The first scream didn't echo.
Not because it lacked volume—but because this part of the OtherSide had been designed to swallow sound.
Kyon stood high above the Valley of Scorned Echoes, the black wind whipping through his ethereal cloak as the cry of a dying entity faded into the soil like blood into parchment. He didn't blink. The death below was the fourth this morning. The resistance was getting bolder.
From his perch on the fractured monolith of a forgotten bedtime prayer, Kyon watched as two factions clashed far below.
On one side: Hollowborn, malformed wretches stitched together from half-remembered dreams and childhood regrets. Loyal to him.
On the other: the Red Mask Collective, an uprising of abandoned constructs who had begun to believe the Tethered God had become no better than the Ancients he once defied.
They were right. And also very, very wrong.
Let them bleed. Let them scream. Let the fire purge the weak from the strong.
He stepped forward. A red-cloaked figure below—moving faster than any fragment should be able to—twirled through a cluster of Hollowborn. Their curved bone-blade carved a sizzling arc through flesh, spraying a mist of red-black abandonment ichor across the obsidian rocks.
Another Hollowborn shrieked. Limbs folded backward. Skull crushed.
Kyon smiled.
That one… I want alive.
He descended like a god descending from Olympus—though the air here smelled more like wet rust and burnt paper than divine light. His arrival bent the realm around him. Sky cracked. Ground folded. Time itself hiccupped.
The fighting stopped.
The Red Mask warrior turned, weapon still slick. Their face hidden by a cracked porcelain theater mask painted with streaks of crimson tears. Their aura shimmered with defiance—and something else.
Hope.
Dangerous. Infectious.
"Do you know who I am?" Kyon asked, his voice stretched through the air like a blade of glass.
The warrior said nothing. Just raised the blade in defiance.
Then charged.
The duel was immediate. Brutal. One-sided.
The warrior struck first—a low dash, blade sweeping up toward Kyon's exposed ribs. Kyon pivoted slightly, letting the weapon scrape harmlessly across the illusion of his flesh.
Mistake. The warrior hesitated at the lack of resistance.
Kyon's hand lashed out—not with magic, but with brutal, human force. His palm cracked against the side of the warrior's skull. The sound was sharp, wet, final.
But the warrior didn't fall.
Instead, with blood leaking from under their mask, they gripped Kyon's forearm with both hands and bit into his skin with sharp, inhuman teeth.
Kyon flinched.
"Interesting," he whispered, as blood—his blood—spattered across the gray grass.
He lifted his free hand and drove his fingers through the warrior's abdomen, up to the knuckles. The porcelain mask splintered with a muffled moan. The warrior dropped to their knees, clutching their stomach, still twitching as imagination leaked from their wound like flickering strands of thought.
Kyon knelt beside them.
"Who taught you to fight like that?"
The warrior spit a tooth. "We remember… what you forgot."
And then—without warning—their body ignited. Not in flame, but in unraveling. Memories broke apart. The bones became language. The skin became song. The weapon fell from their hand with a shriek.
They had chosen self-erasure. Suicide by unmaking. A message.
Kyon stood slowly, blood still dripping from his hand.
"The rebellion is no longer hiding," he muttered. "They're ready to be seen."
Behind him, one of his Hollowborn generals stepped forward. "My lord… what do you command?"
Kyon turned, eyes glowing with stormlight.
"We give them what they want."
"We give them a stage."
"We give them war disguised as entertainment."
He raised his arm, and the sky above them shimmered. A great spiral of symbols began to form—ancient glyphs that hadn't been seen since the Ancients first declared dominion.
A proclamation to the entire realm.
THE TRIAL OF UNMAKING BEGINS IN SEVEN DAYS.
Let the abandoned fight for the right to shape the future.
Let the forgotten prove their worth.
Let the gods bleed.