“My dear children...” The old man began, his voice slow and weathered.
“I am going to tell you the story of the Two Pillars. But keep this in mind, you are not to hold any grudges. And you must not believe everything else you hear afterwards.”
He sat in a worn wooden rocking chair, its soft creak telling both its age and his. Time had left its mark on him, and his features spoke quietly of the years he had lived, and his health long tested. As he gently leaned back, the chair began to sway even gentler, rocking in rhythm with his words.
Three boys sat before him in silence and very attentive. The youngest of them had messy curling hair that fell into his eyes, forcing him to peer through it as he listened. The other two shared the same features and build. They were so alike they could have been mistaken for reflections of one another, and they appeared to be the same age.
“It was a fateful and chaotic night for the world,” the old man continued, his voice slightly hoarse.
His mind flashed back the memory, images of what transpired that night all vividly clear.
“Run! Hurry to the caves!”
Voices cried into smoke and blood socked concrates, yet many could not move. Some froze, clutching their children tight and simply waited for death. Others stumbled forward, desperate to see one more sunrise. While all asked the same silent question:
Will the caves protect us? Or are they only tombs waiting to be sealed?
Creatures that had been known to only exist in legend walked the earth once more. If anything, they were nightmares carved into flesh, forms twisted by madness, and towering bodies that defied nature.
Some crawled on too many limbs, others dragged swollen hides streaked in colours that shimmered sickly against the dark. Wherever they moved, the land warped, mirroring their grotesque design.
.....................................................................................
At the edge of Elaria city was a man, he stood his tan skin lit by the surrounding flames. Firelight traced the sharp lines of his features, casting shifting shadows across his face as smoke curled through the air. His long, frost-white hair hung loose down his back, streaked dark where ash and soot had clung to it.
His eyes were an unnatural blue, reflecting the blaze before him, glimmering faintly as he stared toward the horizon, where the city burned in chaos.
Two women approached from behind him in the smoke. The first was Nayara — his wife, heavy with child. Her skin was pale, almost drained of colour, and her eyes were unsettling, her pupils grey and hollow, an implication that something vital had retreated far beyond reach.
Beside her walked his mother, Mishaka, her hair hastily bound behind her, loose strands escaping, giving the sense that she had not taken the time or dared to make herself presentable
After an intense pause, he beckoned to them to move forward, but their path faltered.
Before them loomed a towering silhouette cloaked in mist, its body pure obsidian, swallowing light like a void. From the shadows, two eerie pale voids glowed where eyes should have been, piercing and otherworldly, a veil of smoke‑like fabric drifting around it, thrumming with ancient silence.
Mishaka's jaw dropped, her voice cracking with each word. "S-Sēndra! The Guardian of Sealed Knowledge!"
She gasped. Then turned to Nayara. “Don’t look into its eyes, Nayara! You will lose all your memories!”
She warned her, but late. Nayara’s gaze was alraedy fixed on the silhouette, her voice dreamlike as she spoke. “Where am I? Where is my husband? Manvuki!”
Her hand instinctively moved toward the man in front of her.
The one she called Manvuki turned to her and clutched her face with both hands. He whispered to her his voice low and unsteady.
"I'm right here, Nayara. Do you hear me?"
A piercing cry escap Nayara’s lips as she doubled over as another wave of labour pain tore through her body, shattering the trance.
"Manvuki...!" Miashaka called. "She's been in labour for twelve hours. We can't wait any longer!"
She clung to her daughter‑in‑law, her voice cracking with desperation.
Manvuki drew his sword and slashed at the silhouette, but all it met was mist. Then claws erupted from the haze, wicked and glistening, striking for the pregnant women.
Just then, a roar of flames echoed through the night. Then followed by blood spraying in a crimson arc as a massive twisted head large as a wagon front crashed to the ground.
From the smoking neck, a tall man with a big build desended, his expression evidence of his fury. His chin bared thick brown beards, and flames coiled from his blade as he cleaved the shadow.
He barked at Manvuki. "What do you think you're doing standing there in a daze while your wife is in labour?"
Then he turned toward the confused crowd, his voice echoing with command. “To the caves! Move! Now!” Yet chaos swallowed his words.
Behind the blood-stained smoke, men fell, children devoured, women slain in flashes, blood soaking the earth. And still, he stood against the tide.
Noticing a familiar face at a distance, he shouted. "Hey, Kaeth... where are the others!?"
Before Kaeth could respond, a spear tore through his skull with brutal precision before anyone saw where it came from.
He cursed under his breath, rage burning in his chest. "Move your wife out of here, Manvuki!"
He growled, frustration spilling over as he had no idea where his wife was, and she too was pregnant.
Manvuki gave a single nod, clutching Nayara in his arms and whispered under his breath.
"I owe you one, Varek."
He veered into the woods as the city behind him burned in chaos with strange creatures prowling through buildings, fire licking across shattered stone, blood slicking the streets, and bodies laying in heaps. With his blade ready, he plunged deeper into the forest, eyes darting between the trees.
Nayara’s cries grew weaker, her body failing as the child demanded its way into the world.
Mishaka’s voice trembled as she spotted a cave. “There, I see a cave up ahead. Hurry!”
Manvuki noticed moving shadows around them and urged his mother to take Nayara first. "Take her, I'm right behind you, mother."
Just as they walked past him, hot blood splashed across his back, followed by a heavy dread that settled on him. He spun in time to see Nayara fall on her knees, her head bowed, her hand holding her lower stomuch, yet the blood wasn't hers.
Slowly lifting his gaze, the sight before him forced a gasp through his throat. Before him loomed a colossal crocodile-lion hybrid beast, towering, and monstrous, its height competing with the canopies, its jagged stone‑like hide pulsing with eerie green veins, and twisted ivory horns that curled along its skull.
The beast roared a thunderous bellow that shook the trees, its mouth still stained with Mishaka’s blood.
Nayara sobbed, each breath ripped from her as waves of labour agony crashed through her body.
"Manvuki! Where is Dakali?" She mumbled to herself, her words barely reaching him. "Tell me he's safe and alright."
Even with the agony, she still had some little strength to worry about someone else.
Sweat drenched her skin, her face more pale and drawn than before, yet her eyes still burned with the will to endure even as her strength bled away.
Manvuki roared, a silent flame burning in his eyes, his voice clashing with the monster's roar. His eyes glowed a piercing blue as his blade flashed in sudden brilliance, cleaving the abomination into shredded flesh.
He barely had a moment to fully grasp how it had happened when more abominations surged from the darkness, their glowing eyes fixing on him.
He urged Nayara with a trempling voice toward the cave, but her limbs would'nt move, her world already collapsed into pain and exhaustion.
Gritting his teeth, Manvuki carried her again, but chains of shadow coiled about his ankles before he could take a step, rooting him in place.
From the darkness, a woman emerged, her motion swift as a blade drawn from its sheath, her golden eyes burning with resolve as she seized Nayara and dragged her toward the cave.
While inside the cavern, Nayara tried to push through the agony, but even the thought of lifting a finger felt impossible. Her body shook, trapped between despair and a faint spark of hope.
She sobbed, her voice trembling. "I… I can't push…"
The woman snapped, her voice echoing through the stone like thunder. "Then do you want to kill your child?!"
Her words struck like a whip, yet Nyra only wept harder, choking on her sobs. "I can't… I have no strength left…"
Outside, the sky bled crimson, and shadows writhed like living things. Manvuki carved through the horde, his blade flashing again and again. Yet for every monster he felled, two more clawed their way forward.
.................................................................................
In that very moment, another mother was screaming in labour pain in a hospital laying in ruins, and swallowed by devastation only half its walls standing, jagged and broken. While the roof had collapsed inward, exposing the sky above.
Amid the debris and dust, a nurse knelt beside a woman writhing on the cold, cracked floorer, her messy damp hair covering her face.
The woman screamed the baby wasn't coming, her voice raw with desperation. While the nurse urged her to push, her own voice barely rising above the distant chaos.
Outside, men clashed with monstrous creatures, steel meeting shadows in a war that had no end.
Despite it all, the woman never gave up on pushing, her body trembling with strain and agony, her cries raising with the explosions in the distance.
Then, at last, the child came.
A newborn with fair skin and soft light green hair. And as he entered the world, he cried. Though, his cry was no ordinary sound. It tore through the air like a rupture.
The vibrations echoed like thunder trapped in stone, shaking the dust from fractured beams, and shattering windowpanes.
The nurse staggered back, her ears ringing, eyes wide with disbelief.
The sound was too loud and too deep to be real. Even the creatures beyond the broken hospital faltered, their monstrous forms recoiling, sensing something they didn't understand. Then, one by one, they began to retreat in uneasy.
The woman tried to hold the child, but the cry pierced through her skull. And the nurse could no longer hear her own thoughts.
Meanwhile, in the cave, Nayara clenched her teeth, tears streaking down her face as she pushed not for herself, not for her breath, but for the fragile life she carried.
With her desperate efforts, creature froze mid‑snarl. Ears twitched, claws hung motionless in the air. Then fell a silence so heavy it crushed the battlefield.
One by one, the beasts stepped back, their eyes never leaving the cave as they retreated, sinking into shadows, into soil, swallowed by the trembling earth itself. They felt a presence of something far greater than their own existence coming.
Nayara let out one last, soul‑rending scream, and he was born. A child with hair of shimmering white‑blue strands, glistening like frost under moonlight, his eyes as clear and endless as the sky, his skin a golden bronze.
He lay still in the woman's trembling hands, no cry escaping his mouth. For one breathless instant, they thought him lifeless.
Then, from his back, burst a bright glow of shifting colors that lit the cavern with radiance as shadows fled.
The woman’s breath faltered. “No… it cannot be…" Her eyes widened in recognition. "The Nine Pillars Binding Seal.”
Outside, the world had changed completely. The creatures were now gone like they had never been. Even the abominations that ravaged the cities had fleed like rats before a storm, vanishing as though pursued by something far greater than death.
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When the old man finished telling the story, the three children were left with countless questions, each of them wanting to ask something, but there was no one left to answer them. The old man was already gone.
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