The dungeon reacted before the hunters did.
The floor beneath Kairo's knees split open with a deafening crack, a deep rumble rolling through the darkness like something alive stirring after a long sleep. Dust sifted down from the fleshy ceiling. The black veins spreading from beneath him pulsed violently—like they were pumping blood through the stone.
The hunters didn't need orders.
They felt the shift.
"Retreat!" the female commander shouted—her voice finally cracking. "Form a choke-point! Don't let it expand!"
But the dungeon didn't care about their formation.
It cared about him.
Kairo gripped his chest, gasping as heat bloomed beneath his skin—too hot, too bright. Like embers igniting inside his ribs. Like his bones were softening and reforging themselves.
His heartbeat slammed against his sternum.
Ba-thump.Ba-thump.BA-THUMP.
The dungeon pulsed with him.
"Stop… please… stop…" Kairo whispered, voice cracking between a gasp and a prayer.
He didn't know who he was begging.
The hunters formed a tight wall—shields raised, spears glowing with cold, blue light. They were disciplined. Well-trained. Not the type to panic.
But their eyes—
Their eyes screamed fear.
The commander stepped forward, spear pointed straight at him.
"Kairo. Listen. If that thing inside you awakens completely, there won't be a world left for you to regret it."
His shoulders trembled.
"I don't want this…" he whispered.
There was no malice in his voice.
Only helplessness.
The commander hesitated—for one fatal second.
FWOOM.
Black energy erupted under Kairo, splitting the floor open like a cracked bone. The dungeon warped—walls pulling back, the ground bulging upward as though a massive heart beat beneath the entire room.
Hunters staggered.
Some fell.
"What is this?!"
The commander clenched her teeth.
"Dungeon shift—no. Worse. It's forming Abyss architecture!"
Kairo didn't understand—but the voice did.
"Our home remembers us."
Kairo forced himself upright, slamming a fist into the wall to stay conscious. The wall dented—not like stone breaking, but like flesh bruising.
Blood dripped from his hand.
The dungeon bled with him.
The commander stepped forward again, fear in her eyes but courage in her stance.
"Kairo. Look at me."
He tried.
When their eyes met, she flinched.
His pupils had narrowed to slits.His irises burned cold blue edged with black.Dark lines spiderwebbed beneath his skin, pulsing with every heartbeat.
"You're transforming," she whispered.
"No." His voice trembled. "I'm still—"
"Human?" the voice purred.
Kairo swallowed hard.
"You keep saying that," the voice continued, "but your body keeps disagreeing."
Another wave of nausea stabbed through him. He almost collapsed again, bracing himself on the shifting wall.
The hunters raised their weapons.
One whispered, "Commander… permission to eliminate?"
"No!" she snapped. "If he fully manifests the Fragment, we're dead anyway. We contain him. No killing unless necessary!"
Kairo felt it again.
The pull.The heat.The pressure beneath his ribs—
—like something massive pushing up his throat, begging to be set free.
He squeezed his eyes shut and screamed:
"STOP IT!"
The dungeon quaked so violently the hunters lost their footing.
Black smoke burst from Kairo's spine—thin tendrils snapping outward, writhing like living shadows before dissolving into the air.
He collapsed to all fours and vomited blood.
The commander hesitated.
He didn't look like a monster now.
He looked like a boy.
A battered sixteen-year-old kid, trembling and bleeding, fighting something far bigger than he could understand.
"Kairo…" she said softly. "Tell me… what does it feel like?"
He lifted his head slightly.
His voice was raw. Barely there.
"I feel… like something is trying to wear me."
The hunters went pale.
The commander whispered, horrified:
"So the Abyss Fragment is conscious…"
Kairo's vision blurred. His heartbeat pounded through his skull.
Ba-thump.BA-THUMP.BA-THUMP.
His bones vibrated.
And then—
Everything stopped.
Silence swallowed the room.
Not the silence of stillness—the silence before something enormous takes its first breath.
The commander froze.
"What… what's happening?"
A chill slid down Kairo's spine.
The voice inside him wasn't whispering anymore.
It was chanting.
Not in words.In intention.
Symbols ignited across the floor—circles weaving into circles, runes burning black into the flesh-like ground.
A ritual.A summoning.An awakening.
"Kairo!" the commander screamed. "Fight it! Or you'll—"
He raised his head.
His eyes were pitch black.
And when he spoke, his voice was layered.
Kairo's voice…
and something far, far older.
"The Abyss remembers its name."
The ritual lines flared.
Black flame roared upward.
The hunters screamed.
The commander lunged—
Too slow.
The world erupted in a blast of dark energy, swallowing everything.