CHAPTER 57: CHAPTER 57: THE HEART OF DARKNESS

Evon was halfway across the Atlantic when every alarm on Earth started screaming.

The military transport he was aboard shuddered as emergency broadcasts flooded the communication systems. Pilots shouted coordinates. Radar operators called out impossible readings. Through the small window, Evon could see other aircraft changing course, all heading toward the same destination.

South America.

The Amazon.

"What’s happening down there?" Evon asked the flight commander, a stern-faced woman named Captain Rodriguez.

She handed him a tablet showing satellite feeds. "See for yourself."

The images were grainy but clear enough. The entire Amazon rainforest was covered in a swirling black dome of energy, easily a hundred kilometers across. Lightning crackled around its edges, and the surrounding landscape was already showing signs of corruption—trees withering, rivers turning black, animals fleeing in all directions.

"How long has this been going on?" Evon asked.

"Started about twenty minutes ago. Every Black Force cell across the planet went dark at the exact same moment. Then this appeared."

Evon’s comm unit buzzed with an urgent message from Commander Jaun. "Evon, please tell me you’re seeing this."

"I’m seeing it. What’s the assessment?"

"Catastrophic. Whatever they’re doing down there, it’s affecting dimensional stability across the entire continent. We’re detecting reality fractures as far north as Mexico and as far south as Argentina."

Evon closed his eyes and reached out to the four goddesses in his soul realm. Their response was immediate and alarmed.

"They can feel it too," Naia said, her usual calm cracked with worry. "Something massive is happening."

"The corruption is deeper than we thought," Lyria added. "This isn’t just about Earth anymore."

"They’re opening a doorway," Veyra’s analytical voice cut in. "A bridge between realms."

Sythara’s draconic presence stirred with anger. "They’re calling something through. Something that shouldn’t exist in this reality."

"Can we stop it?" Evon asked silently.

"Maybe," Naia replied. "But we’d need to get close. Very close."

Evon opened his eyes and looked at Captain Rodriguez. "How fast can this thing go?"

"Why?"

"Because we need to get there before whatever’s happening down there finishes."

As their aircraft approached the edge of the corruption dome, the world below became increasingly alien. The Amazon rainforest, once a green carpet stretching to the horizon, was now a twisted landscape of black trees and smoking rivers.

"I’m reading massive energy signatures at the center of the dome," the radar operator called out. "Something big is moving down there."

"Define big," Rodriguez asked.

"Bigger than anything in our database."

Through the static-filled communications, fragmented reports came in from ground teams that had been in the area when the dome appeared. Most of the transmissions cut off mid-sentence, but one came through clearly:

"All Black Force personnel are converging on a central location. Thousands of them. They’re not fighting—they’re gathering for some kind of ceremony."

Evon gripped the Blade of Fate tighter. "A ceremony?"

His comm unit crackled with Commander Jaun’s voice. "Evon, we’re getting reports that this might be a mass sacrifice ritual. Every Black Force operative on the planet is heading to the same coordinates."

"They’re all going to die?"

"Willingly, from what we can tell. The question is—what are they dying for?"

The aircraft couldn’t penetrate the corruption dome’s energy field, so Evon had to jump from several kilometers out and make his way on foot. As soon as he hit the ground, he could feel the wrongness in the air—a thick, oily sensation that made his skin crawl.

The corrupted forest was eerily quiet. No bird songs, no insect sounds, nothing but the whisper of wind through dead leaves. Evon moved quickly but carefully, using his Eyes of Fate to avoid the worst of the environmental hazards.

After an hour of travel, he began to encounter Black Force operatives. But they weren’t fighting or patrolling—they were walking in the same direction he was, their eyes vacant and their movements mechanical.

"Excuse me," Evon called out to one of them, a man in tactical gear with the Black Force insignia.

The man turned to look at him without stopping. His face was pale and his eyes were completely black. "You shouldn’t be here," he said in a flat, emotionless voice. "This is the hour of ascension."

"Ascension to what?"

"The Great God comes to cleanse this realm. We are honored to provide the bridge."

The man continued walking, and Evon let him go. There was no point in fighting them now—they were already lost.

As he got closer to the center of the dome, Evon encountered more and more Black Force operatives. Hundreds, then thousands, all walking in the same direction with the same vacant expressions.

### The Ritual Site

The center of the corruption dome was a vast clearing where the original stone ring still stood—the same one where the Black Force had first gathered months ago. But now it had grown. The ring was enormous, easily a kilometer across, and filled with a pool of black water that seemed to absorb light.

Around the pool’s edge stood every Black Force operative on Earth. Tens of thousands of them, arranged in perfect concentric circles, all facing inward toward the water.

And floating above the center of the pool was Ahmed Hassan.

But he was no longer the man Evon had glimpsed in intelligence reports. His body flickered between flesh and shadow, and his voice carried across the entire clearing without amplification.

"Brothers and sisters," Ahmed called out, his words echoing strangely. "We have served faithfully, but we have failed in our mission. The one who bears the sealed goddesses has proven too strong for us."

A murmur ran through the assembled crowd—not of disappointment, but of acceptance.

"But failure is not the end," Ahmed continued. "It is merely the beginning of a greater purpose. Today, we offer ourselves willingly so that our master may walk upon this world."

Evon tried to move closer, but the sheer number of Black Force operatives made it impossible. He was one man against an army.

"Great God of the Corrupted Domain," Ahmed’s voice rose to a shout. "We, your loyal servants, were unable to fulfill our mission. We all now offer you our lives. Please, Great God, accept our sacrifice and descend here. Purify this lowly domain with your mighty power!"

### The Sacrifice

What happened next would haunt Evon for the rest of his life.

Every single Black Force operative raised their weapons—knives, guns, blades—and without hesitation, without screaming, without any sign of fear, they ended their own lives.

Thousands upon thousands of people fell simultaneously, their blood flowing into channels that had been carved into the ground, all leading toward the central pool.

Ahmed was the last to fall, plunging from his position above the water directly into the black pool’s center.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Then the pool began to change.

### The Awakening

The black water started to bubble and churn. A strange aura spread outward—not visible, but felt in the bones and the soul. It was the sensation of something vast and alien turning its attention toward this small corner of reality.

Evon felt the four goddesses in his soul realm recoil in fear.

"Run," Naia whispered. "We need to run. Now."

But it was too late.

Black energy erupted from the pool, shooting toward the sky like a reverse lightning strike. The beam punched through the corruption dome and kept going, disappearing into the stratosphere.

The pool itself began to expand, growing larger and deeper with each passing second. And from its depths, something rose.

First came massive hands—each finger the size of a building, dripping with black water that hissed when it hit the ground. Then arms, thick as subway tunnels, covered in what looked like scales but might have been scars.

A torso emerged, broad and muscled like a bodybuilder but wrong in proportions that hurt to look at directly. And finally, a head—humanoid but too large, with features that shifted and changed whenever Evon tried to focus on them.

But the eyes...the eyes remained constant. Two burning red orbs the size of houses, filled with malice and hunger that seemed to reach across dimensions.

The Corrupted Curse God had descended.

Standing nearly a thousand meters tall, it dwarfed everything around it. When it moved, the ground shook. When it breathed, the air itself seemed to recoil.

It looked down at the clearing full of corpses and spoke in a voice like grinding stone and breaking glass:

"AT LAST. THE BARRIER IS WEAK ENOUGH. THIS REALM WILL SERVE."

Then those terrible red eyes focused on Evon, and he felt the weight of divine attention pressing down on him like a mountain.

"AND YOU...YOU WHO CARRIES THE FRAGMENTS OF THE SEALED ONES...YOU WILL BE THE FIRST TO FEED MY HUNGER."

Evon drew the Blade of Fate, its familiar weight somehow insignificant in the face of what loomed before him.

"Well," he said quietly to the goddesses in his soul realm, "any suggestions?"

The silence stretched for a long moment.

Then Sythara spoke, her voice grim but determined:

"We fight."

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