The word did not echo. It didn't need to.
It commanded. It unlocked.
And the first level answered.
The three undead beast generals convulsed violently as their souls began to fall.
Dragged downward by invisible chains through the first gate of the Ninefold Abyss.
Black light exploded from their chests, spiraling upward in jagged pillars of flame-wreathed shadow.
Waves of death energy rolled out in pulses, devouring both the dead and undead nearby.
It was a violent manifestation of the first circle of hell where beasts turned into demons and horrors of unimaginable power.
The first circle of hell, Vel'khara.
The Realm of Remnants.
A wasteland carved from silence and ash, where the souls of forgotten beasts roam the ruins of their extinction. The sky is always dark there, not black but hollow, and the wind carries only the sound of names long erased. Time crawls sideways. Bones bloom from the ground like flowers. Rivers run with liquefied memory.
