The first pillar cracked beneath Alex’s feet the moment he landed on it.

A spiderweb of fractures exploded across the stone surface, and chunks of rock broke free, tumbling into the abyss below.

Alex pushed off instantly.

BOOM!

The pillar collapsed a second later, swallowed by darkness before the sound of impact ever returned.

A grin tugged at the corner of his lips as he soared through the air.

This was insane.

Below him stretched an endless basin of black stone and moving shadows—a dead world hollowed out into a massive crater that seemed to span forever. Giant pillars rose from the depths like broken teeth, scattered across the abyss in uneven intervals.

And Alex was jumping across them at full speed.

The wind roared past his ears.

His enhanced body cut through the air effortlessly, cloak snapping violently behind him as he landed on another pillar with enough force to make it tremble.

CRACK!

The stone groaned beneath him again, deep cracks spreading across the surface the instant his boots touched down. Every single platform in the abyss felt unstable, as though the pillars had been rotting for centuries and were only moments away from collapsing entirely. Yet instead of unsettling him, the danger only made Alex’s pulse quicken with excitement.

A grin tugged at the corner of his lips as he crouched slightly before launching himself forward again. The distance between the pillars was absurd, sometimes stretching hundreds of meters apart, and one mistake would’ve sent him plummeting into the endless darkness below. But Alex wasn’t afraid. If anything, he was enjoying himself even more.

The glowing pathways beneath his skin pulsed faintly as Emi surged through his body. His evolved physique handled the strain with terrifying ease. Muscles tightened and released like perfectly wound springs, each leap smoother than the last.

He landed again, the pillar trembling violently beneath the impact before another web of cracks spread across the ancient stone. Alex immediately pushed off toward the next platform, moving at insane speed as chunks of rock broke apart behind him and disappeared into the abyss below.

Then his eyes narrowed mid-jump.

Far beneath him, something massive crawled across the side of one of the lower pillars.

The creature’s body was distorted beyond reason, held together by long, unnatural limbs that bent at impossible angles while its shape shifted constantly, like reality itself struggled to properly contain it. Shadows peeled off its flesh in strands before reconnecting again moments later, making it difficult to tell where its true form actually began or ended.

A Void creature.

Alex slowed slightly mid-air and activated his enhanced vision. The thing immediately stopped moving, its distorted body twitching unnaturally before, very slowly, its head turned upward to look directly at him.

A cold chill crawled across Alex’s spine the moment their eyes met.

Not fear. Instinct.

The creature wasn’t hunting randomly. It was watching him.

Then another shape crawled out beside it. And another.

Soon, dozens of malformed figures clung to the lower pillars like insects scaling walls, their shifting bodies twisting against the stone as they silently tracked his movements from below.

Dozens of them crawled across the lower pillars like insects clinging to walls, their malformed bodies twisting unnaturally as they tracked his movements, yet not a single one attempted to attack. That alone immediately struck Alex as wrong. Earlier, the Void creatures had lunged toward him the moment they sensed his presence, acting like feral predators driven purely by instinct, but now they only watched from below in complete silence.

One of them even retreated slightly when Alex looked directly at it.

His excitement faded a little after seeing that.

For some reason, the behavior unsettled him far more than outright aggression would’ve, because mindless monsters didn’t hesitate, and they certainly didn’t observe their prey cautiously before deciding whether to approach or not.

These things recognized danger.

Alex continued forward, though now his eyes scanned the basin more carefully.

And the deeper Alex traveled, the stranger the pillars became. At first, they had simply looked like giant chunks of ancient stone rising from the abyss, unstable platforms scattered across the darkness below, but now he began noticing marks carved into them everywhere—deep scratches, strange engravings, and enormous names etched directly into the rock like ancient grave markers. Alex landed on one pillar and immediately froze when he saw giant words carved into the surface beneath his feet.

[VELKOR THE STAR EATER]

The letters were enormous, etched deep into the stone like a grave marker.

But something had clawed across the name violently afterward, nearly erasing it with deep jagged marks that looked less like damage and more like pure hatred preserved in stone.

Alex frowned before leaping toward the next pillar, where a broken sword stood embedded deep within the rock itself. The weapon was gigantic, taller than him even while buried halfway into the stone, but snapped cleanly near the hilt. Despite its ruined state, faint divine pressure still leaked from the fractured blade, heavy enough to make the air around it feel denser.

Beside the sword lay bones.

Not human bones.

The skeleton was far too large and dense for that, its ribcage alone bigger than a truck, with parts of the remains fused directly into the pillar as though the creature had partially melted into the stone during death itself. Alex slowed as he took in the sight, his expression gradually darkening.

This wasn’t a battlefield.

It was a cemetery.

A graveyard filled with things powerful enough to leave divine pressure lingering long after death.

Alex leapt again, landing hard against another crumbling pillar just as faint whispers brushed against the edge of his mind.

"...don’t..."

"...run..."

"...hungry..."

He froze immediately.

The voices vanished as abruptly as they had appeared, leaving behind only the sound of wind sweeping through the abyss and the distant movements of Void creatures crawling across the lower pillars far beneath him. Alex’s eyes narrowed sharply as he scanned the darkness, but there was nothing there.

Then the whispers returned the moment his foot shifted slightly against the stone.

Not actual voices. Thoughts.

Fragments of emotion buried deep within the pillar itself.

Regret. Madness. Desperation.

The sensations slammed into his head in broken waves before fading again, as though the stone had absorbed the dying remnants of something ancient long ago.

The sensations slammed into him in broken waves before fading again.

Alex immediately jumped away from the pillar, and the whispers vanished the instant his boots left the stone. Silence returned so abruptly that it almost made the previous voices feel imagined.

"...What the hell is this place?" he muttered under his breath.

Even his excitement had begun fading now, slowly replaced by a growing unease that crawled deeper into his chest the farther he traveled. This place didn’t merely feel old. It felt abandoned in a way normal ruins never could, like something divine had once existed here before being completely erased from reality.

Then he saw it.

Alex froze mid-jump as his eyes locked onto a massive structure suspended above the abyss itself—a floating ruin held in place by gigantic chains thicker than buildings. The entire thing hung silently in the darkness like the corpse of a fallen kingdom.

Gigantic broken chains thicker than skyscrapers connected it to nearby pillars, anchoring the floating island in place.

The closer Alex got to the floating ruin, the heavier the pressure pressing against his body became, to the point where even the air itself started feeling dense and difficult to move through. The massive structure resembled some kind of ancient sanctuary—or perhaps a palace built for worship long before this place became a graveyard—but whatever grandeur it once possessed had long since been destroyed.

Now it looked butchered.

Half of the structure had collapsed inward, leaving enormous cracks running through the walls and pillars, while gigantic statues lined the entrance in eerie silence. Yet every single one had been decapitated. Not worn down by time. Not eroded by age. Removed. The cuts along their necks were far too clean and deliberate for natural damage, as though something had systematically destroyed every trace of the figures they once represented.

Alex landed near the entrance more cautiously now, his boots crunching against fractured marble as he surveyed the ruin carefully. The atmosphere shifted immediately the moment he crossed into its vicinity. The whispers that had only faintly brushed against his mind earlier suddenly grew louder and more oppressive here, writhing through his thoughts like fragmented remnants of dead voices, while the air itself became unnaturally heavy.

More importantly, the Void creatures refused to approach this place at all. Even from a distance, Alex could see several of them lingering atop nearby pillars, their distorted bodies twitching uneasily as they watched the sanctuary from afar without daring to cross whatever invisible boundary surrounded it.

Alex noticed several watching from distant pillars—

But none of them crossed the invisible boundary surrounding the ruin, as though even the Void creatures instinctively understood that something far worse existed inside. Alex’s eyes narrowed slightly at that before he stepped forward and entered the structure without hesitation.

The interior looked even worse than the outside. Destroyed thrones littered the massive halls, many of them split apart or overturned as if some unimaginable force had rampaged through the sanctuary long ago.

Ancient bloodstains still blackened the floors and walls despite how impossibly old the place clearly was, the dried marks stretching across marble pillars and fractured stone like scars left behind by a massacre. Weapons were scattered everywhere, some broken cleanly in half while others looked partially melted, their divine metal warped beyond recognition by temperatures or forces Alex couldn’t even imagine.

One massive spear still remained embedded deep within a distant wall, the impact having split the entire structure behind it and left giant cracks running across the sanctuary ceiling.

Alex walked deeper into the sanctuary carefully, his boots echoing against the fractured marble as the silence around him grew heavier with every step. The deeper he went, the colder the air became, until even breathing started feeling difficult, as though the chamber itself rejected his presence.

Then he reached the center hall.

The moment he crossed the doorway, his entire body locked instinctively.

An overwhelming pressure crashed into him without warning, so heavy that his knees nearly buckled on the spot. Alex immediately caught himself against the cracked wall beside him, teeth clenching hard as the stone beneath his fingers shattered slightly from the force.

His eyes widened slowly.

At the center of the chamber sat a corpse.

Not a normal corpse.

A god.