Third Person’s POV
The first on the leftmost corner bore the sigil of a colossal silver wolf’s head with its fangs bared in eternal defiance, and glinting faintly in the fading light.
Across from it, at the opposite end, was a blood-red banner dyed so deeply that it seed woven from gore itself, and even from such a distance, looking at it, Ethan felt as if he was sinking in a sticky sea of blood.
At its heart, a crimson moon hung like an ominous and unyielding symbol that glared down on all beneath it.
But it was the two banners in the center that arrested Ethan’s attention and his breath.
The first blazed like fire incarnate.
It was a scarlet, fiery banner that depicted a flaming skull, and even from this distance, Ethan could feel an abysmal heat radiating off it.
The air itself shimred around the fabric as waves of invisible fire warped the reality, as though the emblem were not a symbol but a living, flaming skull demon watching them.
Beside it, in stark contrast though possessing a similar grandness, hung a banner so utterly black it seed to devour the very light around it.
Upon its surface was carved the image of a dead planet, its cracked surface jagged and barren as it was suspended in the void.
And the longer Ethan looked, the heavier his chest felt as if the banner itself exhaled despair.
Its darkness was not the absence of light, but the annihilation of aning as it seed to be sentient.
Supernatural and unexplainable whispers rang in his mind, and he seed to be suspended in a world that was stripped bare of all life, all warmth, and the hope that light brought.
Ethan shuddered with cold sweat on his neck as he realized to his horror that his mind, a lot stronger than the people of his age and even his power level, had been invaded by sothing intangible without him even noticing when and how it happened.
The banner and the darkness it represented were not a literal shadow, but a conceptual weight and a revelation of what true darkness ant if he explored the abstract and primal concept it represented in the lives of all beings.
And for the first ti, he understood that what he had touched until now was but a sliver of the abyss that was the true dark...
Realizing this, his heart started pounding with conflicting feelings of awe, admiration, and a sobering solemnity.
He clenched his fist, steadied his breath, and reminded himself of who the people this dark banner represented.
They were his enemies, and to be exact, they were the Empire of Abyssal Dominion, one of the two great demon empires, while the flaming skull to the side clearly represented the Empire of Infernal Sovereignty.
As for the silver wolf head banner, they might be the werewolves of the Northern Highlands, the sa werewolves whom he had beaten the shit out of.
And lastly, the bloody banner with that Blood Moon must be the vampires of the Stygian Blood Woods of the Southern Wilderness.
As he examined all of them, his gaze ca back to the dark banner, and a thought went up in his mind abruptly.
It was a guess that most likely, their darkness was not the sa as his Master’s, and it carried a different essence, yet he realized that it was no less formidable.
It was perhaps even equal, and standing on its own towering pillar of supremacy.
Taking a deep breath, he resolved himself and tore his gaze away from the banner to search for the blond demon Lucy, but then, he froze as he realized that soone was watching him intently.
His sharp eyes scanned the gathering until they found him.
It was a young man with curly black hair, lean of fra, and perhaps in his early twenties.
His posture was relaxed, but the intrigue in his gaze was anything but casual. He was leaning against the wall not far from the dark banner of the Empire of Abyssal Dominion.
At once, crimson eyes t dark ones across the distance, and the murmur of the crowd seed to fade away.
In that instant, without a single word exchanged, Ethan felt a sharp chill lance through his heart.
His chest tightened, and his heartbeat grew louder, heavier, until it drowned out the murmurs of the ground around him.
Each thud echoed like a drum of war, and it reverberated through his body, as though his very instincts were trying to warn him of sothing primal.
His gaze lingered on the young man, and to his surprise, he noticed the figure’s position shift ever so slightly until he now stood directly beneath the black banner of the Empire of Abyssal Dominion.
Ethan’s expression remained carefully neutral, but his facial muscles stiffened.
And it was not because he had realized the young man was a mber of the dreaded Empire of Abyssal Dominion, but because his instincts scread louder of the danger he represented than they ever had before.
This was not just another enemy but a dangerous being in its purest form, and the fact that he belonged to his future enemies just beca the icing on the cake.
What unsettled him even more was the comparison his mind betrayed him with.
He had fought a Sky Realm Dark Knight in the City of Vord, and had tasted the suffocating might of an existence that far surpassed his own... yet never, not even then, had his instincts raged this violently.
The fact that a youth, soone seemingly close to his own age, could trigger such alarms was a truth Ethan did not want to accept.
And yet, his racing heart and taut nerves left no room for denial.
His crimson eyes studied the man carefully.
The stranger’s handso features held no arrogance and no sharp sneer of superiority that was common to young people like him who were from powerful and noble families.
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