The Abyss was no longer merely reacting.
It was watching.
Seris felt it in the way the shadows slowed when she moved, in how the floor beneath her feet no longer rippled blindly but adjusted—tilting, guiding, correcting her path as though the realm itself had intent. The darkness bent not just to her power, but to the bond etched into her soul.
To Mason.
The silver mark on her collarbone pulsed steadily now, no longer flaring wildly. Its heat was controlled. Purposeful. Like a heartbeat that was not her own.
"You feel it," Mason said behind her, his voice low, calm—dangerously so.
She turned.
He stood at the edge of a vast obsidian precipice, shadows draped around him like a king's mantle. The silver in his eyes had deepened, threaded now with something darker, older. Not hunger.
Claim.
"The Abyss has stopped testing you," he continued. "It's choosing."
Seris swallowed. "I didn't agree to be chosen."
A faint smile touched his mouth—not amused. Reverent.
"You never needed to."
The air thickened.
From below the precipice, the darkness opened.
Not split. Not cracked.
Opened—like an eye.
An immense presence stirred beneath reality itself, vast and unfathomable. Not a god in form, but in will. The Abyss was not a place.
It was an ancient consciousness.
And it was awake.
Seris staggered as pressure crashed into her mind—visions flooding her senses.
Stars being devoured. Gods kneeling. Realms collapsing into shadow not through destruction, but surrender. She saw herself standing at the center of it all, silver light blazing from her chest, shadows bowing.
And behind her—
Mason.
Always Mason.
"No," she whispered, clutching her head. "This isn't prophecy. It's manipulation."
Mason was suddenly in front of her.
He did not touch her.
That was worse.
"You think I forced this?" he asked quietly. "You think obsession means blindness?"
His voice dropped, threaded with something raw.
"I saw you before the Abyss did."
Her breath caught.
"I chose you before it woke," he continued. "And when it did… it recognized what was already true."
The Abyss roared.
Not in sound—but in affirmation.
Shadows surged upward, coiling around Seris's arms, her waist, her spine—not restraining.
Crowning.
Power poured into her, ancient and vast, and this time it did not burn.
It answered her.
She gasped, falling to one knee as silver light erupted from the mark, threading into the shadows, reshaping them. She felt it then—what Mason had always known.
She was not being consumed.
She was being installed.
"You are becoming its voice," Mason said softly. "Its will."
She looked up at him, eyes blazing. "And what does that make you?"
His gaze darkened.
"The only god it will not touch."
The only one who could stand beside her.
The only one it feared.
The Abyss settled.
And for the first time since her descent into darkness, Seris understood the truth that terrified her more than any monster.
Mason had not chained her to him.
He had built the world around her so she would never be alone in it.