling like living things along its walls. And upon the throne sat Nakali, King of the Cold Abyss.
Massive. Crooked. Crowned in the skull of something that history had failed to name.
Runes older than recorded reality crawled along his arms, pulsing with cursed authority. The shadows around him did not obey—they listened.
Nakali leaned forward slowly.
For the first time in centuries, his expression did not harden with certainty.
"You walk with a presence that distorts the floor beneath you," he said, his voice deep and glacial, layered with ages of dominance.
"But you are not written into this realm's law."
Jack stopped.
He raised his chin just enough for the light to graze his lips.
A quiet chuckle slipped free—low, humorless, dismissive.
"I don't need to be written," he said calmly.
"I overwrite."
Silence stretched.
Then Jack's tone dropped—flat, absolute.
"And I don't think you're worth the swing."
He turned.
Not in challenge.
In dismissal.
Like a god stepping away from something already sentenced.
The throne exploded.
Nakali's fist slammed down, fractures ripping through bone and frost as raw abyssal power detonated outward. The palace shook, walls screaming as snow and shadow tore loose.
"INSOLENCE!"
The word thundered across the realm, no longer speech but a storm given voice.
"You DARE turn your back on me?! I am Nakali the Great—!"
Jack halted mid-step.
He did not turn.
He tilted his head—just slightly.
Enough.
Half his face caught the light.
Half remained swallowed by shadow.
His smirk curved slowly, venomous and cold.
"Prove it."
His eyes ignited beneath the hood—twin infernos of restrained ruin. The air screamed as pressure collapsed inward, the floor spider-webbing beneath his feet, struggling to contain something planetary pressing against the limits of restraint.
Magic surged—not released, not cast—contained, like a chained god testing its bonds.
Then—
Silence.
The kind that does not last.
The kind that exists only to make annihilation louder when it ends.
The realm held its breath.
And death waited—
—not as an outcome—
—but as a certainty, counting down its final second.