Kofi staggered back as the black stone embedded itself into his palm. It wasn’t painful, but the sensation was overwhelming—like thousands of voices whispering at the edge of his consciousness, too faint to understand but too loud to ignore.

  His skin tingled. His mind expanded.

  For a moment, the entire dungeon seemed transparent—he could sense every crack in the walls, every shift in the ground, every particle of dust hanging in the air.

  This wasn’t just earth anymore.

  It was matter itself.

  He clenched his fist, his breathing uneven. What am I becoming?

  Then, the chamber shook violently.

  The walls pulsed, as if something ancient had just awakened. A deep rumbling filled the air, and suddenly—

  A doorway appeared where there had been none before.

  Kofi’s heart pounded. He didn’t trust the dungeon—not anymore. It had been testing him from the beginning, and now it was leading him somewhere.

  He had two choices: turn back or step forward.

  He took a breath.

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  Then, he walked through the doorway.

  —

  The Observatory – Outside Forces Close In

  Orbiting above Earth, unseen by the world below, a sleek, black spacecraft hummed with energy.

  Inside, a figure stood before a massive holographic projection of Ghana’s northern region—where the dungeon anomaly had occurred. Data scrolled across the screen, showing energy fluctuations and unidentified matter signatures.

  A voice crackled through the comms.

  "Commander, the readings have stabilized, but we’ve detected… something new."

  The figure narrowed their eyes. "Define ‘new.’"

  "It’s not just mana anymore. It’s something else. Something… fundamental."

  Silence.

  Then, the commander’s voice was quiet, but firm.

  "Deploy the team."

  "If this anomaly is what I think it is... we may be too late to stop it."

  —

  The Dungeon – The Chamber of Origins

  The new passage led Kofi to an immense underground cavern, unlike anything he had seen before. The walls were lined with glyphs, pulsating with faint, golden light.

  At the center of the room stood an obelisk, ancient and cracked, but radiating power. Floating around it were fragments of material he couldn’t identify—shifting between liquid, solid, and something else entirely.

  Then—

  The voice returned.

  "You have taken the next step. Now, you must understand."

  Kofi clenched his fists. "Understand what?"

  The obelisk pulsed once.

  And suddenly—

  His mind was no longer in his body.

  —

  Visions of the Past

  He saw worlds that no longer existed.

  Planets shattered into dust.

  Beings that wielded power beyond comprehension.

  And then, he saw them.

  The ones who had come before.

  Not humans. Not monsters. Something else.

  They had mastered matter itself—creating, destroying, reshaping reality at will. They had used their abilities to travel beyond the stars, forging civilizations across galaxies.

  But then…

  Something had hunted them.

  Something that did not belong to any world.

  And one by one, they had fallen.

  Until only a single remnant of their power was left—buried deep beneath the earth, locked away in the dungeons that had now begun to reawaken.

  The vision faded.

  Kofi gasped, stumbling back as he returned to the present.

  His entire body burned with energy. His very cells felt like they had been rewritten.

  Then, the voice whispered one final truth.

  "You are the first to awaken in a thousand years."

  "You are the last heir of the Shapers."

  Kofi’s pulse thundered.

  This dungeon had never been just a dungeon.

  It was a prison. A warning.

  And now… he had inherited its power.

  But if that was true—

  What had hunted the ones before him?

  And worse…

  Was it still out there?