The Immortals of Notoriouslandia
Chapter Five: The Gathering Storm
A thousand years had passed since the Immortals fell, since the Chosen One Monday sealed Septiceye behind the Door of Never.
But cracks don't stay closed forever.
And power, even buried, has gravity.
Descentedrain, the descendant of Monday, felt the pull growing stronger. His powers burned with ancestral memory, and in the silence between breaths, he heard Septiceye's voice, clawing through dreams like a snake through glass.
He needed a team. Not soldiers. Not saints.
Weapons.
1. Joab — The Illustrator of Reality
Descentedrain was passing over Skyward Academy, a massive floating college of scholars, pilots, and tech-mages. He wasn't looking for anything—just feeling the world hum under his skin.
Then he saw it.
A graduation stage below. A young man stepped forward to speak. His name: Joab.
He drew a small creature on his graduation scroll while joking with the crowd. Before their eyes, the creature crawled out of the paper, alive.
It danced on the podium.
Then it exploded in glitter.
Descentedrain landed behind him quietly.
"That's not magic," he said. "That's world-forging."
Joab turned. Blinked. Smiled nervously.
"Yeah, I've been… doodling reality since I was five.""I can summon anything I draw. Anything my mind can imagine."
Descentedrain offered his hand.
"I imagine we'll need you."
2. Kukranchunlikryting — The Toxic Flesh of War
They called it a dead zone: Sector Null. An abandoned bio-lab swallowed by rot and green-black fog. Locals whispered of sirens that cried like children and metal that bled.
Descentedrain entered alone.
Inside, the walls pulsed with radioactive veins. Machines were melted. Notes written in desperation lined the walls:
"We gave him life, but not a soul.""We tried to burn him. He drank the fire.""He made the rats gods."
At the center of the ruin, floating in a vat of burning gel, stood Kukranchunlikryting—a being of humanoid form, stitched from nuclear accidents and broken laws of biology.
He opened his eyes when Descentedrain stepped forward.
"You're not scared of toxins?"
"I'm scared of what's coming," Descentedrain answered. "You want purpose?"
The vat shattered.
Kukranchunlikryting stepped out, dripping green, smiling.
"I want war."
3. Sapphire — Crystalline Sovereign of the Multiverse
Beyond Notoriouslandia, Descentedrain traveled into space, drawn to a comet streaking through forbidden stars. His ship cracked reality just to chase it.
Riding the crystal tail of the comet was Sapphire—a woman armored in refracted galaxies, her cape a chain of shattered dimensions.
She stood atop an asteroid like it was a throne.
"You don't belong here," she said, without turning."Neither do you," Descentedrain replied. "You're from everywhere."
She turned. Her eyes were twin cores of living diamond.
"You speak like someone who knows the silence beneath creation."
"I'm the echo of a war that never ended," he said.
A pause.
Then she smiled.
"Good. I'm tired of waiting."
Unbound Team HQ
They didn't return to the floating cities or ancient ruins.
Descentedrain had Joab draw a base into existence.
A living fortress of psychic stone, floating in between dimensions—invisible to the physical world, but anchored above the ruins of old Notoriouslandia.
Its name:
UNBOUND TEAM HEADQUARTERS
Inside, it shimmered with technology Joab invented with pen strokes, reinforced with Sapphire's interdimensional crystals and protected by Kukranchunlikryting's toxic beasts patrolling the walls.
They trained there. Planned there.
Waited there.
They knew the seal on the Door of Never was weakening.
They knew the Immortals of Notoriouslandia had not given their power to a boy just for remembrance.
"We're not a resistance," Descentedrain told them one night, staring into the surveillance feed showing the shifting chains of the Door.
"We're the second apocalypse… meant to stop the first."
And in the deepest part of the Earth—
Septiceye waited menacingly...