CHAOS

[CHAOSBORN ACTIVATED]

Everything went dark for Robert. One minute there were giant wolves hovering above him, the next he was in the embrace of the sweet, eternal darkness, with no idea of what was about to happen and no recollection of the event after he woke up.

Mark, on the other hand held onto to his consciousness as chaos SOURCE ENERGY flowed into him as though he was a dried soil. He couldn't see much, nor could he hear much, but he was slipping in and out of consciousness, desperately trying to hang on to his life. The unfairness of it made him despair. He wanted to cry, wail with agony, which turned to a burning rage that give him the strength, the will to push through, to hold on to life by the thread. 'I will not die today.' He repeated that sentence like a prayer, or a mantra. And it did work, but the more the chaos SOURCE ENERGY entered, the harder it became for him to hold on to that single thread, threatening to snap any second his attention went elsewhere.

Where Robert lay, a swirl of energy cocooned him, stirring the wind. Dusts and pebbles floated around, tossed as the speed of the wind increase. The wolves retreated to prevent the pebbles from hitting Darius, who was too weak to even lift his hand. They needed him alive, long enough that they could kill whatever emerged from that thing. It gave both the wolves a surprise as the energy came out of the nowhere. It gave them a familiar feeling. They couldn't remember from where, but they didn't like the feeling it was giving them. 

Darius looked at it with a surprise as well. He had not seen such…magnificent, beautiful and yet…terrifying scene anywhere. Not even at the ruins of blue rose. And there were many terrifying things there. Things he wished he could forget.

"What is happening to you, brother?" he asked, his voice ragged and tried, lacking the strength to even reach the grounds.

The wolves, not wanting to wait to whatever was going to come out of that energy cocoon, lunged and howled loud enough to shake the ground, swinging their massive paws at it. But the moment it touched the cocoon, it released a pulse of massive energy that sent the wolves hurling through the air like rag dolls.

They whimpered as they hit the ground, dragging the ground as they slide with their back. No, they did not like that energy one bit. Before it was because of the felling but now it was because they couldn't erase—grant it death.

They hated every encounter they had with those things they couldn't erase. Like those giant bullies that came to their mistress's domain, except that big ball of light. He was okay in their book. He would always bring treats whenever he visited. But they especially hated that giant woman that smelled wet. It was always wet when she was around, and dark, not like that dark place in their home, but more of a darkness that filled them a disgusting feeling. But the energy from their prey was something else. It smelled wrong in every sense.

The whirl of energy subsided after some time. When it cleared of the only thing left was a dark silhouette of a human, covered with the swirl of dusts and ashes. By the time the dusts cleared, the human-like figure was standing, looking at them. It smelled amused, amused by them, which infuriated them. All their previous preys smelled of fear, despair, or hopeless. How dare his human…they paused, confused. It didn't smell like a human…not anymore. It smelled closer to their mistress and those bullies. Whatever, they didn't need to think about it. They just need to hunt. 'It not like this thing could kill us,' they though.

What Darius saw was something that made no sense, and at the heart of it stood a figure that had once been his brother. The figure had no defined form, no stable existence. It was an ever-shifting inferno, its flames cycling through every conceivable color in the span of a breath—azure, crimson, gold, hues that had no names. It rippled, coiled, expanded, and fractured, each flicker of its fire unraveling the very fabric of existence around it. Where it stood, the world ceased to follow any law. A river split into the sky. Trees grew roots that stretched into the heavens. Time stuttered, skipping forward and then rewinding in an endless loop of impossible moments. The forest was dying. Not in the way nature intended, not through decay or time, but through sheer disorder. Trees bent in unnatural angles, their leaves flickering between colors that had never existed. The ground cracked open, revealing glimpses of places that should not be—endless voids, burning deserts, frozen oceans. Nothing made any logical sense. Order was dying around the figure.

The only way he could describe it was "CHAOS."

The two titanic wolves remembered why they were feeling that much hatred and disgust. They had fought someone who had that power, a very long time, so long they had forgotten it momentarily. They had almost died back then, even though they shouldn't be able to die. But that person had almost killed them, only thanks to their mistress did they survive.

So they started to take on their full form. Their fur turned into a shadow darker than the void between stars, their eyes smoldered with the light of a dying star. They did not growl, did not posture, for they had no need for threat or intimidation. They simply moved.

The wolves lunged in unison, carrying the raw essence of death. Where their claws struck, 'his' flames flickered, dimming into nonexistence before surging back in an eruption of paradoxical heat. The one who had white fur before—the female of the two—Nyxeon attacked again. Her shadow stretched unnaturally, her presence consuming the very essence of life in her path. She aimed not at 'him'—not to wound 'him', but to erase—grant death to the concept of movement itself.

The first mistake you could make when fighting someone like chaos is expecting everything to follow logic. And the second thinking you could make it makes sense.

So when her jaws snapped shut around 'his' blazing figure. The next, she stood at the edge of the forest, muzzle bloodied, as if she had never attacked at all. The male counterpart—the one with dark fur previously—Acheron, undeterred, leapt high. He aimed for 'his' heart, or so he thought, willing its destruction, but in an instant, he was beneath the earth, lungs filling with dirt, suffocating in a grave that had not existed seconds ago. 

He laughed. It was a soundless thing, an emotion rather than a noise, seeping into the bones of the world and making everything wrong. 

He turned towards her and took his first step. The sun disappeared, and the moon rose. Another step. They found themselves in the middle of a busies street with the blazing sun overhead. A vast shadow flying over their heads, with wings that spanned at least hundreds of meters. Another step and they were standing on the surface of the ocean. Another step and back to the forest. Another step and the forest reverted back to its infant times. Another step and the entire forest was aflame. With every step, order unrevealed itself, chaos reigning supreme.

A wave of fire erupted from its form, not burning, but unmaking. The very air distorted, rippling as reality bent and twisted. Time cracked—Nyxeon and Acheron moved, but their bodies lagged behind their own movements, appearing in places they had yet to step into. Death, their mistress's gift, faltered. Concepts that should have ended flickered back to life, and chaos reigned again. 

The ground split apart. The sky twisted into a spiral, stars appearing and vanishing in the blink of an eye. The forest was no longer a forest—it was a fractured thing, existing in multiple states at once. Some trees stood, their leaves untouched. Others lay as charred remains, yet others were reversed, growing upside down, roots grasping at the heavens. 

Acheron reached first, his claws raking through space itself, tearing apart possibility. Where he struck, time faltered, moments unraveling. But 'he' did not abide by time. 'His' form distorted, appearing both in the wolves' grasp and far beyond their reach in the same instant. 

Then the flames came. 

'His' fire was no ordinary inferno. It was existence unmade, a swirling storm of colors that burned without heat, consuming without destruction. It spread across the forest, rewriting reality wherever it touched. The sky cracked open, the moon distorted, twisting between its crescent and full states as if uncertain of its own shape. 

The wolves faltered. Their mistress, the Goddess of Death, could end anything, but Chaos was not a thing to be ended. It was not life, nor time, nor space. It was the absence of all orders; it was not something that could simply be claimed.

Nyxeon fell first. 'He' willed it so. She did not collapse in pain—she was simply there, beneath Chaos's flickering form, her body sinking into the shifting ground as if she had been there all along. Acheron snarled, his form dissolving into black mist before reforming elsewhere, but it did not matter. 

The battle was decided before it truly began.

Chaos loomed over them, its flames converging into a singularity of shifting color. The wolves did not beg. They did not plead. They were death incarnate, and they would meet their own end with silence.

Then the air shifted. 

A bell rang, though no bell had been struck. A presence stepped into the ruined landscape, not bound by time or place. A figure draped in robes woven from the murmurs of the dead, a being who had existed long before this cycle and would persist long after. 

The Guardian of Souls. 

He did not raise a weapon. He did not stand in defiance. He simply looked upon Chaos, his unseen gaze heavy with something far more painful than anger—disappointment. 

"You are late," the Guardian said, his voice carrying the weight of centuries. "I had hoped, perhaps, that this time, you would not return. That this cycle had finally ended." 

Chaos did not speak. Its flames flickered, shifting erratically, as if uncertain. 

"It has been tens of thousands of years," the Guardian continued. "Every time, I wait. Every time, I wonder. Will this be the cycle where you lose? Will this be the age where order endures? But you have returned." He exhaled, a breath that carried the sorrow of countless eons. "And so, as always, I will do what must be done." 

He stepped forward, not toward Chaos, but toward the wolves. With a gesture, their forms shimmered, fading from this ruined place, vanishing into the realm beyond. Taken from the battlefield before their end could be sealed. 

"What are you doing here?" asked Chaos but not with voice, but inside the head of the Guardian of souls, "there are no souls here for you to take."

He didn't answer him, just pointed towards Darius and stared at him.

Chaos's form trembled. The flames flickered one last time—then, abruptly, they died. The power that had surged through Mark drained away, retreating into its source, beyond Mark's ability to perceive. 

Robert collapsed. 

No longer a towering entity of shifting colors, no longer a being beyond comprehension—just a man, broken and barely breathing. Mark's spirit housed that power, so Robert was fine for most parts, but Mark's spirit was fractured, his mind lost, unable to bear the weight of what had briefly lived within him. But he had witnessed the conversation between the two entities, leaving him with more questions than answers.

Finally, unable to hold on to his consciousness, his vision darkened and went to sleep, for the first time since he came here

The Guardian of Souls stood over him for a long moment, silent. He turned towards Darius. His face laid on the ground, blood coming out of it, forming a small puddle. His eyes turned red, his body twisted at an impossible angle. Hands growing out of his backs. The tip of his fingers turning into eyes with different colors. He didn't look like a human. He was a monster out of someone's nightmare.

The Guardian of souls released a sigh and looked at the transparent figure beside the dead body. It was the soul of Darius, with some darkness spreading through his body, but it was not much and only covered his right arm.

"Your sins do not require you to go to hell," said the Guardian of souls. Darius's soul looked away from his body and to the Guardian. "Come, I'll guide you to your place."

Then, without another word, he was gone.