Descent Into the Unknown

A bone-chilling emptiness wrapped around Shen Mu the instant his fingers touched the hand of the entity.

In a flash, his senses dissolved. His feet no longer touched the ground. His vision was stripped away, leaving behind an infinite darkness. His ears strained, yet not a whisper of sound reached them.

For a terrifying moment, he felt as though he had ceased to exist.

This isn't normal.

Panic clawed at him, crying out to fight, to fight and struggle and try to tear loose—but how could he wrestle something this absolute?

And then a voice.

"Do not resist."

It was not in his head outside of him but within. And it was being spoken right at him into his thoughts.

Shen Mu clenched his jaw tightly, working on his calm. "What's this? Where am I?"

"Between."

One word had chilled him down his spine.

Between what?

He never had a chance to ask.

Around him, everything shifted.

Darkness cracked, and color bled into existence, swirling like liquid fire. His body reformed, his senses returned. A strange, oppressive atmosphere replaced the emptiness.

He stood on nothing. The space around him stretched into infinity, but directly ahead, ruins floated in the void—broken towers, shattered monuments, and colossal monoliths of obsidian stone.

He took a step forward, a weight he had no power over bearing down upon him.

Then the whispers started.

At first, they were indistinct, a murmur of a thousand voices too distant to understand. Then, they grew louder.

Echoes of the past.

Shen Mu turned as the vision unfolded before him.

A city. Great black stone monoliths everywhere bore the pulsing runes along their faces, and great streets with their streetsides hung about with banners of gold and blue.

The natives were not men at all; their eyes glowed with a fiery light, and about them an unobtrusive aura of magic.

They had been soldiers and sages and kings, an infinitely old people. And then, across that sky gone dark.

Shen Mu gasped. This was the seepage of evil; a wave that would infect the very tissue of reality, letting it rust and eat away.

It stood there.

Something drop through the air

It did not have shape, as if it was traveling in a ripple of twisting shadow. Everywhere the thing went it distorted reality—beyond recognition, beyond redemption.

Screeches emit as people flare out; not killed; not rent open; simply erased.

Shen Mu tried to move, try to look away, but he was forced to watch.

The city, its people, its legacy—consumed in the blink of an eye.

The vision splintered like glass, and Shen Mu was hurled back into the void.

He gulped, his heart pounding within his chest.

"What is that?" he asked.

The creature's radiating eyes held onto him.

"The first devouring," it replied. "The end of the civilization before yours."

Shen Mu's blood turned ice.

"That thing. is it the end of the world?"

"No."

Shen Mu clenched his fists. "Then what is?"

"The end of your world is just a consequence. A delayed aftershock of something much greater."

A chill ran down Shen Mu's spine. The end was not the disaster.

It was just the start.

The Real World: Mei Lin's Unease

In the real world, meanwhile, Mei Lin stood stiff, her knuckles white as she gripped her sword.

Shen Mu stood there frozen for more than five minutes, his face an unreadable mask, his body as motionless as stone.

And the creature? Not one step forward.

What is going on here?

All of her senses screamed at her. She had seen too much and been through too much to discount the feeling of something being seriously off.

Was Shen Mu okay? Was this thing hurting him?

A sharp crack ricocheted through the air. The very air around them seemed to freeze over.

Mei Lin's breath hitched.

It was unnatural, not only because it didn't speak but in the sense that nothing else in the room moved, like time itself had been placed under arrest.

Finally, the creature turned to her.

"He is seeing the truth."

Mei Lin dug her claws deep into the butt of her blade, her hands shaking and alive with an adrenaline she felt way too many times before.

"I don't care what he's seeing," she said through set teeth. "If you don't bring him back, I'll—"

Her words went raw in her throat under the weight unseen.She took a forward step, nearly going to her knees.

This monster-this thing beyond the human and the mutant, even reason-behind her back and her raised head.

She straightened and found grit for standing up.

"If he doesn't wake up soon," she snarled, "I'm going to make you wish you didn't."

Back in the void, Shen Mu's breathing steadied.

"You're saying my survival… my system… everything has been going against fate?"

"Correct."

He exhaled sharply. So I wasn't supposed to be here.

The apocalypse should have erased him—just like it erased the billions before him.

Yet here he was.

Something had intervened.

"Then tell me," he said, his voice steady. "What exactly is the system?"

The creature was silent for a long moment.

Then, it answered.

"A relic. A remnant of a lost war."

Shen Mu narrowed his eyes. "A war against what?"

"The Devourers."

The word made him shiver.

The creature continued.

"'Your system was never built for you. It was for a warrior so long forgotten. A weapon built to counter that destruction that destroys worlds. Only the one to wield it. never did. "

Shen Mu's pulse had quickened with excitement. "Then who brought it here?"

"What, I don't know. But what I do know is this: if you want to oppose what's coming, you must unlock its real power."

Shen Mu's fists tightened. He'd always thought it was incomplete; it had pieces missing. Now he knew why.

"What am I supposed to do?"

The being reached out once more with a long hand.

"Accept the burden."

For a moment, Shen Mu was silent.

He'd fought for survival, built something, scratched and carved out an existence in a world that broke him.

He never asked for more than that.

But now he knew the truth.

This was no longer a matter of himself.

If this vision was true, if the Devourers survived—then all was living on borrowed time.

Shen Mu took a slow breath.

No matter what it would cost, he would not be erased.

He stretched forward.

The moment his fingers touched the creature's hand, the emptiness burst into flame.

And everything changed.