(Solomon's POV)
Some battles are fought for survival.
Others are fought for freedom.
This one was fought for the right to exist.
The First Strike
The abyss moved first.
Not because it was brave.
Because it was terrified.
The Devourer's scream shattered mountains.
The darkness beneath the world erupted upward like an endless ocean.
Tendrils thicker than cities burst from the abyss.
Thousands.
Millions.
Each one made from compressed suffering.
Compressed despair.
Compressed hunger.
The true body of the Devourer finally revealed itself.
And I understood why ancient civilizations had feared it more than death.
It wasn't a creature.
It was a wound.
A wound carved into reality itself.
Something that should never have existed.
Something that existence had failed to heal.
Th
