Six Eldritch floated above the debris field, suspended on translucent veils of energy. Their shapes varied, silhouettes of crooked bone, stitched flesh, and mechanical sew.

Each of them a senior Watcher assigned to spatial breach containment.

One of them spoke, its voice layered, dissonant, trembling in frequencies not meant for human comprehension:

"We are not prepared for this."

Another, shaped like a crown of roots with a silver face plate, pulsed in agreement.

"The summoning platform was vaporized. That was not a response. That was... acceptance."

The thir, an eye housed in a rotating cage of bone and blood-veined crystal, focused on the figure standing at the epicenter.

"He hasn't moved, not since reformation."

There he stood...Wang Xiao.

The black robe he wore hadn't been stitched, it had grown from the surrounding matter.

He had shaped his body like a potter with clay, sculpted from aether, stone, and rage.

His hair, filled with energy residue.

His face tense.

His eyes, those terrible crimson eyes, fixed on something beyond the horizon.

He wasn't watching them.

He wasn't watching anything.

He was listening.

To the world itself.

More Eldritch gathered on the distant ridges.

Floating titans, skittering dreadforms with faces of writhing runes.

Mechanical watchers with solar engines for hearts.

They didn't attack.

They studied.

Hesitant and uncertain.

"What's he waiting for?" muttered General El'Zuur, commander of the Ninth Flame Division.

He stood taller than the rest, wrapped in heavy ceremonial red armor grown from silverwood and hardened regrets. His face was buried beneath a shroud of smoke.

Beside him, his lieutenant, Kael-Rai, a youngling compared to the others, a mere three centuries old, tapped his cane against the obsidian floor, nervous.

"He looks… small. Smaller than I expected."

El'Zuur didn't laugh. He didn't blink.

"So do neutron stars, boy."

Then, movement.

Wang Xiao blinked.

That was all.

But the wind stopped.

The smoke from the blast froze.

Even the ash paused the the space, like reality itself had flinched.

The silence shattered when an envoy floated forward, hovering slowly on a crescent platform of blue flame.

It bore the insignia of the Yin Faction's diplomatic core.

The figure on it bowed, a being cloaked in folded silk made of shadows, its face carved smooth like moonstone.

Its voice was calm, layered in etiquette and tradition.

"Honored entity… I am Envoy-Vek Tal, second voice of the Eastern High Conclave. By the will of the Great Lord of Yin, I come to speak."

No reply.

"We acknowledge… your presence was not expected. Nor was your acceptance of the summoning tether. But we assure you, we seek only dialogue. Harmony. Mutual understanding."

Wang Xiao tilted his head. "And you're here to negotiate on behalf of your leader?"

The envoy, surprised that its language could be understood, hesitated.

"Yes. It is tradition."

Wang Xiao took a step forward.

Just one.

And something beneath the envoy's platform cracked.

Not the stone.

Not the platform.

The light.

The light around him fractured, like a mirror held too long in silence.

His next words were spoken without anger, without cruelty.

"Tradition…"

Another step.

"…They follow traditions… in a place like this?"

Before Vek Tal could retreat, the sky screamed.

Bang!

A wave of pressure exploded from Wang Xiao's body, bundless, colorless, but absolute.

The envoy didn't fall.

He evaporated.

No blood.

No scream.

No resistance.

Just silence.

And dust.

"Fallback!" El'Zuur roared.

The army reacted at once.

Millions of Eldritch, of every shape and form, moved as one.

Glowing shields erected, runes locked in the air, void-pylons activated across the ridges, spinning anti-existence fields.

Thousands of spear-bearing guardians launched into the sky like a meteor swarm, surrounding the point of impact.

"He is not to be destroyed!" El'Zuur shouted again. "He is to be examined—dissected if needed!"

"Bind him! Now!"

They surrounded him.

A million strong.

Their formation closed like a net.

And that's when Wang Xiao smiled.

His body trembled.

Once.

Then...It dissolved.

Dark matter exploded outward, not like gas, but like hunger.

The cloud roared across the field, an unnatural tide.

It didn't drift.

It chased.

It moved with intent.

Faster than thought.

Smarter than fear.

The front lines screamed.

But sound didn't carry.

The first five thousand turned to bone.

Then ash.

Then nothing.

El'Zuur watched in horror.

"It's conscious. The smoke, it's him!"

Kael-Rai shouted beside him.

"We can't contain it, he's spreading into the local time layers!"

Too late.

The command pylons blinked red.

The terrain was being rewritten.

Reality here no longer belonged to the Netherworld.

They tried to flee.

El'Zuur turned to escape, activating emergency phase-step, but the smoke caught him mid-jump.

He collapsed, armor imploding inward like a dying star.

Kael-Rai screamed, tried to reach him, only to see his mentor fold into a perfect cube of flesh and bone, which then collapsed into dust.

The smoke didn't roar.

It didn't speak.

It only devoured.

And it kept expanding.

Like a wound that refused to close.

Like judgment.

By the time an hour passed, there was no battlefield.

Only a field of abandoned bones, shattered land, and ruined structures.

And the Netherworld whispered across every domain:

"The Eastern Block has fallen."

"The summoning failed."

"The Calamity walks free."

_____

The Capital, Northern Block, Throne of the Great Lord!

The palace was silent.

Not the silence of peace.

But the silence that arrives after a scream too large for the space to hold. ThiscontentwasfirstreleasedonMV_LEMPYR.

The Capital Spire of the Yin Faction, seat of the Great Lor, stood above the clouds like a god's fang, piercing through the folded sky.

Within its core, past hundreds of guards, sacrificial channels, and warlocks chained to time-warping glyphs, sat a single throne.

Monolithic.

Carved from condensed void crystal and bound with silver blood.

There, the Great Lord of Yin sat motionless, an entity without defined shape. Cloaked in living shadows, eyes like black stars flickering behind a porcelain mask that smiled too gently to be sane.

Before him, a scrying orb the size of a man's torso floated above a basin of liquid memory.

The orb pulsed, and displayed Hell.

A servant knelt below, trembling, three knees touching the black floor, forehead pressed to the stone.

His voice was small, too small for the size of the throne room. And yet it echoed, as if the room itself wanted every word heard.

"My Lord… containment has failed."

The orb shifted, showing footage from scry-probes before they were disintegrated.

What remained of the Eastern Block was a sea of roiling black mist, moving like the opened mouth of a cosmic beast.

It crawled over ruined cities.

Swallowed towers whole.

Turned reality to ruin.

Every method of suppression, runes, bindings, collapse-level incantations, had only fed the phenomenon. The more they tried to contain it, the more it expanded.

As if it fed on effort.

The servant's voice echoed.

"All contact with the Eastern Block has ceased. Thirty percent of the Faction's land has been… infected."

"Casualties are estimated at eighty-four billion, not including dimensional ruptures and soul-collapse zones."

"The two ruling Lords of the Eastern Block… have fallen."

The orb flashed, showing an image frozen at the moment of annihilation. Two towering beings turning to flame. Then to ash. Then to nothing.

The Great Lord did not move.

But the pressure in the throne room descended, like space itself was barely holding.

"How?" the Great Lord finally asked.

His voice did not echo.

It reverberated, through the walls, through the soul, through the idea of being.

The servant swallowed hard.

"The invader… he came prepared, Lord."

"He utilized… soul detonations. High-tier ones. We were still experimenting with such weapons in our arsenal, but this entity has already mastered them!"

That drew silence.

"Explain."