The Rift’s New Pawn

The Silence Before the Storm

The battlefield stretched endlessly, a frozen wasteland where the echoes of battle had long faded. The once-vibrant sky was now a canvas of ashen gray, shrouded in an eerie, suffocating stillness. Jagged remnants of Rift corruption still clung to the shattered ground like malignant scars. The air carried the faint metallic tang of blood, laced with the bitterness of loss.

Kael was gone.

Not dead. Not trapped. Erased.

Ethan stood at the center of the devastation, motionless. His golden aura flickered around him, dim and unstable, casting trembling shadows across the fractured ground. His fists were clenched so tightly that blood welled in thin, dark rivulets from where his nails had bitten into his palms. Yet, he didn't feel it. The physical pain was nothing—a mere whisper drowned beneath the hollow ache gnawing at his soul.