Daylight offered no comfort in New Hope Village.

  Sunlight bled through the rusted iron and cracked concrete, painting the settlement in dull, sickly yellows. Survivors moved like ghosts, heads down, carrying out their chores in heavy silence.

  To the naked eye, it was peaceful.

  But beneath Zyra's clothes, the Universe Stone was burning.

  A dull, persistent heat pressed against her chest. A silent alarm. Something was wrong.

  In the darkest corner of the local tavern, Karv sat motionless.

  The air around him smelled of stale tobacco and cheap alcohol. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. In his hands, a battered leather diary. His pen scratched frantically across the yellowed pages.

  His eyes, sharp and predatory, never left the two girls across the room.

  "Is it her?" Karv muttered, the sound swallowed by the tavern's low hum. "Is she the 'Glitch'... or just another corpse waiting to happen?"

  Zyra and Zafira sat at a scarred wooden table.

  Rayn's old map lay flat between them. Zyra's finger was pressed hard against the Northern territory.

  The tavern was crowded, but the air felt impossibly heavy. Suffocating.

  A shadow fell over the map.

  Zyra didn't look up. Her hand instinctively ghosted toward the hilt of her katana.

  "That paper is a lie," a voice rasped.

  Karv pulled out the empty chair opposite them. The wood groaned under his weight. He didn't look at the map. His piercing gaze was drilled entirely into Zyra's eyes.

  "The North doesn't look like that anymore," Karv said softly. "The earth shifted. The rot spread."

  Zafira leaned forward, her jaw tight. "Who are you? We didn't invite you."

  Karv didn't even blink at Zafira. His focus remained locked on Zyra.

  "Survivors don't sit like you," Karv said, gesturing lazily with his glass. "You aren't prey. You're a hunter. But there's more." He leaned in closer. "There is something inside you. Something that doesn't belong in this dead world."

  Zyra's eyes turned to glacial ice.

  "Walk away," Zyra whispered. The temperature at the table seemed to drop. "We aren't here to make friends."

  Karv smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.

  "Neither am I. The name is Karv. I don't kill the monsters. I dissect them. I study their DNA. Their origins." His voice dropped to a razor-thin whisper. "And that toxic, purple energy that strings them along like puppets."

  Zafira stiffened.

  Purple energy. The Master.

  "I've tracked their frequency for years," Karv continued, his eyes darkening. "But the second you walked through those gates, my meters spiked. You carry an ancient signal. A frequency that tears right through their dark energy. You are a 'Glitch'. An anomaly in their perfect nightmare."

  Zyra's knuckles turned white. Beneath her shirt, the Stone grew painfully hot.

  "What do you know?" she demanded.

  "I know that the Leader sitting on the throne up North isn't just an animal," Karv said, his voice grim. "The moment you crossed into this village, your scent hit the wind. He knows what you carry. He knows you're coming."

  Zafira's face drained of color. "He... he knows?"

  Karv set his glass down. Clack. "Walking North right now isn't a journey. It's suici—"

  The mechanical shriek of the emergency siren shattered the sentence.

  WEEEE-OOOO-WEEEE-OOOO!

  The tavern exploded into chaos.

  Chairs overturned. Glass shattered. People screamed, clawing at each other to reach the back exits.

  Zafira was already at the window. Her breath hitched. Her eyes widened in absolute horror.

  "Zyra!" Zafira screamed, her voice cracking. "Outside!"

  Zyra was there in a heartbeat. Karv flanked them, his hand slipping inside his long coat.

  Outside, the world was burning.

  The massive iron gates of New Hope Village had been violently ripped off their hinges. Thick, choking plumes of crimson smoke swallowed the sky. Dozens of heavily mutated monsters poured through the breach like a flood of nightmares.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Gunfire erupted.

  Screams of the dying filled the air.

  Through the thick smoke, a small figure stumbled near a burning stall. A little girl.

  "Mom! Help me!" she shrieked, tears carving paths through the ash on her face.

  A towering beast, its skin peeling back to reveal infected muscle and razor-sharp, bloodstained claws, lunged for her.

  Zyra's pupils constricted. The ice in her eyes instantly boiled into absolute, blood-red fury.

  Her hand closed around the hilt of her katana.

  Zafira trembled, paralyzed.

  Beside them, Karv pulled a heavy, matte-black revolver from his coat. He cocked the hammer with a sharp, metallic click.

  "Well then," Karv said, his voice entirely devoid of fear. "It begins."

  The monster's jaws unhinged.

  The little girl squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the end.

  A sound like tearing thunder cracked through the plaza.

  Zyra didn't run. She erupted.

  A high-voltage wave of kinetic energy blasted from her boots, scorching the ground. The air around her violently distorted.

  Before the beast's claws could even graze the child's hair, Zyra was there.

  She snatched the girl from the jaws of death, tossing her safely behind a shattered concrete barricade in a single, fluid motion.

  Zyra stood between the child and the beast.

  Her hair whipped wildly in the superheated air. Her eyes held an electrifying, terrifying glow.

  The towering beast skidded to a halt. It let out a guttural, confused roar. Its crimson eyes stared at her in disbelief.

  "What... are you?" the monster gurgled.

  "Your executioner," Zyra whispered.

  She stepped forward.

  It was a fatal miscalculation.

  She expected a mindless beast. She didn't expect the speed of an apex predator.

  Before her blade could even clear the scabbard, the beast moved.

  Its massive fist displaced the air, slamming directly into Zyra's stomach.

  The impact sounded like a car crash.

  Zyra was launched off her feet. She flew backward, crashing violently through a thick, reinforced concrete wall.

  CRACK.

  The masonry crumbled, burying her in dust and debris.

  Pain exploded through her nervous system. Then, absolute darkness.

  There was no pain in the void. Only an endless, echoing silence.

  Then, a voice. Faint at first. A decaying memory.

  'Your grandfather wasn't just a man, Zyra...' her father's voice echoed. 'He held back the dark alone. He was a legend.'

  The memory warped. The voice deepened.

  It became a sound that carried the weight of a mountain. The voice of a titan.

  'You carry my blood.' Her grandfather's voice vibrated through her very soul.

  'Rise. Defeat is not a luxury you possess.'

  In the ruins of the collapsed wall, Zyra's eyes snapped open.

  The pupils weren't human anymore. They were burning, molten gold.

  The air pressure in the plaza suddenly plummeted. A violent, unnatural wind began to swirl around the debris.

  Zyra stood up.

  She drew her katana.

  The moment the steel cleared the scabbard, the blade ignited.

  A roaring, crimson flame engulfed the right edge of the blade. A violent, spiraling vortex of sickly green wind wrapped around the left.

  The Fire and Wind elemental modes.

  Awakened.

  The giant beast roared, gesturing with a massive claw. Dozens of smaller monsters swarmed over the rubble, charging at her like a tidal wave of rotting flesh.

  "I don't care about the puppets," Zyra said. Her voice echoed with dual tones.

  She gripped the dual-elemental katana.

  The next sixty seconds were a slaughter.

  Zyra tore through the horde like a natural disaster. A single swing of her blade sent arcs of compressed wind and searing fire through the ranks, reducing monsters to raining ash.

  But amidst the blinding chaos, she lost track of the giant.

  A shadow eclipsed the sun.

  The beast brought a massive, jagged forearm crashing down on her left side.

  SNAP.

  The sound of her left arm breaking was sickeningly loud. Bone fractured. Splintered.

  Zyra screamed. White-hot agony flared as her left arm went completely dead, hanging uselessly at her side.

  The beast reared back for the killing blow.

  Zyra didn't retreat.

  She gritted her teeth, tasting blood. She gripped her katana entirely with her right hand.

  "I might break," she snarled, the flames on her blade flaring blindingly bright. "But I will never stop!"

  She pushed off the ground with explosive force.

  She launched herself high into the air, spinning past the beast's guard. With all her remaining strength, she drove the blazing, wind-infused katana straight down into the giant's chest.

  The flames violently erupted inside the monster's ribcage.

  It let out an ear-piercing shriek before its massive body instantly incinerated into a pile of smoking ash.

  Silence slammed back into the plaza.

  Every monster was dead.

  Where the giant beast had stood, a small, obsidian stone lay in the ash. It radiated an intense, suffocating pulse of soul energy.

  Ignoring the blinding pain in her shattered arm, Zyra dropped to her knees. She reached out.

  The moment her skin brushed the cold stone, a whisper crawled directly into her brain.

  'You now hold the gate to souls.'

  Her vision blurred. Her body trembled uncontrollably.

  "Zyra!"

  Zafira was running toward her, tears streaming down her face. She caught Zyra just as her knees buckled.

  "What... what was that?" Zafira sobbed, terrified.

  Zyra managed a weak, bloodstained smile.

  "I don't know," she whispered. "But something inside me... just broke free."

  As her eyes rolled back, the massive, imposing shadow of a warrior briefly materialized on the ground behind her, before dissolving into the smoke.

  The plaza smelled of ozone and burned flesh.

  But the survivors were cheering.

  They looked at Zyra with a mixture of terror and absolute reverence. A messiah born from the ash.

  But Zyra didn't care about the cheers.

  She sat on a crate, her broken arm bound tightly in a makeshift splint. The village healer had applied potent herbs, dulling the agony to a deep, throbbing ache.

  But right where the bone had snapped, a strange, pitch-black geometric mark had burned itself into her skin.

  Karv stood leaning against a burned pillar.

  "That bone is dust, Zyra," Karv said flatly. "Walking into the wasteland like that is begging for the grave."

  Zyra stood up. She slung her heavy pack over her good shoulder. Her face was pale, but her resolve was absolute iron.

  "If I stay, they die," Zyra replied. "Those things came for my head. I won't use innocent people as a meat shield."

  Karv watched her. The cold logic was undeniable. He offered no argument.

  Night swallowed the forest.

  The canopy of a massive, ancient Peepal tree offered their only shelter. The dying embers of a small campfire cast long, dancing shadows across the campsite.

  Zyra was unconscious. The sheer physical toll had dragged her into a deep, coma-like sleep.

  On her bound arm, the black mark pulsed rhythmically in the dark.

  Crunch.

  Zafira froze.

  Crunch. Heavy boots crushing dry branches.

  Two massive silhouettes stepped out from the treeline. They wore heavy, rusted iron armor. In their hands, colossal, jagged greatswords. The elite executioners.

  Zafira's blood ran cold. Paralysis gripped her spine.

  "Z-Zyra!" Zafira screamed, her voice tearing her throat. "Wake up!"

  Zyra didn't move. She didn't even twitch.

  The first executioner raised its massive sword high above Zyra's sleeping form.

  Zafira squeezed her eyes shut.

  Suddenly, the ambient temperature of the forest plummeted.

  Frost instantly crawled across the grass.

  The campfire violently snuffed out.

  From the shadow cast by Zyra's resting body, the darkness began to rise.

  It peeled off the ground, taking a three-dimensional shape. A towering entity clad in heavy, abyssal-black iron armor. It carried a massive, pitch-black greatsword.

  It had no face.

  Beneath its dark visor, two fierce, deep-blue flames burned wildly.

  The Black Soul Warrior.

  The two executioners froze. Their jagged swords halted in mid-air. True, primal dread flooded their eyes.

  "What... is that thing?!" one of them choked out.

  The Black Warrior made no sound. No battle cry.

  It simply moved.

  It was a blur of absolute, silent violence. A single, devastating horizontal slash of its black greatsword sheared straight through the first monster's heavy iron armor, cutting it cleanly in half.

  The second monster roared in a blind panic, swinging its weapon down wildly.

  The Black Warrior sidestepped with flawless, fluid grace. It brought the pommel of its sword down, crushing the beast's skull into the dirt.

  Zafira sat frozen against the tree trunk. She couldn't breathe.

  In less than five seconds, the executioners were reduced to dismembered, bleeding heaps of flesh.

  The forest was dead silent once more.

  The Black Warrior slowly turned. It looked down at Zyra's sleeping form. The blue flames flickered softly.

  Then, the dark armor dissolved like ash blowing in the wind, sinking seamlessly back into Zyra's shadow.

  When the first pale rays of dawn broke through the canopy, Zafira was still sitting in the exact same spot.

  She hadn't blinked. She hadn't slept.

  Zyra groaned softly, shifting in the dirt. She rubbed her eyes with her right hand, wincing as the pain in her left arm flared.

  "Zafira... you're already awake?"

  Zafira's eyes were wide, bloodshot, and locked entirely onto Zyra.

  "I didn't sleep," Zafira whispered, her voice trembling uncontrollably. "Zyra... last night. Something came out of your shadow. A dark warrior. It slaughtered them."

  Zyra frowned, utterly confused.

  "A shadow? What are you talking about?"

  Zyra looked down to adjust her sling.

  She stopped.

  The black, geometric mark on her fractured arm was glowing. It was emitting a faint, ethereal energy.

  The exact same deep-blue energy that had burned in the eyes of the shadow warrior.

  Zyra and Zafira stared at the glowing mark in absolute shock.

  The soul stone hadn't just given her a weapon. It had ripped open a door to something far, far darker.