The gateway roared open, a spiral of light and shadow swirling in a controlled vortex before Kael's throne. The air shimmered with raw power ancient, hungry, and curious.
Kael stood, the obsidian throne humming behind him like a heartbeat. The Abyss didn't whisper anymore. It waited. For orders. For conquest. For direction.
"I'm getting readings," Valen said, fingers glowing as he summoned a map of flickering realms. "That portal it's tethered to a dying world."
Lyra frowned. "A world like ours?"
"No," Kael replied, stepping toward the edge of the rift, staring into the endless depth. "A world worse. One that never had a protector."
Through the gateway, glimpses of another realm flickered a city hanging in the sky, its buildings crumbling under weightless gravity, its people hunted by shadows even darker than the Abyss. The sky bled violet. The air was warped with desperation.
A scream echoed from within the gate distant, but real.
Kael clenched his fists. He recognized that sound. He'd lived it. Died by it.
Not again.
Behind him, the Abyssal beasts growled not in anger, but in anticipation. The army he'd unintentionally forged stood ready.
Valen looked toward him. "You're not going alone this time."
Kael smirked. "Wouldn't dream of it."
Lyra twirled her blade, the light of the rift dancing off its edge. "Let's go show that world what happens when darkness answers to a king."
With a single thought, Kael commanded the gate to solidify. The path ahead bent and shifted, revealing a fractured bridge of floating black stone, leading into the heart of the decaying world.
He turned to his allies his family, forged through fire and shadow.
"From this point on," he said, voice steady, "we are not just survivors. We are conquerors of chaos. We don't just stop the dark we decide what form it takes."
He stepped through the portal.
The others followed.
And the Abyss his Abyss followed too.
Into the next world.
Into the next war.
With a king no longer hiding from his crown.