With the fall of the Shantak and his minions and the disappearance of the One in Red it has come to everyone's attention to who will claim the center of the multiverse. The remaining factions and heroes have been rebranded. Into four new factions, the Dreaming Green. The Allied Kingdoms. The Primevals. And lastly the Hand of Death. All vying for control of the center. Battlefields will be fought for real this time. The very earth will tremble and the very fabric of reality will shatter.
Meanwhile somewhere on Earth. The old man in the bookstore is wrapping something in a big parcel. It is being shipped to an address near the coast.
Nearby on top of a roof across the street from the bookstore, a strange black cloaked figure wearing a skull mask is watching. What he's watching is unknown. He turns around and he fades through a rip in reality. It closes right behind him.
Meanwhile somewhere in Abel at night a dark shadowy figure lurks the street. Sounds of choking can be heard inside the buildings as he walks past them. Dark sinewy arms of darkness flit through the cracks and holes and vents in the houses. He seems to smile and chortle as he passes every building. As if hearing their last thoughts was comedy. He seems to be drawing joy out of the suffering of others. A sniper with a rifle on a lookout post unloads his rifle. Bangs echo in the town. The bullets simply go through the dark figure. As if he was shadow. The Shadow Mogul has come. The Mogul goes to the other side of town. And he goes into the town graveyard. So old even the letters on the gravestones have faded. Dry weeds choke what remains of this cemetery. And from out of the grave dirt, comes a dimensional rip in the fabric of reality. And from the other side there is a boy. A boy in oversized adult clothes. Like a business suit. In his hands and the floor strewn about him are various hand puppets. Hand puppets of angels, cast out of heaven for not bowing down toward mortals. Demons.
"Bifrons"
The boy raises his head in surprise and relief.
"It's time to go"
With that the boy raises a hand puppet and the hand puppet talks in a very dark, deep voice.
"I am ready, time to wake the Beast"
And from that dark power comes out of the puppet and bolts of it hit all corpses and pierces the grave dirt and for a moment it is quiet. Until the sound of the rested becomes the sound of unrest, disturbed and the damned.
With the deaths of Sakari, avatar of life and the slaying of Simone, the avatar of water. A vicious pair of avatar has been chosen. One of the chosen is at a toxic waste dump in the ocean. The other is in a chrysalis.
At the foggy toxic waste dump, Zachary becomes one with the water, preserved by the chemicals. And awoken by the ray. He wakes up and roars. A fury of the tides has awoken. His clothes are in scraps. They vaporize from the day. His eyes turn a deep aquamarine blue. His hands turn into claws. As he lurches forward forgetting his previous existence as a human. He is now the lord of the tides. And all of creation will be submerged in merciless waters. And as he looks around he sees a broken cutlass. And he looks at his nakedness. And the spray of the sea hitting him forms into clothing, that of a pirate captain. And as he looks around he sees that their is a ship that appears out of the morning fog. An old ship, a frigate. Covered in seaweed yet it does not appear wet. It's sails are ripped and torn. And it creaks an unholy wail. It lurches toward him in the brine. On it's side it says the Knucklavee .And it says with a deep gargly voice of the deep.
"Welcome"
It unceremoniously dump a life dinghy to row up to the ship.
Zachary looks at it and jumps on. And as he jumps on it he realizes it needs two people. And with a brief prayer to the great oceans. He multiplies into two. Real life clones of himself. And they row away toward the sentient ship. In the distance he sees a modern day boat. It's the coast guard.
Meanwhile in the forest at night. The moonlight hits a cherry blossom tree. And from out of the grass appears a creature. It's skin is tree bark of an white oak. It's hair the petals of a cherry blossom. It's hands and feet end in rootlike appendages. And it looks at the moon. Then at the tree. And then he sees seeds from underneath the shade of the tree. His soldiers. He picks them up and starts planting them. Paul then vows in his mind that no matter how much they hate him and hunt him he will always help humanity. Every step of the way.