Darkness.
a primordial void, endless and crushing, swallowing everything without mercy.
Arian fell through it helplessly, his limbs numb, his breath ripped away by the sheer weight of the Abyss. The pressure wasn't merely physical; it pressed on his mind, squeezing thought and memory into fragments.
His vision had gone black the moment he crossed the threshold. Every instinct screamed to open his eyes, to see, to grasp something—but the energy around him was so thick, so violent, that even the slightest attempt made veins burst and his skull ring like shattering glass.
His body trembled.
His heartbeat became faint.
Is this… how I die?
His final thought drifted into a sea of pain and emptiness.
He felt the cold, the kind that seeped not into skin, but into the soul. It numbed everything—fear, anger, even regret—until he felt like a fading echo of himself.
But in that absolute silence…
A voice awakened inside him.
---
"You who fall… do you want power?"
The sound wasn't heard by ears. It pulsed directly into his consciousness—soft, calm, yet carrying an ancient heaviness, as if spoken by something older than reality itself.
Arian's eyes remained shut, but his fading awareness flinched.
"Who…"
The word dissolved before it reached his lips.
The voice repeated, unchanging:
"Do you want power… or will you meet your end in the Abyss?"
The words struck him like cold lightning.
Arian tried to move, tried to breathe—nothing. It felt like invisible chains bound him from every direction. The Abyss wasn't merely killing him; it was erasing him.
His vision—or whatever remained of it—blurred with memories.
The dungeon.
His team.
Those he trusted with his life.
Their faces appeared one after another, twisted with greed and recognition-hunger.
"We can't let him take the reward."
"He'll overshadow us."
"Push him—no one will know."
The betrayal played again, burning deeper than any physical wound.
He remembered the shove.
He remembered falling.
He remembered their eyes—cold, relieved, victorious.
A tremor of hatred shook through him.
Arian's consciousness, though fading, ignited with a flame he thought he had lost.
"No…"
The whisper inside him was raw.
"I won't die… not like this."
The voice within him responded instantly, as if waiting for that flicker:
"Then answer me.
Do you desire power?"
The question dug deeper, echoing in the deepest corners of his being.
It wasn't a plea.
It wasn't an offer.
It was a door—one he could either open or let close forever.
His fear melted into fury.
He pictured their faces again, those traitors whose names he once spoke with pride.
He remembered the dreams they crushed, the trust they shattered, the life they stole from him.
He felt anger turn into something darker. Something primal.
"I… I want power…"
His voice trembled with pain and rage.
"I want strength to stand again… to rise again…"
His words sharpened, his spirit shaking with fury—
"I want revenge! I want to tear down everything they built on my death!"
Silence.
Then…
A shift in the Abyss.
As if the entire void took a breath.
The voice murmured, softer now—almost approving:
"Then endure what comes."
---
The world around him exploded.
A wave of abyssal energy surged, spiraling like a devouring hurricane. The pressure crushed him harder, compressing bone, muscle, even his soul. It felt like a thousand blades carving his existence apart.
Something pierced into him—dark, cold, ancient—
A force beyond understanding tore through his veins, burning like liquid fire.
Arian screamed, though his voice made no sound.
Every nerve lit like a dying star.
His body twisted, reshaped, torn apart and rebuilt in the same second.
The Abyss was not giving him power.
It was reconstructing him to survive its power.
Tendons snapped and reformed.
Bones cracked, dissolved, and grew stronger.
His mind shattered and reassembled piece by piece.
Through the agony, the voice returned—still calm, still distant, still unknowable:
"If you wish to live… accept this pain."
His consciousness flickered violently, threatened to break.
He tasted blood—felt lightning in his skull—felt the entire Abyss roaring inside his chest.
But through it all, one thought anchored him:
I won't die.
Not here.
Not before I make them pay.
He clung to those words with everything he had left.
The Abyss pushed harder, molding him, rewriting him, filling him with its wrath.
And for the first time…
the darkness didn't feel like an enemy.
It felt like a rebirth.
---
By the time the storm calmed, Arian was no longer falling.
He was simply suspended—floating in a void that had stopped trying to kill him.
But the transformation was not over.
Something still lingered in the dark.
Watching.
Waiting.
Silent.
Arian couldn't see it.
But its final whisper brushed against his consciousness like a shadow with intent:
"When you awaken… you will no longer be the same."
The Abyss swallowed him once more—
not as prey,
but as its chosen.
---