---
> "Before language, there was hunger.
Before tribes, there were fangs.
Those who bit deepest… became history."
---
⚔️ The Flesh-Wars Begin
The First Layer howled.
It did not rain. It bled — from the skyless crusts to the ever-wet soil of bone. The Breath of the Abyss had awakened more than instinct; it had stirred territory.
And where territory existed, conflict would follow.
Suku Tanduk Hitam — the Hornblack Tribe — marched under the cracked moonlight of the Pillar's glow, their skin adorned with shardbone and dried bile paint. Krall, their alpha, now wielded a limb from a failed Ritual Eater — a twitching scythe-arm he wore like a crown.
Across the rotting dunes lay the Suku Abu — Ash-Eaters. Unlike the Hornblacks, they burned their dead and carved fire-tunnels through flesh-mountains. Their elder, Sul, had not returned. In her place, the faceless survivor Nuhrr now ruled, her voice a whisper carried by ashwinds.
And in the middle, between the two growing powers, roamed those who had no names.
They were simply The Nameless.
---
🧠 Born Without Purpose
The Nameless were not a tribe. They were fragments — mutations who never knew loyalty, faith, or fear. Their origins were accidental:
Some born from failed rituals, partial births spat out by the Pillar.
Others evolved too quickly, becoming so alien their kind rejected them.
A few were not born at all… but woke.
One such creature was It-That-Watches-Sideways. Its form had three torsos, no legs, and six dragging arms covered in eyes. It did not hunt — it predicted. Entire nests vanished because it anticipated their hunger before they even felt it.
Another, Gnarlmaw, was pure hunger. Its mouth ran down its spine. It could only move by chewing its way forward.
The Nameless made no sounds, no banners, no symbols.
But they killed with elegance.
---
⚔️ The Battle of Fangs
It began near the Screaming Ravine, where both the Hornblack and Ash-Eater tribes had come to scavenge the remains of a collapsed Totem. Neither knew the other had sent hunting packs.
Both sides emerged into the ravine at once.
And for three full cycles of darkness, the ravine sang with death.
The Hornblack pack moved in formation — fangbearers in front, toxin-bleeders behind. Their armor had grown directly from their skin, jagged and diseased.
The Ash-Eaters brought fire worms, trained leeches, and barked through cracked rune-lanterns. They coated themselves in flammable bile. Their strategy was to burn, blind, then bite.
But they were not alone.
The Nameless had been watching.
It-That-Watches-Sideways had predicted this convergence.
As both tribes clashed in brutal melee, a dozen Nameless emerged from the deep bones of the ravine. Not charging. Not howling. Just... entering.
And everything broke.
---
💀 Witness the Devourer
The battle turned to madness when Gnarlmaw split a fangbearer in half just by crawling through its body. Ritual Eaters, who had been bound to Hornblack forces, turned feral — as if something had unbound them.
Fireworms exploded prematurely. One Ash-Eater accidentally ignited its own unit with a false rune-signal, causing a bileflare that melted seven of their warriors into a single, screaming mass.
Krall himself arrived too late. What he saw was not battle.
It was butchery without authorship.
And at the center stood a Nameless entity not recorded in any tongue:
A being with no limbs, only a halo of sharp tendrils floating in a loop around a hollow. Inside that hollow swam teeth.
It did not eat.
It simply unmade.
Krall retreated. Nuhrr watched from the distant ridge and began scratching a new rune into her flesh. One shaped like a spiral of silence.
---
🌘 The Aftermath
When the blood settled and the flesh cooled, only three things remained in the ravine:
1. A pillar fragment, cracked and glowing.
2. The skull of a Ritual Eater, chewed through the inside.
3. A single Nameless creature, sitting cross-legged, humming a note none could hear.
Both tribes mourned their losses differently.
The Hornblacks began breeding scouts specifically to sense Nameless presence.
The Ash-Eaters began studying the flame patterns left behind, treating it as divine math.
The Nameless?
They simply moved on.
But the Abyss had recorded their presence.
And the Breath of the Abyss shifted once again — slower, deeper, hungrier.
---
🧠 Evolution Note – Tier 2.5
The Battle of Fangs marked the first recorded example of a creature breaking past Tier 2 without Ritual or Totem.
The Nameless, specifically the entity called Devourloop, became a subject of silent study. It introduced a new concept:
Absorption without structure.
The Pillar whispered again.
> "To eat without purpose… is to become the Abyss."
---