Outside the dimension where Erend and Eccar fought, the forest began to change.
The sky darkened unnaturally, as if the sun itself had recoiled in fear. Clouds loomed above. It looks thicker and blacker than any normal storm cloud, swirling in slow menacing spirals.
The wind howled through the broken trees with an eerie voice like something alive and angry. Thunder cracked, not just from the sky but as if it echoed from beneath the ground. Something ancient had awakened and the forest could feel it.
Far from the ruined temple, in a clearing surrounded by half-collapsed trees and torn soil, the adventurers who had been thrown clear by the rift's surge began to stir.
The first to rise was Jan. He groaned, pushing himself into a seated position with effort.
His head rang and his limbs felt heavy as lead but he was conscious. Beside him, Mark was already sitting upright, one hand pressed to the side of his head as he looked around, his expression tight with unease.
The wind caught Mark's cloak, snapping it in the gust. He stared up at the swirling sky.
"There's a storm coming," he muttered. "And after everything we've seen… it's not going to be normal. This one'll tear the world."
Jan followed his gaze. "Yeah. We better get out of here. Erend and Eccar… they're handling the rest. This shit is beyond us now."
They turned toward the temple. Its highest chamber was destroyed, a jagged wound of stone and silence.
The tendrils of warped Magic had vanished but traces still lingered. They were visible like ripples in the air, almost like heat waves. The rift had calmed but it hadn't disappeared.
"Could they have entered the rift?" Jan asked, eyes narrowing.
Mark nodded. "Either they were pulled in or they chose to go. But either way… they've managed to force the storm back. For now."
Silence fell between them, broken only by the groans of the others slowly waking. Jan looked around at their friends—still weakened, some barely able to move, others just beginning to sit up.
"I think we should get out of here now," Mark said. "We can't do anything else. Not now. We have to protect what we can. Which is our lives."
Jan nodded. "First, we get everyone up."
Together, they moved from person to person, helping the others stand, speaking gently but firmly.
"We have to move. We're leaving the forest. Now!"
Meanwhile, in the ash-choked world beyond the rift, the battlefield burned.
The grey creatures screeched and fell by the dozens, some torn apart by jagged spears of earth, others incinerated by sweeping arcs of fire. The air rippled with heat and quaked with shockwaves.
Flames danced across the blackened soil and stone spikes jutted from the ground like fangs, impaling anything that got too close.
In the center of the chaos were Erend and Eccar.
Blood and ash streaked their faces, but their eyes burned bright with the determination. The fiery Magic within them had become a storm. Their fists struck with devastating attack and their Magic unleashed in wild bursts. Wherever they moved, the death of grey creatures followed.
And still, the grey creatures came in wave after wave of endless and feral creatures
From afar, atop a shattered tower that rose crookedly into the crimson sky, a figure stood in absolute stillness.
The tower itself was like an ancient relic. It was made of black stone laced with rotting vines, cracked and scorched from countless battles. It leaned as though the world had tried to bring it down again and again, but something within refused to let it fall. And now, at its peak, the one who had made the tower to endure were standing.
The figure was both feminine and masculine at once—impossibly androgynous, with a presence that defied the ordinary bounds of form.
Their armor was grown rather than forged. It was made of a carapace of hardened bark and living vines that curled around their limbs. Patches of moss glowed faintly across the surface, but there was nothing gentle about them. This was armor born of nature twisted into wrath.
Their eyes were shifting whirlpools of black and green—colors that pulsed with a toxic, ancient power—and their hair flowed like a corrupted river, also looks black and green that waving in the windless sky all the way down to their lower back.
They stood with arms folded, gaze fixed on the battlefield below, watching as Erend and Eccar tore through the grey creatures.
The figure's lips curled into a bitter smile. Their voice, when it finally broke the silence, was quiet—but it carried ancient hatred.
"Finally… I see you again."
The hatred in their tone wasn't sudden. It was old as ancient as the ash choking the world around them. A hatred that had never cooled, never healed, only sharpened over time. The kind of hate that defined a soul.
Long ago, the figure had begun to influence the world beyond the rift after they gain some of their power. Whispering to weak minds, feeding anger and greed into fragile hearts, twisting faith until cults had risen to worship them, a forgotten god.
Through rituals carved in blood and madness, those devotees had resurrected their essence, piece by broken piece.
All they had wanted—no, all they needed—was to find a way out then they can start their hunt.
To punish the Dragonborn.
But the irony was thick in the air now. The figure laughed dry and hollow.
"You came to me instead."
Their fingers flexed. Vines around their wrists tightened like a living gauntlet. The tower beneath them groaned as if it felt their rising fury.
"They sent you here to stop me. But you. You are the reason I exist . It's you who broke everything!"
They raised one hand, and the corrupted Magic of this world answered. Across the blackened plains, the land began to shift. The bones of forgotten beasts stirred beneath the ash.
Distant ridges split open, revealing massive shapes long buried. Eyes began to glow in the darkness.
"You think you've seen my army"
The figure's voice dropped to a whisper as their hand slowly closed into a fist.
"Then let me show you what true hatred can raise from the dead."
And with that, the battlefield began to change.