"I don't know why… but welcome back," I said, embracing the sword. And as if it heard my voice, it began to glow.
Not just any glow. It was deep, almost alive — pulsing, as if answering something buried inside me. Light burst from the blade like a whisper turned into a scream. A flash tore through the surrounding void, slicing the darkness with a violet blaze.
"What the…" — I raised my arm to shield my eyes, blinded for a few seconds. The darkness was gone. And something else had taken its place.
"…"
When I opened my eyes, it took me a moment to accept what I was seeing.
I was standing in the remains of a city.
Shattered homes, cracked streets, bridges broken like snapped bones. Tilted towers fallen like soldiers defeated by time. Twisted gates, facades partially devoured by something that didn't look like simple decay. There was a story here — buried beneath the rubble.
Buildings that once stood proud were now nothing but urban skeletons draped in dark vines, as though nature itself were trying to cover up the shame of what had become of them. The stone was black, the ground layered with a fine, cold dust — almost ash, almost memory.
'A city?' — I thought, slowly turning my head, taking in every detail of the wounded landscape. The streets still hinted at what they once were — a main road, broken lamp posts, the base of a fountain — but they were now overwhelmed by silence and shadow.
The sky, however, told a different story.
Above me, a sea of stars spread out like ink spilled on velvet. Deep purple, with shades of lavender and streaks of wine-red. Gentle nebulae drifted among constellations I had never seen. And high above it all, hanging like an ancient secret, was the moon — pale, almost translucent. But immense. Colossal. Watching in silence.
It was as if the sky belonged to another world. As if it refused to share the sorrow of the city below.
"What is this place…?" I murmured, not expecting an answer.
I rose slowly, using the sword for balance. My knees cracked quietly — a reminder of how long I'd been still. Looking around, I realized I was standing in what remained of a dried-up fountain. Probably once a central square.
"This must be the center…" I muttered, examining the structure. The stone of the fountain was blackened, dull, almost glass-like. I ran my fingers across its surface, expecting to feel soot or dust.
"Scorched?" I wondered, frowning. But there was no dirt, no residue. No sign of fire. "No… the stone really is this color." The texture was solid, consistent… a material I'd never touched before.
I looked up again. And that's when something unsettling dawned on me: everything in the city — absolutely everything — was black. The wood of the doors, the stones in the walls, the rooftops, the metals of railings and fences. Every single structure, even in ruin, clung to this oppressive monochrome, as if the entire city had been built under an eternal vow of mourning.
"Interesting illusion…" I muttered, mostly to myself. It reminded me of the illusion before — vivid, too real — and I sensed this one couldn't be shattered with brute force or sheer will either. I'd have to explore it. Understand it. Unravel it.
Of course, it wasn't as if I was driven by curiosity or that old, nagging hunger for knowledge and adventure that had grown inside me since my time in the dark void…
"No… this is just to find a way out," I declared firmly — to myself. And tightening my grip on the sword, I stepped out of the fountain and headed in the direction that felt most promising.
And so, I began exploring the city.
I walked for hours. Maybe days. Time here was so still it felt frozen — like it didn't even exist. The streets followed no familiar logic — narrow, winding, with no sign of carriages or wheels. The architecture was ancient. Not in Asgardia's medieval style, but older. Much older. I'd once studied ancient Earth civilizations — the Hittites, Sumerians, maybe even the Indus Valley peoples — and there was something here that echoed those ruins. An almost obsessive symmetry. Symbolism etched into every stone. A cold, imposing beauty… tinged with death.
The inscriptions on the walls were in a language I didn't recognize. But I couldn't resist. When I came across what looked like a temple or library — a semi-circular structure with black columns and a domed roof, still partially intact — I decided to step inside.
"Well… time doesn't seem to mean much here anyway."
I sat at what remained of a reading table. The black wood was cracked in several places, but still held its own weight with an ancient sort of dignity. Dozens of volumes were spread across its surface. Some were completely unreadable, their covers consumed by moisture and time. Others… surprisingly intact, as if time itself had paused just to protect the knowledge they carried.
Their pages weren't made of paper. They were thicker, coarse to the touch — like a blend of parchment and stone, far too durable to wear out naturally. Some of them glowed faintly, a soft greenish shimmer that pulsed when I touched them. Most of the texts were written in languages I'd never seen, and yet… something about them felt like it was trying to reach out to me.
The letters shifted subtly as I read, changing in ways too delicate to catch, adapting themselves to my thoughts. As if the books wanted to be understood.
"Thankfully, some of these are in Jotundrim…" I murmured, a wry note of relief escaping in my voice. "Maybe I can use them as a key to decipher the others."
And so I did.
I spent what felt like an eternity in that space. Reading. Studying. Comparing scripts, symbols, recurring words, star patterns, fragmented myths… Line after line, I pieced together names of forgotten kings, shards of eras that existed in no other record I'd ever come across, star charts depicting three moons — though one seemed conspicuously absent from many of the accounts — treatises on shadow manipulation, records of a perpetual eclipse that supposedly drowned an entire continent in darkness for seven years…
'Maybe this illusion is based on a real place,' I thought, more and more convinced. 'Maybe it's a memory. A place that once existed.'
And yet I found no one.
No living soul. Not even a corpse. It was as if the people had simply evaporated, leaving everything behind. Chairs still pulled out, books still open, a cracked stone mug abandoned on a toppled counter… The city was dead, yes — but it hadn't been burned or looted. There was no blood, no signs of battle. It had simply… ceased.
And yet, traces of life were everywhere. Stranger still: nearly everything was reduced to ruins… except the libraries. The places built for knowledge seemed to be the most intact. Or the most protected.
Homes had sunk into their own foundations, streets split by ancient roots that coiled through the ground like petrified serpents. Statues shattered, their faces worn away by time. Collapsed towers, temples open to the sky. And everywhere, the same black material — the wood, the stone, the metals. It was as if the city had been sculpted from solidified shadow.
And yet… it wasn't dark.
Not in the oppressive sense. Yes, it was empty. But I didn't feel fear. I felt reverence.
Eventually, after days (or was it weeks?) without food, without sleep — not by choice, but because my instincts didn't demand it in this place — I reached a conclusion.
"This place… is Erebus. Or at least, a memory of what it was when it fell." I murmured, standing outside the library, gazing down at the city from a higher vantage point.
Through relentless comparison and effort, I finally managed to decipher the texts in the books. The process was slow, exhausting… but it worked. What still amazed me was that I didn't find a single dictionary. No glossary, no basic manual. The books didn't want to teach directly — they wanted to be unlocked.
Maybe that was the point. That I wouldn't learn through instruction, but through persistence. Through effort.
I suspected the great cathedral — towering on the horizon, its spires and stained glass windows shattered — might hold more direct answers. But something in my gut said no. Not yet.
There was something wrong there. Reality itself seemed to ripple around the cathedral. And for the first time since I arrived in the city, I felt something close to fear. A chill down my spine. A quiet warning. And I listened.
The one thing I still couldn't understand was why only books existed here. No cutlery, no jewelry, no animals. Nothing but stone, shadow… and knowledge.
Maybe… someone — or something — wanted me to learn. Wanted me to be prepared.
"Well… not that I'm going to complain," I murmured with a faint smile. "After all, knowledge is power."
And here… it seemed to be all that remained.
I closed my eyes for a moment. The silence was almost absolute — broken only by the occasional creak of old structures adjusting, as if the city was still breathing in its endless sleep. A light breeze drifted through the ruins, carrying the scent of ancient stone — dry, with a faint metallic trace, as if time itself had a flavor.
I turned to the sky then, lying back with my hands behind my head to soften the feel of the hard ground. That absurd, splendid, alien sky was the only thing in this world — aside from the books and the brittle tapestries on the walls — that never tired me. I could watch it for hours, and it never repeated itself. The stars moved in ways too subtle to notice, and there was a silent music in the nebulas — as if some unseen entity were painting them as I watched.
"Once again, the legends were wrong..." I whispered, the sword beside me bathed in a shaft of lilac light seeping through the cracks in a shattered dome.
My eyes drifted, almost by instinct, to where the palace of Erebus should have stood. I had read about it. The maps depicted its grandeur, its black obsidian walls, the spiraling tower that pierced the sky. But there… there was only emptiness. A rupture in the fabric of reality itself. A gap. A deafening absence.
"As if it never existed…" I thought, a chill crawling down my spine. "In truth..." I murmured, "Azrael chose to fall… along with his kingdom."
And then it all made sense.
"The Kingdom of Eternal Darkness… and Azrael, the Demon King of Endless Night…"
I couldn't help but let out a laugh — short, muffled, caught somewhere between disbelief and admiration.
"Azrael was a genius."
He knew. He had always known that Erebus would fall, one way or another. Even as the sharpest of all the sovereigns from the previous cycle. Even with his unmatched magic, even with his pacts with the entities of the Void.
The legends claimed Erebus had been destroyed by an alliance — my ancestors, the elves, ancient beasts, Giants, even some of the mightiest Dragons… all banding together to siege Erebus. But now, with every fragment I uncovered, I saw the truth: that version was just a child's tale. A simplified fable.
The truth was far more intricate.
"He divided his kingdom..." I murmured, fingers brushing my lips, as if the touch could help me think. "And his soul as well..."
Azrael had torn himself apart. One piece — the one everyone knew, the one the tales speak of with both horror and reverence — truly perished with Erebus, in the great collapse. But another piece… was sent elsewhere. To another plane, sealed beyond the reach of gods or kings.
And there, somewhere in the world — or perhaps in another dimension — Erebus still lived. Whole. Awake. With forty percent of Azrael's soul still pulsing within its foundations.
"But why?" The question echoed, caught between cracked columns and walls dusted with crystal fungi.
""I understand the first division, but…" I continued to wander, trying to understand Azrael's thinking, "Why divide a second time and leave another thirty percent behind? He could've left far less and still achieved the same effect." The more I thought, the more confused I became. "Why allow records like these to even exist? Above all… why write them?"
My voice faded into silence.
"Who was he hoping would find them?"
Something stirred within me. Not physically — more like a concept, a presence. A restlessness, maybe. As if the words I spoke had awakened an invisible gaze. Something that had been sleeping… and was now watching.
"He wasn't hunted for his strength alone…" I said softly, as if confessing a secret to myself. "But for what he knew. For what he was capable of preserving…"
I closed the book slowly, almost reluctantly. My fingers were still gripping its edges like claws, like my body refused to let go. Its black leather cover was thick with ancient dust, and yet the embossed symbols still shimmered faintly — pulsing like restrained breath.
Inscribed across the front, in graceful, curved script, it read:
— Erebus: Chronicles of the Endless Night – Dawn
"Dawn…" I echoed in thought, feeling the weight of irony in the title. "The kingdom of endless night, speaking of a dawn…"
There was something deeply poetic in that. Tragic. Almost… hopeful. As if, in his fall, Azrael had caught a glimmer — the faintest thread of light woven into the dark.
I rose slowly, and for a brief second I wished the sound of my movement would break the silence.
It didn't.
The air inside was heavy, dense like ancient mist. Toppled shelves littered the floor like skeletons of forgotten thought. Tapestries still clung to the walls, their crests blurred by time — crossed swords, twin moons, eyes weeping blood — and broken stained glass cast fractured hues of lilac, amber, and dark wine across cracked marble.
The library beneath my feet felt like a temple. A mausoleum of memories. And outside, the world remained still.
No animals. No wind. Not even the whisper of time. Just the dead city, frozen like a painting at the end of all things.
"This isn't just an illusion," I whispered. "It's a sign, a message. An invitation." I turned my gaze, slowly, toward the cathedral across the city.
There it was. Even from this distance, the building seemed to stare back. Towering over the ruins, untouched. Intact. A living wound on the ruined horizon.
My instincts had screamed against it. Since I first arrived, something deep in me had said: Don't go.
But now… now it was different.
"More than anything, for whom..." I murmured, still clutching the book to my chest.
More than anything… who was this message meant for?