The corridors felt alive.
Kael led the trio through the broken artery of the ancient ruin, boots crunching over fragments of stone and brittle insect shells. The stale air pulsed with the restless skittering of unseen limbs. Every few steps, a worker-ant creature crawled out from a crack, mandibles clicking—but Kael's blade ended them in a single smooth motion. Norphis gagged each time, and Clauiy flinched, clutching her spear tighter.
The deeper they walked, the darker the ruin became. The light crystals embedded in the walls flickered like dying stars.
Ahead loomed the long corridor that led to the Queen's Chamber.
Clauiy's voice broke the silence. "Um… Kael? Something's been bothering me."She sounded hesitant—yet curious, almost childlike. "If this ruin is a temple… why is it broken? Why is it even inside the Colossal Realm? And if it is a temple, why doesn't anyone come here to worship? What god did it belong to?"
Kael didn't stop walking, but one corner of his mouth twitched. "So many questions," he sighed. "Ask them one at a time." "No, I want them all answered," Clauiy insisted. "This place feels… wrong." Kael exhaled slowly, as if this conversation had been waiting for years. "Before the Third Aroth," he began, "there lived a vigilante. Some called him a monster. Others, a nightmare. But a few… a very few… knew the truth."
Clauiy blinked. "Who?" Kael finally looked at her. "The Revenant Conqueror." The air shifted. Even Norphis stopped fidgeting. Kael continued walking as he spoke—slow, steady, voice steady as a blade being drawn. "He was a perfect killer. A shadow-wraith who stalked the voidborn abominations, corrupted humans, divine zealots—anything tainted by false light or by Oblivion. A man who walked the night not as a servant, but as its master."
His tone deepened. "He didn't just fight monsters. He was the monster they feared." The images his words created felt almost alive—an assassin wrapped in moonlit armor, moving without sound, a presence colder than death itself. Batman's cold precision. Moonknight's terrifying inevitability. A myth you didn't summon—you survived. Clauiy's eyes widened. "And he was real?""Oh, very real," Kael murmured. "And he was the Avatar of a god." Norphis nearly tripped. "Avatar? Of which god? Those exist only in bedtime stories!" Kael's gaze sharpened. "Not stories. Records." They reached a cracked mural on the wall—dark stone etched with a fading sigil of a crescent devouring a sun.
Kael touched it, almost reverently. "Scolrious. The forgotten unholy god. The god from whom even light hides. Banished from the Pantheon. Erased from every divine scripture. Remembered only by one bloodline: the Scolenharts." Clauiy whispered the name, as if tasting the weight of it. "Scolrious… The God of Darkness and Night." Kael nodded. "He chose avatars to fight corruption, to restrain Oblivion, to eliminate divine hypocrisy. But he didn't respect divine law. He killed sinners even if they were gods' chosen. He made his own rules." Kael's tone shifted—lower, colder.
"Soon, the gods saw him as a threat. So they sealed Scolrious and his last avatar inside this very temple. The Temple of the Revenant." Clauiy swallowed. "Then… are they still sealed here?" Before Kael answered, Norphis burst out laughing. "You both actually believe this? What unholy divine—what revenant—pfft! These are good jokes, sir. Very good." Kael stopped walking. The temperature dropped.
He turned his head toward Norphis with the slow precision of a predator choosing whether to bite. His voice came out soft—too soft. "Mock the sun, Norphis. Mock the kings. Mock me, if you're suicidal." He stepped closer, eyes dark. "But do not mock the night. The night has teeth." Norphis froze, breath hitching. Kael leaned in slightly, voice a cold whisper: "The gods you worship with your jokes? They bleed. The forgotten one… he feeds on that blood." Clauiy shivered. Something ancient lingered in those words—resentment, awe, maybe fear. Before Norphis could stammer a reply—
Darkness breathed.
Kresor stood—no, floated—inside the void of his dream. The same throne room, the same dead stillness. His real body was unconscious in the Queen's lair, but here… here something else stirred. On the throne where he had lain earlier… sat a figure. Shadow wrapped around him like a living cloak. The throne behind him groaned, as if struggling to hold the weight of something divine. Kresor swallowed, his voice shaky. "Who… who are you? Am I in hell? Are you a god?" The figure didn't answer. Not with words. He simply lifted a hand—pale, carved from darkness and starlight—and extended it toward Kresor. Then his voice hit. Deep. Ancient. As if spoken through every shadow in existence.
"Kresor Scolenhart. The new Revenant Conqueror. Heir of my bloodline. I—Scolrious, God of Darkness and Night—grant your wish. And shape you as my Avatar."
Kresor blinked. "Sorry—sir—you've got the wrong person. I'm Kresor, not Kresor Scolenhart. I've never even heard of a god named Scolrious—Darkness—whatever you said—" Scolrious tilted his head. "You are just like your elder brother." Kresor froze. "…my what? I have an elder brother? I barely remember my mother. All I know is she handed me to that damned carpenter and vanished—" "And I will tell you why." Scolrious took a step closer. "And why she ran. Why she hid you. Why your bloodline was hunted." Kresor felt the dream shake. "Wait—wait, hold on—why would I trust anything? You're inside my dream. This is madness—" Scolrious' voice suddenly echoed like a collapsing world.
"Kresor. Look at me." Kresor fell silent immediately—some instinct rooting him in place. Scolrious spoke again, now calm, controlled. "I do not have time. Your body is dying. The queen approaches. You cannot fight her alone." His eyes—two pale twin voids—bored into Kresor's. "Let me save you. Become my Avatar. And I will reveal every truth buried inside your blood." Kresor hesitated. His mind raced. If I refuse… I die here. Kael and Clauiy die too. And I never find out who I am. I never know what happened to her… He swallowed, breath trembling.
"…Fine." His voice was barely a whisper. "What do I have to do?" Scolrious extended his hand fully. "Nothing. Only hold my hand." Kresor reached out… and touched it. Reality shattered. Infinite shadows swallowed him whole. Galaxies split open. Millions of dead nights howled. He saw stars collapsing, universes birthing, timelines breaking, every death, every forgotten darkness— It was too much. And then— Kresor gasped awake.
His eyes snapped open in the real world—just as the Queen's massive form towered over him, claws raised to strike. His heartbeat hammered. His mind screamed. Scolrious… what now?! The god's voice whispered inside him: "Say it. Amphosis."
Kresor inhaled sharply. And he yelled— "AMPHOSIS!!!"
The world snapped. Kresor's scream of "AMPHOSIS!" detonated through the chamber like a war drum from another universe. The Queen's mandibles jerked back in instinctive fear—a primal recognition that something older, something higher, now stood before her. Black light burst out of Kresor's skin. Not shadows. Not darkness. The absence of existence itself. The cavern trembled. Dust rained from the ceiling. The glowing sacs lining the walls exploded one by one, plunging the nest into a suffocating half-night. Kresor staggered to his feet, choking on the surge racing through his veins. What… what is this power—
Scolrious' voice resonated inside him like a steady heartbeat. "Do not fight it. Let the night settle." Kresor exhaled. And the world bent. His body elongated, bones cracking and rearranging—not painfully, but like a lock clicking into its rightful shape. Darkness wrapped around him, layering itself into form, into armor, into meaning.
A black suit wove itself over his skin—liquid shadow hardening into sleek plates, seamless and cold. It clung like a second body, built for stealth, impact, and death. A hood formed, cascading like midnight smoke. Then the mask materialized. A jawless, crescent-shaped visage—smooth, featureless, terrifyingly calm. Engraved lines glowed faint silver across its surface, shifting like moonlit veins. It was not a mask meant to hide a face. It was a mask meant to erase it. The mask of a Revenant. The mask of a Conqueror.
Kresor sucked in a breath. The air tasted… different. Sharper. Older. The Queen screeched, stumbling back as if her instincts screamed: predator.
Black tendrils spiraled down Kresor's right arm, coiling like serpents. They condensed in his hand, forming a hilt—simple, unadorned, cold as winter steel. Then the blade burst forth. A katana forged from starless night. Its edge shimmered with faint silver runes that shifted like a whisper. The air around it dipped several degrees. "Umbra Karas," Scolrious whispered. "The blade that severs both flesh and faith." Kresor held it with a familiarity he shouldn't have yet felt completely natural. The Queen lunged.
Kresor didn't move. Not until the last heartbeat. Then— step. Time crawled. His suit pulsed once—silent, precise. Kresor vanished. A streak of black light slipped past the Queen, too fast for her to react. She twisted, her abdomen tearing open in a line of shimmering silver. Kresor appeared behind her, blade lowered, breath steady. "Purity Conjugate — Night Howl Drift." The name left his lips like a quiet admission, not a threat.
The Queen shrieked in agony. But she did not fall. Not yet. her true form Her carapace split open. A torrent of acidic steam burst out, melting stone. Her body expanded—legs thickening, mandibles elongating, wings tearing out from her back like cracked obsidian. Pulsing red veins crawled across her flesh. She became a nightmare. Twice her original size. Faster. Frenzied. A corrupted pseudo-ascendant beast. She slammed toward Kresor.
The Queen lunged, a hurricane of limbs and chittering fury. Her screech rattled the chamber, shaking dust from the cracked stone ceiling. She was an abomination of swollen flesh and jagged chitin, a nightmare birthed to consume anything foolish enough to enter her brood nest.
Kresor did not flinch.
"Disgusting," he murmured behind the mask, his voice flat, almost bored. "How desperate."
The Queen convulsed in rage. Her limbs slammed into the walls like living siege hammers, shattering pillars into clouds of bone-white debris. Eggs ruptured beneath her mass, releasing a stench that curled like poison through the air.
Kresor moved.
Not with panic. Not with urgency.
His body flowed like a shadow slipping through cracks. He slid under her wild swing, feet barely brushing the ground, movements sharp and minimal — each step precise enough to seem rehearsed. He wasn't dodging her.He was letting her fail. The Second Strike — Void Mandate: Crescent Rupture
He raised his blade. Darkness coiled up the steel like a living serpent, hissing softly as it tightened around the edge. The aura pulsed, hungry, eager. Kresor's whisper slithered through the chamber. "Kneel." He moved. One clean arc. Silent. Perfect. "Void Mandate — Crescent Rupture."
A crescent of pure void ripped forward, carving reality itself like wet parchment. The chamber cracked open from floor to ceiling. Eggs split. Pillars disintegrated. And the Queen's thorax tore wide, a jagged canyon splitting her monstrous body in half. A geyser of dark fluid erupted, raining across stone like tar. The Queen screamed — a violent, distorted howl that quaked the ground beneath them. She thrashed, limbs gouging trenches into the floor.
Still alive. Still enraged. Still doomed. Dominance She lunged, mandibles spreading wide, large enough to cleave him into pieces. Kresor didn't step back. Didn't raise his weapon. He caught the mandibles. With one hand. The Queen froze. Her entire massive body locked in place, trembling — not from pain, but from disbelief. She strained, muscles tearing, but his grip tightened like a vice forged from pure void.
Kresor leaned in slightly, voice dropping into a whisper colder than the abyss itself. "You had your chance." He twisted. A sickening CRRRK— chitin fractured. Bone snapped. The Queen's shriek warped into a wet, choking gurgle. Her limbs convulsed, flailing in panic. Kresor drew his blade slowly along her neck. Not out of sadism. But out of finality. Precision. A verdict carried out without emotion.
"Die quietly," he said. "You're irritating." Then—
SHNK—
One decisive strike. Her head separated cleanly from the body, rolling across the stone floor before settling against a shattered pillar. The monstrous corpse collapsed, shaking the entire chamber with its final death-spasm.
Then silence.
A heavy, reverent silence — the kind that settles after something ancient has died. Kresor stood amidst the ruin, surrounded by shattered eggs, steaming ichor, and the corpse of a queen who had ruled this darkness for decades. His blade dripped voidlight — a black radiance that pulsed like a heartbeat. He felt nothing. No relief. No triumph. No fear. Only purpose. Only inevitability.
The air shivered, and a voice — colder than the void, older than the realm itself — whispered from the shadows inside him. "Well done… my Avatar." Scolrious. The entity bound to his soul… watching… approving. Kresor's gaze dropped to the Queen's corpse. His voice came out low, steady, unshaken — a sentence delivered to the world itself:
"This realm will remember the night it learned to fear me."