When consciousness returned, it was not gentle.
I awoke to the sound of chains dragging across stone not from me, but from all around. The walls of the cage groaned like the ribs of some ancient beast, black veins of soul-light pulsing through them, and the floor beneath me bled shadow in slow, pulsing breaths. The air was heavier than before. The hunger inside me was heavier too.
The reset had come.
My wounds were gone, my strength restored but it wasn't mercy. The Abyss had only sharpened its knife for another cut.
They were already here.
Shapes moved in the haze. Not the same pitiful wretches from yesterday. These ones had weight in their steps. Some still wore the ghostly remnants of their former bodies half-armored warriors with flickering blades of memory, beasts with hollowed-out skulls burning with inner fire, and wraiths whose movements bent the shadows themselves. Their eyes all burned with the same thing: hunger.
The cage didn't care who devoured who. It only cared that something died.
The first came at me with a scream that split the dark. Its claws were like razors dipped in moonlight, swiping at my throat. I moved before thinking too slow yesterday, but not today. My hand shot up, catching the wrist mid-swing. I felt its soul through its flesh trembling, vibrant, alive.
I tore it free.
The sensation hit like a storm. Heat, cold, memories, pain they rushed into me in a tidal wave, dissolving the hesitation I had clung to before. The soul fought as it was devoured, and the more it fought, the sweeter it burned.
When I dropped the empty husk, the others hesitated.
Then they came all at once.
Steel flashed. Teeth tore. I felt claws rake my back and the sting of something burning through my ribs but I didn't stop. My movements were sharper, my senses stretched further than the skin I wore. I wasn't fighting bodies anymore. I was fighting cores. Souls. I could feel them before I saw them, beating like war drums inside every enemy.
That's when I felt it the cage whispering, or maybe my own hunger speaking for it:
[ Abyssal Instinct awakened. ]
— Passive: You sense the weakness in any soul within the Cage.
The next strike was different. I lunged, hand cutting through a wraith's incorporeal chest, my fingers curling around its core a fragile thing pretending to be strong. I crushed it, and the wraith dissolved into ribbons of light, flowing into me until the hunger flared again, bigger, sharper.
I didn't notice at first, but the shadows around me had begun to move. Not just because of the flickering soul-light. They were… reaching. Curling like tendrils from the floor, the walls, even from my own feet. They caught the limbs of the fleeing, tripping them into my reach.
[ Abyssal Grasp — Skill unlocked. ]
— Active: Shadow tendrils immobilize prey within range. Strength scales with consumed souls.
I didn't think about it. I just used it.
One of the champion souls a giant with molten eyes tried to leap clear. The shadows surged, seizing its legs mid-flight. Its roar became a scream as I dragged it back, my teeth clenched, my fingers stabbing into its chest. The resistance was immense like trying to tear stone with bare hands but I needed it. The hunger demanded it.
When I finally ripped its soul free, it was like drinking liquid fire. My vision blurred. My heart pounded. My body moved faster than thought, tearing through the next, and the next.
The floor became a graveyard of empty shells.
I don't know how long I hunted.
When the last one fell, the cage was quiet. Too quiet. My breath came ragged, the hunger still gnawing even after so many had been devoured. I wasn't human anymore. Not here. The rules outside didn't matter. The only truth was this: in the Abyssal Cage, you kill or you vanish.
That's when his voice came again deep, ancient, and cruel.
> "Better. You live. But you are still small."
I looked up. There was no figure, only the darkness coiling above like a watchful serpent.
> "Feed until nothing within this cage survives your shadow. Then… come to me."
I thought it was over, but how wrong I was.
They came like a tide not the measured steps of predators, but the desperate scramble of creatures too far gone to think. Their howls bounced off the walls, jagged and wrong, the sound of hunger given voice.
I didn't wait.
The first to reach me was a twisted thing with a spine arched so far it moved on all fours like a broken beast. It lunged, mouth splitting open too wide, teeth like glass shards. My shadow struck first a tendril lashing out from beneath me, spearing through its chest and holding it mid-air as it flailed. Its soul fluttered against my senses, faint but frantic. I yanked it free in one smooth motion, its body collapsing into dust before it even hit the floor.
The next was faster. A gaunt warrior in tattered armor, blade still burning with some lingering magic from a life long gone. It swung low a feint then came high for my neck. But [Abyssal Instinct] showed me the truth before the steel even moved. I stepped into the strike, my arm snapping up to catch its wrist, the other hand plunging into its chestplate like paper. The soul within was bitter, stubborn. I devoured it anyway.
The rush sharpened everything. Every flicker of movement in the haze was clear, every heartbeat like a drum in my skull.
Three more came at once. I didn't move back I pulled them in. Shadows surged outward, coiling around their limbs, choking their momentum. Their eyes widened, but there was no escape now. I moved through them like tearing wet cloth, ripping the cores from each, feeling the heat flood through my veins as their forms unraveled into nothing.
Something heavier hit the floor.
A hulking brute, twice my size, plated in bone and muscle so thick it almost scraped the ceiling. Its steps made the cage vibrate. The hunger in it was raw not just for flesh, but for dominance.
It roared, and the sound rattled my teeth.
I didn't match its strength head-on. My shadows did. Dozens of tendrils erupted from the ground, tangling around its arms and legs, forcing it to one knee. It thrashed, muscles straining, cracking some of the bindings but I was already on it. My hand plunged into the gaps between its ribs, digging deep until I found the soul, a blazing furnace trying to burn me out.
I squeezed.
The fire went out.
As it collapsed, the shadows drank in what was left, curling back toward me as if satisfied. But the hunger in me didn't fade it sharpened.
Bodies or what was left of them littered the cage floor, fading into black mist that rose and vanished into the walls.
Silence fell again. Heavy. Expectant. But I was still starving, I wanted more ,more of it but I decided perhaps I would ask.
I wanted to ask for more to tear open the walls and drag out whatever else this place could throw at me but a thin thread of sense cut through the hunger.
I needed to stop.
I needed to digest what I had taken.
The Cage floor was cold against my back as I laid down, staring into the endless black above. The shadows curled close, like they feared to leave me. For the first time since I woke here, a question crept in, quiet but sharp enough to sting.
Why?
Why was I doing all this? Why keep fighting, keep killing, keep swallowing these broken souls?
The answer came fast, too fast because I already knew.
I want revenge.
I want to know why.
I want to avenge him… and my wife… the way they died screaming under the teeth of those beasts.
My throat tightened at the memory, but I forced it down.
And then another truth slipped in, colder than the rest.
I wasn't even sure I'd ever see Earth again.
The thought left a bitter taste I couldn't spit out. I closed my eyes, letting exhaustion drag me down, the weight of the stolen power settling in my veins. The darkness above seemed to pulse, watching. I didn't care. My mind blurred.
And somehow… I slept.