Darkness.

An endless, oppressive void that consumed everything. The kind of darkness that had weight. Caelum couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed—there was no difference. His breath, shallow and uncertain, felt as though it echoed in a chamber vast beyond comprehension. He blinked, but nothing changed. Only the strange sensation of being watched, of something ancient waiting for him in the shadows.

The air, if it could be called that, was thick—heavy with a pressure that pressed against his chest, threatening to crush the breath out of him. He was floating—or was he standing? It was impossible to know. There was nothing around him but the crushing void, a darkness that seemed to eat at the edges of his mind.

Then, beneath him, something solid. His foot touched it first, a floor that was not stone but felt older, more ancient than anything he could have imagined. Smooth, but not like marble—more like something worn down over an eternity. He felt it under his fingers now as well. His heart pounded harder, faster. He wasn’t dreaming. This was real. This place, whatever it was, had weight, had substance, but it felt wrong. Unnatural.

Slowly, his eyes adjusted. Or maybe the darkness itself began to shift, parting just enough to let the barest hints of light filter through. A platform stretched out before him, massive and wide, stretching far into the distance until it disappeared into the shadows. There was no horizon, no walls, no sky. Just a void that consumed everything beyond this ancient, foreboding platform.

It looked like an altar, or a stage. His heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t just a platform—it was a plinth. A ceremonial offering space. His skin prickled with a sense of unease that gnawed at his insides.

Then, towering over the platform, a figure came into focus.

Caelum blinked, his breath catching in his throat as he made sense of what he was seeing. At first, he thought it was a statue—a monument to some ancient god, an idol carved from the very rock of this place. But as his gaze traveled up and up, his mind reeled. The figure’s head loomed hundreds of feet above him, nearly scraping the unseen ceiling of the void. It was hunched, its massive shoulders bowed under some invisible weight.

For a long moment, Caelum couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The figure looked dead, or petrified—like something locked in time. Its skin, if it could be called that, was cracked, dry, and ancient, as though it had been left out to wither over millennia. Thick rivers of something dark and glassy ran from its eyes, mouth, and ears. Obsidian, his mind whispered—cooled lava, frozen in time like tears of molten rock. But there was no warmth here. Only cold. Only dread.

His heart pounded in his chest, echoing through the silence. No, not just his heartbeat. He could feel something else—deep, low, barely perceptible. A drumbeat. Slow, rhythmic. Felt more than heard. His eyes widened as the truth hit him like a hammer.

It was the Titan’s heartbeat.

The massive figure wasn’t dead. It was alive, bound to this place in ways Caelum couldn’t understand.

He took a hesitant step forward, the sound of his footfall swallowed by the vast emptiness around him. The weight of the Titan’s presence pressed against his chest, suffocating. It felt wrong, unnatural. He shouldn’t be here. No one should.

But something compelled him to move forward, to draw closer. Each step felt heavier than the last, as though the gravity in this place was increasing the closer he came to the center of the plinth. The heartbeat—if that’s what it was—grew stronger, more insistent. Caelum’s breaths came faster, but the air was thick, stifling.

He glanced down at his hands. Where there should have been pale skin, there was only shadow. His body seemed to fade into the gloom, his form barely visible. Was he real here? Was any of this real?

His legs trembled as he reached the center of the plinth. His gaze lifted, taking in the full, terrible scale of the Titan. Its head was bowed low, its massive form hunched over, as if carrying the weight of a thousand lifetimes. The obsidian tears dripped slowly from its hollow eyes, splashing onto the platform with a sharp, echoing crack. The sound made Caelum flinch, his heart skipping a beat.

For a long moment, nothing happened. The Titan remained motionless, a looming figure of stone and shadow. The drumbeat—the heartbeat—was the only thing that filled the silence.

And then, the Titan stirred.

The sound of cracking stone echoed through the chamber as the Titan’s massive head shifted ever so slightly. Caelum froze, his body locking in place as fear gripped him. The Titan’s movement was slow, deliberate, as though each shift in its form required an immense effort. Obsidian shards, razor-sharp and glassy, fell from its face, clattering to the ground with a sound like shattering glass.

Caelum’s breath hitched. His muscles tensed as the Titan’s head turned, its eyes—two dim, flickering embers—locked onto him.

“You…”

The voice. It was a sound like the grinding of mountains, a deep rumble that shook the air, the ground, everything. Caelum’s legs buckled beneath him, but he couldn’t look away from those terrible eyes.

“At last… you have come.”

The Titan’s words carried the weight of ages, of lifetimes. Caelum’s throat tightened. He wanted to speak, to ask what this was, what this place was, but the words wouldn’t come. His mind was spinning, struggling to grasp what he was seeing, what he was hearing. This couldn’t be real.

The Titan’s gaze bored into him, its eyes flickering with a faint, terrible light. The obsidian tears continued to drip from its face, the sharp, deadly shards piling up at its feet. The weight of the Titan’s presence was unbearable, pressing down on Caelum like a physical force.

“I have waited…” the Titan rumbled, its voice dragging out the words as though each one was a great effort. “Through the rise and fall of empires, through the shifting of stars, I have waited… for you.”

The words seemed to hang in the air, heavy with meaning Caelum couldn’t yet understand. His fists clenched at his sides, his heart hammering in his chest. “Waited for me?” The question slipped from his lips, barely a whisper. “What… what do you want?”

The Titan’s lips twisted into something resembling a smile—a terrible, jagged smile that sent a chill down Caelum’s spine. “You… are here to inherit. To take on the burden of kingship. I offer you power… beyond imagining. But power, boy… comes with a cost.”

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Caelum’s mind spun. Power? Kingship? None of this made any sense. “A cost?” he asked, his voice shaking. “What cost?”

The Titan’s eyes flickered, the dim light within them growing slightly brighter. “Your lifeforce. A fragment of it, nothing more. A small token, in exchange for power. Power to shape worlds, to command the stars themselves. You will rule, as I once ruled.”

Caelum recoiled, the words hitting him like a physical blow. Lifeforce? His body trembled, fear gnawing at the edges of his mind. “Why… why me?” His voice cracked, the question barely louder than a whisper. “Why would you want… my lifeforce?”

The Titan’s smile faded, replaced by an expression of patience—ancient, weathered patience. “You are chosen. A piece in a puzzle so vast, even I do not see all the edges. You… were born into this path.”

Caelum’s heart raced. Chosen? Fate? He had heard words like that before, but they were stories, myths. Nothing real. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

“And if I refuse?” His voice trembled, but the words came out stronger this time.

The Titan’s eyes darkened, the embers flickering as though the light within them was fading. “Refuse?” The word was sharp, cold. “Then you will turn your back on your birthright. You will choose to live as dust… to fade into nothingness. Without this power… you are nothing.”

Caelum’s body trembled, the weight of the Titan’s words pressing down on him. Power. Kingship. Lifeforce. It all felt wrong—like a trap, a cage waiting to be closed around him. His instincts screamed at him to run, to flee from this place, from this being, but something held him in place. Fear? Curiosity?

“I…” His voice faltered, his fists clenching at his sides. “No. I won’t. I won’t give you… part of myself. I don’t even understand… what this is.”

The Titan’s eyes narrowed, the embers within them flaring briefly before dimming again. “You walk a dangerous path, boy,” the Titan rumbled, its voice echoing through the chamber. “You will regret this. Power does not come to those who wait. Remember that.”

The Titan’s form began to fade, dissolving into the shadows once more. The sound of cracking stone and falling obsidian shards echoed through the silence, the weight of the Titan’s presence receding.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the vision ended.

Caelum blinked, his dry eyes stinging as they fought to adjust to the world around him. A slow, burning tear traced the curve of his cheek, though he couldn’t tell if it was from the dryness, the fear that still clenched at his chest, or something else. For a moment, he simply stared out the classroom window, watching the gray sky blur into the hazy outlines of trees and distant rooftops. The world outside was still, ordinary.

Inside, his heart pounded as if trying to escape his ribs.

The teacher’s voice droned in the background, a monotonous hum about ancient empires and the rise and fall of civilizations—ironic, considering what he’d just seen. He swallowed hard, tasting the dryness in his throat, the ghost of that suffocating air still lingering in his lungs. His fingers flexed, numb with tension, as though they hadn’t moved for hours. No one seemed to notice him. No one ever did.

Caelum let out a shaky breath and glanced down at his desk. His journal lay open before him, a half-finished sketch of something familiar now, though before… before the vision, it had been nothing more than a strange shape that had wandered into his mind. His hand shook as he traced the jagged lines of the sketch—a twisted, hunched figure, its head bowed low, surrounded by an ominous mass of dark, spidery marks.

The Titan.

His throat tightened again. When had he started drawing this? Was it before the vision? He couldn’t remember. His pencil lay abandoned on the desk beside the open journal, and he stared at it as if it could answer the questions forming in his mind.

Had it always been there, somewhere in the back of his thoughts, this dark and terrible being? How had it crawled into his dreams—into his life?

His fingers brushed the paper, smudging the lead. He tore his gaze from the sketch and forced himself to look around the room, trying to ground himself, to pull himself back into something real. The classroom was as it had always been—rows of desks, worn and etched with years of graffiti, some scratched deeply into the wood, others faint pencil marks erased but never truly gone. The walls were a pale, washed-out green, meant to be calming but instead leeching life from the room. Fluorescent lights buzzed above, casting a flat, sterile glow over everything.

His desk sat near the window, isolated, as it always was. He’d chosen it for the view, but now the window seemed like a portal to a world that didn’t make sense anymore. Outside, everything looked so normal. Inside, his mind felt like it was unraveling.

Caelum rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, hoping to banish the burning, the tears. His fingers brushed the pages of his journal again, and his eyes fell on the sketch. The jagged, haunting lines. It looked exactly like what he had just seen, but he didn’t remember drawing it before. His chest tightened with a creeping sense of dread. It wasn’t possible.

The hum of the teacher’s lecture blended with the sound of shuffling papers and quiet whispers, but none of it reached him. None of it mattered. The Titan’s voice echoed in his head, deep and ancient, rumbling through his thoughts like an avalanche that buried everything in its path.

"You are here to inherit…"

His fingers clenched into fists, his knuckles white against the scratched surface of the desk. Inherit what? What had the Titan meant? And why him?

Caelum stared down at his sketch again, as if willing it to provide answers. The strange, twisted figure loomed on the page, much like it had in his mind only moments ago, as if the vision had bled into the real world. He wiped his eyes again, this time more roughly, willing himself to focus, to push away the lingering fear.

Focus. Breathe.

His gaze moved from the journal to the pencil lying beside it. The graphite tip was dull, worn down from his compulsive sketching, but the edges still felt sharp. He picked it up, turning it slowly in his fingers. His other hand smoothed the journal page, smudging more of the lines, but he didn’t care. The world in front of him felt muted, unreal. Even his body felt distant, as though he were still trapped in that void, floating just on the edge of something terrible.

Caelum had always been good at slipping into the background, at fading away when the world became too much. He’d been doing it his whole life—blending into the corners, into his books, into the quiet spaces that others ignored. His parents worked late most nights. They loved him, he knew that, but he was always left to his own devices—his sketchbook, his thoughts. School had been no different. He was never at the top of the class, but never at the bottom either. Just… drifting. Invisible.

Until now.

Now, something inside him had been woken up, something that he had always felt lurking at the edges of his mind but had never truly understood. His dreams had always been strange, vivid, but nothing like this. Nothing that felt so real.

The Titan’s voice, the offer of power, of inheritance, echoed through him again, rattling his thoughts. The weight of it made his head swim, and he gripped the pencil tighter, using it as an anchor, something to hold onto. His heart thudded painfully in his chest.

He didn’t want any of this. He had never wanted power, had never wanted to be anything more than what he was. Just a kid trying to get through school, trying to figure out what came next. But the Titan had seen him—chosen him. For what, he didn’t know. But that vision, those words… they had changed everything. He couldn’t pretend anymore.

Caelum closed the journal slowly, the pages rustling like whispers in the stillness of the classroom. He glanced up, his eyes darting to the front of the room where the teacher continued her lecture, oblivious to the storm brewing inside him. No one had noticed. No one had seen the tears, the fear.

No one ever noticed.

A soft sigh escaped his lips as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes drifting back to the window. The gray sky was still there, the clouds hanging heavy like a shroud over the world. Ordinary. Mundane.

But Caelum knew better now. The world wasn’t ordinary. It never had been. There was something else out there—something ancient and terrible, and it had found him.

His fingers drummed absently against the cover of his journal. Outside, the wind picked up, rustling the leaves on the trees, and for a moment, Caelum thought he could hear it again—that low, distant drumbeat, felt more than heard, just on the edge of perception.

He shivered and looked away.

The Titan’s words still lingered, haunting the quiet spaces of his mind, refusing to let him go.

This was only the beginning.