POV 1: Solomon Kane – Abyssal Ruins, Beneath the Southern Ice

The water clung to Solomon like oil now. Not cold. Not wet. Just wrong. His dive suit was shredded in places, scorched by energies no material science could explain. Behind him, Reina's panicked voice crackled over the comms, increasingly distorted.

“Solomon—get out of there! That thing’s watching you!”

He floated in the abyss, a lone figure beneath the frozen shell of the world, facing the obsidian pyramid that had awakened. Its eye had not blinked. It had stared into him. Through him.

No, not stared. Spoken.

“You sealed me once. You won’t again.”

He didn’t understand what it meant—what he had sealed. But somewhere in the back of his mind, something old shifted. A memory not his own. A war waged in stars that had long since died.

A sound echoed from the structure. Rhythmic. Like breathing.

Then movement.

Stone peeled apart like petals. Runes lit across the structure, not with magic, but something deeper—primordial script that pulsed with meaning and will. Not Elven. Not human. Not from this reality.

And from the opening, a shape emerged. Humanoid. Hooded in liquid black, limbs flowing like smoke—no face, just a void that drew in light and sound. Yet Solomon heard words.

Not with ears. With soul.

“We remember you, Gatebreaker.”

Solomon’s breath caught.

“You carry the wound. The scar left when you touched the edge.”

Visions slammed into his mind—battlefields beyond galaxies, dying gods, a ring of black fire around a screaming planet. And himself—no longer human—standing in armor that rippled with shadows, wielding a blade made from the memory of fear.

“The Seal fractured. The bindings rot. You are needed.”

He collapsed, the pressure of the truth suffocating.

“Kneel, Solomon Kane.”

His body obeyed before his mind caught up. He fell onto the sea floor as if gravity had inverted. The creature raised a hand and drew a symbol in the water—a spiral intersected with a burning eye. The glyph seared itself into the space between them.

“We name you: Abyss Knight.”

Darkness surged.

It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t power. It was understanding. He saw the abyss for what it was—not evil, not corruption, but the shadow cast by all light. The necessary silence between stars. The gatekeepers of forbidden knowledge.

And now, he was one of them.

The ocean exploded.

POV 2: Reina Morales – Recon Sub Starlance

The Starlance rocked hard as a shockwave tore through the water. Sonar screamed, systems went dead, and the viewport cracked with glowing veins of pressure and magic. Reina cursed, gripping the helm.

Then she saw it.

Solomon Kane rose from the trench, but he was no longer just a man. Armor of swirling dark metal clung to his frame, alive and shifting, a helmet forming with a crescent-shaped visor that pulsed faintly. In his hand was a weapon—not a sword, not a gun, but a shape that the eye refused to hold.

“Solomon…?”

His voice came through the comms. Calm. Serene. Different.

“I remember now. I remember what they were. What we were.”

“We?”

“The Abyss Knights. We were the first. We kept the balance when the First Gates opened. Before Forestia. Before Earth. Before time bled.”

The abyss behind him pulsed like a heartbeat. Creatures stirred. Eyes opened in the dark.

“I need to return to the surface,” Solomon said.

Reina hesitated. “What are you now?”

He turned to her slowly.

“The one thing that still remembers how to fight what’s coming.”

POV 3: Jamie Lancaster – UN Arcology, Geneva

The images from Starlance had the entire science council in chaos. Solomon’s transformation, the emergence of the ruins, and the creature that had spoken—none of it could be explained.

Jamie stood in the central holochamber, trying to make sense of the recordings.

Leylines were fluctuating again. The energy patterns around Antarctica had gone from erratic to coordinated. Something was building.

And now Solomon Kane—her rescuer, her friend—was something else entirely.

Her fingers trembled as she opened the last transmission from Starlance—Solomon’s voice.

“Jamie, if you get this… I need you to find the record of the Seven Seals. It’s buried in the Elven archives beneath Geneva. The truth about the Abyss isn’t in human history. It’s in theirs. They fought it once too. They just forgot.”

She stared at the encrypted Elven archive locked behind diplomatic firewalls.

She would break in tonight.

POV 4: Mary – Orbital Station, Earthwatch

Mary watched the footage from Starlance and felt a chill in her bones.

Not from fear.

From recognition.

She had seen symbols like those in the Old Temple of Lunar Ashes—before the war. Forbidden texts claimed they were marks left by the “Outer Walkers”—beings even Luna herself feared. She had dismissed it then. She couldn’t now.

Beside her, Dyug stirred in his stasis field.

For the first time, he whispered.

“Knight of the Abyss… the Watchers will stir…”

Mary leaned closer. “What did you say?”

“He opens the path… but they walk in shadow… behind…”

She stepped back. Her own instincts screaming.

The Gate in Forestia had opened.

The one below Antarctica had stirred.

And now, Solomon Kane—a human—had become the first of the old guardians.

“May Luna protect us,” she said.

But deep down, she feared Luna was not enough.

POV 5: Queen Elara – Forestia, True Gate Chamber

The creature that stepped through the True Gate was beautiful and wrong. Not flesh. Not soul. Possibility made manifest.

It walked like memory and shadow. Its voice, when it spoke, made the priests bleed from the ears.

“Your kind once helped close the Wound.”

Elara’s mouth was dry. “We remember nothing of this.”

“Because you were made to forget.”

Vyelar raised his blade. “What do you want?”

The creature’s body pulsed—reality bending around it.

“To finish what was started. The Seal is undone. The Abyss wakes. And so must we.”

It turned toward Elara.

“You summoned me. So now, you must choose.”

Elara clenched her fists. “Choose what?”

The void-being raised its hand—and the True Gate showed Solomon Kane clad in dark armor, standing at the edge of the Southern World.

“Your ancient enemy now bears our mark. The balance tilts. Decide quickly, Elven Queen. Will you join the abyss… or be consumed by it?”

POV 6: Solomon Kane – Antarctica, Standing Alone

The storm howled around him, the auroras above bleeding into shades no human eye should perceive. Solomon stood at the edge of the trench where the abyssal pyramid had risen.

His new armor felt like a second skin. Alive. Whispering. It didn’t tell him what to do—it remembered for him. Tactics. Rituals. Secrets.

He raised his hand, and the blade responded—lengthening into a jagged weapon that looked forged from the scream of stars.

He felt them stirring beneath the ice.

Not Elves.

Not humans.

Not even Abyss.

Something older still.

He turned toward the horizon.

“If I am the First Abyss Knight… then it falls to me to warn the worlds.”

Above, the stars flickered unnaturally. One of them blinked—and didn’t reopen.