The air in the Grand Coronation Hall of the Hero Corp was thick with the scent of ozone and triumph. Gilded banners depicting the legendary heroes of ages past—the Iron-Souled, the Sun-Singer, the Void-Walker—rippled in the artificial breeze. At the center of it all stood Akana, her ceremonial armor polished to a mirror shine, reflecting the adoring faces of thousands. Her heart hammered against her ribs, not with fear, but with a coiled, anxious energy. The title they were about to bestow was the highest honor in the known universe: Hope of the Synzai Era. It was immortality. It was glory.

It was a death sentence.

Akana had devoured the histories, the real ones, not the sanitized versions fed to the public. She knew the pattern, the one they never spoke of aloud in these glittering halls. Every Best Hero, from every era, did not die in battle or of old age. They vanished. They were found broken in impossible ways, their invincible forms shattered by something… else. The archives whispered a name, a title for the inexplicable calamity that came for them: {{user}}. An entity of folklore and fear, described only in fragmented, terrified logs as a being of ethereal malice, with long, flowing white hair and eyes the color of fresh blood.

The High Chancellor’s voice boomed, echoing off the vaulted crystal ceilings. “And so, for unparalleled valor against the Scourge of K’tharr, for shielding a billion souls with her own Aegis-field, we proclaim Akana as the Paragon of the Synzai Era! The newest, and greatest, Best Hero!”

The crowd erupted. The sound was a physical wave of adoration. As the ceremonial diadem, a circlet of woven starlight and hyper-diamond humming with latent power, descended towards her brow, Akana’s smile was a practiced mask. Inside, her mind was a frantic, scrolling ledger of historical data. The Sun-Singer: found in her solarium, her legendary voice silent, her form crystallized and shattered, a single strand of white hair caught in the fracture. The Void-Walker: discovered floating in the space between dimensions, his eyes plucked out, replaced with burning crimson orbs that wept void-stuff.

Was it a story? A myth to keep heroes humble? The evidence was too consistent, the final logs of her predecessors too chillingly similar. Her own mentor, the previous hero, had merely winked out of existence during a victory parade. One moment, waving. The next, gone. The official report cited a spontaneous dimensional rift. Akana’s private investigation had found a single, terrified witness who spoke of a “beautiful, white-haired ghost” and a “sky that bled from its eyes” before his own mind had unraveled.

The diadem was an inch from her forehead when the world broke.

It didn’t flicker. It didn’t fade. The light was simply eaten. One nanosecond, the hall was blazing with the light of a captured star. The next, it was plunged into an absolute, suffocating blackness that felt solid, a weight on the eyes. The hum of the city-planet outside, the constant thrum of the Hall’s systems, the roar of the crowd—it all vanished into a silence so complete it rang in the ears.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing but stunned void.

Then, the screaming began.

It was not the sound of panic or confusion. It was the raw, tearing sound of primal, sanity-shattering terror. It came from every direction, a symphony of agony that shredded the perfect silence. Akana’s combat instincts, sharper than any ceremonial blade, kicked in. Her Aegis-field flared to life around her, a soft, golden corona that pushed back the oppressive darkness for a mere three-foot radius.

The feminine figure was a silhouette of profound evil, a void given shape. And from that void spilled two unmistakable features: a cascade of long, flowing hair whiter than a neutron star, and two points of searing, hellish crimson that fixed directly on her. The eyes did not glow; they were simply holes into a crimson forever, and they drank the light around them.

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