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- Unknown Deserted Location, Greenland -
- May 6, 1937 | Simultaneously -
Deep beneath the corrupted soil where the battle raged above—beneath twisted roots and hollow bones—the Core stirred.
It existed in a state between pulse and thought, like an echo trying to remember the sound that made it.
For a brief moment, something pierced that echo.
Not of flesh. Not even of power.
A mortal hand had brushed the threads of reality. And it bent. Not through brute force, but through something far more dangerous:
The Core felt it. Through his roots. Through the marrow of the bodies he had devoured and twisted into fuel. The very code of existence around him had shifted like wind disturbed by a falling leaf.
He felt... irritation.
And then, slowly, his awareness crept back. Like fog returning to a mountain.
The Core did not think in words as mortals did. But something close to memory returned in sharp, broken shards.
The tomb. The sands. The Sphere.
A thousand miles from here, years ago, hidden deep in a hidden tomb sealed by forgotten sorcerry and buried by time.
They came for it. The crew of scavengers—not of this world. Bounty hunters, they called themselves. Greedy, careless, full of tricks and tools. Sent by someone they called the Collector, a hoarder of the strange and the powerful.
They had come to take his prize.
They had brought something dangerous—Sands of Time, fragments of a lost relic that could erode the temporal locks around the tomb. Fools. They didn't know what they were freeing.
He let them break the seal.
Then he tore them apart.
The Sphere inside the tomb... it pulsed with something beyond stars, something ancient and wrong and beautiful.
He cracked it open, using the very Sands they had brought.
Inside, resting like a heart without a chest, was a Celestial core. Not a machine. Not just an energy source.
A piece of a star-forger's soul.
Not chewed. Not swallowed.
He absorbed it—into every cell of his already flawed and boiling Deviant code.
And that's when it began.
The Core's body trembled, shifted, tried to reshape itself a thousand ways at once. His cells screamed. His bones melted and reformed. For the first time, he knew fear—not of death, but of unmaking.
Instinct led him to the bounty hunters' ship. There were more aboard—waiting.
He consumed them too.
Not for their flesh. For their souls.
Their essence soothed the chaos within him. Stabilized the evolution. Gave him time.
Time to flee. Time to adapt.
He took their ships. The tech. The data.
He found a place so forgotten even the stars ignored it—Greenland. Icy. Isolated. Perfect.
Random humans. Wanderers. Animals. The curious and the lost.
He didn't waste their bodies.
Because something inside him—some spark from the Celestial heart, or perhaps something older—told him he could make.
He didn't sleep. He grew.
A cocoon formed around him—flesh and root and void. A husk that looked like a parasitic tree, but pulsed with buried breath.
From that shell, the Deviants began.
Not like those who came before.
Stronger. Smarter. Grotesquely beautiful.
Tall. Perfect. Almost human. But not.
He carried intelligence. A mind that could learn, build, twist. Varak became his voice. His hand. His pride.
Together, they studied the remnants of the Sphere, reverse-engineered the advanced tech, and honed the Deviants into something far more dangerous than beasts.
They became a species of design.
And the Core listened.
It learned what it needed: Energy. Souls. Evolution.
The Celestial heart had started the change, but it was not enough.
Varak found the answer: The Eternals.
Batteries of godly power. Living engines. Beautiful. Arrogant. Archaic.
The Core watched, pleased, as Varak hunted them. Captured them. Harvested them.
And now, after all these years, he was close. So close.
The Eternals had fueled his growth. The Sands of Time, retrieved from the wreckage, had accelerated his evolution.
What should have taken millennia, now required only years.
And now, the final strands were nearly woven. Soon, his true body would form. Not the parasitic tree. Not the roots. But the Core Ascendant—a being that would stand among Celestials, but without chains.
His thoughts, once drifting, solidified.
Not fear. Not concern. But rage—cold and deliberate.
The mortals above had interfered.
They touched reality like it was clay. As if they had the right.
He would not forget that.
He would not forgive it.
He would rise—soon. Whole. Remade.
And when he did, he would unmake the one called Aryan.
He would turn his soul inside out and carve it into prophecy.
And the world would remember the day a mortal dared to rewrite the story that belonged to gods.
Above, the winds howled louder.
The tree pulsed once—deep and slow.
And far beneath, in its buried heart—
His awakening had begun.
The cold wind was still.
Aryan's eyes weren't on the battle anymore.
They were fixed on the tree.
Once. Deep. Like something inside was remembering how to breathe again.
"Seems lkie... you weren't lying," Aryan muttered to himself.
The Deviant general had been boasting—righteous, proud, drunk on his own twisted brilliance. But one thing he hadn't hidden behind words was the truth.
The Core or what the Deviant called the parasitic tree as, was waking up.
Aryan felt it—not through sight or sound, but through instinct.
Something ancient. Something unnatural. Something that didn't belong in this world—or any.
Not with eyes—but with presence.
A soft voice broke through the tension.
"Aryan?" Shakti's hand touched his shoulder, firm but trembling. "You're frowning. What is it?"
He turned to her. Her eyes held worry. Not for herself—but for him.
He smiled faintly. A smile made of steel and sorrow.
"It's the tree," he said, calmly. "Or whatever's inside it. I think... no, I know—it's about to awaken."
Shakti's lips parted, but the words never came.
Aryan turned back toward the battlefield. Varak was still striding forward, his form slightly hunched, wounded, scorched from their earlier attacks. Behind him, Deviants hissed and staggered, their monstrous bodies flickering with unstable energy, already faltering under the pressure of the Power Cosmic Aryan and Shakti had unleashed.
"First," Aryan said softly, more to himself than anyone else, "we finish what we started."
Shadows curled at his feet like ribbons of oil.
Towering, elegant, monstrous—shapes born from darkness, memory, and conquest. His Void Servants emerged from his shadow like wolves from smoke.
Each one... a nightmare given form.
Each one... born from what he had conquered in the Dungeon World—Tier 4 and above, intelligent and loyal, their eyes burning with silent purpose.
Not mindless. Not summoned fodder.
A monstrous wyrm with scales of twilight coiled behind him, its breath flickering with null energy.
A skeletal swordswoman, once a Vampire Queen, now knelt, twin obsidian blades humming in her hands.
A horned beast with runes carved into its hide let out a rumbling growl, the earth beneath its hooves cracking.
And dozens more—shadows given purpose.
Aryan raised his hand and spoke only one word:
They moved—fast, disciplined, surgical.
Darkness surged into the battlefield as the Void Servants collided with the weakened Deviants. The air shook as roars and shrieks tore through the frostbitten air.
The tide of the battle turned in a heartbeat.
Aryan's gaze never left Varak.
"I'll deal with him," he told Shakti.
She nodded, stepping back slightly—but not far. Her aura still shimmered with the Power Cosmic, ready to defend, strike, destroy.
Aryan stepped forward. Wind catching his coat. The glow in his eyes deepening to a cold, commanding gleam.
Varak stopped, sensing him.
The Deviant general smiled, even through the pain.
"So," he rasped, voice half-glory, half-rot, "the mortal dares face me one-on-one?"
Aryan didn't answer with words.
Appeared again—a heartbeat later—his fist slamming into Varak's jaw with enough force to send the giant crashing into the ground.
Snow flew. Earth cracked.
The tree pulsed again behind them, slower now. But stronger.
Like it knew what was happening.
But Aryan wouldn't let it finish.
Not if he could help it.
Because something inside him whispered that if it did awaken, this world would never be the same again.
And so he fought—not just to win...
But to buy the world a little more time.
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Haah... This Chapter was supposed to come yesterday but there were unexpected errors in the plot I wrote in this Chapter so had to rewrite it multiple times. Hope it turned out okay. Also the probised multiple Chapters upload will be done in a few days as I sort out the errors.
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