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Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 183: The Name That Was Never Meant to Be
The Night That ListenedThe world did not settle.Though dawn crept over the ruins, coloring the shattered stones with pale light, the air stayed restless, tinged with the resonance of something that shouldn't have been said.The words of the chronicler had shattered the thin silence Ethan had held onto, fracturing something within him that was never whole to start with.Asha watched him, still.He had not budged since those words had escaped the Chronicler's lips."You were never supposed to leave that throne.""You were the last."Ethan had just stood there, his shadow reaching in directions that did not exist, his shoulders rigid, his fists at his sides. He did not flinch, did not question.He only listened.As if he had known this truth all along.The Chronicler had withdrawn back into the ruins, its shape breaking down into parchment and ink, but its words remained.Cain, usually the most vocal of them, sat in uncharacteristic silence.Raven moved restlessly, eyes flicking betwee
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 184: The Rift Remembers
A World UnravelingAsha's cry was gone into the abyss.The Rift opened wide, devouring them in a sea of nothingness.No, not nothingness.Something far worse.Something that had existed and had no business ever existing again.The instant her hand had curled around Ethan's wrist, the world had collapsed. The sky tore apart like shattered glass, the earth curved beneath her, and then there was a tug, a savage, screaming tug tearing her down, down, down.The feeling wasn't like falling.It was like being erased.The blackness that surrounded them wasn't anything. It was everything thick, choking, heavy with whispers, heavy with names.Asha held onto Ethan as hard as she could, her heart pounding against the cage of her ribs. But he was frozen, too frozen, like the force of the Rift had already gotten inside him, already started its slow, inexorable claiming.She opened her mouth and attempted to call his name.The words did not exist.Something was amiss.Something was re-weaving itself
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 185: The Shadow That Called My Name
The world broke.Not in a blast, not in a brutal collapse, but in unwinding as if reality itself was being remade, ripped apart at the seams of existence. The light that had burst forth in the Rift wasn't redemption. It was transformation.And Asha was trapped in between.The pressure of the explosion hurled her across the floor, her body floating in midair, her ears ringing with something that was not sound but memory: thousands of voices talking all at once.Ethan!She struggled to get up, struggled to reach for him, but she couldn't see only glimpses of things that had already occurred, things that ought not to have occurred.The Hollow Crown.The battlefield that wasn't a battlefield. The throne, waiting and empty.And Ethan.Ethan, standing before it.Not now. Not in the present.Before.Before he had ever left.Before he had ever been Ethan.Asha gasped, pushing forward, pushing herself back to the now.And suddenly, she was falling.The ground reformed beneath her feet, hard an
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 186: The Teeth of the Forgotten
Asha hit the ground hard.The blow expelled the air from her lungs, and she tumbled across the parched soil.Her limbs throbbed with pain, but she hardly registered it.Her mind was still spinning from what had just happened from the throne, from the Rift, from Ethan ripping himself free of the past that had tried to eat him.She dragged herself to her feet, wheezing, vision swirling.They were back.The battlefield surrounded them, familiar but … wrong.The air was heavy now, thick with energy, as if the planet itself had tilted out of alignment.The sky wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it wasn’t right either; colors swirled in shapes they shouldn’t, as if the Rift had made a bruise that wouldn’t go away.And beside her.Ethan.He was on all fours, breath short, fingers dug into the ground as if he needed to attach himself to something real. His shadow still not quite right writhed unnaturally, stretching in directions it didn’t belong.Asha swallowed hard.“Ethan.”He didn’t answer.A b
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 187: The Nameless One
The battlefield fell silent.For one suspended, fleeting moment, the world seemed to hold its breath, like reality itself stopped spinning, waiting to find out what he’d done.Then.The thing shattered.Not in the way a body breaks. Not with bone, not with blood.It unmade itself.The air quaked, the place it had occupied folding in on itself, and for one dreadful instant Asha glimpsed something beneath.A snapshot of what used to be, ripped from your grasp.Then it was gone.The wind shifted.Not as a storm builds, not the taste of rain, not the faraway rumble of thunder, but something much deeper.Something unnatural.When she had seen it, Asha had felt it in a marrow-level way.She gazed out to the horizon, to the dimming sky, at the lack of clouds, a massive shadow pulsating across the heavens, traveling fast.Her heart raced in her chest like a trapped bird.Ethan saw it too.His back went stiff, and his shadow twisted howling under him as if it recognized the encroachment of the
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 188: The First Seal
The absence, once faceless, left too poignant a silence.The world had returned to a dead calm, but the wrong kind of calm after a storm, not before one.Before a hunt.Asha knew that silence, Asha.It meant they weren’t alone.She tightened her hold on my blade, stepping toward Ethan.His breath was still coming in jagged bursts, and his fists were balled at his sides.His shadow had stuck to him for the time being, but she could still see the tension in him.She spoke low. “We need to move.”Ethan didn’t respond right away.He stared at the place where the faceless ones had stood.Not where they had vanished.Where they had watched him.Like they were waiting.Waiting for him to remember.Asha clenched her jaw. No.Whatever else they wanted, whatever he was to them, they were wrong.And she was not going to let them take him.Ethan finally breathed out, his voice firm but far away. “We’re not alone.”Asha’s breath stilled.Then.The shadows moved.Asha reacted instantly. She twirled
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 189: The Second Hunter
The ground of battle had been soaked in red.Asha gasped each breath, the sword dripping thick, blackened blood from the creature she had just slain. The dead that were never supposed to be there lay splayed about them, with bodies so fresh it was as if they’d just dropped.But it wasn’t over.The first seal had broken.And something bigger was coming.Ethan was beside her, his blood streaming down his chest as the black strands from his injury shot out of his body once more. Its shadow curled oddly below, reacting to something below it no one else could feel.Then.The ground trembled.Asha snapped her head up.The darkened sky split open once more.A second figure crossed over.Another Hunter Enters the FieldThe air grew cold.Not the kind of cold that came with winter but the kind that came with death.But the figure who stepped out of the shade was nothing like Veyne.This one stood taller and broader, its segmented skin wrapped in sheets of black armor that seemed hammered out o
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 190: The Nameless Legion
Ethan lay unmoving.Asha placed both hands on his chest, felt his heartbeat too slow, too faint.His breath barely whispered past his lips, his body shaking as if something inside him was crumbling to the ground.But that wasn’t what frightened her.It was the names.Ethan still whispered them.A faithful, ceaseless roll of voices forgotten in time.She tried to shake him. “Ethan! Wake up.His body thrashed violently, his breath catching as if he were drowning.And then.The world shifted.Asha felt it in her bones.The air thickened, and the ground underfoot trembled like something below is rising.Then.The corpses rose again.Asha spun, her sword in her hands.The battlefield was no longer a battleground.It was a graveyard that wouldn’t stay buried.And in the center of it all.A new figure emerged.Asha’s breath hitched.Because this was one that was different.This one wore a crown.The King of the NamelessWhen he first showed up, the dead ceased moving.They didn’t attack.The
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Episode 212: The Last War, The Last King
It was no longer their battlefield.What had once been a sky became a dirty mirror of a world that had died before history itself.The ground shook under Ethan and Asha’s feet, not from ruination, but from something attempting to rewrite existence itself.And at the center of the whole thingThe light belonged not to this world, and it now burned behind their eyes, at last uncovered from the shattered mask.The End.They weren’t human.They weren’t divine.They had been something before those things.And as they walked closer, the mere act of them distorted the air nearby.“You have tread too far, Hollow King.”“You’ve broken too many chains.“And now you will see what was meant to be forgotten.”Ethan’s hands made fists.Asha took a slow, deep breath.They had no time to think.Because the First King moved.And the final battle began.Ethan had little time to even react before he found the First King in front of him.Their movement flouted space itself—not teleportation, not speed, ju
Episode 210: The Beast That Devours Fate
Ethan felt nothing.No pain.No weight.No time.Just… absence.As if he had entered the void of creation itself.As if he never existed at all.But somewhere through the deafening silence.He could still hear Asha calling his name.Still feel the tug of who he was.What he had been.What he refused to lose.Because this wasn’t merely an enemy.This was something worse.Something beyond the throne.Farther than he had ever ventured beyond the kings and wars that had shaped his life.And if he didn’t stop it.There would have been nothing left to save.Not this world.Not Asha.Not himself.Nothing.Asha was losing him.She saw it.Felt it.Ethan was fading, his form wavering between real and unreal, his shadow bending, extending—being consumed.The Nameless Horror stood in front of them, a shape that had shape, a thing that had life, but nonetheless the presence of hunger.It had no eyes.No mouth.And yet.She could hear it laughing.Not a sound.Not a voice.A feeling.A whisper in
Episode 209: The Breaking of the Seal
Ethan and Asha fell through the floor.Not from an explosion.Not from an attack.But because something below it had stirred.A being older than the Hollow Throne.Something that had been locked away since the beginning of this world.And they had just released it into the wild.Or the very ground they fought upon, as Asha staggered backward, as wide-eyed as the battlefield ripping itself asunder, huge stone slabs rising into the air like broken sheets of a long-lost history.Ethan breathed slowly, steadily.But his shadow is his power.Trembled.For whatever was coming out of the cracks.It wasn’t a monster.It wasn’t a ruler.It was more than those things.That should have never come back to life.The tyrant coughed violently, blood leaking from between their lips, but they were smiling.Smiling as they knew exactly what was in store."You thought you won."Their voice was raw, not much more than a whisper.“You thought you could kill me and end this war.Their half-broken gaze sett
Episode 208: The Hollow King’s Last Breath
The battlefield had long been a maelstrom of destruction.But when the tyrant came down.Everything changed.The atmosphere twisted, warped by the mere gravity of their existence.Reddish-golden light poured off their form, writhing into physical might, bending the battlefield as if the very fabric of reality was willing itself to conform to their will.Ethan and Asha knew it immediately.The pressure.The difference.The monsters they’d fought before Vaelros, the tainted Tamers, the Eclipse Titan.They had been powerful.But this?This was a god entering the fray.Asha’s pulse pounded.She gripped her sword more tightly, but her fingers were numb.Ethan’s shadow trembled wildly.His power, which had always been bound to the throne, was now battling against him.Because the throne no longer belonged to him.And there before him stood its new ruler.The tyrant’s voice was calm. Smooth.Amused."Tell me, Hollow King…"“It’s like being powerless. How does that feel?The War Begins Again
Episode 207: The Tyrant Descends
The battlefield had long been a maelstrom of destruction.But when the tyrant came down.Everything changed.The atmosphere twisted, warped by the mere gravity of their existence.Reddish-golden light poured off their form, writhing into physical might, bending the battlefield as if the very fabric of reality was willing itself to conform to their will.Ethan and Asha knew it immediately.The pressure.The difference.The monsters they’d fought before Vaelros, the tainted Tamers, the Eclipse Titan.They had been powerful.But this?This was a god entering the fray.Asha’s pulse pounded.She gripped her sword more tightly, but her fingers were numb.Ethan’s shadow trembled wildly.His power, which had always been bound to the throne, was now battling against him.Because the throne no longer belonged to him.And there before him stood its new ruler.The tyrant’s voice was calm. Smooth.Amused."Tell me, Hollow King…"“It’s like being powerless. How does that feel?Ethan moved first.He
Episode 206: The Colossus That Eats Light
The Nightmare GrowsThings were coming apart at the scene of the battle.The colossus towered, hovering over Ethan and Asha, contorting, warping, and turning into something worse.Its shape contorted, once a lump of shadow and machination and now remolding itself in the heat of battle.Razor-sharp spines of obsidian jutted from its back. Its arms stretched, transforming into monstrous blades of pure void.And worse, it was learning.Ethan clenched his fists.Asha swallowed hard. “Tell me we have a plan.”Ethan exhaled. “We destroy it before it’s fully developed.”A pause.Then Asha grinned. “Good. That, I can do.”And then.They attacked.So, The Hollow King and the Tamer Strike BackAsha was first.She darted ahead, her knife glinting in the fractured light, stitching her way through the maelstrom of sorcery pulsing from the colossus.The air itself struggled against her, the raw force of the beast’s power stretching time like chewing gum around it.But Asha was faster.She ducked be
Episode 205: The War of Beasts and Kings
The battlefield ceased to be a desolation.It was a slaughterhouse.Asha’s boots skidded on the cracked earth, her blade shining as she plunged it into the chest of a monstrous soldier. The creature screeched, but it did not fall.It had no blood to spill.No flesh to break.It was a manifestation of the throne’s will, a life that was never meant to be extinguished.And it was multiplying.For each one she felled, two more crawled from their cracks, skeletal eyes fixated on her with unbowed faithfulness.Asha gritted her teeth.They were trapped.And Ethan.Ethan was fighting in another way.The Final Fighter: A King Without A Throne, A Fighter Without ChainsEthan had stopped using his shadow.The energy of the throne, his old throne, was throwing him out, and now the power of himself was turning against him.So instead he had been battling with his fists.With pure, relentless force.He slammed his heel into the earth, pushing himself forward, his body running faster than the though
Episode 204: The First War of the New King
The Rising StormThe wind was wrong.Not just heavy hostility.It contained something other than natural, something that made Asha’s skin prickle with unease.Standing with Ethan at the edge of the battlefield, she stared across the devastation of their greatest fight.But this was no victory here.Only loss.The throne was gone.Taken.And the world was already writhing under its new monarch.Ethan’s hands balled at his sides. His shadow, which he used to wield with ease, was still thrashing.Still smarting from being spurned by the throne that had once been his.Asha took a slow breath.“So,” she said, looking at him, willing to steady the weight at her chest. “Where do we start? ”Ethan didn’t respond right away.His eyes were fixed on the horizon.For the long walk back in the far distance past the shattered ruins, past the crumbling ashes of the old world.A new kingdom was forming.And it was spreading faster than they could contain it.The New King’s DomainThe sky was splittin
Episode 203: The New Tyrant
The throne was gone.The battlefield was wreckage, but it wasn’t the desolation that made Ethan’s chest a hollow place.It was the absence.He had spent every moment of his life struggling with the past, against it, trying to only be defined by what he could make of himself and his family rather than that throne.And now, someone else was in possession of it.Now, the world was breaking in ways he couldn’t control.Ethan blew out, trying to keep his breaths even.But Asha noticed the tension in his shoulders.She felt it too.The shift in the air.The change in, really, the world itself.Whatever this masked ruler had done, it had not simply been to take the throne.They had redefined something basic.And now, the reckoning was at hand.Fast.A First Indication of the New OrderThe ground quivered.Not from a battle, not an attack, but from something deeper.Asha’s instincts screamed.She grabbed Ethan’s arm.“Move.”Before he could ask it, the ground opened beneath them.An enormous
