Hunger Awakens
Sanctum of Shadows
In the deepest layers of the Hollow Sanctum, silence wasn't absence—it was presence. It pulsed. It listened. It hungered.
Analice sat cross-legged in the heart of her fortress, surrounded by floating orbs of bleeding crystal. The walls pulsed with shadows, shifting like breathing skin. Whispers crawled across the stone like insects, carrying secrets too vile for gods to hear. Each whisper was a name, each breath a forgotten oath, each heartbeat a countdown to ruin.
She opened her eyes.
They weren't eyes anymore. They were voids. Windows into the bottomless pit from which she had crawled.
> "Thermuz is gone. Nimistran waits. That leaves… me."
She did not fear Matt. Not the Flame. Not the Earth.
But Nimistran...
Nimistran was different.
Not predator. Not prey. Not even god.
He was the silence that devoured both.
From her throne of bones and obsidian glass, she raised her left hand—and the walls peeled apart like lips, revealing the grotesque theater of her army's birthing chambers. Pools of black ichor churned as new monstrosities emerged, born not of life but of purpose.
Below her, the Shadowian Legir knelt in perfect synchronization, their hybrid forms a grotesque blend of predator and soldier. Tigers with wings. Lions with human torsos. Clawed beasts adorned in imperial armor that breathed like it lived.
> "We take the Earth. We consume its defiance. We feed."
A tremor shook the Sanctum. And from the endless void, a new banner rose—stitched from shadows and crowned in blood.
---
The Earth Responds
Back on Earth, in the war-torn valleys of the shattered Nyugan frontier, Matt stood with hands trembling.
Not from fear. From memory.
His battle with Thermuz had taken its toll. His body was battered, his soul worn thin. Ashlight still pulsed in his core, and the Voidflame within him stirred like a storm not yet unleashed. His breath steamed in the air, though the winds had gone still.
> "She's coming," Mailane whispered beside him, her eyes scanning the shifting winds.
Even the trees seemed to recoil. Birds flew away in flocks without sound. The horizon blurred.
A Nayron soldier dropped his spear without realizing.
Another whispered a prayer they didn't believe in.
Even flame forgot how to burn.
Sam stood at the ridge, cloak fluttering. His voice held no humor this time.
> "This one doesn't want to win."
"She wants to empty us."
Grey, who had begun to fear nothing, tightened his grip on his blade.
> "She's not like Thermuz. She's not war. She's hunger."
And hunger wasn't something you fought.
It was something you escaped.
---
The Descent
Shadowfall
It began with the clouds.
They didn't darken—they vanished, swallowed by a dome of nothingness. Birds spiraled out of the sky. The sun lost its voice.
Then came the screams—birds falling mid-flight. Animals convulsing. Rivers turning black. Entire forests shriveled in seconds. The world forgot how to breathe.
Then came her.
Analice descended not on wings, but on silence. The air around her refused to move, the sky bent inward, and reality recoiled at her presence. Her eyes burned with the hunger of a thousand lifetimes. Her gown was spun from nightmares. Her breath soured the ground.
Behind her, the Shadowian Legir marched in perfect rhythm. Over hills, through forest, across the bodies of beasts they didn't even stop to kill—they moved like fate given flesh.
> "I expected a god," she said, landing before Matt. "But I smell a boy… and a curse."
> "And I smell your rot," Matt replied. "You're not the first to fall. You won't be the last."
Analice's grin split her face in ways that skin should not. Her claws extended like serpents.
Then she attacked.
---
God vs Hunger
The battlefield became a grave.
Analice fought like a living disease—every cut she made rotted the air. Her claws sang of void-venom. Her fangs whispered illusions. Her speed was impossible. She flickered in and out of existence, stepping between screams and shadows.
Matt parried, danced, burned. Ashlight flared in wide arcs while Voidflame wrapped his movements like armor of shadows. He struck with vengeance, with legacy, with the memory of every fallen soul.
Their battle cracked the sky.
Mailane and Grey joined the fray, weaving strikes between Legir beasts. Sam invoked a barrier spell that shielded hundreds, his voice bleeding arcane syllables into the wind. Even the Nayron Kings returned, crashing into the enemy with thundering fury. Myuthor's thunderclaps broke the horizon. Namgari's fire split mountains.
> "You fight well," Analice growled. "But your flesh still bleeds.
Matt's voice was low, certain.
> "And yours still burn."
He raised both hands.
Ashlight and Voidflame merged.
A sun of darkness ignited between them.
The light scalded reality.
---
The Hunger Burns
Analice screamed.
It wasn't pain.
It was fear.
The hybrid flame tore through her armor. The Shadowsidian blade—wielded by Mailane—pierced through her ribcage. Grey and Sam coordinated the final push, locking her in place with spirit chains carved from the blood of Nyuga. The ground trembled with each link.
"You can't kill hunger," she hissed.
"You can only become it!"
She lunged—not to strike—but to merge.
Her hands reached for Matt's skull, eyes blazing with maddened hope.
But his flame answered first.
Matt stepped forward, flames licking his shoulders.
> "Your hunger ends now."
He plunged his fist, engulfed in Voidflame, into her chest. A sphere of anti-light erupted from the contact, bending gravity.
A star exploded.
And then—silence.
The Hollow Sanctum shuddered across realms.
The Legir army dissolved into mist and memory.
For a moment…
Analice's smile faded.
> "I was… mercy once," she whispered. "I remember… warmth. Before the hunger."
Then she burned into dust.
---
The Empress Has Fallen
The field grew still. The sky cleared. Her army scattered into shadows. The screams faded. The rot stopped.
Matt dropped to one knee.
Behind him, the battered forces of Earth stood victorious—but weary. The ashes of war clung to their skin, and every breath felt borrowed.
Grey offered a hand. Mailane knelt beside him.
> "You keep doing that," she whispered.
> "Doing what?"
> "Carrying everything."
Matt didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Because something older than war was watching.
Not flame. Not hunger.
Not even vengeance.
It was the absence of endings.
And it was coming.
> "The Empress has fallen," Mailane whispered.
> Grey looked up at the blackening sky.
> "Then the world only has one ending left to face."