EREBOS - DC UNIVERSE
Named after the primordial god of darkness itself—the void personified—Erebos embodied the essence of shadow. Wherever darkness lingered, it was present, an omnipresent force weaving through the fabric of existence.
This realm housed the great kingdom of the underworld.
Many harbored misconceptions of the underworld as a cavernous domain buried beneath the earth, but the truth was far more profound: it was a metaphysical plane without a fixed location. It existed everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, unbound by the constraints of physical space.
Shrouded in the eternal darkness of the ancient god Erebos.
Here, a ferry loomed over the River Acheron, its ancient hull creaking softly against the sluggish current. The Acheron, known as the River of Woe, wound through the shadowed expanse like a vein of sorrow, its waters thick and inky black, murmuring with the faint echoes of lost regrets and unspoken pains. It served as the primary gateway to the underworld, ferrying the souls of the departed across its treacherous depths to face judgment on the far shore—provided they could pay the toll.
Looming near the shore, a figure stood aboard, cloaked in a haze that was not true fog but the ethereal veil of lingering despair, wisps of unresolved mortal anguish coiling like smoke from dying embers.
Charon, the ferryman who transported shades to the underworld.
His cold eyes pierced beyond the shore, fixing on the multitude of shades—souls awaiting their final passage to judgment.
These shades appeared as faint, translucent forms to mortal eyes, but Charon saw through their visages with unflinching clarity. Some were victims of murder or natural death, their ethereal outlines bearing the subtle marks of their earthly ends; others carried the scars of violence that had ravaged kingdoms in the world of the living. Yet the true multitudes were warriors, so vast in number that their ranks stretched across the misty horizon for miles, a sea of spectral armor and faded banners undulating in the dim twilight.
This was not the first time Charon had witnessed such a surge, but it marked a rare occasion: warriors unburied properly, denied rites in the chaos of battle, were now granted passage to the underworld and, by judgment, to Elysium.
The gods were indeed feeling generous today. There would be no fee exacted.
Charon contemplated in silence; it would take considerable time to ferry them all.
Suddenly, something snared his attention.
He gazed once more at the shades and frowned.
For some inexplicable reason, their numbers had dwindled significantly. He could sense it acutely.
"What is going on?" His haggard voice rasped like a groaning whisper, echoing faintly over the water. But no answer came; only the blank, impassive gazes of the shades met his query, their forms flickering like candle flames in a draft.
As he watched, the peculiar sight unfolded: souls vanished by the second, their ethereal presences dissolving into nothingness, reducing the throng to a mere fraction of its former immensity.
His cold eyes narrowed in confusion from beneath the dark cloak that shrouded his frame.
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PSYKER.
What is a psyker?
Interpretations and conceptions of these beings vary widely, yet one truth endures: they are extremely dangerous.
More often than not, this danger stems not from strength but from a profound curse.
Psykers are beings of any race who possess a connection to the Warp—through genetic mutation in the humans of the Imperium or the natural talents of the Eldari.
Being a psyker binds you inexorably to the dimension known as the Immaterium, or the Warp: a chaotic realm teeming with entities and energies that corrode and devastate any soul projected there.
Only the truly powerful psykers can ward off these entities from invading their minds and bodies.
A weak psyker is vulnerable to possession by Warp entities or daemons, potentially becoming a literal gateway for these foul creatures to breach the material universe.
However, with the peril comes its counterpart: power.
With sufficient knowledge and training, even a potentially weak psyker becomes a formidable force on the battlefield.
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Atrius knelt on the ashy ground, his glowing fiery eyes staring ahead, as if fixated on something beyond the writhing forms of the mortals rising before him.
While other psykers invoked spells, hurling lightning and fire, outliers like him achieved the impossible.
The mortals' screams and yells of agony—as they resurrected and rejuvenated—escaped his senses entirely, for he was not truly present.
All he perceived was carnage: a battlefield strewn with broken bodies, rivers of ichor pooling in craters, dismembered limbs scattered like debris from a storm, and the acrid stench of burnt flesh hanging heavy in the air. It felt as though he were reliving a moment long past, the echoes of clashing steel and guttural roars reverberating in his skull.
Amid the chaos stood a giant golden figure, his helm adorned with a scorched red plume that fluttered like a banner of defiance. He battled an endless horde of terrors—twisted abominations with jagged claws and gaping maws— a boney blade cleaving through their ranks, eliciting shrieks of agony that pierced the din as the creatures recoiled in disarray.
The figure flashed across the battlefield at a speed defying his colossal size, materializing in multiple places at once, a blur of auramite armor leaving trails of shimmering afterimages.
Within his slightly scarred helm, golden eyes flared with incandescent fury.
with a deep grunt, massive concussive wave erupted from him, slamming into the horde and hurling them backward, the force ripping through flesh and bone, incinerating swaths of the enemy in blasts of searing heat.
BOOM!!!!!!
In this infernal realm, devoid of natural light yet illuminated by endless fires that snaked like molten rivers—crackling and hissing with unholy vigor—he alone remained standing, a solitary beacon amid the devastation.
He dropped the bone like blade.
clankk!!!.
At a closer look, its shape resembled that of a large claw..
crrkk~~~
Extending his gauntleted hand into the void, he shattered reality itself, punching a rift through the fabric of existence with a resonant crack that echoed like thunder. Slowly withdrawing it, he grasped a spear, its blade gleaming with ethereal light.
In the distant haze, another golden hand mirrored the action, yanking an identical weapon from the charred, smoldering corpse of a daemon—its twisted form still twitching, ichor oozing from gaping wounds, the air thick with the sulfurous reek of its demise and the faint sizzle of cooling embers on its blackened hide.
Only a few breaths of silence passed, broken by the ground thundering under the pounding steps of approaching daemons, their guttural snarls and the rhythmic quake of their advance vibrating through the scorched earth.
Without a flicker of change in his helmed expression, he flicked the ichor from the spear's tip with a sharp motion, sending droplets arcing through the air like liquid obsidian. He assumed a poised stance, balanced and unyielding, awaiting the inexorable horde.
One man... no, one Custodes against an endless tide of daemons.
Golden...
The thunderous clash loomed imminent when, abruptly, something shifted.
Time crawled to an excruciating halt, the world freezing in mid-motion: flames suspended in their dance, daemons mid-stride with claws outstretched, the very air thickening into a palpable stillness that pressed against the skin like an invisible weight. The cacophony of battle—roars, clashes, and crackles—faded into a muffled hum, leaving only the pounding of Atrius's own heartbeat echoing in his ears, each throb a visceral reminder of his fragile tether to reality.
Slowly, the golden figure turned his gaze, pivoting with deliberate grace amid the stasis, his armored form humming faintly with latent power. Golden pupils, radiant and piercing like twin suns, locked onto red ones—Atrius's own—bridging the chasm between visions with an intensity that burned through the psyche, a surge of electric connection that raised gooseflesh and sent a chill racing down the spine.
'WAKE UP!!!!!!'
The command erupted like a cataclysmic psychic blast, a torrent of raw energy slamming into Atrius's mind with the force of a supernova. It tore through his consciousness in a whirlwind of blinding light and deafening thunder, shards of fragmented memories and sensations exploding outward—flashes of golden armor clashing against obsidian claws, the metallic tang of blood mingling with the ozone scent of psychic discharge, the searing heat of Warp-tainted flames licking at his nerves. His body convulsed on the ashy ground, muscles seizing as the vision shattered, pulling him back with brutal abruptness: the writhing mortals' agonized cries flooding his ears anew, the gritty texture of ash grinding under his knees, and the acrid smoke stinging his eyes as reality reasserted itself in a disorienting rush.
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