The Abyss was restless.
The black plains trembled beneath my steps, not with life, but with the ceaseless shifting of the countless damned. The air here wasn't air at all thick currents of soul-essence rippled through the emptiness like unseen tides, carrying whispers of agony from one end of eternity to the other. Above, there was no sun, no moon only the infinite void and the slow, ominous pulse of a crimson rift high overhead, bleeding strands of light that never reached the ground.
I was no longer a stranger to this place.
I had hunted here.
I had suffered here.
But today… today was different.
The prey was no mere wandering fragment, no weak, broken ghost clinging to memories. This was a High-Level Soul a being so potent that its essence alone could twist lesser spirits into madness. Lucifer's command had been simple:
> "Bring me its essence. Survive… and I'll pour power into you that will shatter your mortal shell entirely."
That promise had burned into my mind like a brand.
But so had the warning: High-Level Souls hunt back.
The terrain shifted ahead, the ground opening into a jagged chasm. From within, a shape began to rise no feet, no hands, no face, only a vortex of screaming white forms bound together like a swarm, each individual soul fragment struggling to break free from the knot that made the whole. It radiated a heatless, blinding light that gnawed at my eyes. My skin or what was left of it prickled with every wave of pressure it exuded.
It had sensed me.
The swarm screamed not in fear, but in challenge and the Abyss itself seemed to bend, shadows drawing back from its light. I moved first, tearing through the ground in a blur, my claws manifestations of my will raking at its outer layer. But the high soul wasn't mindless.
It split.
Thousands of fragments scattered into the air, surrounding me, forming a cyclone of faces contorted with rage and grief. Each fragment dived at me, passing through my form like icy blades, slicing my very essence. Every strike burned and froze simultaneously, threads of my soul unraveling with every touch.
I roared, forcing my will outward, summoning chains of black flame to bind them. The chains hissed through the air, catching a few, yanking them back into my grasp where I devoured them whole. They dissolved on my tongue if you could call it a tongue tasting like bitter iron and lightning.
But the more I consumed, the more the high soul retaliated.
From above, its core appeared a sphere of condensed soul-light the size of a man's skull, dripping trails of green energy. It descended like a falling star. The ground ruptured when it landed, and its light flared outward in a pulse that knocked me to my knees.
Strong. Too strong.
I lunged again, this time aiming for the core. The cyclone of fragments tightened, forming a wall. I tore through, losing pieces of myself in the process bits of memory, sensation, me. Still, I pushed on, my rage driving me. My claws found the core at last, and I sank my teeth into it.
The taste was agony.
It didn't want to be consumed.
It fought inside me, tearing, biting back, as if it would rather shatter me from within than be devoured.
I didn't stop.
Couldn't stop.
The last scream it made wasn't sound it was a vibration in my soul, like glass breaking. Then… silence.
The cyclone collapsed. The fragments fell lifeless to the ground, fading into wisps that sank into the Abyss.
By the time I dragged myself back to Lucifer's black citadel, I was barely whole. Its gates, made of entwined bone and obsidian, yawned open without sound. Inside, the throne room loomed, its vast walls lined with tortured statues former souls bound into eternal stillness, their mouths frozen mid-cry.
Lucifer sat upon his throne, a figure carved from shadow and pale light, his wings stretched wide behind him like an eclipse given form. His eyes, twin lanterns of molten gold, locked onto me the moment I entered.
I dropped the core at his feet.
> "You bleed power," he said, his voice like a choir singing in reverse. "But you are still… unshaped."
He rose, crossing the hall with a grace that made the ground quake. Without warning, his hand black talons wreathed in the shimmer of the Abyss plunged into my chest.
The pain was immediate.
And endless.
His energy poured into me in torrents, a flood of raw force that seared and froze, that ripped apart my soul-thread only to weave it tighter, denser. My vision warped; I saw not just the hall but the layers beneath it the veins of the Abyss pumping black light, the screaming rivers of wandering souls flowing through unseen channels.
I convulsed, every fiber of what I was straining against the overwhelming force. My essence swelled to the point of rupture, cracks forming in my form, leaking streams of pale mist. The pressure was suffocating my own will threatened to snap.
Lucifer didn't stop.
If anything, he pushed harder.
> "Endure," he said, his voice a command that sank into my marrow. "Or be remade into nothing."
And so I endured.
Through the agony.
Through the sensation of being dissolved and rebuilt in the same heartbeat.
Through the weight of a god's hand shaping what was once mortal clay.
When it ended, I collapsed to the black marble, trembling, unable to speak.
But I was stronger. I could feel it my edges sharper, my core heavier, my hunger… deeper.
Lucifer returned to his throne, watching me in silence.
The throne room was silent, but silence in the Abyss was never still.
It was alive.
The air shivered with unseen whispers, threads of voices carried from the screaming plains beyond the castle walls. Shadows slithered across the black marble floor, moving like oil under moonlight, their shapes forming and unforming talons, teeth, faces pressed in agony. Above, the ceiling was a cathedral of void, a sky stolen from reality, bleeding slow streams of silver light that seemed to come from nowhere.
Lucifer sat upon his throne, a structure of bone and obsidian fused together, each vertebra engraved with runes that pulsed faintly like the beat of a dead heart. His presence was not merely seen it was felt, seared into the soul like a brand.
I stood before him, or rather, I tried to stand. My soul form trembled under the pressure of his gaze. It wasn't the weight of physical gravity it was a force that reached inside, gripping my essence, whispering of how fragile I was.
"Enough of the shallow waters," Lucifer's voice rolled through the hall, deep and cold, like the first moment ice forms over a still pond. "You have tasted the weak. It is time you breathe in the stench of the deep."
I swallowed an instinct from when I had flesh, though my form here was nothing more than translucent sinew and shadow. "Deeper?" The word left me before I could stop it.
His eyes pools of burning, inverted light fixed on me. "You seek to become more than a drifting morsel in the dark. Then you must tear power from those who will not give it freely."
The floor around me split open, not with fire, but with an endless fall of black mist. From the chasm, I could see glimpses jagged plains of floating debris, rivers of screaming light, titans locked in battles that never ended. And beyond all of it, I could feel something… ancient, hateful, and aware.
"Below this level," Lucifer continued, "are the High Souls predators who have devoured empires worth of spirits. They are not remnants. They are kings among the dead, and you will bring me one."
A tremor of something between fear and hunger ran through me. "Why me?"
"Because," Lucifer said, rising from his throne in a slow, deliberate motion, "you are still human enough to hesitate. That hesitation will be the first thing they will try to tear from you. If you survive, you will no longer be the mortal I first chose. If you fail… the Abyss will forget you."
He stepped closer, and his hand pale, long-fingered, tipped with nails like black glass rested briefly on my shoulder. "You will not return until you have consumed a soul worthy of my table."
The floor gave way beneath me.
The fall was endless, yet sudden.
I crashed into the deeper Abyss.
I landed hard on a plain of jagged obsidian, my soulform cracking with the impact. The air was thicker here if it could even be called air. It felt like breathing in liquid shadow, each breath dragging whispers into my head that weren't mine. The ground trembled beneath my feet, as though something vast shifted below the surface.
Around me, the horizon was a storm of distorted ruins spires of bone twisted into spirals, rivers of molten silver where chained figures writhed beneath the surface, and skies split by arcs of crimson lightning.
I felt it then.
The pull.
A hunger that wasn't mine clawed at me from somewhere ahead. The High Soul.
Every instinct screamed to turn back, but I moved forward, stepping through broken archways and fields of petrified corpses. Each footstep echoed unnaturally, as though something beneath me was listening.
Then the world darkened further.
It wasn't the clouds. It was him.
The High Soul emerged from the haze like a monument of nightmare a towering figure of fractured armor, bones woven into his frame like trophies, and a helm crowned with horns that curved forward like the jaws of a beast. His body radiated pressure, not heat, but the crushing force of a gravity that existed only to remind lesser beings what they were. His eyes burned like frozen suns, and when he spoke, the sound was deep enough to make the ground shiver.
"You smell of the Surface Abyss," he said. "Fresh. Weak."
I summoned every shard of will and lunged first, drawing the Abyss-forged blade Lucifer had granted me. My slash connected and shattered. The weapon dissolved into shadow dust against his chestplate.
He moved once. Just once.
A backhand that wasn't even meant to kill me ripped my form apart, scattering my soul like shards of glass. I hit the ground hard enough to leave a crater, struggling to reform my essence.
Pathetic.
I looked up just in time to see him step closer. "You thought you could devour me?" His hand, massive and clawed, closed around my throat not crushing, but holding. "No. You are not yet worthy of being my prey."
The world twisted around us, and in a blink, I was somewhere else.
A cage.
A colossal sphere of black bars in the middle of an arena carved from bone. Dozens no, hundreds of other souls were here. Some screamed endlessly, their voices raw, others simply stared at nothing, broken. Chains hung from the high ceiling, each one ending in a hook that carried a struggling spirit.
"This is where the unworthy are tempered," the High Soul said, his voice booming through the cage. "Devour them. Tear them apart. Feed on them until there is nothing left of their will but ash."
I clenched my fists. "And if I refuse?"
His eyes burned brighter, a sick amusement in them. "Then you will remain here until the Abyss strips you to nothing. If you survive the cage, come to me again. Then… perhaps… I will kill you."
The cage doors sealed.
And the other souls turned toward me.
They came like a tide all teeth, claws, and screaming hate. And in that moment, I understood: this was not punishment. It was preparation. The only way out was through carnage.
Make sure to entertain me boy, it shouted while walking away.