Chapter 77: The Monolith Pyramid of Entry

Exterior – Under the Violet Sky

Dakarie stood before the towering monolith's obsidian gates, beside I:1-Aurum, one of the Five Faceless Kings. The noble's armor was etched in soul-marks, its hollow face reflecting only emptiness. A soft, mechanical hum passed through its chest as it turned to Dakarie with haunting stillness.

"Step to the side," I:1-Aurum said in its lifeless, resonating voice. "The show is about to begin."

And so it began.

Just outside the pyramid's ancient entrance, Ruthen's elite Thal'karn squad tore through the mist like phantom beasts. She stood tall among them, obsidian armor slick with blood, glaive pulsing with energy. The Faceless Warrior, her adversary, moved like a whisper, its blades fused to its arms, attacking not with rage but function pure, precise, calculated.

The battle turned brutal fast.

A single Thal'karn Unit Vesh-8 was cleaved clean in two, its handler snatched mid-command and impaled on the warrior's arm-blade in a single movement.

But before the faceless could withdraw, the remaining pack descended like wolves, pulling the warrior apart in an explosion of bone, metal, and shadowed fluid.

Then, with a low three-tone whistle, another Faceless Warrior emerged silently from the fog, taking its fallen sibling's place with no ceremony, only function.

Dakarie winced at the cold efficiency. I:1-Aurum did not blink.

"This is your feared Mahasimu? Once they shook galaxies," the faceless noble whispered. "Now their spawn fall to tools even we consider expendable."

Dakarie gritted his teeth. "They've grown colder. Stranger. They've evolved."

"Or decayed."

Two more Thal'karn and their handlers fell screams snatched from the air and smothered under bone-crushing blades. It was now only Ruthen and her lead Thal'karn left, both bloodied but snarling, surrounded by faceless.

The Chamber of the Forgotten Eye

Inside the Seers' Council, amusement bloomed.

The four seated elders whispered in laughter, boasting in fractured speech.

"They fight like infants."

"Let us send ten more faceless. Or a hundred."

Then something shifted.

A soundless quake.

The two Grand Faceless Sentinels, who had stood beside the Grand Blind One's throne unmoving for millennia, moved.

They didn't stretch.

They sprinted moving through space with terrifying purpose, bounding out of the council chamber like hounds unleashed.

A wave of silence fell. Then a pressure. A choking, ancient presence poured into the atmosphere like a black sun pressing down from orbit.

"Something's coming…" one Seer murmured, visibly shaken.

"Something old."

Jha'mor'ak – Battlefield Outside the Pyramid

The Faceless Warrior facing Ruthen suddenly halted mid-strike, head tilting upward. Its body froze, not in fear but in deference.

Ruthen narrowed her eyes, blades humming.

Then she felt it too.

The fog warped. The air compressed as an ancient vessel, dark and irregular like a starved behemoth, punched into orbit and descended like a meteor, cracking the sky as it landed just beyond the battlefield.

The earth shuddered. The fog burned away.

Out from the ship's gaping maw marched ten elite Shadow Troopers, their ancient armor humming with forbidden energy, their every step drenching the ground in dread.

But behind them came something worse.

Clad in ceremonial handler robes fused with psychic conduits, his name encoded on the side of his helm in forgotten runes, was the Myth Handler: Vorth-Ka'Zir.

Attached to his cybernetic arm were two massive psy-chains, bound to a roaring abomination

The Mythosaur.

It emerged, yellow scales slashing through the air, enormous black eyes staring at the world like it was prey. Its twin horns, curling like dark antlers, scraped the temple stones. The beast raged in all directions, its breath boiling stone and screaming through layers of reality.

Ruthen took a step back. Even her Thal'karn whimpered.

Vorth-Ka'Zir raised one clawed finger.

A single word in a tongue even the Seers did not know.

In the blink of an eye, the Faceless Warrior was decapitated, its soul ripped and shredded before its corpse hit the ground.

The Seers, watching from the council, fell into silence.

Jha'mor'ak – Monolith Pyramid Entrance

The ten Shadow Troopers flanked Vorth-Ka'Zir as they approached I:1-Aurum and Dakarie, the Mythosaur slithering behind in restrained rage.

The two Grand Faceless Sentinels stood defensively in front of Aurum and Dakarie, blades drawn, power humming.

Vorth-Ka'Zir tugged the chains tight. The Mythosaur snarled, flames licking its teeth.

"Is this how you wish to die?" Vorth-Ka'Zir asked, not to the Sentinels, but to the very world.

"We will end you in ways your minds cannot grasp."

And then he appeared.

No sound. No arrival. He was simply there.

The Grand Blind One.

Hovering behind the Grand Sentinels, draped in void-robes, the air around him warped and wept. His face was gone, replaced by a pulsating crystal socket of pure voidlight, and his every step sent ripples through time.

Behind him stood the Four Elder Seers, silent now. Uncertain.

For the first time in epochs, the Broken Seers were no longer in control.