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Chapter 175: Chapter 175: The Shackled Calamity

While the celestial realms trembled and the elemental planes fell silent, the shockwave of Sol’s ascension did not only touch the high and mighty. It burrowed deep into the cracks of the world, into places forgotten by light and reason.

Somewhere not near, yet not entirely far… hidden within the jagged scar of a canyon… a place where the sun was choked by perpetual grey clouds… lay the Grotto of Lament.

It was a literal cathedral of death, a hollowed-out mountain belly that eternally smelled of copper, stale air, and millennia’s of rot. The floor was not made of stone. It was a macabre mosaic, meticulously paved with the yellowed remains of humanity. There were the broad, cracked skulls of warriors, the fragile, paper-thin skulls of the elderly, and most chilling of all, the tiny, fist-sized skulls of infants, piled in pyramidal mounds that reached toward the dripping ceiling.

In the center of this ossuary, atop a dais constructed from the ribcages of behemoths, sat a throne. And on that throne sat a statue of darkness.

He was a humanoid figure of towering stature, his skin the color of bruised obsidian, covered in ancient, jagged scars that pulsed with a faint, necrotic green light.

For hundreds of years, he had not moved. Not a twitch of a finger. Not a breath. He was the Sleeping Calamity, a legend whispered to frighten children, a myth that neighboring tribes had long dismissed as the ravings of savages.

But then, the Pressure arrived.

It bypassed the rock, the bone, and the air. It struck his dormant consciousness like a thunderbolt.

The figure’s eyes snapped open.

There were no whites, no pupils. Only swirling pools of crimson, absolute malice, burning with an intense, agonizing desperation.

“GAAAH!”

A sound tore from his throat… a sound like grinding tectonic plates, dry and unused for centuries. Dust fell from his shoulders. The pile of infant skulls near his feet vibrated and shattered into powder.

He felt it. He sensed a threat to his existence, or perhaps, the key to his revival.

“The… pressure…” his voice rasped, sounding like wind howling through a crypt.

Desperation, thick and oily, flooded his veins. He wasn’t just evil; he was starving. He was a being who had been trapped for an eternity, and didn’t had any hope for revival and suddenly, he smelled the scent of the key to his freedom. He didn’t know who had caused this pressure, but he knew that the rigid laws of the world were fluctuating.

With a roar of pure, frantic need, he tried to stand, his claws digging into the bone armrests of his throne. He had to find the source. He had to consume it. He had to—

CLANG!

The moment he moved, the darkness of the cave was blinded by searing white brilliance.

Thousands of runic chains, previously invisible, materialized from the void. They were thick, forged of solid white light, etched with unknown language. They lashed around his neck, his wrists, his ankles, and pierced through the membrane of his skin.

“NO! NO! NO!”

He roared, thrashing against the bindings. The light sizzled against his dark skin, burning his flesh, sending plumes of black smoke rising into the stalactites. The pain was so intense, and so terrifying that it would have dissolved anyone else, but he fought it. He pulled until his muscles tore, until his black blood splattered onto the white bones below.

The desperation in his eyes was terrifying. It was the cornered madness of a starving beast seeing a piece of meat just out of reach.

“BREAK! BREAK, DAMN YOU!”

“GRAAAAAH!”

He roared, thrashing against the bindings. The cave shook. The desperation in his eyes turned into manic fury. He needed to get out. He needed to find the source. But the chains held, pulling him back onto the throne of bone, forcing him back as smoke rose from his scorched flesh.

…

Outside the grotto, a figure lay prostrate, his forehead pressed so hard against the sharp floor that blood trickled down his nose.

He was a withered, twisted creature, his skin painted with ash and dried gore, wearing a necklace of severed fingers. He was old… impossibly old for a human. For eighty years, he had knelt here every single day. Before him, his father had knelt. And his father’s father and so on.

For centuries, their Tribe had guarded this Grotto. They had been hunted by the other tribes. Their once flourishing massive tribe, was repeatedly attacked by joint forces of countless other tribes, until they had been driven into the wasteland.

They were called madmen, lunatics who worshipped a corpse. They had suffered disease, starvation, and war, yet they kept their faith. They raided caravans, slaughtered countless tribes, and sacrificed countless….men, women, children…. pouring rivers of blood into the bone drains, hoping to wake their God.

And for centuries… nothing. Not a whisper.

Vorak had begun to doubt. In the silence of the night, he had wondered if they were truly just crazy. If the “God” was just a dead stone.

But today… He moved.

Shaman slowly lifted his head. His cloudy, cataract-filled eyes widened until the skin at the corners tore. He hurried in and saw the smoke rising from the deity’s shoulders. He smelled the burning flesh. He heard the echoes of that divine roar ringing in his ears.

It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t a myth.

“He… He is awake…”

He whispered, his voice trembling. A bubble of bloody spit flew from his lips. His body began to shake, not with fear, but with an overwhelming, orgasmic ecstasy.

“HE IS AWAKE!”

The scream tore from his throat, shattering the silence, and began dancing a jig of absolute lunacy. He threw his arms up, tears of blood streaming down his painted face.

“THE PROPHETS WERE RIGHT! WE WERE RIGHT!”

He looked at the smoking, heaving figure on the throne with pure religious adoration. The movement, To him, it was a command.

“Hunger… He hungers! The chains weakened! He needs strength to break them! BLOOD! HE NEEDS MORE BLOOD!”

Laughing maniacally, a high-pitched cackle that sounded like a hyena choking on glass, he sprinted out of the Grotto.

He burst into the twilight of the canyon, where the massive encampment of their Tribe lay. Thousands of savage busy with their ’normal’ lives, and mostly clad in bone armor and ragged furs, looked up.

Shaman stood on the high ledge overlooking the camp and screamed.

“THE GOD HAS SPOKEN! THE SILENCE IS BROKEN! PREPARE THE ALTARS!”

A hush fell over the tribe. Then, a roar erupted. It was a sound of primal, savage vindication. They weren’t crazy. Their suffering had meaning.

“SACRIFICE THE NEXT MONTHS’S BATCHES TOO!” Shaman commanded, pointing a crooked finger toward the massive wooden holding pens carved into the cliffside. “NOT ONE LEFT ALIVE! FEED HIM! FEED THE CALAMITY!”

Immediately chaos erupted.

The warriors, eyes glazed with fanaticism, charged the pens. It was a massacre in motion. They began to herd the “cattle.” They dragged the prisoners out… hundreds of them. These were people captured from massacring other tribes, result of their countless expeditions, the ones that made them enemy and feared by tribes far an d near.

It was a stampede of despair.

“Please! No!”

“My baby! Don’t take him!”

The canyon echoed with wailing. Women clutching infants were whipped forward; old men were dragged by their hair across the sharp rocks; children stumbled, crying for mothers who had already been speared. The tribe showed no mercy, their eyes glazed with religious fervor as they pushed the mass of humanity into the dark to be slaughtered.

The smell of fear was pungent enough to taste. The prisoners knew where they were going. They had seen the fate of their predecessors. They could feel the malevolence radiating from the cave.

But strangely, in the far corner of this screaming, chaotic mass, was one figure who did not scream.

She was a young girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, it was difficult to ascertain, as she was a literal bag of bones.

Her appearance was wretched. Her clothes were shredded rags, barely clinging to her frame, revealing skin that was mapped with bruises, grime, and old scars from the whip. Her feet were bare and bleeding. Her hair was a matted mess of mud and dried blood.

By all rights, she should have been broken. She should have been wailing like the others, begging for a quick death.

But she was silent.

As the crowd surged toward the darkness of the cave, she didn’t look at the ground. She didn’t look at the warriors. She looked up at the ledge, where Shaman was dancing and laughing.

The “camera” of fate seemed to slow down as it focused on her.

Underneath the layers of filth, her face possessed a haunting, cold beauty… sharp features that didn’t belong in a savage wasteland. But it was her eyes that held the true power.

They were a striking, unnatural shade of icy red.

There was no fear in them, or hint of any despair. There was only a hatred so intense, so concentrated, that it felt like it could manifest into reality. It was the eyes of someone who had watched her world burn, who had lost everything, and had decided that if she was going to die, she would become a ghost that would haunt these savages until the end of time.

She gripped a small white bone in her hand…something she had been gripping for years. She wasn’t planning to escape, there’s no way she would escape. She will wait, wait for her chance, a chance to take her revenge.

The hatred in her eyes deepened, spiraling into a vortex of cold fury.

The view zoomed in.

Past the dirt on her cheeks. Past the tangled hair. Into her left eye.

Closer.

Closer.

Until the crimson iris filled the entire world. The intricate patterns of her iris swirled like a burning red storm.

…

The burning crimson dissolved, morphing seamlessly, blending color and texture until it became a brilliant, molten gold.

The pupil constricted.

The “camera” zoomed out rapidly.

It was no longer the girl’s eye. It was the eye of a Primordial.

We were back in the Void Temple.

Isylia stood frozen, her hands covering her mouth, her golden eyes wide with a mixture of terror and absolute awe.

She had witnessed the birth of stars. She had seen mountains collide. But she had never seen this.