CALAMITY : Legends Of The Chosen

Day One

The skies wept thunder.

Max flew alone beneath them.

Black lightning surged beneath his boots, each burst of propulsion rattling the air with unnatural force. The ruined landscape below blurred past — collapsed towers, rotted trees, the skeletal remains of ancient war machines left half-buried in volcanic mud. His trench coat flared behind him like a torn flag, soaked with rain and streaked with plasma burns.

He didn't care.

He hadn't eaten since he left. He hadn't stopped once to rest. The cauterized wound in his neck still ached — a dull reminder of what he did to get away.

Good.

Pain made it real.

Max didn't want comfort. Not now.

He kept flying.

Higher. Faster. Further.

Until even the wind began to scream.

He crash-landed once — somewhere in the badlands north of Yrdal, after his body finally gave out midflight. Cratered into the earth. Dirt in his mouth. Static around his fingers.

He dragged himself into a broken tunnel under a collapsed road and waited out the storm.

Not the weather — the one inside his head.

Max tried to sleep.

He couldn't.

The lightning wouldn't let him.

It pulsed beneath his skin. Scraped at his mind. Made his thoughts feel like a ticking bomb.

"Why didn't it evolve?"

"Why didn't I get stronger?"

"Why does everyone else keep awakening like it's natural?"

"Why do I still feel... stuck?"

He clenched his fists and screamed into the mud.

Sparks jumped from his fingertips, frying a rat two meters away.

He didn't even flinch.

---

Day Two

Morning came like a gray bruise across the sky.

Max's eyes were bloodshot. His breathing uneven.

He didn't know how long he'd been walking.

The air was dry now. The clouds above had thinned to streaks of golden ash. He trudged through fields of scorched grass and twisted trees, where mutated crows watched him from branches with too many eyes.

Every time he passed a shadow, he felt like it was watching him.

Every time he saw his own reflection in a puddle, he didn't recognize the man staring back.

But he kept moving.

He followed every faint echo of demonic VYTHRA that flared on the horizon. Each time it was a false alarm. A dead zone. A scavenger fight. A rotting carcass.

But finally—

As the sun began to set on the second day, casting long shadows across a rusted pipeline canyon—

He felt it.

The world around him buzzed.

Not from electricity.

From something older.

Something hungry.

The canyon trembled.

The wind dropped dead.

Then came the crackle — not thunder, not Max.

Something else.

Something deeper.

It made the air vibrate.

He dropped into a crouch, sliding down a slope of jagged rock, landing at the base of the canyon. The black lightning in his body surged unbidden, reacting on instinct. His fingertips flared. His nerves screamed. His instincts whispered:

This is it.

And there—

Rising from the shadows at the far edge of the ravine—

A silhouette of coiled energy.

Ten feet tall.

Arms of obsidian armor.

A core pulsing with inverted plasma.

Eyes like stormclouds spinning backward.

The Catalyst Demon stood waiting for him.

Not moving.

Not attacking.

Just watching.

Like it had known Max was coming.

Max's heart pounded once.

He exhaled.

Then took one step forward, electricity crackling from every inch of his body.

"Found you."