From the wreck, ripples of fire were emanating, creating the shockwave on the battlefield. Oliver stumbled back, gasping, sweat running down his face. His muscles cried out, emptied of every ounce of strength. But he managed it. He watched as the titan's core shattered into a thousand glowing shards. Victory was claimed by him. Or so he thought. The terrible machine should have been lifeless, but the fettered wreckage twitched and metal groaned. Something pulled the debris together with strange force; melted and molten jagged steel shifted like liquid. But metal was not all. Flesh. Actual flesh. Oliver almost choked on his breath. His jitters made him want to flee, but his legs were refusing his orders. His weary limbs trembled as some new form erupted from the cataclysmic scene. A new core pulsated-life. Entire. This titan wasn't just mending itself. It was mutating. The air grew heavy, unnaturally thick heat. The battlefield quaked under his feet. Where remnants

In a flash, everything stopped.The battlefield was filled with fire and wind, and the huge giants were fallen. Yet now silence was stretching to fill the emptiness surrounding the land. The air, once heavy with the scents of blood and burning magic, felt empty. Warriors stood frozen in place, weapons raised but forbore. Magic that had been flaring wildly flickered and died out as if the world had forgotten how to breathe. Even the wind was hesitant, at a stalemate between moving and being still.And somewhere in the thick of it, something had changed.Oliver was no longer just human.Living shadows curled, twisting around him, coiling like black flames alive and moving with almost a thought of their own. These flames, not ordinary in nature, flared as though fired internally, inside, as if devouring everything around them-light, warmth, sound. They stood heavy in the air, obliterating reality under its self-suffocating, almost cruel press, darkening the ground beneath Oliver's feet

Oliver was at the middle of the battlefield, clad in dark flames. The black flames curled and wrapped around him like some sentient thing, flickering hungrily yet never burning him. There was something coursing through his veins, something powerful and ancient. It was no longer blood-it was pure shadow.Before him hovered hollow figures, kneeling in silence. They were not whimsical spirits; they were wraiths, the eternal creatures from the abyss, bowing before him in apparent recognition of him as their king.The sky overhead was cracked wide open, ribbons of darkness cutting through the clouds. The cracks offered no view of the azure dome or sparkles of the stars, just a vast and endless void.Once again, the massive abyssal colossus knelt in front of him, the very etching of horror. It was somewhere between shadow and free-flowing substance, alive and changing, utterly dark. And there it was, that horrible beast, yet not an enemy, bowing, as it were, to its master.Oliver looked aro

Chapter 48Such an incredible rent in the heavenly sky was almost like a sword recently buried in the very fabric of reality, leaving a gaping hole in the heavens. There were the darkest of clouds revolving, where blue sky once lay, shadows stretching across beyond the cracks. The very sun was peeking down behind the super eclipse, while a monstrous-ish abyss writhes in the tormented sky, as though some living thing was whispering things in the ear that no human should ever have to hear.The celestial Sentinels, being the great warriors of light donned in glimmering golden armor, staggered. A tremor racked their glowing weapons, just as onslaughts of darkness began engorging the battlefield. They had fought for eons against demons and even sorcerers, malign creatures that would come out of the depths, but this was entirely different. So much worse!And there in the eye of it—Stood Oliver.Or what might be left of him.His body no longer belonged entirely to that human aspect. Black

In the very middle of the battlefield, Oliver stood with golden eyes, penetrating the dust as it swirled over the remnants of chaos. The sensation of power running through him had not yet dulled, like a heartbeat waiting for its moment of retribution against an unworthy receiver. The Test of the Traveler.He had achieved what he set out to do by breaking free, severing his chains, defeating Elias and Seraphina in battle-the guardians of the realms whose mission was to keep such battles from happening-and now left only to echo the victory. But his mind had not forgotten their words, their last challenge."Prove that you're truly ready."The soft gentleness of Seraphina's voice contrasted with the respect in Elias's, the meaning of which Oliver couldn't yet fathom. But it was the weight of those words that gnawed at him. Ready? For what?His thoughts were interrupted by a soft rustle behind him. He turned to face the ragged forms of Elias and Seraphina moving slowly, purposefully at th