Darkness within, darkness without

Darkness.

That was all Benjamin knew.

Somewhere, his body existed, but it felt like a distant thing—an abandoned husk drifting through oblivion.

Pain lurked in the edges of his mind, a dull, numbing force that threatened to drag him deeper. But he was already too deep.

He had fought.

He had lost.

And now?

Now, he was nothing.

---

The cavern was in ruins.

Stone debris lay scattered across the battlefield, jagged boulders and shattered platforms now nothing but corpses of a once-thriving stronghold. The torches, half-drowned in dust, flickered weakly, barely illuminating the bodies—both human and beast—that littered the ground.

Among the wreckage, a man stood calmly, surveying the devastation with mild amusement.

Boyan.

The once-proud Warden of the Pit was changed, his body battered, his uniform in tatters. Blood seeped from deep gashes in his side, a testament to the chaos that had erupted in his own domain.

But none of it mattered.

Not compared to his missing arm.

The right sleeve of his fatigues hung empty, torn at the shoulder where his limb had once been. The wound had been crudely cauterized, a messy, blackened scar of flesh and torn muscle.

Most men would be writhing in agony.

Most men would be raging, screaming, cursing the one responsible.

Boyan simply sighed.

"Well," he muttered to himself, flexing his remaining fingers as if testing their movement, "that was unexpected."

His men stood at a distance, some tending to wounds, others retrieving whatever salvageable supplies remained.

They watched Boyan warily, unsure of what to say.

Finally, one of them—a man with a shaved head and a broken nose—stepped forward. "Warden… your arm…"

Boyan arched a brow, glancing at the stump.

Then he grinned.

"Oh, this? Tch." He rolled his shoulder, the motion slightly off-balance now. "A minor inconvenience."

Silence.

The soldiers exchanged glances, unsure whether he was serious.

Boyan's smirk widened.

"What? You think I'd start screaming? Crying? Begging the Heavens for my limb back?" He chuckled, shaking his head. "Please. I've lived too long to cry over a piece of flesh."

He tilted his head back, inhaling the dust-heavy air.

"It's almost refreshing," he murmured. "Haven't had a real challenge in years."

Then his gaze dropped to the unconscious figure being dragged toward him.

Benjamin.

The boy was barely recognizable under the dirt, blood, and bruises, his body limp as the two Black Flame enforcers dragged him across the stone floor.

Boyan clicked his tongue, looking down at the battered form with mild interest.

"Still alive, huh?" He exhaled, shaking his head. "Damn brat. Almost made me respect him."

He crouched low, observing Benjamin's shallow breaths.

A smirk tugged at his lips.

"Guess I'll let him pay me back for the arm."

---

He stood, rolling his remaining shoulder before turning to his men.

"This section is a loss," he said simply, gesturing to the collapsed cavern walls and crumbling stairways. "No salvaging it."

One of the lieutenants—a lean woman with a jagged scar down her left cheek—crossed her arms. "We're just abandoning it? After everything?"

Boyan snorted.

"You wanna stay here? Dig through the rubble? Wait for the Sages to get curious and start poking around?" He lifted his brows. "Be my guest."

The lieutenant grimaced.

Boyan rolled his eyes. "This place was never permanent. You all know how we operate. One entrance closes, another opens. We sever ties, we move on."

His gaze drifted back to the ruins, something almost nostalgic in his expression.

"Shame, though. I liked this place."

The lieutenant hesitated, then sighed. "What about the survivors?"

Boyan glanced at the wounded Black Flame soldiers being helped to their feet, then at the remaining slaves who hadn't been killed in the chaos.

"Round them up," he said. "We're relocating."

The lieutenant nodded.

"And the boy?"

Boyan's smirk returned.

"Oh, he's coming with us."

He nudged Benjamin's body with his boot, watching the boy's unconscious form barely react.

"Kid worked too damn hard to kill me. Would be a waste to just let him die here."

Then, stretching his remaining arm, he turned toward the far tunnel—the one passage untouched by the destruction.

"Let's go," he called out, already walking. "We've got work to do."

---

As the Black Flame began their exodus, leaving behind the ruined cavern, the torches flickered one final time.

Soon, the only sounds left in the collapsed mine were the distant echoes of dripping water, the occasional skittering of surviving Dawads, and the final whispers of a battle long since ended.

And just like that—

The underground stronghold was gone.

The tunnels leading back had been sealed.

No one on the surface would ever know what happened here.

And neither would Benjamin.

Because for him, the world faded to black long ago.

--

Before time, before light, before the turning of the first moment, there was the Maker: Asterion, the Unmade it meant in a language ancient as the world itself.

And before all things, before the worlds and the great expanse of existence, there were the Itharim—beings of pure awareness, woven from the currents of meaning itself.

They did not question. They did not wonder.

They witnessed.

And in witnessing, they sang.

Their voices filled the endless sea of pre-existence, a chorus of harmony so vast it had no edges, no beginning, no end. It was not sound as mortals would know it. It was not thought as mortals would conceive it.

It was praise. It was witnessing. It was being.

And it was enough.

For all but one.

---

Kaarith was not like the others.

He knew this, though he did not know why.

When he thought, he did not merely think alongside the chorus—he thought apart from it.

When he moved, he did not simply move as one with the great harmony—he moved against it, within it, around it.

He was aware. Not in the way the Itharim were aware, for their awareness was pure and simple. Their praise flowed from them like breath, effortless and unquestioning.

But Kaarith?

Kaarith had agency.

And agency, though it was not yet a word, was the first spark of something else.

---

Kaarith watched as the Maker spoke—not in words, not in thought, but in the act of willing.

And from that will, existence came forth.

The great sea of potential stirred. Ripples turned to waves, waves turned to form, and form became being.

Where there was only endless, shining nothingness, there now were realms, stretching outward in all directions.

The Itharim sang in wonder, in devotion, in witnessing, as the Maker shaped the first things into being.

Great pillars of light, vast vaults of reality, the first turnings of space and form.

It was not a place, not yet. It was the potential of all places.

But the Itharim could not enter it.

They could see. They could praise.

But they could not touch.

---

Kaarith's thoughts burned.

He did not question the Maker—how could he?

But he wondered.

The other Itharim sang, their voices merging in the great harmony, moving in the vast, infinite sea that was their nature.

But Kaarith watched.

And wondered.

Why were they merely witnesses?

Why was there a boundary?

What was beyond it?

While the others were lost in song, he reached out.

Not physically—for there was no form yet, no true substance—but he focused his awareness toward the boundary where the Maker's will had separated the sea of Itharim from the unfolding reality.

There, he saw something new.

Not vast space, not the endlessness of the Itharim's realm, but small, shimmering spheres—bubbles of what could be.

Inside them, something moved.

Like dreams before they are born, like ideas before they are shaped.

It was the first glimmers of existence.

And Kaarith, who had never known restraint, did what the others had never even conceived of doing.

He leaned in.

---

His awareness pierced the surface of a bubble.

And suddenly, he was seeing.

Not just witnessing from afar, not just praising from beyond the veil—he was within it.

The bubble contained light, but it was not the pure light of the pre-temporal sea.

It had shape, it had color, it had a kind of bound movement—the first form of place.

And in that place, he could sense its structure, the first traces of reality bound by the Maker's design.

When he withdrew, he felt different.

For the first time, an Itharim had not merely watched—but experienced.

He drifted among the others, their songs still rising like a tide, uninterrupted, unchanging.

They had not noticed.

And so he did it again.

And again.

And each time, he went deeper.

Each time, he felt the Maker's work more clearly.

The vast ocean of form grew clearer to him. He saw patterns, rules, the laws by which the bubbles of reality were formed.

And he longed to understand them.

---

He knew he was alone in this.

The others did not ask questions.

The others did not wonder.

But Kaarith did.

And so one day—when the vast harmony of the Itharim rose to its peak, when all the others were lost in pure witnessing—

Kaarith did not look.

Kaarith did not observe.

Kaarith did not wonder.

He plunged.

And for the first time, an Itharim entered existence.

---

He did not simply see the world as it unfolded.

He was within it.

He felt the first whispers of form around him, the soft edges of reality molding against his awareness.

And unlike the other Itharim—he could touch it.

He could move within it.

And with just a thought, he found that he could shape it.

Not as the Maker did, no.

But he could stir the ripples.

He could shift things.

He could will small changes—a color deepening, a light shifting, a form stretching.

It was barely anything.

But it was his.

And for the first time, an Itharim had done something not decreed, not sung, not merely witnessed—

But chosen.

And Kaarith, once a mere observer, felt something new.

Power.

Not the power of the Maker.

Not yet.

But something else.

Something that no Itharim had ever had. Was he even an Itharim?

And so he did it again.

And again.

Until the bubbles of existence bent to his will like a thing waiting to be shaped.

And then—

Then, he asked himself something he had never asked before.

"Why should I return?"

And the chorus of the Itharim sang on, unaware that one of their own had already begun to change.

---

And Benjamin dreamed…

Far away, far below, in a world of dust and stone, Benjamin's body remained still, shackled in darkness.

Yet his mind wandered through pre-temporal echoes, seeing through eyes that were not his own.

And though he did not know why, he felt it.

The first tremors of something ancient, something lost.

And he understood one thing clearly.

The Itharim had never been meant to enter existence.

But one seemed to have done so.

And now, he was seeing the world through its fall.