The moon hung blood-red over the Hollow Expanse, its crimson light casting jagged shadows across the wasteland of broken dreams and shattered realities. The air itself seemed to bleed, thick with the metallic taste of ancient curses and the whispered screams of those who had dared to venture too close to the forbidden gate.
Valerian stood on cracked obsidian stone, each fragment reflecting distorted images of possible futures—most of them ending in death. His dark coat flapped in the wind like the wings of some great carrion bird, and the chill of cursed mana brushed against his skin, leaving trails of frost that burned rather than cooled. Before him, the enormous gate carved into the mountain—the Gate of Lament—began to pulse with a rhythm that matched the dying heartbeat of the world itself. The ancient seal, painstakingly maintained for over a thousand years, now fractured like an eggshell preparing to birth something monstrous.
