Chapter 1 - The Echoing voice
For two hundred years, Zeekith had believed he understood power.
He was wrong.
The first hundred years had been spent in Liminal Space, where time had no meaning and death had no permanence. Under Gagaroth’s guidance, Zeekith had learned magic that ancient civilizations had erased from existence. Magic that wasn’t supposed to belong to humanity.
Then came another hundred years.
A hundred years of hunting things that lived between universes.
A hundred years of fighting beings who could extinguish stars with thoughts.
A hundred years of becoming something that no ordinary human should have been capable of becoming.
And through all of it, one warning remained burned into his mind:
Vorthak is still out there.
Then Vorthak returned.
Not as the monster Zeekith remembered.
Something worse.
Vorthak emerged from Liminal Space like reality itself was trying to vomit him back into existence.
His twelve-foot humanoid body was covered in black obsidian armor, but the armor was no longer simply armor. It looked grown rather than forged, like an enormous shell wrapped around something ancient.
Violet light burned through the cracks.
His eyes looked like dying stars.
And around him, space bent.
Zeekith stood across from him.
For the first time in two centuries, he felt something he hadn’t felt since childhood.
Fear.
Vorthak smiled.
“You learned much while I was gone.”
Zeekith tightened his fists.
“So did you.”
Vorthak tilted his head.
“No.”
The smile disappeared.
“I remembered.”
The sky went black.
Every star above them vanished.
Then Vorthak spoke a name that Zeekith had never heard.
A name older than language.
Older than civilization.
Older than the first universe.
And Zeekith suddenly understood.
Vorthak hadn’t merely survived Liminal Space.
He had discovered what existed before it.
Something beneath reality.
Something that even Vorthak feared.
Zeekith attacked first.
Lightning exploded from his hands as he crossed the battlefield faster than sound. His fist struck Vorthak’s chest with enough force to split the ground for miles.
Vorthak didn’t move.
He grabbed Zeekith by the throat.
“You still believe this is a battle between two beings.”
He lifted Zeekith into the air.
“It isn’t.”
He threw him through a mountain.
Zeekith crashed through stone, recovered, and stared at the blood on his hand.
Vorthak walked toward him.
“You cannot kill what existed before the concept of death.”
Zeekith’s eyes narrowed.
“Then I’ll find something that can.”
And that’s when Zeekith remembered his father.
Cavron.
The Book of Revelations.
The weapon that had once been used to pull planets together, tear open space-time, and bend entire worlds toward destruction.
Zeekith had sworn never to become his father.
But now he realized something.
The Book wasn’t inherently evil.
It was simply too powerful for the wrong hands.
Zeekith opened it.
The pages turned by themselves.
The language inside wasn’t written in ink.
It was written in events.
Wars.
Extinctions.
Births of universes.
Deaths of gods.
And then Zeekith found the page he wanted.
A forbidden passage.
One that Cavron had never reached.
One that wasn’t supposed to be read by humanity.
The title appeared across the page:
THE REVELATION OF THAT WHICH PRECEDES CREATION
Zeekith hesitated.
Gagaroth’s voice echoed in his memory.
“There are powers you may use.”
“There are powers you may survive.”
“And there are powers that will use you.”
Zeekith looked at Vorthak.
Then at the Book.
“I’m not doing this for myself.”
He opened the page.
The universe screamed.
