Ater's eyes snapped open—yet there was no light.
No sky. No floor.
Just black.
An endless void stretched in every direction, thick and absolute. There was no wind, no sound—only the dull throb of his heartbeat, and even that felt muffled, as if the darkness itself were pressing against his ears.
He stood, though he couldn't tell how. There was no ground beneath him, yet his feet didn't fall. No gravity. No weight. Just… stillness.
Then, instinctively, he starts walking.
Each step echoed faintly—impossible, yet clear—rippling through the void like a drop of water disturbing still glass. His breath, if it still counted as breathing, steamed faintly in the air, though no cold touched his skin.
Ahead, something emerged from the dark: jagged silhouettes, faint and shifting, forming slowly like ghosts from memory.
Stormhold.
What remained of it?
The mighty castle—his home, his burden—was now just a carcass of stone. Its proud towers had collapsed in on themselves. Cracks fractured the walls, and something shattered the foundations. The once gleaming banners hung in torn shreds, barely clinging to scorched battlements. Flames trapped in time slowly licked along the broken roofs.
Ash rained upward.
Ater's footsteps slowed.
This was not just a dream.
This was a memory rotting.
And something inside it still lived.
Ater stepped through the broken gates of Stormhold, the ruined archway groaning as if protesting his presence. The once-familiar streets were now a graveyard—stone, ash, and silence.
And then… he saw them.
Faces.
Dozens of them.
Maybe more.
People he remembered—citizens, soldiers… perhaps even family—stood frozen in place. But something was wrong. Their eyes were hollow, dark pits staring straight through him. Silent, their mouths gaped open as if frozen mid-scream. Their skin was dull, drained of color, flickering like old film.
The deeper he walked, the more the silence cracked.
Statues lined the pathway—stone tributes to the fallen—but each was shattered, chipped, or crumbling. Someone had scraped the names off their bases. Arms lay in the dust, heads cracked open like hollow eggs. Recognition sparked. He knew these faces. He had walked beside them. Fought beside them.
And then came the whispers.
At first, just one. A whisper sliding across his ear like a breeze.
"You let us die."
Another. A distinct voice. Louder.
"Where were you?"
And then more. Dozens. Hundreds. All around him. Layered and distorted, rising like a chorus of blame.
> "You should have done more."
> "You were there."
> "You did nothing."
> "It's your fault."
The whispers twisted into static—not just sound, but a pressure, like claws scraping against his skull. Ater dropped to his knees, hands clamping over his ears.
It didn't help.
The voices grew sharper, more jagged, tearing through the darkness like knives. Every word hit like a stone to the chest, cracking through his thoughts, his defenses.
> "You failed us."
> "You failed her."
Ater shut his eyes, trying to will it all away—but the weight of the dead was already upon him.
Ater's heart races as he stares at the fractured statue of Alvi, her once beautiful features now marred by jagged cracks and missing pieces. The sight fills him with a profound sense of loss and despair, a mirror to the shattered remnants of his own soul.
As he turns to flee, his eyes fall upon a blurred version of himself, standing above Alvi's broken form with a hammer and chisel in hand. The figure is dripping with the same black sludge that Ater used to fuel his powers, but its face remains obscured, a twisted reflection of his own.
With a surge of fury, Ater rushes forward, swinging his weapon at the clone. But as the hammer connects, it melts away mid-strike, along with his own arm—first flesh, then bone dissolving into black ooze. The horror of it freezes him in place.
The clone turns slowly, its posture eerily calm and familiar yet twisted beyond recognition. When it smiles, it's a cartoonishly wide grin, inhuman and unnatural. Its eyes are exaggerated and glowing like those of a predator from a corrupted animation.
Branches clawed at Ater's clothes as he sprinted through the warped forest, breath ragged, vision swimming. The twisted trees bent in unnatural ways, groaning with every step he took. Behind him, the monstrous Malgarath pursued—massive, lumbering, yet somehow faster than it should be.
Black **tendrils burst** from the shadows, snapping toward him like whips. Some slammed into trees. Others scraped against his back, searing through fabric. But Ater kept moving, ducking low, weaving between the trunks until—by some miracle—he found cover.
He stumbled into a clearing.
At its center stood a cabin.
Small. Rotting. Forgotten by time.
The wooden walls warped, half the roof caved in, but the door stood slightly ajar, as if inviting him in.
Ater didn't hesitate.
He pushed the door open and entered. The air inside was thick with the scent of dust, ink, and something rotten beneath the floorboards.
Paper smothered the walls.
Hundreds—maybe thousands—of drawings, notes, and symbols scrawled in frantic, chaotic patterns. Figures with twisted limbs. Unreadable words scratched into spirals. Pages torn, burned, or bleeding ink. Some images moved when he wasn't looking. Others seemed to breathe.
The roomhummed with whispers—faint, overlapping, endless.
Some pages screamed when he got too close.
Others simply wept.
His vision blurred. The words twisted before his eyes—**too cursed to comprehend. His mind recoiled at their meaning. Yet somehow… they felt familiar.
As he turned to leave—
The door exploded open
Malgarath stood there—his form towering, monstrous, leaking shadow and malice. His hand shot forward and seized Ater by the throat, lifting him off the ground with ease.
Ater struggled, kicking, gasping—but it was like fighting gravity.
Malgarath leaned in close. Its voice slithered into his ear—a broken cadence, ancient yet intimate.
> "You are the root… and the rot."
> "When the creator forgets… the creation remembers."
> "Wake up… if you can."
Ater barely had time to register the words before there was a sickening crack.
His neck snapped.
Darkness swallowed everything.
No sound.
No pain.
Just void.
And though it was only a nightmare—
Something in the words stayed with him.**
Back to reality
The hum of medical equipment echoed softly through the sterile chamber of the MWMB infirmary. Screens pulsed faintly, casting pale blue light over Ater's unconscious form.
He lay still on the reinforced medical bed, hooked up to half a dozen monitors and stabilization rigs. His skin was pale. His breathing shallow. Beneath the thin sheet, his body, bruised, scorched, and bent in ways that defied survival.
Inter stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, eyes flicking between Ater and the display readouts.
Elm stood beside him, reviewing the biometric data with narrowed eyes.
"Twenty bones broken," Elm muttered. "Some shattered entirely. Nervous system—fried. Completely. Synaptic links aren't just damaged. They were erased."
Inter raised an eyebrow. "So… he's dead, but breathing?"
Elm didn't answer at first. He tapped the edge of the tablet again, watching the graph shift. Then he looked closer—eyes widening, just a little.
"…No," he drawled. "He's not just healing."
On the screen, nerve pathways flickered like rewiring circuits.
New tissue bloomed beneath the damage, consuming and replacing the old.
"He's… destroying the damaged nerves. Then rebuilding them. From scratch." Elm's voice was quiet, analytical—but laced with something else now: unease.
Inter blinked. "That's not regeneration. That's adaptation."
Elm nodded. "It's faster than anything we've recorded. He's not just recovering. He's correcting."
The air felt heavier around them.
And then—
Ater's fingers twitched.
Moment LATER
A sudden gasp tore through the silence.
Ater's body jolted upright, eyes wide, hand flying instinctively to his neck. He clutched it as if expecting to find it broken, the memory of pain still burning behind his eyes.
**Cold sweat dripped** down his face, soaking the sheets beneath him. His chest rose and fell in ragged breaths, every inhale sharp and desperate. For a long moment, he said nothing—just stared at the ceiling, haunted.
Across the room, Elm froze mid-step.
He'd seen Ater survive what should've been lethal. He'd seen him silent, stoic, cold.
But never like this.
For the first time… **Ater looked afraid**.
Elm stepped closer, exchanging a glance with Inter, who looked just as surprised.
"I wasn't expecting you to wake up this soon," Elm said quietly. "Not after what we saw."
Ater didn't respond. His eyes were still unfocused, heart still racing.
After a pause, Elm sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.
"…I owe you both an apology," he muttered. "That trial was harsher than I intended. I didn't think it would get that deep. Whatever you saw… wasn't supposed to happen."
He turned, retrieving a case from the wall. With a soft hiss, it opened—revealing a pair of white, gauntlet-like gloves, traced with subtle black streaks along the fingers and forearms. They shimmered faintly under the room's lights, forged from something far more advanced than standard material.
"These are modified Darvik gloves," Elm said, holding them out to Ater. "Tuned to your bio-signature. Should help channel that void-sludge of yours without melting your arms off."
Ater took them slowly, still catching his breath.
Elm smirked just slightly, then tossed over a folded dark tactical suit**, the fabric sleek, reinforced, and clearly made for fieldwork.
"You passed," Elm said simply. "From here on out…"
"You work under me now."