John and General Leah stood frozen among the temple's broken pillars, their breath coming in ragged gasps as they stared at the figure who had just executed the Heretic. The Knight's armor was a map of scorched metal and ancient scars, looking as though it had been forged in the heart of a dying star.
"Who are you..." John whispered, the sound barely carrying through the dust.
Leah stepped up beside him, her hand white-knuckled around her weapon. "Yeah. Who are you?"
The Knight offered no name. He simply gave a slow, deliberate nod—a silent acknowledgement that they were, for now, under his protection. He turned toward his mount, and the mortals recoiled. The Skeleton Dragon was a masterpiece of horror: a cathedral of bleached bone, devoid of muscle or skin, yet its tattered wings beat with a heavy, rhythmic thud that vibrated in their chests.
As the Knight walked toward the beast, John noticed a gruesome detail—the Knight had no legs. In their place, pulsing red vines grafted his torso directly into the dragon's spine, making man and monster one. He gripped a heavy halberd, its blade notched from centuries of slaughter.
"So, where are we going?" John asked, trying to pierce the oppressive silence.
A voice finally emerged from the depths of the Knight's helmet—a sound like the grinding of tombstone lids. "Castle."
They soon reached a set of massive, wooden gates that loomed like giants over the landscape. With a single, effortless sweep of his rusty sword, the Knight sheared the timber in half as if it were parchment. Beyond the threshold, hundreds of Corrupted Villagers turned in unison, their eyes glowing with a mindless, hollow hunger.
The dragon did not wait for a command. It unhinged its jaw and unleashed a torrent of blue fire, a ghostly heat that incinerated the horde in a heartbeat. With a snap of the Knight's fingers, the flames died. He looked back at the two mortals.
"Follow."
They stepped into the courtyard, their boots crunching on the ash of the fallen. John's eyes wandered to the walls, where strange artifacts bound in heavy chains pulsed with a life of their own. A floating tunic drifted nearby, its fabric shivering as if it were breathing.
Suddenly, a streak of red light whistled through the air. With supernatural reflexes, the Knight swiveled and deflected a glowing Red Orb with the flat of his blade. He went still, scanning the jagged battlements above.
The earth began to groan. A massive, obsidian-black hand—the size of a city bus—clawed over the castle wall. Then came the second.
Azret emerged. The demon was a nightmare of red and black flesh, a mouthless titan that emitted a roar so deep it rattled the marrow of their bones. Six lidless red eyes tracked their every move. Having no lower body, the creature dragged itself forward with its colossal arms, casting a shadow that swallowed the entire courtyard.
"What the hell is that!?" John and Leah yelled in unison, their weapons feeling like mere toys.
The Knight stood his ground, his rusty sword held low. "It is a primordial demon," he said, his voice steady. "Azret. The Embodiment of Wrath."
As the demon circled them, gouging trenches into the stone with its claws, the Knight shifted his stance to shield the mortals. "Stay behind me." He swung his blade in a wide arc, the metal singing a song of ancient wars. "Back then..."
As the Knight spoke, the world seemed to dissolve into a vision of cosmic horror.
Lust: Isolde. A figure with skin the color of fresh blood, her face dominated by a jagged, ear-to-ear grin while a black blindfold hid her eyes. Behind her, a single obsidian tendril swayed, tipped with a pulsing, heart-shaped point.
Envy: Thersites. In the crushing dark of the Relic Ocean, this thirty-meter titan churned the abyss. Muscular and shirtless, with the face of a dragon and the tail of a serpent, he reached through the deep with infinite arms, fueled by jealousy of his sister, Angelus Vitiosus.
Sloth: Lethargus. High in the silent Mid-verse, a figure the size of a continent sat upon a throne-shaped asteroid. Obscured by a white, flowing robe, he drifted in eternal apathy—a living fragment of the void itself.
Greed: Midasia. A golden mannequin that appeared only to the desperate. Faceless and composed of fused jewelry, she siphoned the life from any who dared covet her golden frame.
Gluttony: Vo'garth. Not a monster within a gate, but the gate itself. A living stone archway with a cavernous mouth that devoured travelers, spitting some into distant realms and dropping others into the pits of Hell.
Wrath: Azret. The nightmare returned—the six-eyed demon who led the Tunic War before being cast into the Scorching Passage, where the Calamities now dwell.
Pride: Aterus. Finally, a shadow loomed over a battlefield of millions. The architect of the Macro War, his full form remained hidden in smoke—a silhouette of arrogance the world was not yet ready to face.
The vision snapped back to the present. The courtyard was cold, and Azret let out a soundless vibration of fury. The Knight tightened his grip on his rusted blade, prepared to face the Wrath once more.
TO BE CONTINUED
In the darkness that followed, a new voice emerged—wretched and wet, rasping with a sickening rhythm.
"There is a traitor among you... though your eyes are yet closed to it. The longer the shadow grows, the clearer the betrayal shall become."