The night was thick with smoke and gunfire, the stench of burning flesh mixing with the metallic tang of blood. Bullets ripped through the air, their sharp whines lost in the chaos of screaming men and roaring explosions. Somewhere in the jungle, an enemy commander lay dead, his compound reduced to rubble. The mission had been a success—until it wasn't.
He ran, breath ragged, blood seeping from a gash in his side. His team's voices crackled through his earpiece.
"Primary target eliminated. Exfil point secured."
He was close. Just a few more steps. He could hear the rhythmic thump of helicopter blades slicing through the air. But something felt off. The usual urgency in their voices was missing.
"Where's my ride?" he growled into the mic.
Static.
Then a voice—cold, detached. "Command's orders. You're a failed product. Can't risk the team bringing you back."
His blood turned to ice.
"What?"
The chopper lifted off. His team was leaving.
They were leaving him.
Shock and anger surged through him, burning hotter than the pain in his ribs. He staggered forward, arm outstretched, watching the aircraft fade into the night. His earpiece crackled one last time.
"You were never meant to make it home."
Then silence.
The jungle erupted around him. Shadows moved between the trees—enemy soldiers, closing in fast. He turned, gripping his rifle with bloodied hands. His heartbeat slowed, the world narrowing to a single point. If this was the end, he'd make sure they paid for it.
They swarmed like wolves, flashes of metal glinting in the darkness. He fired. One went down, then another. Then another than two more than 'click click' he was out of bullets. He switched to the side arm downed a few more with great bullet proficiency. But there were too many. A machete flashed in the moonlight. Pain exploded in his shoulder. A rifle butt cracked against his ribs.
He hit the ground, coughing blood.
His vision blurred. The last thing he saw was a dozen boots surrounding him. Then, darkness.
The Void Calls
Then—nothing.
He should have been dead. He should have felt cold steel carving into his flesh. But instead, he felt weightless. Suspended.
A vast emptiness stretched in all directions, darker than night, deeper than death. The jungle, the pain, the screams—it was all gone.
Then came the voice.
"You are not finished yet."
It slithered through the blackness, deep and ancient, vibrating in his bones. A presence loomed before him, its form shifting and endless, a shadow with no source.
"You have been cast aside, forgotten. But I see you. I know what you can become."
Something coiled around him—tendrils of pure darkness, wrapping around his limbs, pulling him deeper. It seeped into his wounds, into his very soul. And for the first time in his life, he felt powerful.
"Embrace the abyss."
The void swallowed him whole.
The Beginning of Oblivion
He awoke gasping, lungs heaving like he had been drowning. But he was no longer in the jungle. The sky above him was endless black. The ground beneath him was neither earth nor stone but something shifting, alive.
Darkness thrummed through his veins. He flexed his fingers and watched as darkness curled around them, answering his unspoken command. The pain, the weakness was leaving something else trying to replace it . But Nasir's hesitation kept it at bay.
A whisper echoed in his mind. "Don't you want to be reborn? Don't you want your enemies to beg for mercy? Don't you want to reach your full potential?"
Nasir was tired of being overlooked. He gave everything to his country. His youth his body. And to be left in a random jungle was a slap in the face.
Nasir wanted revenge he wanted to prove he was the best soldier. He had always been counted out. He was an orphan he never had the love growing up. He really resented the system. People always decided what he could and couldn't do going to the military was his only choice. He wanted control he wanted the power he was desperate for it. He never was a soldier really he was always something far worse.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice steady despite the growing weight in his chest.
"I am Eberus." The name rumbled through the void. "And I am offering you a new purpose."
His fists clenched. He thought of the men who left him. The ones who made the decision that his life was worthless. The ones who betrayed him.
"What do you want from me?"
A long pause maybe a few hours it was hard to tell time in Nasir's current state. He felt like he blinked but in reality he went to sleep for some time. His body needed to adjust to the new force entering it. The darkness pulsed like a living thing. It wrapped around him, coiling into his wounds, slowly seeping into his bones. The pain faded. His body no longer felt weak—no, it felt invincible.
He looked up, eyes adjusting to the abyss, and saw the towering figure before him. It wasn't a man, not really. It was something beyond men. A being whose form was never fully seen, only felt—a shifting mass of shadow, an eternal night given shape.
This was Eberus.
"You have been discarded." The voice rolled through the void like a distant storm. "Your life deemed unworthy. Forgotten."
Nasir clenched his fists. His entire life had been spent fighting. The military, the program, the missions—they had all led to this. Being thrown away like garbage.
"And yet… you still draw breath," Eberus continued. "Not by your strength. Not by your will. But by mine."
Nasir narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
Eberus chuckled. "Because you interest me."
The shadows around him thickened, pressing against his skin like a second layer of flesh. The power it carried was intoxicating.
"You are a weapon without a master. A blade seeking purpose. I can give you that purpose. Power beyond your understanding. Strength to never be discarded again."
Nasir exhaled. "And what do you want in return?"
The void trembled. The air itself grew heavy.
"Worship."
A flicker of confusion crossed Nasir's face. Eberus continued.
"Gods are only as strong as the faith that feeds them. I am old, but I am not dead. I exist in the spaces between belief, in the whispers of forgotten tongues. And you, my would-be executioner, will be the instrument that carves my name into the minds of men once more."
The words settled in Nasir's chest, their weight undeniable.
"You will be my Avatar."
Nasir considered this. He had been betrayed, left for dead. The system he fought for had abandoned him. If men could worship power, money, and empty promises—why not something real?
Why not Eberus?
He smirked. "And what if I say no?"
The void around him convulsed. In an instant, he felt everything—the crushing weight of eternity, the vast emptiness of oblivion, the knowledge that without Eberus, he would cease to exist.
Eberus didn't need to threaten him. The truth was clear.
There was no "no."
Nasir tilted his head. "Fine."
The darkness surged forward, wrapping around him completely. His body burned, but it was a cleansing fire, burning away weakness, reforging him into something greater.
"Then rise, Avatar of Eberus."
He opened his eyes, and the world would never be the same again.