Past the burnt forest, beyond the mountains and valleys, across rivers and lakes, a fight was unfolding. The kind of fight no inhabitant of this world had ever witnessed. A battle woven with magic.
In a region where the land cracked under its own dryness and where water existed only as a memory, two beings clashed. One fought as if taking his first step into a larger destiny, an initiation into true combat.
The other was a veteran of countless hunts, a tyrant of the wasteland, feared by all who lurked within its borders.
In one corner of the natural arena stood a creature that looked like a grotesque fusion of praying mantis and scorpion. Its towering form reached three meters with ease. Hard, sand-colored plates covered its body, each one overlapping to form an almost impenetrable exoskeleton. Its name was known to the tribes that lived far from this place, whispered with dread.
A Manorpis.
Its stinger curled behind its back like a drawn bow, gleaming with venom that could kill a man in seconds. Unlike ordinary scorpions, this monster could fire the stinger at its prey like a projectile, only for it to regrow moments later. Coupled with its speed and armored body, the Manorpis ruled this wasteland without challenge.
Until today. Today, it faced something which did not belong to the natural order of this region.
A bird. A crow. Usually dark as night, but this one was unlike any creature born under the moon. Red and grey streaks shimmered along its feathers, turning its whole body ghostly and unreal. It was the size of a wolf, its wings stretching far beyond its own length, carving through the night like silent blades.
Midnight smothered the forest below. The moon hid behind storm clouds that refused to break, and the world lay drowned in shadow. In that darkness, the crow became invisible. Camouflage was not just an advantage for Umbra. It was his throne.
He soared high above, observing, calculating. His foe could not match his sight. Not even close. Umbra saw every shift of the air, every tremor on the ground, every heartbeat beneath the soil.
Yet even with the night itself wrapped around him, he knew the truth. The Manorpis was almost untouchable. Its shell was a fortress, its stinger covered so much ground that even a misstep from afar could mean death. Umbra had many strengths, but brute force was not among them.
Still, the creature below could not strike at him either. Two predators circling each other, both unwilling to blink.
It would have been a stalemate.
But Umbra was not ordinary. Not even close. The Manorpis carried only faint traces of mana, rare but insignificant. Umbra carried something far greater. Something sacred.
He had tasted the blood of a higher being. He had been chosen by a God. The divine flowed in his veins, thrumming with power he had yet to understand.
This was his first true battle. His first test. His first chance to discover the shape of the power sleeping within him.
And tonight, in the darkest hour, he would awaken it.
Divinity, despite sharing a few distant similarities with mana, was an entirely different force altogether. At its earliest stages, the difference was almost overwhelming.
Mana relied on the world. It drew strength from the elements around it. A user pulled it in, shaped it, guided it, and then released it according to their own will. Mana was cooperation. Mana was borrowing.
Divinity was not.
Where mana obeyed structure, divinity ignored it. It did not gather, process, or channel anything. It did not wait for a command. Divinity asserted. It bent reality the instant it touched it. It did not enhance the world, it rewrote it.
A mortal using mana asked the world to respond.
A Divine being did not ask. The world simply yielded.
That was the fundamental difference.
While mana flowed like a river through creation, divinity radiated from the soul like a new sun, reshaping everything within its reach, even if the wielder did not yet understand how.
It was said that if divinity could be in liquid form, one drop of it would equal about one million drops of mana in terms of energy output and power.
With that in mind, Umbra chose to rely on his instincts.
Similarly to Jermal, he felt that personal enhancement was the simplest way to discover this new power. And so, he began.
Umbra willed that the shadows of the night would help him. And they obeyed.
The desert seemed to grow a bit darker, more tenebrous.
Around Umbra's form, an extra layer grew. One of dark energy. The shadows now literally coated him.
He could feel his weight grow exponentially. Not sure about how that could help him, given that he was basically given a suit of armour, where he wanted a way to deal damage, Umbra was a bit discouraged.
But that feeling didn't last long. An idea manifested itself in his mind.
He began to soar.
Down below, the Manorpis felt the shift in the atmosphere. The night felt a bit more suffocating. As if something that should be possible was made possible.
He recoiled out of instinct. Perhaps out of fear.
He couldn't see what was happening up above. That didn't matter, however, as the beast knew that its opponent couldn't hurt him.
The Manorpis straightened, and once again, stood in wait. Whatever this arrogant chicken could come up with would surely be ineffective against his indestructible exoskeleton.
Just then, he heard a whistle. Low at first, coming from high above. Quickly, that noise got louder.
Umbra had climbed up high. Kilometres into the sky. And dived down.
As he dropped straight towards the ruler of the dunes, his newfound coat of shadows concentrated around his beak. Like an arrow travelling as fast as a bullet.
The air split around him. Umbra's eyes remained locked on his target.
It wasn't enough. Despite the ridiculous speed at which he was travelling, Umbra wasn't convinced that it would be enough to end his foe.
So, he called upon his power once again. This time, to impose his will on his surroundings.
He willed the air from his path, erasing friction for ten seconds of pure, unhindered flight.
Silence fell. The whistle vanished. The Manorpis froze, confused, maybe even assuming that the foolish bird that had dared challenge him finally gave up.
Then impact.
Umbra's beak struck like a sharpened dagger, shadows surging with him, tearing through scales. The stinger tried to react, but the crow was faster than instinct, faster than thought. The Manorpis's head split, its body crumpling into a storm of shattered armor and broken bone.
Its blood and insides splattered all around them. The earth itself caved in.
In the center of the crater, in the middle of the carnage, Umbra stood tall.
His dark grey and red feathers were now lathered in the blood of his enemy he so masterfully annihilated.
His first victory. His first step towards power. Towards glory.
The moon finally emerged from the clouds, casting its soft light upon this beast that was born from the fight.