CHAPTER 523: EQUAL

Seris looked her dead in the eye. "He is now."

Before anyone could speak, the ground trembled again—harder this time. Ashwing clung to Lindarion’s hair with a strangled squeak.

A wave of sand rippled outward from the center of the rings.

Then—

Something rose from beneath.

Not a creature.

Not a person.

Not even a spirit.

A structure.

A monolithic slab of obsidian-black stone pushing up from the earth, as if something below had forced it upward. Runes covered its surface—not glowing, not active, but vibrating with restrained power.

Nysha stared. "A... sentinel monolith? In this region? That’s impossible, they’re all dormant—"

"This one wasn’t," Lindarion said quietly.

Ashwing pointed frantically. "Look at the top! LOOK at the TOP!"

They did.

And froze.

At the very peak of the monolith stood a silhouette—tall, slender, wrapped in wind-worn desert cloth. Two curved horns arched from his head, gleaming like polished obsidian. His eyes burned like dim starlight behind the cloth mask.

A celestial hybrid.

Not fully mortal.

Not fully cosmic.

A messenger of the outer pantheon.

Vaelion’s hand tightened on his sword. "A Celestial Scribe..."

"No," Seris whispered. "Not a scribe. A Herald."

Nysha’s breath caught. "They haven’t appeared in centuries."

Ashwing groaned. "Of COURSE one shows up now—!"

The Herald lifted a hand, and the desert wind immediately stilled. Every grain of sand froze mid-shift. Even sound seemed to collapse into silence.

Then the Herald spoke.

His voice wasn’t loud.

It didn’t need to be.

It slid directly into the mind—smooth, resonant, undeniable.

"Lindarion of Eldorath.

The Pantheon acknowledges your awakening."

Vaelion swore under his breath. Nysha grabbed Lindarion’s arm. Ashwing fainted.

The Herald continued.

"Your resonance has crossed the threshold.

Your path now intersects the cosmic chain.

And the devourer’s heart stirs in anticipation."

Lindarion stepped forward. Calm. Steady.

"What do the cosmic deities want with me?"

The Herald tilted his head slightly, as though amused.

"Not want, child of shifting fate.

Warn."

The monolith pulsed beneath him.

"The South is no longer a battlefield.

It is a convergence."

Nysha swallowed hard. "Of what?"

The Herald’s eyes burned brighter.

"Of all who seek to shape the Devourer’s fate.

Including you."

The air tightened around them—heavy, electric, almost unbearable.

Then the Herald spoke one last sentence, quiet and devastating:

"Dythrael moves to greet you.

And so do the gods."

The monolith sank back into the earth, the Herald vanishing with it.

The wind returned.

The desert breathed again.

No one spoke.

Lindarion finally turned south, expression carved from iron.

"We keep going."

Nysha exhaled shakily. "Into a convergence of cosmic deities, eldritch serpents, and ancient forces."

Ashwing groaned. "And no breakfast."

Vaelion adjusted his cloak. "May the stars guide us."

Seris murmured, "You are walking toward something the world has not seen since the primordial era."

Lindarion’s steps didn’t falter.

"That’s fine," he said. "I’m not walking to witness it."

He looked toward the horizon where Luneth waited—somewhere.

"I’m walking to end it."

For most travelers, the desert was a predictable thing.

Hot. Wide. Dead.

Sand, wind, the occasional dune worm.

For Lindarion’s group, however, the desert became something else entirely.

The moment the Herald vanished, something shifted. The sky—still dark—refused to brighten. No dawn. No paling at the horizon. The stars didn’t fade.

Nysha’s voice was tight. "Why is it still night?"

Ashwing flapped anxiously. "Maybe the gods hit pause?"

Vaelion scanned the heavens. "No. The constellations are wrong. They’re... moving."

He pointed upward.

Nysha stared. "Stars don’t drift like that."

"They do," Seris murmured. "But only when something is rewriting the sky’s upper mana fields."

"Rewriting?" Ashwing squeaked. "Like—editing?"

Lindarion stopped walking.

Because he felt it too.

A tug in the cosmic lattice, subtle but enormous. As if a hand—massive, cold, ancient—pressed gently against the world’s outer shell.

Not enough to break anything.

Just enough to remind the world that it could.

Nysha edged closer to Lindarion. "This is because of you, isn’t it?"

He didn’t deny it.

Instead, he raised his head and listened.

The desert was never silent, not truly. It breathed, it shifted, it whispered.

But now—

Nothing.

Even the wind had died.

Seris was the first to recognize the signs. "A null-pressure zone. Something is drawing in ambient mana."

"Something big?" Ashwing asked.

Seris didn’t answer.

Because the horizon suddenly flickered—like the air itself was glitching.

And then the "stars" moved again, sliding across the sky like fireflies caught in a jar that was being shaken.

Vaelion stepped forward, cloak billowing. "Everyone stay behind me."

But Lindarion didn’t move.

His eyes turned east.

Where a storm was forming.

A storm made of... nothing.

No sand.

No clouds.

No rain.

No lightning.

Just a rotating mass of absence, spiraling slowly like a wound in the world.

Nysha hissed, "Voidstorm."

"No," Lindarion murmured. "This is different."

Seris’s voice trembled for the first time. "Something is distorting reality. This isn’t void. It’s... unmaking. Anti-creation. Only one thing ever used this kind of energy—"

She stopped.

Because the storm suddenly pulsed.

And a single figure stepped out of the distortion.

A humanoid shape.

Tall.

Shrouded in strips of fabric that fluttered despite the dead air.

Six eyes glowed faint white across the face—three stacked on each side.

A mouthless visage.

Arms too long.

Feet that didn’t touch the sand.

Nysha immediately summoned her blade. "That’s NO god I know."

"It’s not a god," Vaelion said. "It’s an emissary."

Seris shook her head. "No. Worse."

Ashwing hid behind Lindarion’s shoulder. "Worse than a god?!"

Lindarion knew.

The moment those six eyes locked onto him, he knew.

"A Void Shepherd," he said.

Nysha paled. "Those extinct things from the wars before the First Era?"

"Not extinct."

The Shepherd tilted its head, and the world bent slightly with the motion. Its gaze was not hateful. Not cruel. Not anything mortal minds could name.

It lifted one elongated hand.

The joints cracked backwards.

Reality twitched.

Then it spoke.

Its voice was not a voice—more like a chorus of whispers layered through endless distance.

"Lindarion of Eldorath.

The Devourer knows your scent."

Ashwing screamed quietly.

The Shepherd walked toward them, footsteps silent, its limbs swaying like a puppet on invisible strings.

Nysha blocked Lindarion instinctively—even though it was useless. "Lindarion, step BACK."

"No," he said.

Seris grabbed his arm. "You don’t understand—Void Shepherds don’t negotiate. They don’t talk. They ERASE."

The Shepherd stopped only a few paces from Lindarion.

It towered over him, faceless, unreadable, limbs folding and unfolding like origami made of bone.

Again, that whisper-chorus:

"The path is chosen.

The fates converge.

The heart awakens."

Then it leaned slightly closer.

If it had breath, it would have kissed his forehead.

"You are the fulcrum."

Suddenly the air around Lindarion bent inward, as if gravity reversed around him. Nysha staggered, Vaelion was forced back, Seris’s shadow magic recoiled as if burned.

Ashwing screamed louder. "I DON’T LIKE THIS I DON’T LIKE THIS—"

The Shepherd reached toward Lindarion’s chest—

not to touch,

but to feel.

The sand at Lindarion’s feet rose in spirals.

Nysha shouted, "MOVE, LIN—!"

Lindarion didn’t.

He stood exactly where he was.

Because he realized something.

The Shepherd wasn’t here to kill him.

It was here to confirm something.

And when its hand hovered inches from his chest—

Lindarion’s mana ignited on its own.

Golden-white.

Pure.

Stabilizing the warped air.

The Shepherd froze.

All six eyes flared white.

It drew back.

Then it said the most alarming sentence yet—

"You are no longer prey."

Nysha’s heart nearly stopped.

Seris covered her mouth.

Vaelion’s grip on his sword tightened until it creaked.

Ashwing fainted again.

And the Shepherd continued:

"The Devourer will address you as an equal."

Before anyone could question it, the Shepherd’s body fragmented—breaking into dust-like pieces that dissolved into the distortion storm.

The storm collapsed.

The stars realigned.

The first light of dawn finally crept over the dunes.

Silence.

A long, devastating silence.

Nysha finally found her voice. "Equal? Equal to the Devourer? Lindarion, what the hell is happening to you?!"

He didn’t answer immediately.

Because he wasn’t looking at her.

Or the sky.

Or the dissipating storm.

He was staring at his own hands.

Steady.

Calm.

Glowing faintly with the same golden-white pulse the Shepherd recognized.

"...Something," he said quietly, "that I didn’t choose."

Then he turned south again and began walking.

"We keep going."

No one argued.

They were too afraid of what might happen if they didn’t.

The world didn’t feel normal again—not even after the Shepherd vanished. Dawn had finally come, yes, but it felt pale and thin, like a copy of daylight rather than the real thing. The group walked in silence, tension coiling around every step.

Hours passed. The dunes shifted. The sky steadied.

But Lindarion didn’t.

Something inside him still resonated—like distant bells in the marrow of his bones.

Nysha stayed close, watching him from the corner of her eye. She didn’t speak, but her grip on her dagger never relaxed. Seris murmured to herself occasionally, running silent calculations in her head. Vaelion kept scanning the horizon, hand on his sword. Ashwing... sat on Lindarion’s shoulder trying to act brave but intermittently trembling.

When the desert finally changed, they all felt it before they saw it.

A cold wind.

Not a desert wind.

A canyon wind.

And then the ground simply dropped away.

"What..." Nysha breathed.

They stood at the edge of a ravine so deep it looked like it had been carved by a god’s blade. The sand did not slope— it ended. A sheer vertical cut descended for what seemed like miles. And the stone inside the ravine walls... was black. Perfectly black. Smooth like obsidian, but somehow more reflective, like polished void.

Ashwing peeked over. "This is how worlds get split in half."

Vaelion knelt, touching the edge. "Not natural. Not carved by water. Not by collapse. This is... deliberate."

Seris closed her eyes, extended her mana. "There’s a barrier. A layered one. Concealment at the top, distortion beneath, and something old below that. Magical signatures woven so tightly even the elves of Sylvarion couldn’t unravel them."