Far beneath the world's crust, where no sunbeam dared trespass, a labyrinth of black crystal pulsed with a slow, malignant hunger. In that lightless domain walked Erebus, the first Abyss Emperor. He wore no crown, for none had ever been born who could place one upon him. His silhouette flickered, a shape of void and swirling motes of starlight, as if the universe itself had hollowed him out. Each of his footfalls left a bruised stain on the rock, as if the earth recoiled from his passing.
Before him loomed the Nihileth—a colossal, crystalline monolith whose every facet shimmered with unreality. Inside its frozen depths, dream and substance dissolved into one another. Erebus extended a hand of black mist to caress its surface.
"Soon," he murmured, voice echoing as if the cavern were a thousand cathedrals. "You will birth the blade that severs all ties."
A crack rippled through the Nihileth, spitting jagged shards across the cavern floor. From within its core, a shape began to coalesce. It was not born as a child, nor even as a creature. It was an idea made flesh, a being forged to embody pure extinction. As its limbs knit together, obsidian armor sealed over translucent muscle. A helm formed last, its single eye a slit of cold indigo light.
Orion's awakening was silent. When at last he stepped from the shattered monolith, the air recoiled as if the cavern itself feared him. He regarded Erebus without blinking, as though sight were only one of many senses he possessed.
"You know your purpose," Erebus intoned. "You are my herald, my sword, my perfected heir. Speak your name."
The figure tilted its head, and a whisper that was not quite a voice—more a thought pressed against the walls of reality—echoed through the abyss.
"Orion."
Erebus's lips curved into something almost like a smile. He spread both hands, shadows unraveling into wings of midnight. "Go now, my child. Find the surface. Show them what the end looks like."
Orion inclined his helm, then turned without ceremony. As he strode toward the winding tunnels, the Nihileth's shards trembled and dissolved into mist. Each step he took left no trace, for his passage was not recorded by time, nor memory, nor mercy.
When he vanished into darkness, the cavern pulsed once in mourning—for in that instant, a slumbering world had gained its executioner.