Crimson Ascension

Draven wandered in a place where thought and spirit held no weight, where pain was a distant afterthought. There was peace in knowing that nothing mattered anymore, that the burdens forced upon him once before no longer pressed him down with the consequences of failure.

What burdens? He couldn't remember. How did I get here? He no longer knew. If it escaped his memory, perhaps it wasn't important.

Two broken suns shone above his head, their fading light barely enough to illuminate the darkness that permeated every corner of where he was. A crimson sphere, riddled with cracks and on the verge of collapse, encompassed the world, sheltered it from what lay beyond. Draven examined the suns. Ruptured, leaking light, pieces crumbling, only to float around in a ring of debris.

A part of himself despaired at the sight, cried in anguish, but that voice was too muffled to hear. Why would he resent the destruction of a sun? It had never been his creation in the first place—no one could craft a force of nature such as a sun. The sentiment was foreign, illogical, yet he felt it all the same.

The world shook with every passing second. Outside, black lightning struck the crimson sphere with an intent to destroy it, rid reality of its existence. Draven knew both forces were not of his making, the same way he understood he would cease to be if the black lightning succeeded. Yet why did he need to prevent it? Existing. Not existing. It was all the same; his life carried no weight.

No, he denied. His soul shook with those words even as the two suns crumbled to pieces. Others depend on me, he thought, but couldn't remember who those others were.

Draven noticed for the first time the presence of something foreign inside the crimson sphere. Inky black vines squeezed through the cracks in the shield—it was a shield, after all. He remembered it now. The Unbreakable Veil, which ironically enough, was on the verge of breaking. The black tendrils wrapped around his consciousness, dug into his head, urged him to forget about their existence.

A part of himself, small, muffled, cried for help. It begged to be heard. The black tendrils silenced it as the lightning struck his shield with renewed effort. Unbeknownst to Draven, he recited the words someone else had told him long ago—someone he hated and respected at the same time.

"Inside my soul, I am the sole ruler." His voice shattered the black vines until nothing remained.

The voice he had been struggling to hear became louder, intelligible. "Aiden! Help… please, I can't hold it anymore." It was the Hemomorph. Morph. A part of himself that wasn't himself.

Memories flooded Draven's mind like a torrent of rage and fury. In an instant, he remembered everything. He focused his will on the sphere, commanding the cracks to reform, ordering the shield to stand strong.

"Morph!" Draven looked at his astras, or what remained of them. Destroyed. Crumbled to pieces. "What happened here?"

The serpent materialized on his arm, but its usual luster was gone—what was once crimson now resembled a lifeless gray. "That thing… It shattered the shield you wove. It damaged the astras before I could make a new one."

Rage burned inside Draven's heart. How dare it, whatever it was, destroy what he had been painstakingly building? The rage turned into wrath. He would make it pay. No matter the cost, he'd make sure it understood the consequences of its actions.

"What do we do now?" Morph laid his head on Draven's arm, defeated in both soul and spirit. "It's all gone. Everything we've built."

"Not everything, Morph. The astras are broken, but their hexion remains. The rifts remain." Draven needed not look, to feel their presence. He willed refined hexion to flow into the serpent, mending the damages done to its spirit. Gray turned to pure crimson.

"I need you to hold it again," Draven grunted, losing the struggle against the forces beyond with every passing second. The lightning had to be held back if he wanted a chance to reform their astras. "Can you buy me some time?"

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"Consider it done." Morph leaped from Draven's arm, and the Hemomorph's Mantle burst into existence around its spirit. "You're terrible at making shields, anyway."

Draven would need to do the impossible, something that had never been done before. He'd need to reform their astras, create new ones like the Sixfold Corridor once had. But the task was already difficult to do once, if not impossible. Attempting to do it twice, simultaneously, lowered his chances of succeeding to a level he wasn't comfortable risking.

Time was lacking, but his resolve was not.

The lightning outside grew stronger by the second, and once it fully broke through his shield, a battle of wills was bound to take place. He needed to be ready for the breach. He needed to be stronger than he was—than he had ever been. So he summoned his will around the astras like a misty cloud of blood, pushing them closer, together. If he lacked the time to forge two astras, then he'd make one.

The rifts, the tears on his soul that connected the realm beyond the crimson door to himself, were distinct. No longer! He ordered. His will turned to Ekron, pressing the two tears together, brooking no resistance. Pain laced his actions, paved a path to the center of his spirit as the fissures were forced together into a larger one.

Not enough, he thought. Whatever sort of creature had attacked him was strong, more powerful than anything he'd ever faced. It defied what he knew about the boundaries of Empyrean power, for its power dwarfed even the Chaos Perfected. Beating it was beyond his means; he knew it deep down.

He needed sufficient strength to escape.

With a grim resolve, Draven forged claws of hexion and will. He walked in front of the fissure, facing the darkness of the void beyond. It was a doorway that allowed him to beckon un-imbued hexion from another realm, limited by the size of its creation. No matter how strong he was, there was only so much hexion he could beckon at a time.

Draven snarled at that idea. Chains had bound him before, but he refused to allow them to shackle him again. Gritting his teeth, he held the ends of the fissure in his hands and pried them open. He forged hooks of congealed blood, willing them to pull from all sides. The rift grew wider, vaster, unstable. Draven smothered the edges with his will, molding the rift into a sphere—a dark revolving portal that tore his soul the more it expanded.

Even one more inch would make the instability critical, so he let it be. His job was done. The hole in his soul was magnitudes vaster than what it had been before, so it would restrict his beckoning no longer. But it was not an astra, merely an oversized rift. To forge one, he'd need hexion—a lot of hexion.

So he beckoned.

His command touched the rift, and a tidal wave of crimson fire responded. It flooded his soul in an instant, imbued with his will to a point where he'd have filled his previous reserves in an instant. Draven suppressed the excitement; he couldn't allow himself to grow complacent, not when Morph bet his life on buying him time.

Condense! He molded the refined hexion into a sphere around the rift, willing all the newly imbued energy to gather around it in a protective shield. It felt much like weaving a shield, except the Unbreakable Veil had been flawed. Nothing was unbreakable—no matter how much Draven wanted to convince himself otherwise, he knew that was a lie.

It was hard to break, perhaps nearly impossible for even the strongest of Empyreans, but not impossible. The Maker had made the material. If he made it, perhaps he could break. It was only a matter of how strong you hit it. As the Archon of Blood, Draven had never truly relied on the durability of his body; it helped him, that much was true, but if he received a wound, he had the confidence to Mend it.

The realization opened a path in his mind, a road which he had never contemplated before. He had been approaching the shields wrong from the beginning, playing to the strength and beliefs of others rather than his strength. No longer.

His shield, his astra, they could break, but they would never again remain broken. He was the Archon of Blood; no wound could defy his mending will. Draven infused that belief into the hexion and let it congeal into a shield around the rift. A runic circuit burst into existence around it, flaring to light with a thought.

A gigantic sun burst into flames inside his soul, immersing his spirit with power and confidence. It was larger than the sum of both broken parts once had been, greater than an astra had any right to be.

Draven mustered his will around himself and into his soul and spoke.

"It's alright, Morph. Inside my soul—our soul—we are the rulers. Let it in." His words alone caused the lightning to falter. "It's time for retribution."

Morph heaved a sigh, but let the shield fade, not a hint of distrust in Draven's confidence. He vanished from sight, returning to slumber inside the flaring sun that stood at Draven's back.

The lightning didn't strike. Tendrils of darkness didn't attempt to rob Draven of his memories. Instead, the darkness spoke.

"It is generous of you to bring a Fragment of Eternity to me," it spoke.

The darkness assumed the vague shape of a man. But Draven knew it was no man, for horns burst from its temple. Eyes burned like molten metal.