Prologue
: The Child Against the Abyss
The river rose against the world.
Its waters abandoned their bed in a profane crash, tearing themselves from the earth to surge toward the heavens, as if Creation itself had been forsaken.
Under this supernatural upheaval, the beach split open and the forest buckled, bent by an invisible force that crushed everything in its path.
Above them, the sky tore apart. There was no promise of rain in those clouds—only black lightning, heavy with the weight of a final sentence. On this day, nature protected nothing.
It judged. It struck.
At the center of the chaos stood a child.
He should never have been there. His body was that of a teenager, but what burned beneath his skin belonged to no specific age.
His hair, once dark, had turned to ash-gray, streaked with living embers as if an ancestral hearth was slowly dying within him.
With every breath, the air vibrated. River water pulsed beneath his pores, while the spirits of the forest inhabited his every limb.
Before him, the Abyss opened.
The entity that had surged from the depths possessed no stable form.
One moment, she was a towering woman, upright and sovereign; the next, she became a tide, a monster—a living mass bristling with liquid fangs and murderous currents.
Then, the world gave way.
Water fell like a mountain in freefall. The sand exploded under the impact; trees were uprooted like common weeds. The child leaped, struck, and unleashed a force capable of swallowing entire kingdoms.
The Queen of the Deep screamed. It wasn't a cry of rage—it was a cry of recognition.
Too late, she realized what he truly was.
The battle raged until time itself stood still. The river howled, the forest bled, and the sky retreated, refusing to bear witness to such a slaughter.
In one final surge, the child threw himself forward.
He seized the goddess's tentacled arms. The searing heat tore through his flesh, and his mind wavered under the weight of millennia, but his scream split the fabric of reality. The incantation erupted from his throat like a torrent of fire.
A light burst forth.
White, golden, violent as a star plucked from the firmament. It pierced the Queen of the Waters, ripping from her something more ancient than memory. The goddess let out a shriek of absolute loss.
Her essence was extracted, wrenched away, and sealed within a white goat brought there for the sacrifice. The animal trembled and froze—a terrified vessel for a power that surpassed it.
The river finally collapsed back into its bed. The storm seemed to die. A woman raised her dagger to deliver the final blow to the animal and lock the spell forever. The world held its breath. A slow, terrible smile stretched across her lips. The bond was forged.
Then... silence. The peaceful murmur of a river turned docile once more.
Until the illusion shattered.
A scream tore through the air, followed by a cry of pain that was horribly human. Behind the child, the woman with the dagger collapsed onto the blackened sand. The backlash of the magic—or the monster's final assault—had severed her arm clean off. Blood and earth mingled at her knees, yet she refused to surrender.
With a trembling hand, she maintained the fragile barrier around the vessel.
"Finish it!" she shrieked at the boy.
The child understood.
With eyes burning like coals, he stepped between the mutilated woman and the Abyss. A rampart of flesh and ash. He opened his mouth.
His throat burned, his tongue tore, but his voice became a torrent. Ancient syllables coiled around him like chains of iron and shadow.
The sky answered. Winged spirits sliced through the air.
Two silhouettes descended from the invisible world: two great spirit-birds. One black as a moonless night, the other white as bone polished by time. Their wings swept through the astral air.
They knew.
The child traced a final sign in the sand. A wraith erupted from the world of the dead.
Three entities took their place beside the ash-haired child, ready to lead the ultimate assault against the Queen of the Deep.
Before the heavens and the earth, the forest and the river, the forces of the world took note.
The war of the elements had begun anew.
