Shiva Khan never knew a normal childhood. Born to The Boss and one of his most gifted Asian mistresses, Shiva was raised in the shadows of his father's criminal empire. He spent his earliest years shuttled between luxurious strongholds and secret compounds, never settling in one place for long.
Meet The Boss
Anthony “Tony” Khan was born into a world of crime and chaos. His father, a powerful Afghan drug lord, ruled the Old Underworld with an iron fist. His Italian mother, a Norman princess of the Black Nobility, ensured that he had the upbringing of a true prince. But when rival gangs sought to take his father down, they succeeded, leaving a power vacuum in their wake. Young Anthony, fueled by vengeance and ambition, stepped up boldly to fill his father's shoes.
While his father was consumed with consolidating power and pursuing immortality, young Shiva yearned for paternal affection and guidance. But The Boss viewed his son as little more than an asset, an heir to maintain family control. He kept Shiva at arm's length, occasionally appearing to humiliate him with hard lessons and tough love.
As Shiva grew into a brooding adolescent, he witnessed the depths of his father's cruelty and avarice firsthand. Innocent lives were mercilessly sacrificed for profit and advantage. Hired guns and assassins carried out The Boss's ruthless edicts without pause. Shiva recoiled in disgust, feeling like an outcast in his own family.
When Shiva turned 18, his father took him on a fateful expedition to retrieve ancient alien artifacts from the scorching deserts of Iraq. But their armed convoy was ambushed by Federation special forces bent on stopping The Boss's pursuit of forbidden power. Trapped in a furious firefight, Shiva watched his father transform into a nightmarish avatar of Enlil, the ruthless Anunnaki warlord. With ungodly abilities, The Boss slaughtered the entire Federation team - except for one young agent named Yin.
Beaten and bloody, Yin stared defiantly at the dark entity towering over her. "You're a monster," she spat at The Boss. "Humanity will never bow to your evil."
The Boss simply grinned, his eyes burning with contempt. "Brave words for an insect facing the sublime power of godhood."
Yin's eyes went wide as The Boss reached towards her face with a crackling hand. But before the fatal blow could land, Shiva bravely stepped between them.
"Father, no!" he cried, shielding the helpless soldier. "She's beaten. Show mercy!"
The Boss halted, his blazing glare fixing on Shiva with disgust. "Stand aside, boy. This weakling must learn her place before our righteous judgment."
"Please," Shiva begged, tears in his eyes. "Can't we be better than this? All I've seen is death. When does it end?"
Growling in contempt, The Boss withdrew his smoldering hand. "Foolish sentiment. I spare this gnat's life only because my own flesh pleads for it." He turned away, his voice dripping with disdain. "Take her and go. You're both unworthy to walk beside a demigod."
Stunned, Shiva looked to Yin with pity. The two young people fled into the desert, shaken by the evil they'd witnessed. An unbreakable bond was forged that night between them against the darkness Shiva had been born into.
Over the ensuing years, Shiva and Yin waged an unsung campaign to undermine his father's global operations from within. They leaked information to authorities, sabotaged arms shipments, and liberated human trafficking victims from Arachnid's clutches. But no matter how many blows they struck, The Boss's grip over the criminal underworld only tightened through sheer viciousness and fear.
By his late 20s Shiva had renounced his birthright, rejecting the Khan legacy. He lived off the grid, helping Yin run a network of safe houses for those fleeing The Boss's evil empire. His dream was to one day amass enough power to permanently bring his father down, and free the world from Anunnaki and other sinister influences.
But destiny had other plans.
While investigating strange activity in the Taklamakan desert, Shiva and Yin stumbled upon an ancient ziggurat buried beneath the sands. Within its long abandoned inner sanctums, they encountered an entity far more malevolent than even Enlil.
"Behold Azrael, the endless void that hungers," boomed a disembodied voice in the eldritch darkness. "I am the reaper that unravels creation itself!"
A festering cloud of black vapors swirled forth, cold tendrils caressing Shiva and Yin's faces. The two recoiled, their minds reeling as the entity's existential dread washed over them in waves.
"For eons, I have slumbered," Azrael's voice echoed hauntingly. "Awaiting one worthy of my power to claim - a vessel to enact my annihilating will."
Shiva and Yin scrambled for the exit, but an impenetrable force barred their escape. They were surrounded by the emptiness, their only option to listen.
"One of you shall become my unholy avatar," the void creature declared. "Only then may you leave this forsaken place."
Yin looked at Shiva in terror. "No, I won't let it take you!"
But Shiva's eyes narrowed with grim determination. Here was the power he needed to finally defeat his wretched father and the manipulative Enlil once and for all. No matter the cost, he would end their reign of oppression on Earth.
"I accept your offer, dread Azrael," Shiva stated firmly. "Grant me your unholy might!"
"Shiva, no!" Yin cried in vain.
Dark vapors swirled around Shiva, invading his body and mind with an agonizing coldness. As he convulsed in torment, the last of his humanity was stripped away—every moment, every emotion, every memory. When nothing remained but emptiness, a new Shiva emerged - skin like dark blue tourmaline, his eyes burning vortices into the eternal void of Azrael's realm.
The angel of death’s avatar now walked the Earth.
"The age of your false gods is over," Azrael/Shiva’s distorted voice admonished Yin with disdain. "I am the oblivion all beings shall embrace. Starting with the empire of the deluded warlord who dared call himself my father!"
Yin watched in horror as her friend surrendered completely to this dark primordial force. Once unified in their quest to stop The Boss, she now stood alone against another titanic threat to Earth, and life itself.
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