I don't know when I blacked out again.
My body had nothing left. No strength. No blood. No sense. I should've died when I fell from that cliff.
But death didn't come.
Instead, it sent me something worse.
A dream.
No.
Not a dream.
A vision.
---
[Vision Begins]
I'm standing inside a massive chamber. Not stone. Not metal. Living.
The walls pulse like veins, wet with something that smells like blood and acid. Runes float in the air like dust, symbols I don't understand but can feel. They burn my eyes just looking at them.
In the center of the chamber, there's a pit—circular, wide, and full of bodies. Monsters. Elder Dragons. Their corpses twist unnaturally, like they were taken apart and sewn together with rage and wire.
There are people too. Figures in long robes, their faces hidden behind gold masks carved like dragon skulls. They chant in a language I can't comprehend, but each word echoes like it shouldn't exist in human mouths.
Then…
It rises.
Out of the pit.
Out of the horror.
The thing they made.
---
At first, I don't know what I'm seeing.
Then it opens its eyes.
Dozens of them. All blinking independently. All watching different directions. All aware.
The head is Rathalos—fanged and furious, but split down the center with a second jaw grafted into its throat, steaming like a forge. One eye glows like Teostra, the other like Vaal Hazak.
The right wing unfurls—a jagged iron fan, wrapped in rusted metal and cyclone winds, unmistakably Kushala Daora.
The left wing erupts in flame, molten cracks burning down its veins—Teostra's unmistakable fireblood leaking from every joint.
Its spine is covered in crystal, lightning flickering within like a caged storm — Kirin.
Its tail ends in a massive, brutal club with black bone and red spikes like Nergigante.
It is a chimera.
No—an abomination.
And it is alive.
Twitching.
Breathing.
Suffering.
Its entire body pulses like a scar left on the world. Every movement lets out a distorted, garbled roar, made from the voices of monsters it was built from.
It's not roaring in dominance.
It's screaming.
---
I stumble back.
I don't know if I'm seeing it from memory, from the past… or from the future.
The robed men continue chanting.
Then one of them turns to a massive circular device. A projection ignites above it—ancient script flares across a map of the world.
One of them speaks—clearer now, as if the vision wants me to hear it.
> "Equal Weapon #000: Vaal'Dhazyr."
"The Absolute Apex. The Judgment of Balance."
"Born from the bones of kings. Forged in the fall of nature."
"A weapon... to hunt anything."
They bow.
To the monster.
Like it's sacred.
Like it's divine.
Like it's the only thing they trust to fight what came before.
---
I can't breathe.
I can feel its presence in my chest like a heart that isn't mine. The monster looks directly at me.
I'm not even in this world, in this time, in this memory.
But it sees me.
Its fused jaw shifts, blood dripping from between steel teeth.
> "Become me," it says.
And I wake up screaming.
---
[Vision Ends]
Moonlight.
Jungle air.
Pain in every inch of my body.
But that monster…
That Equal Weapon…
Was real.
And the worst part?
Something about the way it looked at me—
Like it recognized me.
Like it's waiting for me to finish something that started long before I was ever born.