Chapter Text
The Time When Lohen and Varka Got Thrown 500 yrs ago In Nod - Krai
The battlefield outside Nod-Krai was already fractured, sky split with violet fault-lines as Abyss monsters poured through rifts between frozen ruins and shattered lightposts. Varka and Lohen fought at the forward line, blades and steel trading space with howling darkness. Behind them, Illuga moved like a contained storm, his strikes carving clean arcs through corruption, while Flins held the flank, keeping the swarm from collapsing inward.
“Left side is breaking, Young master.” Flins shouted, dragging his blade through a creature that dissolved into ash and purple smoke.
“I see it, also DONT CALL ME THAT FLINS!,” Illuga answered, flushed and embarrassed, voice tight, eyes locked on Lohen’s position. “Don’t let them reach him.” His jaw clenched so hard it looked painful, and the heat in his face only made his glare sharper. He thought, with grim irritation, that Flins had chosen the worst possible time to be insufferable.
Lohen barely had time to turn before the ground beneath him folded. His breath hitched as the stone vanished into a hungry drop, and for one stunned second he thought the world itself had decided to betray him. Then gravity snapped its teeth into him.
It was not an explosion. It was an inversion. A circular tear opened beneath Varka and Lohen, pulling light inward like water down a drain.
Varka reached for Lohen on instinct, armor scraping stone, but the pull was absolute.
“You absolute idiot, why are you always standing near the cursed hole?!” Lohen shouted, flailing as the world tilted.
“Me? You’re the one who ran toward it like a heroic fool!” Varka snapped back, voice shredded by the wind.
“I did not run, I was trying to get away from it, you oversized brick!” Lohen yelled, even as they both pitched deeper into the dark.
“You call me stupid while you are literally falling into the abyss with me?!” Varka barked, and even through the panic, both of them had the same miserable thought: they were, without question, the stupidest men alive.
“Lohen!” Illuga’s voice cut through the chaos, sharper than steel. His eyes tracked the collapsing tear like it was an execution order being signed in real time. His thoughts twisted, furious and panicked at once, that Lohen had somehow managed to be reckless again even in a situation actively trying to kill him.
At the same time, Flins skidded forward on fractured stone, staring at Varka disappearing into the pull. His expression tightened into raw disbelief, then irritation that bordered on affection-soured frustration. He thought, with immediate resignation, that Varka had the survival instincts of a charging battering ram with no brakes.
Varka and Lohen were gone.
Illuga stood frozen for half a second too long, the Abyss pressing in around him. Flins swore under his breath, tightening his grip.
“They’re not dead,” Flins said, more command than reassurance. “Focus. We first must head to Piramida to regroup.”
The fall had no end and no direction. Time stopped behaving like time, stretching into a silent pull where up and down lost their meaning. Varka couldn’t tell if he was falling for seconds or hours.
Varka hit ground first, rolling across frozen stone that felt wrong immediately. Lohen landed harder beside him, breath knocked out, vision blurred with pale light. Above them, the sky was intact, but unfamiliar, too clean, too structured, as if reality had been rebuilt with different tools.
“Why do you always land like a collapsed building?!” Lohen wheezed, clutching his ribs as he tried to sit up. “Me? You were literally screaming the entire way down like a broken alarm bell!” Varka shot back, coughing as he pushed himself upright. “I was reacting to the fact that gravity betrayed us!” Lohen snapped. “Gravity did not betray you, you just fell like an idiot!” Varka replied immediately. “Says the man who chose to fall with me instead of letting go!”
No Wild Hunt. No fractures. No screaming rifts. Only an unnatural stillness that pressed against their ears like damp cloth. Even the air felt organized, as if it had been filed into place.
Just silence.
And towers.
They stood, slowly. The landscape of Nod-Krai was still recognizable in shape, but not in truth. The central structure ahead was Piramida, yet it was not the ruined monument they knew. It was intact, elevated, surrounded by orderly tiers of light architecture that pulsed faintly like breathing glass.
Varka’s grip tightened slightly as he took it in. “That… is not reconstruction,” he muttered. “That’s redesign at a scale I don’t like.” Lohen’s gaze followed the glowing edges with a tight swallow. “It looks like someone rewrote the rules and then built on top of them,” he said quietly.
And there were people.
Dozens.
Lightkeepers.
They moved with disciplined precision, not reacting with panic but with immediate containment protocols, turning toward the strangers who had fallen from nowhere as if such arrivals were anticipated. Their formations were too clean, too synchronized, like a single thought expressed through many bodies.
Lohen’s eyes narrowed as he scanned them. “They’re not even hesitating,” he said. “That’s not normal response behavior.” Varka added grimly, “That’s trained expectation. Like they’ve done this before.”
“That’s… impossible,” Lohen whispered, eyes scanning the formations. “Lightkeepers don’t operate in numbers like this.” His voice carried disbelief layered over unease. “At least not in any record I’ve seen,” he added under his breath.
Varka steadied himself, hand still on his weapon. “This is Nod-Krai,” he said slowly, “but not ours.” His tone was flat, but the implication behind it was not.
A horn sounded once.
The Lightkeepers halted in unison.
A figure stepped forward from the lower ring of Piramida, coats marked with unfamiliar sigils. Their voice carried without strain, cutting through the stillness like a blade through glass.
“You are not registered within here,” the Lightkeeper said. “State origin.”
Varka exchanged a glance with Lohen. It was brief, but loaded with everything they were not saying.
Neither answered immediately. Varka’s grip tightened. Lohen’s silence lasted just a fraction too long.
Behind them, the air shimmered faintly, like a wound refusing to fully close. It pulsed once, slow and wrong, as if listening.
And both had the same thought, unspoken but identical: We are so, so screwed. It settled in their minds with the calm certainty of a verdict already delivered.