CALAMITY : Legends Of The Chosen

The sun had barely risen over the broken mountains when Max Conrad flew into silence.

For the past two days, he'd hunted for it — the one Catalyst Demon that could truly push him to the edge. Not a group battle. Not backup. No Zans shielding his flank. No Enme barriers. Just Max, his grit, and his storm.

And now, here it was.

In the center of a dead city swallowed by vines and stone, the ruins cracked open like a scar. There, nested in what was once a banking district, stood the monster.

It was at least thirty meters tall.

Not sleek, not graceful — a hulking mass of arms and segmented limbs fused with razored obsidian and scorched bone. Purple glyphs ran down its torso like melted scripture. From its back, a cluster of black lightning rods sparked and writhed with unstable VYTHRA.

Max hovered over the ruined towers, eyes narrowed.

This was it. This was the one. A Catalyst-Class. Lightning-aligned. Built like a nightmare.

Max's own black lightning pulsed around his body, surging along his shoulders and fingers like wildfire caught in a storm.

No backup. No Indra's Arrow. No flight enhancements. Only raw control. Only instinct.

Only him.

He descended slowly, boots cracking the rooftop of a nearby parking structure. His heart hammered in his chest, but his expression was calm. Focused.

"Alright, freak," he muttered, cracking his neck. "Let's see if I'm worth the storm they gave me."

He took a single step forward.

The demon noticed.

It didn't roar. It didn't shriek. It simply moved. Like a collapsed building suddenly rising to attack, its full mass shifted toward Max with a sickening creak of pressure and heat. The air warped.

Max raised his hands.

Lightning surged.

And the battle began.

The first strike came like a scythe of thunder.

The demon's limbs generated serrated arcs of black lightning, ripping through buildings with crackling force. Max ducked the first, rolled under the second, then launched himself into the sky with a burst of electricity.

Midair, he raised his palm. A ball of unstable voltage formed at his fingertips.

He hurled it.

The sphere hit the demon's chest — and dispersed. The glyphs along its torso glowed brighter, feeding off the impact.

Max's eyes widened.

"It absorbed it?"

A spike shot from the demon's shoulder. Max narrowly twisted aside, but the spike exploded with kinetic force, sending him crashing into a concrete column. The pain lanced through his ribs.

He pushed off the rubble, breath ragged.

"Okay. That's new."

The demon charged.

Max ducked beneath another thunder strike, then sprinted forward, skating along the scorched concrete using raw lightning propulsion. He zigzagged left, leapt off a wall, and landed on the demon's outstretched limb.

Then, he unleashed everything.

His arms shimmered, crackling black lightning dancing from elbow to knuckle. With a roar, he slammed both palms against the demon's shoulder.

A thunderclap erupted.

The arm detonated.

The demon staggered.

But even as black blood hissed and splattered across the broken terrain, its glyphs flared again. Energy began to regenerate its missing limb like molten metal folding into shape.

Max backed off, sweat pouring down his brow.

"Guess we're doing this the hard way."

Hours passed.

Max lost count of how many buildings had collapsed. How many times he was flung like a ragdoll. His shirt was shredded. His knuckles were bruised. The city had become a battlefield of charred craters, slag, and electrical storms.

His black lightning flickered now. Faint. Weak. He was running low.

And the demon wasn't even close to done.

It raised its arm. Lightning formed a trident-shaped storm spear in its palm.

Max dodged.

Too slow.

The spear grazed his shoulder and tore a gash across his chest.

He hit the ground, bounced, and didn't rise for a few seconds.

The wind howled. The glyphs on the demon's back started charging.

A nova pulse.

One hit and it was over.

Max groaned, struggling to push himself up. His fingers spasmed. Blood pooled at the corner of his lips. And all he could think was

Not like this.

He raised his arm, trembling.

The demon released the pulse.

He screamed and threw a single bolt of black lightning — a jagged, unstable, suicidal lance of raw will.

The two collided.

Light swallowed the world.

When the dust settled, both stood. Barely.

Max's body smoked. His arms hung limp. He couldn't feel his legs.

The demon twitched. One of its glyphs cracked. Lightning escaped like gas from a dying engine.

Both dropped to one knee.

Max grinned, blood on his teeth.

"Still here, you bastard."

The demon raised its head—

Max surged forward. His final charge.

A single punch, filled with all remaining lightning, landed against the demon's core glyph.

There was no explosion.

Just light.

The glyph cracked.

And the demon fell.

So did Max.

Ash spiraled in the still air.

The battlefield was charred and uneven, a smoldering ruin of melted stone, fractured terrain, and blackened trees. The air itself crackled faintly with the residue of Max's lightning — but even that was fading.

He stood panting, knees locked, body trembling.

His arms hung loosely by his sides, skin seared and scorched, his muscles trembling beneath the torn fabric of his charred jacket. Veins pulsed with dying light as the remnants of black lightning flickered and danced weakly along his fingertips.

The Catalyst-Class demon — or what should have been its corpse — twitched.

Then it rose.

Its cracked, burnt exoskeleton clicked into place with jagged sounds. Its horned head swiveled unnaturally. Flesh knitted itself back together with sizzling force. Lightning surged inside its translucent bones.

No. It wasn't just alive.

It was healing.

"No," Max whispered.

The demon flexed its claws, head tilted as if amused. It had learned. Adapted. It no longer feared the black lightning that once tore its organs apart. The energy it once flinched from now rolled harmlessly across its hide.

"No," Max repeated, more desperately this time.

He tried to lift his arm, but his body refused. His legs gave way. He dropped to one knee. His VYTHRA gauge was blinking in the corner of his vision — a warning, relentless and cruel.

[0.4% VYTHRA Remain—]

[0.2%—]

[CRITICAL]

[0.0%]

Then the gauge vanished entirely.

Max looked at his own hands. They didn't even spark anymore. His lightning was gone.

"I used… everything," he murmured.

The demon's body let out a low, resonant growl — a purr of triumph. Its glowing eyes locked onto Max with primal hunger.

Max didn't scream.

He didn't cry.

He didn't beg.

He just smiled — bitter and broken.

"I guess this is it, huh?"

He turned his gaze to the sky.

Above him, the stars had begun to reappear, cold and uncaring. The moon sat crooked, like a cracked plate of bone. Wind carried the scent of ozone, blood, and burnt grass.

He wasn't afraid.

Just… ashamed.

"I'm sorry, guys."

He raised his hand — not at the demon, but toward the heavens.

With the last flicker of black lightning left in his soul — not enough to kill, not enough to fight — he launched it upward. A blinding, thin beam of obsidian light cut into the clouds, screaming across the night sky like a final flare.

Not a weapon.

A message.

I've failed.

Come find what's left of me.

The beam crackled once… then sputtered out.

Max collapsed, his body hitting the scorched earth with a thud.

His limbs twitched once.

Then stilled.

The demon stood over him. Its shoulders rose and fell slowly as it processed its kill. But then—

It stopped.