THE SHADOW OVER THE WORLD

A few light rays of a pale, sickly sun managed to sneak through the cracks in the corrupt sky. The faint light was enough to know that the day had begun, bathing the interior of the cave with a grayish, melancholy hue.

Asimil had awakened hours ago, although he had not moved. Noelia was still asleep next to him, her breathing soft and rhythmic. The tension of the previous night had dissipated, leaving behind a fragile and precious intimacy. He simply watched her, etching in his memory the peace of her face, an anchor in the sea of chaos that was his life.

Ikel snored, a guttural sound that made Luce, sleeping on the other side of the campfire, let out a groan and threw a boot at him without opening his eyes. The boot bounced harmlessly off Ikel's chest, who didn't even flinch. Lyra was meditating in a corner, her silver aura a point of calm in the gloom. For an instant, they almost felt like family.

But before everyone could get up properly, something else woke them up.A tremor.

It was faint at first, a mere shudder in the stone, like the passing of a distant beast. Ikel stopped snoring. — What was that? — The tremor returned, stronger this time. Small pebbles fell from the cave ceiling. The campfire flickered violently.

— This is not a beast! — Lyra shouted, jumping to her feet, her amber eyes wide open. — It's the earth itself! —

The ground began to shake with brutal violence. The walls of the cave cracked, and the trembling became a deep, guttural roar that seemed to come from the bowels of the world. — OUT! EVERYBODY OUT, NOW! — ordered Noelia, now awake and on high alert.

They stumbled out of the cave, struggling to stay on their feet as the world convulsed around them. They clung to the rocks, watching in horror as the trees in the nearby forest swayed as if made of rubber and a fissure opened up in the valley floor.

And then, as abruptly as it began, the shaking stopped.

An unnatural, heavy silence fell over the landscape. The air was charged, thick, as before a thunderstorm. — What... what the hell was that? — gasped Ikel, looking at the destruction around him.

— Don't look at the ground — said Luce, her voice a whisper full of dread. — Look... up.They all looked up. And their breath froze in their lungs. —

The purple sky had disappeared. In its place, a huge, total shadow covered everything. It was not a cloud. It was solid. Floating above them, so vast that its size defied logic, was a floating island.

But it was not a stone castle or a metal fortress. It was a tree.

A colossal tree, dead and ancient, whose gigantic, twisted roots hung down like the snakes of a cosmic jellyfish, some so long that they clawed at the tops of the farthest mountains. The trunk was deep black, like petrified wood, furrowed with cracks that glowed with a sickly violet light. Its branches, bare of leaves, stretched toward the broken sky like the skeletal fingers of a dead god.

It was a vision of pure death and decay. And yet... it was both beautiful and eerie at the same time. On its black, rotting branches grew parasites of unearthly beauty: ghostly orchids that emitted a purple light, crystals that dripped liquid darkness, and vines that seemed woven of shadows.

The floating island was large enough to cover the entire Resistance base and nearby regions, plunging the world into perpetual twilight. It was not a structure; it was a nightmarish ecosystem. And it wasn't just there; they felt its presence. A psychic pressure, a wave of pure despair emanating from the tree, crushing morale, whispering in their minds that all resistance was futile, that the end had come.

There was no escape. There was no running away from something that had blotted out the sky.

A low, deep groan, like that of a dying world, vibrated from the heart of the tree. And then, it began to snow.

Small luminous spores, specks of dark light, began to fall slowly from the hanging roots. They danced in the air, beautiful and silent. One of them landed near Asimil's feet. The instant it touched the ground, the grass blackened and withered. From the point of impact, a small, twisted Void monster sprouted from the earth, hissing.

They looked around them. Hundreds, thousands of spores were falling all over the valley, all over the horizon. Each one was a seed of corruption, a soldier of the apocalypse.Spectro's fortress was not somewhere they had to go. The fortress had come to them.

It was not the beginning of the final battle. It was the beginning of the end of the world.