Breno12456

There had never been silence like that.

It wasn’t the absence of sound — it was presence.
Heavy. Alive. A stillness that crushed memory, breath, time.

Elías awakens on cracked earth beneath a sky of rotten red and black-blue. The stars above drift like bloated, decaying eyes — floating in stagnant fluid.

There is no sun. No moon. Only a damp, unholy light that seeps from nowhere. The air tastes like ash and burns like guilt — and something inside him stirs.

He doesn’t remember this world, but it remembers him.
He doesn’t know what he lost, but it’s still bleeding.

When the silence finally whispers his name, he understands:

Elías is not alive. Not dead.
He is what remains.

And this world — whether the last, or just the next — will bleed before it forgets him again

Refuge of the Last Name

Even after the last Flamebound fell, their scorched armor cracking into embers, the city remained alive with heat. The air shimmered. Every breath Elías took tasted of smoke and iron. His grip on the Scythe of Death tightened—not from fear, but from the strange pull he felt coming from below.

The streets were melting. Not from fire, but from something deeper—an ancient heat that pulsed through the stone like a heartbeat.

"Something's waking up," murmured Kael, kneeling beside a broken statue. "And it's not done with us."

Behind them, the others caught their breath. Two were wounded, one badly. The healer muttered incantations, his voice trembling as the ash fell from the sky like dead snow.

Elías stepped forward, boots sinking slightly into the softened ground. The buildings whispered. Not in words, but in sighs—like old voices pushed through cracked bones.

A jolt ran through the city. The ground split open before them, revealing a stairwell of obsidian that spiraled downward into darkness lit by flickering runes.

The silence returned. The same silence Elías had heard when he first awakened in this cursed world. Not the absence of sound—but the presence of something listening.

He turned to the group. "We go down."

Kael frowned. "Into the pit of a dead god?"

Elías didn't answer. He descended.

At the bottom was no chamber—only a door of bone and brass, pulsing with a lightless glow. Symbols etched into its frame burned cold. One looked like an eye with no pupil. Another, a crown nailed to a heart.

As his fingers touched the door, it breathed.

And from beyond it, a voice—not loud, not screaming, but steady—knelt into his mind.

"You carry more than death, child."

The Scythe in his hand grew heavier.

Behind him, Kael whispered, "We're not alone."

What sleeps beneath ruins that burn but never turn to ash?

What price does Elías pay for every power he earns?

And when gods kneel… who remains standing?

Beneath the Ash and Fire