I am Him: Revered through Realms

Silence.

Not the kind that soothes, but the kind that follows annihilation.

The landscape had ceased to be land. It was ruin now, scorched and seared, glowing with a pipe-hot red that shimmered through the haze.

Molten debris floated like burning snowflakes, their incandescent flickers dancing across a backdrop of fractured earth.

The ground steamed beneath the weight of devastation, split into jagged veins that radiated outward like the aftermath of a world in convulsion, recoiling from the violence it had endured.

And at the center of it all, he lay motionless.

From a distant ridge, eight figures stood unmoving.

The Elders.

"He's still breathing," said one, his voice flat with disbelief.

A second scoffed. "At ground zero? That's impossible."

"No," murmured the third. Her eyes pulsed with an eerie glow, something ancient and devilish. "His aura... it protected him. How is that even possible?"

There he remained, broken, bloodied, but alive.

Marcellus's breath rasped in irregular bursts, each inhalation a fresh agony that scraped against the raw linings of his lungs.

His body was mangled and torn, yet clinging to his skin was a flickering shimmer, like the glow of dying embers that refused to fade.

His aura had reacted in the final moment, not with power, but with instinct.

It had compressed around him, cocooning his body in desperation.

It hadn't spared him the pain.

But it had spared him death.

His fingers twitched, curling weakly into the ash-choked soil. Pain rippled through every nerve. Blood filled his mouth, thick and metallic. Yet he endured.

Above him, the sky had been carved open. The heavens were no longer whole, split by the force the behemoth had unleashed.

But then something glitched above him.

One moment, there was nothing but the dread view of the sky, the next, it stood above him, staring with unblinking malice.

Had it crossed the space between in a blink? Had it bent time? Teleported?

He couldn't tell.

Its mouth opened again, wider this time, and at the center, light gathered, furious and pure, swirling into a mass of destruction. Another fireball. Larger. Hotter. Absolute.

It wasn't taking chances, merciless.

Marcellus, writhing in agony, felt mortality crawl its way up his spine. His vision blurred. His body begged him to stay down.

But instinct screamed louder than pain.

With a ragged gasp, he flung his arm outward, not to grasp, but to repel.

From his back came an eruption, a violent release. His aura burst free, shredding the air as it tore outward like wings made of pure distortion. The space around him warped and bent.

In that moment, he became a projectile.

His body launched backward, skimming across the broken earth like a shattered arrow loosed from a dying bow.

He was propelled by raw telekinetic force, his movement a defiance of death itself.

Dust exploded in his wake.

Debris scattered, flung by the pulse of energy that hurled him clear from the creature's maw.

He knew the blast, if released, would still catch him. But at distance, perhaps he could withstand it.

And then, nothing came.

The fireball collapsed.

In its place, a haze.

Marcellus barely registered the shift when the behemoth vanished. It had glitched from view, its massive frame warping out of sight.

His eyes widened.

Too late.

From the edge of his vision, he saw it, a massive fist crashing toward him.

The creature had reappeared beside him, teleporting across the gained distance, and its blow came with the weight of mountains.

Marcellus's aura flared, wing-like constructs snapping into place just in time to intercept the strike.

The punch landed.

Air detonated around them in a thunderclap. Pressure rolled out in a shockwave, flattening the ground as it spread.

Marcellus's eyes went white. Consciousness fled mid-flight as his body was flung across the battlefield like a ragdoll hurled by a god.

But before he could hit the ground, instinct yanked him back.

Telekinesis.

With a strained effort, he slowed his descent.

He hit the earth hard, rolling across the fractured terrain until he skidded to a halt.

A trail of blood marked his path like a wound torn into the land itself.

He lay still for a moment. Then, slowly, agonizingly, he rose.

His body trembled beneath the weight of pain, but his will did not falter.

One arm hung limp, ruined but still his. The other lifted, unshaken, and pointed to the sky with a single, defiant finger.

His aura stirred.

Dark tendrils of energy began to rise, coiling around him in a tightening spiral. At his fingertip, a sphere began to form, small at first, then growing, expanding with impossible depth.

The spiral turned inward, layers folding upon themselves in chaotic symmetry.

Space bent.

The air trembled. The earth groaned beneath his feet. All around him, debris rose, shattered stone, shattered steel, the limp carcasses of beasts, drawn into the forming mass.

They twisted as they were pulled, their forms distorting into elongated shadows before vanishing into the singularity.

Even the creatures still breathing screamed, clawing at the ground as their bodies dragged

Across the dust, pulled into oblivion.

It grew.

Larger. Heavier.

Its mass dwarfed even the behemoth, bending the world around it with an unnatural gravity.

A force that mocked the laws of nature.

A collapsing star in the palm of his hand.

A black hole.

In stunned amazement, Mirah and the Fenrir stared.

"That's one hell of a kid you saved, Mirah," the Fenrir muttered, its voice low with disbelief and something like respect.

The Elders remained silent, their expressions unreadable, yet laced with anticipation. What they had witnessed was no mere anomaly. Marcellus had left an impression, no, a scar upon their expectations. A feral force had just been born, raw and untamed, yet powerful enough to stand nearly on par with the very guards of the realm.

And what followed next occurred so swiftly, so violently, it left every onlooker speechless.

"I thought you liked getting up close," Marcellus said, his grin sharp and voice simmering with rage laced with exhilaration. "Don't worry… I'll bring dinner to you."

He began to ascend, levitating slowly, eyes locked onto the behemoth towering above it.

That was when he saw her.

Perched silently upon the creature's massive shoulder was a humanoid figure, girl-like in form, but unmistakably inhuman. Small horns curved from her forehead, and her expression was etched with awe… and fear.

Fear of the singularity swirling in Marcellus's hand.

His smirk deepened.

The behemoth responded without hesitation. Above its massive horns, a glowing orb of compressed blue flame formed, humming with unstable energy. Above it, another orb, twice the size, balanced precariously. Then a third, even larger, stacked atop the others like an arcane totem of destruction.

Its maw unhinged with a bone-rattling creak. A fourth flame surged into being, spiraling toward release.

And then, movement.

The horned girl rose, slowly levitating, her arms outstretched toward the singularity as though reaching to grasp it, or perhaps to unravel it.

Marcellus caught the shift in an instant. The black hole… it pulsed. Glitched.

A ripple of instability.

Realization dawned, cold and sudden.

She was the cause of the teleportation.

She was not just a passenger on the creature.

She was a Guard.

Her aim, to send the black hole away. Its energy was taking a toll, making it harder to move.

Marcellus sensed it.

His eyes gleamed with manic excitement as the behemoth, without delay, unleashed all four of its flame constructs. The sky lit up in a searing cascade of destruction, four compressed suns barreling toward him in unison.

It felt as though the very sun had been hurled at him.

But he didn't flinch.

With a snap of his fingers and a twisted grin, the black hole surged, tripling in size in an instant.

A vortex of distortion opened wide.

The incoming blasts were devoured mid-flight, each flame sucked in violently, their incandescent trails spiraling like ribbons into the singularity's maw.

Within the swirling mass, the fire writhed, trapped, trying desperately to escape, to defy its fate, but the black hole held fast.

The battlefield fell silent.

Even the behemoth stared, frozen, as the truth settled in.

They were doomed.

"Hey!" the horned girl called out, her voice sharp with urgency. "Toss me closer! If I make contact, I can shut it down!"

Without hesitation, the behemoth reached for her, then hurled her through the air like a spear of flesh and will.

Marcellus blinked in surprise, preparing to react, when a voice echoed in his head.

"She can erase anything she touches, boy."

The words rang with clarity, alien and familiar all at once. Telepathy. But from whom?

His gaze shifted and locked with the Fenrir's.

The beast bared its teeth in a mischievous grin.

But something changed.

The girl's eyes snapped toward the Fenrir, her expression twisted with fury as she shot toward the event horizon, caught in the gravitational drag.

"Loki, you bastard!" she screamed, her voice filled with rage.

She had intercepted the message.

And she was still coming, fast, spiraling toward the black hole.

Toward Marcellus.

Toward oblivion.

The black hole began to pulse erratically, its form collapsing inward. In a matter of seconds, it compressed entirely, coiling tightly around Marcellus's left arm like a sentient glove forged from gravity itself.

The overwhelming pull ceased, its influence no longer dragging the horned girl closer.

But her momentum hadn't slowed,

Cutting across the battlefield like a phantom comet, her form silhouetted against the flickering singularity.

Eyes gleaming with the certainty of a predator who knew she was moments from striking.

"Too late, kiddo," she said with a mocking smirk. "Should've left that little nightmare roaring."

Her arm extended toward him, fingers spread, reaching.

Before Marcellus could fully register her intent, the world warped around him.

A sudden glitch, time stuttered.

He was ripped from his position and hurled, as if reality itself yeeted him forward, slamming him straight into the shadow of the behemoth.

The monstrous entity loomed above him.

Its arms were already spread wide.

Then they began to move.

The intent was unmistakable, a devastating clap, with Marcellus caught in the middle like a gnat between gods.

Marcellus stood unmoved, unphased. Though the teleportation still disoriented him, his body reacting a second too slow, he didn't falter.

As the behemoth's massive hands came crashing in, intending to crush him between them, Marcellus snapped his fingers.

A shimmer flickered at either side.

Then, impact.

An invisible barrier had formed, twin walls of force conjured on either side of him. The monstrous palms slammed against them with a thunderous boom, the force rippling vertically into the sky like twin shockwaves. Dust erupted outward, and wind tore across the battlefield.

But within the eye of that storm, Marcellus stood untouched.

The behemoth's eyes widened, confusion twisting into disbelief. Its hands never connected. They hovered, straining against invisible resistance.

"Goodnight," Marcellus whispered.

In a blink, he propelled forward, closing the distance in a blur. His right fist slammed into the behemoth's chest.

Time fractured.

The creature's feet left the ground. Shockwaves spiraled from the point of impact, bursting through its back in visible rings of compressed air.

And then time snapped back.

The behemoth was launched like a meteor, crashing through mountain after mountain, its form swallowed by pulverized stone and dust. But Marcellus wasn't finished.

His left arm, still sheathed in the coiled remnants of the black hole, lifted as though grasping reality itself.

He pulled.

The air screamed as the behemoth's body, still airborne, suddenly changed trajectory, yanked backward with terrifying speed, drawn toward Marcellus like a planet to its collapsing star.

The force acted like a vacuum, ignoring all else, focusing solely on its prey.

The behemoth, caught mid-flight, realized too late. Its limbs flailed, and in a desperate final act, it launched a blast, imperfect and unstable, formed in panic rather than precision.

Still, it was massive.

But Marcellus's expression didn't change. With calm precision, he raised his right hand and swiped it downward through the air.

Reality rippled.

The blast was split cleanly in two, parted like a curtain. And through the rift it created, the behemoth was yanked in, its momentum unstoppable.

"Sweet dreams," Marcellus said, voice low, final.

His right fist came down.

The behemoth saw it. And in that instant, it felt.

Fear.

As if drawn from its very soul, it saw something impossible, death itself, not as an end, but as a presence. A being peering into its essence.

Then came the blow.

What followed was cataclysm.

A sound like a comet tearing through the atmosphere roared through the world. When Marcellus's fist struck, the sky split.

A hurricane formed in an instant, rising high into the heavens, expanding outward in all directions. It consumed the air, tore across the land, a shockwave of divine force, clearing everything in its path.

Even the Elders, steadfast and ancient, had to brace themselves. The Fenrir stood firm, eyes wide, its usual grin absent. This power, it was raw, furious, malevolent.

And yet—

Something was wrong.

Marcellus's eyes narrowed.

His fist never connected.

He turned slowly, eyes glowing a bright, unsettling blue through the hurricane winds, as though piercing reality itself.

The behemoth was gone.

The girl had teleported it away in the final second.

She now hovered in the distance, her arms trembling. Her expression wasn't victorious.

It was terrified.

She stared at him, at the boy who had become a monster beyond them.

One of the elders allowed a slow grin to spread across his face. He was hungry, not for sustenance, but for combat. His bloodlust seeped into the air like a venomous fog, eyes locked onto Marcellus with predatory intent.

Mirah rose to her feet, her gaze sharp and unwavering, fixed upon the elder with a gravity that demanded caution.

But just as the elder shifted, prepared to step forward, he was halted. A hand pressed firmly against his chest.

"You'll kill the boy," came the low, deliberate voice. "And I've grown rather fond of him."