An unknown amount of time had passed before I felt anything again. The first thing I felt that woke me was the dominating power I had come to know. My eyes flew open at the feeling of the entity's presence. When my eyes adjusted, I saw a familiar sight. The dark shadow-cast forest of the fields hung above me. My body was half sunk into the loose soil of the dark forest. Massive roots crawled away from the gigantic pale trees all around me. They poked up like skeletal fingers into a purple-black canopy of shadows.

  “I told you that you could be trapped in other places,” the entity I called Jon stood over me. His voice was very matter-of-fact.

  I stood quickly to my feet to meet him. I was shocked at where I now stood since the last thing I remembered was being shoved through dimensions again as that world fell apart. It was a cataclysm beyond a scale I could describe. I felt like I’d be swallowed by the dying world, forgotten along with it.

  “Yeah… thanks for the help.” I was a little shaky as I said it. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of there. I was just kind of wandering, aimlessly until you spoke to me,” I said, exhaling, thankful that it was over.

  I had so many questions... so much power... so much... everything. This was a whole other level of shit that I wasn't ready for.

  “I did not help you,” the being said.

  “What,” I asked, confused. “But, I heard your voice there. You told me to walk… to keep moving in that direction.”

  “No. What you heard was the one who resides inside of you.” Entity-Jon actually reached out and put his cold hand on my bare chest. “Yes… You are both growing in your power. Soon you’ll be ready.”

  “Wait…” I was so sure that was his voice back there, and ready for what? “What are you talking about… that doesn’t make any sense. I felt your power, the voice I always hear when you reach out to me. And you were… You were there at the end. That was your power…”

  “In the end, yes… but not in the beginning.” He shook his head, “I cannot reach out into that world in any way. It is a domain outside of my normal reach. The only reason you can walk in that world is that your human form cloaks the power that lies inside of you… The blade. That is why, as soon as you transformed and began feeding from it, the Unseen started trying to cast you out.”

  “The Unseen?” I asked. I could feel a dump of information coming.

  The ominously powerful being slowly paced the shadows of the dark forest. He didn’t say a word as he turned to walk, but I knew to follow.

  “The Unseen was a being that called that place home. Yet, he is one of the most active in throwing off the balance in the living world. When someone like Peter… or Mucia reaches out to the other side for greater power, he answers. He had great power within his own dimension, and he could greatly increase the power of those who wished to serve his will in the living world. He causes much of the imbalance that we are here to correct,” Jon continued as he paced.

  “He spoke like… like he knew you. Both of you…” I tried to push the conversation in that direction.

  “He felt the power of his brethren, something he hadn’t felt in ages. That is what he recognized.

  “Brethren?” I asked. “This thing inside of me is… related to that thing?” I started to feel nervous about what that could mean for me and my situation.

  “It was… at a certain time. It was long ago, longer than you can comprehend. It was a part of something that went very wrong. A step in your world that should have never faltered, but it did. Bad actors chose freedom over the responsibility of their given roles. He,” the entity pointed directly into my chest. “He chose to stay the path… and was killed for it.”

  “By the Unseen?” I guessed.

  “By me!” He said.

  “What?”

  “A deal had to be made. One born of new circumstances. His job,” he pointed to the monster inside me again, “was to bring an end to the age. When the world was prepared, he would have ended the rest and set the earth on its path. The others… his sibling chose to retain their powers and not give their affinities back. They formed a pact, one that struggled against the annihilator. He took many down with him, but he knew he couldn’t take them all, not after everything that happened.” The entity looked resolute, “I offered a deal… one he chose willingly. Die by my hand… and be reborn to take them all. It was not without sacrifice… but he started this path… the path that you are now on with us.”

  There was so much being said and so much being glossed over that I just wanted to hit pause and reflect on the shit he was dumping.

  “What are they?” I asked with feverish intent. I had to know. I had to understand.

  “Primevals. That is what the first races called them. The progenitors of the world, and others, like the one we shattered,” the entity spoke of the world we had just collapsed after killing the Unseen.

  “Primeval…” I said the word, and it tasted metallic and charged on my lips.

  “Harbingers of primordial power used to shape and cultivate the world into a habitable place for all sorts of creatures, races, and powers. They had a job… they were given power… purpose… they stole it. They have been running ever since.”

  I started to realize something, “Wait… did you know I would get sent there?”

  “I knew that I would lose sight of you, and I knew that meant you’d gone outside of my reach. I told you to be careful,” Jon spoke with no mercy, all but saying it was a part of his plan for Peter to ultimately portal me to his benefactor’s domain.

  “Could I have been killed in there?” I asked him.

  He shook his head, “Your existence is fueled by my power, and the Primeval. The fraction of his power could have been snuffed out in there, but not mine. Whatever could have happened to you there, you would have eventually been purged back into the fields... to our domain. If you hadn’t pulled the blade and let my power loose, you could have been stuck there for much longer.”

  "You used the blade to enter his world?" It was all slowly starting to click, like a movie you watch that you start to understand a day later.

  The entity nodded. "It was my only way in... a sort of... back door. Once you smuggled my blade in, cloaked and bound behind your human form, with the help of Peter's ignorance, the plan was in its final stage.

  It was a lot to take in.

  After a moment to process, I asked, “So, if you couldn’t be there until I pulled the blade… that wasn’t you guiding me, but the monster. It could feel the Unseen.”

  “Yes…The beast inside of you isn’t just some creature I concocted out of the scraps of a dead monster. You have within you a piece of Primeval power. The Primeval of Annihilation who hungers for one thing… death. His sole purpose was to kill, destroy, and obliterate his world to pave the way for the next one. His power is fueled by the deaths of others. That power has taken various shapes and appearances over time as each chosen has walked the earth, but you all perform the same task. It depends on who wields the power that determines how it will manifest inside. But it is always a part of an ancient force of devastation.”

  “So, that’s why the Unseen was afraid when he saw me transform… because he could feel the… Primeval in me?”

  The Jon lookalike nodded as I put the pieces together. He seemed more than willing to assure me as long as it was I who put the pieces in place.

  “Then, when I pulled the blade, I got…”

  “Imbued with my authority,” he added. “It was necessary to grant more access to Myordrakien’s dormant power. Still just a fraction of his original form… but enough to kill his old, faded brother. He was weathered from hiding in his realm... hiding since the cataclysm that shook the Primevals into fear and hiding.”

  “That name… Myor… Mjor…” I struggled to say it so fluidly like the entity did.

  “The Primevals all have names,” Entity-Jon said, his voice carrying something low and ancient beneath it. “Not just names… titles tied to what they are. Spoken in their native tongue, in the First Language.” He turned his head slightly. “Myordrakien,” he said, the word scraping against my ears like stone grinding bone. “The Primeval of Annihilation.”

  The moment he said it, his eyes pulsed black… deep and full of void, and without warning, we moved. No motion, no wind. Just a shift. We weren’t standing in the forest anymore. We were on a cliff, high above a vast gorge that stretched into the world’s edge, farther than the horizon could hold.

  I didn’t ask. I couldn’t.

  Below us was no ordinary canyon. It was a grave of razors and shadow. The stone wasn’t just jagged… it was cruel, malicious in its shape, as if the earth had been torn apart by something that hated it. The silence here didn’t feel like peace… it felt like a threat.

  Then, in the deepest pit of the gorge, something stirred. A faint pulse of red light flashed in the far shadows, low and slow. I frowned… but deep down, my stomach twisted before my thoughts could catch up.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  That glow. That rhythm. I’d felt it before.

  Before I could speak, the beat came again. Stronger. A thud, like a deep drum pounded underwater. Then again. Closer. Not just light. Not just sound. A pulse. A living, breathing presence.

  My breath caught in my throat because I recognized it.

  That beat… was him. It was me. The monster inside me. The one I’d always felt clawing at the edge of my mind, the one that took over when I lost control, the one that made the world burn.

  This beat was the same. No… it was the beat. The very same rhythm I’d lived with for years in my death-starved rage. But now I knew where it came from.

  And then the light flared. It illuminated the gorge, and for the first time, I saw. Bones… colossal, blackened, twisted, jutted from the ground like spears. A ribcage the size of a city loomed up from the pit, broken and half-buried. Skull fragments, claws, and torn pieces of spines, all scattered across the gorge. I thought it was just a valley of death and rot. It wasn’t. It was a body. A corpse the size of a state. Half-rotted, half-stone, all ancient. And it was not fully dead.

  Flesh still clung to its frame… thick, desiccated, leathery. Tougher than anything I’d seen, like hide forged from titanium. And deep in the ribcage, pulsing with a slow fury, was a heart the size of a house.

  My eyes locked on it… and I froze.

  It beat once more, louder than before, and I felt it in my chest. The pulse synced with me. My heart… no. That heart. That thing’s heart. It wasn’t separate from me. It was mine. And that’s when I understood.

  The truth hit with all the weight of an executioner’s axe. There was never a line between me and the monster. Because there was no me, not anymore… not really. The heart inside my chest didn’t belong to a man. It was the manifestation of this… Primeval heart hidden away in another dimension.

  This wasn’t just a dead ancient monster… this was Myordrakien. That is what I was.

  Finally… the answer. The thing I had searched for so long to find. The question… What am I? It was answered…

  I’m Primeval… a Primeval of Annihilation. That held a weight that I was not even close to understanding. And Myordrakien… the true Primeval wasn’t truly dead. Just dreaming… dormant; breathing through me. I was not its host. I was its continuation… its will. Its flesh reborn and fueled by the power of the still-unnamed Entity that stood beside me.

  As I stood on the edge of that cliff, with that impossibly ancient corpse sprawled across the world below me, I realized the most terrifying truth of all:

  My heart never beats to keep me alive. It beat to remind the world that annihilation is still coming. For who, or what… I couldn’t say for sure. But I knew, I could feel it. As I grew into more of its otherworldly power… I would be unleashing more of… this.

  I can’t say how long or short it was before I spoke again. It felt like an eternity as I stood in thought. Yet, it also felt impossibly quick as I could do nothing but accept this truth. What power did I have to fight against such weight… such power.

  “So, I guess I only have one more question, then,” I said. “What are you?”

  He looked at me with a cold, blank stare, “You’re almost there…”

  “But I still have to come to that on my own?” I asked calmly.

  He only nodded. Then, after a moment had passed, “You’ll need clothes for where we are going.”

  I looked up from the dark shadows being beaten back by the red pulse, “Where are we going?”

  He reached out his hand and grabbed my shoulder. As soon as the Entity, appearing as Jon, hand touched my bare skin, everything went white.

  The white fog cleared in an instant, and I was standing inside a house. It was a familiar house that I couldn’t quite place at first, but then I realized it was Shelta’s. For a moment, I had a bit of panic as I realized that I had no clothes on after they were burned away in that hell. Then the remnants were ripped away during my transformation. Yet, I looked down and was fully clothed in my usual attire.

  I could hear crying in the other room, and when I went to investigate, it was Shelta. She was kneeling over Annabelle’s lifeless body as it lay stretched out across the living room floor. Patrick and Sara were sitting in the corner, crying again at the loss of another loved one. That’s when I noticed something odd; I couldn’t hear anything. They were like a silent movie playing out right in front of me. But I heard crying… I still heard it. I looked at Shelta, and the sobs did not match what was happening across her face.

  “Shelta… what happened?” I asked, even though I knew what had to have happened.

  Shelta didn’t respond. I spoke again, but nothing. I talked to Patrick and Sarah, but they never acknowledged me.

  I looked to the corner of the living room to see something even more peculiar. There in the corner, looking down at Annabelle’s body, was Annabelle herself.

  “Annabelle,” I sputtered, confused.

  “Oh, Sam. I knew you’d make it." She actually hugged me at my approach, seeming more spry than I’d ever seen her… younger even. “I knew you would be here, but I was confused when you didn’t come. We had to carry on without you… But now I can see why…”

  “I don’t really know what’s happening,” I told her.

  “That’s alright, my boy. I believe I understand now. I thought I could see you now… for some unknown reason, but I see that I only saw your ghost. I caught the smallest glimpse of you because we would both be on this side of life, at the same time,” Annabelle spoke, but stopped quickly at the sight of something behind me.

  I looked back to see what she saw. It was Jon; he was right there behind me.

  “Oh my… Sam. I see now what you’re a part of,” she let out a sigh of relief. “Well… at least now I know they’ll be safe with you around.”

  “What do you see?” I looked back at Annabelle as she gazed upon Jon.

  “No, Sam,” Jon spoke as he stepped around me, grabbing Annabelle’s hand. “That is not what we are here for.”

  “Michael… I’ve missed you so much,” Annabelle spoke warmly to the person I knew as Jon. Why did she call him Michael? “Where’s Bartley?”

  “We’ll be with him soon, my dear. Everyone is waiting on you,” Jon spoke to her.

  When Annabelle looked at Jon, I wasn’t sure that she saw who I saw. She was calling him Michael; her late husband’s name was Michael.

  “Will they all be okay, dear? I hate to leave them all like this with so much still to do,” Annabelle asked Jon about her family.

  “This is how it is meant to be. They will make it out. Peter’s time has already come to an end, his power to come back is cut off, and his life will soon be over for good. No one else will be taken by him,” Jon assured her.

  “Good,” Annabelle smiled. “If that’s the case, then I’m ready to go.” Annabelle reached up and braced herself against Jon’s arm.

  I watched them walk out of the silent house as the rest of her family still grieved and cried amongst the sorrow of the home. Two very different worlds existed in the same space: the living and the dead. Shockingly, the dead seemed happier than the living. Was this right? What was Jon going to do to her? Why was she calling him Michael?

  I followed Jon and Annabelle outside to where they stopped in the front yard.

  “Annabelle…” I was at a loss for what to do with any of it. “What’s going to happen? What do I do…?” I asked them both.

  Jon was as cold as ice, per usual, and said nothing, but Annabelle spoke.

  “Be with the ones you love, Sam. You only have so much time with them until it’s over. Then you’ll have to wait until you see them again… but we will see all of the ones we love again, Sam. That’s the thing to hold onto, my dear.”

  I was frozen, locked in fear and uncertainty of everything. So many things had happened, were happening, and still needed to be done, yet things were becoming more evident.

  “You’ll go back, and you’ll put an end to Peter,” Jon said. “The hard part’s over. Just stomp out the dying embers of the Unseen.”

  “Then, it’s over?” I asked.

  “Peter and the Unseen… yes, but the work will never be complete. The names will come… other Primevals await…” Jon assured. “Now, it’s time to part ways,” Jon said as I felt the earth beneath my feet begin to shake.

  A humming ring tore into my eardrums louder and louder as things started turning white again. Before the last bit of the world was blinded from my view, I heard Jon one last time.

  “Peter Grimwood,” his ominous voice now filled with devastating power, commanded.

  At his final word, everything was white, and I was taken somewhere else.

  As Entity-Jon cast me back into the living world, images ripped across my mind like I was force-fed years of information in mere moments. I knew everything Peter had done, with his own hands, or through others, to gain the life and power he should never have had.

  I saw his dark rise in power while he was still young and living with his family in France. He would read the Grimwood family's bestiaries and be sickened by the few scraps of information they had about their purge from the collective family. His views were angrier than most of his family, who had left their dark ways behind. Yet, there was still one Grimwood that harbored a deep hatred for the Chasses, Wicklows, and especially the Talbot family. Peter’s grandfather developed his grandson’s hatred over many years. In his dying breath, he told Peter about a power that could raise Peter's ability to enact revenge on their family enemy. His dying breath was made possible by Peter taking the last few moments of his grandfather’s life with a necromantic ability. This was the ability he developed over the years to steal life and power from others through various means.

  He started branching out after being warned about the consequences of necromancy by other dark witches and sorcerers that he met in the supernatural world throughout France. He soon learned that darker powers required darker sacrifices. After years of developing his life-stealing ability, ever so slowly, he made contact. I witnessed the Unseen enter Peter’s mind and make promises of power and revenge. The horned beast from the hellscape, where Peter left me, was present in his life for a very long time. He taught Peter without ever seeing him in person, from within his mind. Peter’s personal darkness in the living realm made his connection with the darkness of the Unseen Primeval. The demon creature told Peter how to cloak himself from other beings that could sense his presence and the evil things he had done. He showed him ways to use others as his hands in the rituals and reap the fruits of their labor. He never explained to Peter who, or what, would come for him if he delved too deep, or took too many… but I knew. The demonic being was trying to keep him safe from me. Well, not me, but the Entity that I served. The being from the fields would have found him, then he’d have sent the original Jon for him, or me once I attained the mantle.

  At one point in the images I was shown, an interaction between Peter and Darry of the werewolf pack I had slaughtered. I saw the plan set in motion to take out a group of hunters that came for the pack. Yet, they wouldn’t kill all of them. There was one hunter in particular that Peter wanted alive: Allen Chasse. Peter did not tell Darry who the boy was; he only led him to believe that he would be strong enough to survive the curse and become a werewolf. Darry had no arguments since he always wanted more wolves in his pack. It was all because Peter just wanted to hurt the Chasse family, and in turn, hurt the Wicklows and Talbots. He was vile and cruel.

  Next, images of something far more confusing and haunting passed. It was a meeting. A meeting with a familiar face. Patrick Wicklow stood before Peter, eyes frightful and stance uncertain. He looked powerless as the necromancer spoke to him calmly. The words were muffled, and the details were slightly blurred, like even this vision was being hampered by Peter’s dark power, as his actions were somehow being altered and kept from me. But still, I saw it.

  Peter hushed the scared Patrick, holding a small item in his hand. It was a cheap-looking green plastic hairbrush. He leaned in close, whispering something into Patrick's ear. The young Wicklow's eyes pulsed with something I recognized as recognition, fear, and then slowly… greed?

  Flashes of something else took over. A girl… a room, blood… death. Peter broke in like a wild animal, beating this girl senseless in a physical way. He didn’t have to; he could have just stolen her life, but he chose pain. He made it personal, attacked and tortured her in a small apartment. No… not an apartment… but a dorm. It was Autumn’s dorm. This was Autumn’s roommate. He murdered her. He ransacked the apartment, rummaging through every room before the images shifted back to Patrick.

  Peter handed Patrick the small green item and then slowly backed away with a menacing grin. It was hard to understand, but the actions were clear. Patrick and Peter had some kind of interaction. Then… it all went black.