The black obelisk pulsed—slow, rhythmic, like a monstrous heartbeat beneath the world.
Darius stood before it, the Void-Code on his skin crawling, writhing like a living parasite sensing its ancient enemy.
Kaela and Nyx flanked him, weapons drawn but useless against what they didn't yet understand.
Celestia remained behind them, fragile, hollow-eyed, her hands wrapped in the remnants of forgotten prayers. She could feel it too—the breath of something vast leaking from the fractures in reality.
It was older than gods. Older than faith. Older even than the First Codes of Origin.
And it was waking.
Hours earlier, when the black obelisk first erupted, Darius had sent riders and warpriests across the broken dominion to reinforce temples and prepare for what he called "The Silent Siege."
It wasn't rebellion he feared.
It was infection.
The anti-code that clung to the Revenant King was not mere corruption—it was a sentience of its own, whispering across the ley-lines of reality.
