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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
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 191: The Third Seal Stirs
The battlefield had darkened again, but not in the right way.The kind that felt temporary.The sort that meant something was getting ready to happen.Asha continued to grip Ethan’s wrist, her pulse pounding.The flavor of the dark that had nearly swiped him from her was still clinging to her skin, the long whisper of what shadows had desired to be him but what he’d never become, what he’d never been, what he had never wanted.Ethan was breathing hard.The sludge in his veins had ceased to grow darker, the occasional speck of black that had graced his skin fading, but he had not so much as stirred since the King had vanished.His hands were still shaking.His shadow wasn’t.Asha turned to Kastiel. “Tell me what just happened.”Kastiel exhaled and gave a stretch, but achingly, and his golden eyes were fierce.He said, “The second seal breaking, it means his past is waking. “And the third seal?” His smirk widened.“Ones going to be a hell of a lot more impatient.”The wind shifted.Asha
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 192: The Wolves of the Broken Moon
As soon as Ethan’s blood touched the ground, the world shattered.Not like a crack in stone.Not like a wound in flesh.Like something had ripped reality in two.Asha felt it in her bones a shift, a break, a horrible cracking of balance that sent a pulse of wrong through the air.The earth below them quaked violently, as if trying to determine whether it even existed.And the sky.The red moon pulsed.Its glow deepened, darkened, dripped and seeped into the air like spilled ink.Asha wouldn’t have had time to register any of it before Ethan dropped to one knee, blood spilling from his side.No.She shifted, reaching toward him, but.A spear came crashing down in front of her.Asha slid to a halt, her boots churning up dust.A mocking voice, one they recognized all too well, echoed across the battlefield.“Going somewhere?”Asha was breathing heavily and rapidly.Veyra.The Huntmaster of the Blood Moon towered above her, braced her spear against the shattered ground, wolf-ish blue eyes
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 193: The Fourth Seal Trembles
Ethan staggered, blood soaking his side as the pain blurred his vision.Veyra’s spear wound still burned, but it was more than a wound.Some part of him had broken free.The third seal was broken.And now.The fourth was stirring.They had an air of otherworldliness.The red moon hanging over us had begun to disappear, but the damage was done.The ground beneath Ethan’s feet throbbed, thin rivulets of black energy oozing out through the fractures.Even the world itself was replying to him now.And that meant something worse was coming.”Asha was already next to him, holding on to his arm, eyes shining with concern.“You’re still bleeding,” she said, voice taut. “We need to get out of here.”Before Ethan could respond.The ground below them exploded.The battlefield shattered.A vast chasm yawned open beneath them, uncoiling tendrils of black smoke that smelled of death and rot.There came a stirring in the dark.Something old.Something is waiting.Asha and Ethan flinched; the size of
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 194: The Shadow That Watches
The world was too quiet.Too still.Asha knelt next to Ethan, blood pooled beneath the wound, his breathing shallow, his pulse weak beneath her fingers. His body was cold, and his veins still ran dark from whatever had attempted to claim him.The crevices through which the hand had come were closed and sealed as if they had never existed.But Asha knew the truth.And then something had gone reaching for Ethan.And next time it wouldn’t miss.Kastiel stood a few feet away, arms crossed, watching the aftermath with disturbing glee.“Well,” he said, tilting his head. "That was dramatic."Asha shot him a glare. "Not. Now."Kastiel smirked but didn’t press.She looked back at Ethan, tightening her fingers around his wrist.“Ethan,” she said, whispering, voice urgent. "Wake up."Nothing.Then.The wind shifted.And the world changed.The battlefield, the blood, the bodies, the ruins.Vanished.Asha’s breath caught.She was no longer standing in the wreckage.She was somewhere else.A place
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 195: The Revenant Prince
When the fracture devoured them, the battlefield disappeared.No sky, no ground, no weight of the wind bearing down against them, just an endless void, a space caught between being and abolition.Asha had time only for panic before her feet found something hard.Not earth.Not stone.Something else.Something cold.She spun around, knife up, anticipating an attack.But there was nothing.Except Ethan, standing frozen next to her.His face was blank, those dark eyes trained on the horizon of nothingness stretching out before them.And Asha realized.This place wasn’t just empty.It was waiting.Then.A voice rippled through the space around them, low and ancient.“Do you know it, brother?”The void shuddered.And from the darkness came a throne.Asha's breath hitched.The throne was huge, carved from a material of black stone and bone, its shape jagged and unfinished like it had been broken into pieces, and this is how it had been assembled.It throbbed with slow, turbine energy, as th
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 196: The Beast That Shouldn’t Exist
Ethan was lingering above the battlefield, slowly exhaling breaths.His shadow still twisted, responding to something not seen, something unfinished.The Forgotten Prince was no more.Even more so than when they were sucked into the void entombed behind the wall of Ethan’s power.But the war wasn’t over.Not even close.Asha coughed, trying to prop herself up, her side still bleeding where the prince had struck.The instant she turned toward him, Ethan shadowed back up, curling in slightly, perhaps reprimanded by the sight of her pain.He was still here.Still himself.But just barely.Asha managed a smirk, though the pain pierced through her ribs. “That was insane.”Ethan exhaled, moving to help her to her feet. “You stepped in front of a goddamn blade.”“Yeah.” Asha winced. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”He shook his head and exhaled. His hand lingered over her wound for a heartbeat, dark energy still crackling around his fingers, but then he made a fist and withdrew.He didn’t trust
Rise of the Tamer ( Bound by the Beast) Episode 200: The Hollow King’s Last War
The world was breaking.Part of reality itself bent under the weight of Vaelros; the field on which this battle was fought was nothing more than an illusion.The sky mangled, bleeding light ranged between a dark squall and a hole of flame.Ethan and Asha felt the ground drop from under their feet.The past was present, and the war was eternal.And the Vaelros who waited there, behind the Fifth Seal, was a shadow no longer.He was real.He was here.And the first thing he did was he went on the attack.A War That Never Should Have Been FoughtVaelros was a living storm.Not charging descending.His meat twisted and expanded, massive clawed fingers extending toward Ethan with a frenzied kind of hunger.Ethan responded in no time.His shadow reared up, charged with some instinctive buffer.And once it had joined with Vaelros, it failed.And the force of it was enough to topple Ethan, his body skidding in spasms across the broken blacktop, his breath torn from his chest.Asha reacted inst
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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
