Iris sat alone in the data chamber, screens flickering in the dark, their light dancing across her expressionless face.
Her eyes moved rapidly, scanning lines of fragmented archives, encrypted files, and long-erased names. Then... she found it.
Jack.
Not a soldier. Not a weapon. Once... just a miner. Quiet. Faceless. Lost in the noise of a forgotten incident.
A report flickered onto the screen.
Cave Collapse. Zone D-19C.
Routine dig. Sudden quake.
All workers accounted for—except one. Jack.
Only remains recovered? A severed leg near the corpse of an unclassified beast, charred beyond recognition, next to a volcanic chasm that went deeper than sensors could read.
The official stamp read:
"Presumed Dead."
End of record.
But Iris's eyes didn't move. She had seen something else. A secondary name.
Jasmine. Age: 17.
No blood tie. No listed relation. Yet... her name appeared beside his. In old school registries. Civil tags. Residence overlap.
Subtle, almost hidden—like the system itself was unsure whether to keep them linked... or erase the thread.
She leaned back slowly, her hand brushing her lips, her gaze distant now.
"...He was buried long before the cave ever collapsed" she whispered.
Not a tragedy.
A cover-up.
CUT TO:
A swirling, black-edged portal shimmered at the edge of the 67th floor of the cave—unstable, cold, and ancient.
Jack, face veiled beneath his hood, stepped into it without hesitation. The world behind him blinked away.
An endless city drowned in snow stretched across the horizon, its ruins glazed with spectral frost. Pale blue light bathed shattered towers.
Wind screamed through hollow streets, whispering forgotten names. Time here felt... wrong. Frozen in a breath before death.
From the mist emerged them—the Guardians.
Monstrous silhouettes lumbered forward, bone-thin yet massive, swathed in ancient hair and frostbitten flesh.
Their cyan eyes burned with a cruel awareness, not bestial—but sentient. Judging.
And then, they moved.
Snarls tore through the air. Magic erupted like sirens. Claws tore through space.
But Jack didn't flinch.
He stood motionless—no stance, no tension. Cloak fluttering in the blizzard.
Eyes hidden. Breath steady. Not even acknowledgment.
Reality answered for him.
With no gesture, no word, space bent.
A crushing, silent force warped outward from his presence.
The first beast froze in mid-air. Crack. Crack-crack—implosion.
Its body caved inward, crumbling like porcelain under cosmic weight.
The next disintegrated mid-snarl.
Then the next. One by one, they vanished—no screams, no glory. Just silence, and absolute collapse. The snow never even scattered.
He hadn't lifted a finger.
He didn't need to.
He was not casting power.
He was the power.
The snow beneath his feet didn't shift. Not a crunch, not a trace.
It was as if reality itself dared not disturb his presence.
From beneath the shadowed hood, his eyes glowed—not just red, but the kind of red that looked sealed, restrained, as if the true blaze behind them could melt the stars if unbound.
They didn't flicker.
They judged.
And the world... responded.
The frost-laced ruins, the dead wind, the howling towers—everything bent ever so slightly, subtly, toward him.
Not physically, but like animals sensing an apex predator. Even the silence felt held, like breath clenched in terror.
Jack stepped forward.
Slow.
Soundless.
Final.
The cloak danced behind him, trailing like the shadow of a reaper. No drama. No music. Just inevitability.
And then—
The realm understood.
This wasn't a warrior come to fight.
This wasn't a challenger rising through trials.
This was the end.
Jack wasn't here to survive the floor.
He was here to erase it.
Jack advanced, each step a silent declaration of death.
His boots kissed the frozen marble of the 67th floor's spectral palace without a whisper, as if even the floor dared not echo him. The last of the guardians—hulking beasts of ice-forged bone—stood paralyzed in place as he passed.
No attack. No sound.
Only eyes wide in primal terror. Their claws twitched, not with rage, but submission.
Fear was the command—and they obeyed.
The towering doors ahead groaned open on their own, not pushed nor forced, but yielding, like ancient stone bending to an inevitable truth.
Within the throne room, the air warped. A realm where cold was not a temperature but a sentence.
And on the throne of fused bone and abyssal frost sat Nakali, King of the Cold Abyss.
Massive. Crooked. Crowned in the skull of a forgotten beast.
His arms were etched with runes older than history, pulsing with cursed power. The very shadows curled around him like serpents.
He leaned forward.
His voice was a quake, slow and venomous, laced with the weight of eras.
"You walk with a terrifying presence... but you're still too small."
Jack slowly raised his chin. The shadows clinging to his hood parted just enough to reveal his lips—still, sharp, and arrogantly calm.
A quiet chuckle escaped him—low, guttural, condescending.
"I've been thirsty for a real fight."
His words slid like blades through ice.
"Humans bore me... too soft. Too fragile."
Then the smile faded.
His tone dropped into something far colder.
Emotionless. Absolute.
"And I don't think you're worth the swing."
He turned.
Slow.
Dismissive.
Like a god walking away from something already condemned.
As if the king on the throne... was nothing more than dust waiting to remember it was dead.
The throne shattered beneath Nakali's wrath, fractures webbing out like lightning as his colossal fist slammed down.
Snow erupted from the walls, thrown back by sheer force. The very palace trembled.
"INSOLENCE!"
His voice thundered with the rage of ancient titans—no longer a voice, but a storm of fury crashing through the realm.
"You DARE disgrace me in MY chamber?! I am Nakali the Great!"
Jack halted mid-step.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't turn.
Only tilted his head slightly, just enough for his face to catch the split between shadow and light.
Half-lit.
Half-lost in darkness.
His smirk curled upward—cold, poisonous, slow.
"Prove it."
His eyes ignited beneath the hood—twin infernos of red, glowing with divine malice.
The air vibrated, trembling like a string pulled too tight.
The floor cracked beneath his feet, spiderwebbing outward, unable to contain what was building within.
Magic surged around him like a chained god stirring, ancient and unwilling to sleep any longer.
Then—
Silence.
The kind that doesn't last.
The kind that precedes annihilation.
The air held its breath.
And death waited... teeth bared... just one second from release.