Nyxborn-The Forgotten Etherium

Pain was the first thing Renar felt.

Not the sharp agony of a blade, nor the searing burn of flames—but something deeper.

A cold, gnawing sensation coiled around his very being, sinking into his bones. It wasn't just his body that ached; it was something inside him. Something broken. Something reforming.

His fingers twitched.

Stone.

His hands lay against rough stone, his skin covered in dust and dried blood. The air was thick with the scent of ash and decay, tinged with something ancient.

Slowly, Renar forced his eyes open.

Darkness.

He was lying on the cold floor of what seemed to be a cavern—its walls lined with faintly glowing blue veins, pulsing as if they were alive. The ceiling stretched high, too high for him to see, and in the distance, black monolithic structures loomed, half-buried in the rock.

This was no ordinary place.

He pushed himself upright, his body far too light, as if something fundamental had changed within him. His heart pounded, not from exertion, but from the unnatural stillness in the air.

And then—

He remembered.

The execution. The sword. The last thing he saw—the crimson moon hanging low in the sky, a whisper slithering into his mind.

"Do you seek to rise again… fallen one?"

His breath hitched. He reached for his chest, fingers pressing against his sternum—where his Etherium Core had once been.

But there was nothing. No warmth. No familiar pulse of power. Just an empty space.

No—not empty.

Something was there. Something wrong.

A whisper brushed against his mind like a phantom breeze.

"You are no longer bound to the light of the living… nor the silence of the dead."

Renar's jaw clenched. The words were not his own.

Slowly, he looked down at his hands. His veins—once vibrant with the golden glow of Solmarian Etherium—were now dark, traced with an ashen hue.

And in the depths of his soul, something pulsed.

Something not of this world.

Nyx Etherium.

A power without form. A power without light. A power that did not burn, but devoured.

His body trembled. Not from fear. Not from pain.

But from the cold certainty that he was no longer the same person who had died that night.

Renar Ardentis—the noble heir, the proud warrior, the last of his house—was gone.

Here, in this abyss, something else had taken his place.

Something Nyxborn.

And the world had no idea what it had just unleashed.