Each step felt heavier than the last, not because the stairs were steep, but because they pulled. The kind of pull that reached past mind straight into the marrow of my soul. My hands were still trembling from the fight, my chest rising and falling in that strange rhythm only battle could bring. I could still hear the echo of my blows, the crunch of the High Soul's body breaking, the dying hiss it made when I tore the last fragment from it.
But here, on these stairs, the sound was gone. No arena. No screaming abyssal winds. Just silence so deep it pressed against my eardrums until I swore I could hear my own thoughts scraping together.
I kept climbing.
The darkness above me was not night it was alive. Black currents shifted, writhing like serpents in water, parting only enough for the staircase to continue. Every step seemed to pull a whisper from the air, faint, almost inhuman: regret… regret… regret…
I clenched my jaw and kept moving.
The higher I climbed, the more my soul began to fade not in form, but in weight. My feet touched the steps without sound, my shadow was gone, and the faint shimmer of my soul-light bled from my fingers in thin streams. It reminded me… I wasn't alive. Not here. Not anymore. I was just a soul walking in a place where souls never truly rested.
And then… I saw him.
Lucifer Morningstar stood at the top of the final step, framed in an archway of light so pale it looked carved from moonstone. He was tall taller than memory ever dared make him and his eyes, twin pits of starless night, drew me in the way a flame draws a moth, though every instinct screamed it would burn me to ash.
His lips curved not into warmth, but into something that knew every sin I'd committed and would commit again.
"Well done, boy," his voice rolled through the Abyss, not loud, yet somehow everywhere. "You've done what most could not. You have evolved… your soul now burns as a High Soul."
Something in me stirred at his words. My knees bent without my mind commanding them. The cold steps met my knees as I lowered my head not out of obedience, but because his presence made defiance feel laughable.
Lucifer stepped forward, his shadow falling over me like the closing of a coffin lid. "You've walked the black veins of the Abyss. You've torn down what stood before you. And now…"
He raised his hand. In his palm burned a flame if you could call it that. It was not red, nor gold, but a deep, shifting black shot through with veins of silver and faint crimson, pulsing like the slow heartbeat of some ancient beast. I felt its heat without it touching me, and yet, there was no pain. Only weight.
"I will give you half of my essence," he said, and my chest tightened not from fear, but from the sheer gravity of what those words meant.
The flame rose, and in its light, the darkness of the Abyss shuddered as if the place itself feared it. He placed his palm over my chest where my soul's core should be and the world tore.
The flame poured into me.
It wasn't fire it was raw, concentrated existence. It slammed into me like a storm, burning through every regret I'd ever carried, every memory, every piece of myself until I couldn't tell if I was being reforged or destroyed. My vision flared white, then black, then something beyond both.
I screamed or thought I did but no sound came out. My hands clawed at the steps, cracking the pale stone beneath me as the essence spread, stitching itself into the very fibers of my soul.
Images flashed Lucifer's own battles, his triumphs, his betrayals, the endless legions of shadows kneeling before him. I saw the rise and fall of worlds. The devouring of suns. The silence after everything burned away.
And through it all, his voice, steady, unyielding:
"Rise, Voiden. Inherit my will."
When it finally ended, I was still on my knees, my body shaking. The pale light of the stairs was gone. The archway was gone. There was only Lucifer, standing above me, and the Abyss swirling around us in a silent, endless storm.
I raised my head. My hands no longer trembled. My soul no longer shimmered faintly it burned.
Lucifer smiled not kindly, but as one might smile at a blade finally sharpened enough to cut what must be cut.
"Now," he said, turning toward the shifting darkness ahead, "I name you Voiden Morningstar and there is much for you to do."
The air was thick with a silence that felt like the pause before a storm. Lucifer's voice lingered in my soul, not as a command, but as a promise.
"You will return. But this time, your body must hold. Without it you're soul will be too strong to contain anything in that planet so it will evolve your host to be able to contain you and grow with you"
In my grasp, a golden vial shimmered no larger than a man's fist, yet filled with a glowing white liquid. Lucifer's blood. His essence condensed into liquid fire, distilled from the very heart of the Abyss.
"Store it deep within your soul," he instructed, his presence folding around me like a shadowed cloak. "It will be your anchor, your strength. When you awaken, you will know how to reclaim it. Use it wisely."
I nodded, though words failed me. The vial dissolved into a burning pulse inside me, threading through my core like molten veins.
Then came the descent.
Darkness swallowed me whole, crushing and vast then, the world shattered.
I woke to cold.
Cold concrete against my cheek, the bitter sting of winter biting through ragged clothes. I was sprawled in a dumpster, forgotten and discarded. The smell of rust and rot clawed at my senses, but beneath it, beneath everything… I felt power.
My body thrashed, convulsing violently as if resisting the invasion of a foreign will. My vision swam, colors bleeding, then sharpening. Red eyes blinked open my eyes, but not my own.
I reached inside my soul. The vial Lucifer's blood called to me, hot as molten metal.
With trembling hands, I willed it out, and it poured into my mouth, thick and burning fire flooding my senses.
The pain was unbearable. Hot, scorching, like swallowing the sun itself.
I screamed silently, clawing at the cold earth as my body betrayed me.
Bones cracked and reformed. Skin peeled back and fell away like the shedding of a serpent. My hair, once black and lank, flashed white as pure snow.
My red eyes flared then shifted to burn a fierce gold, sharp and wild.
My frame swelled, muscles weaving beneath pale, ghostly skin. I stood, taller, broader a predator reborn. Not a man, not a beast, but something older and more terrible.
I flexed my elongated canines, breath steaming in the frosty air. My limbs felt impossibly light, charged with a power that thrummed like a war drum inside my chest.
I raised my gaze to the night sky. Stars flickered like distant flames, cold and eternal.
I inhaled deeply, tasting freedom and vengeance on the frozen wind.
"Thank you, Lucifer," I whispered, voice low and hungry. "I will not fail."
But before my thoughts could spiral, a foreign memory slammed into me a shard of someone else's past, jagged and intrusive.
The memory came like a storm crashing through my mind, unbidden and vivid.
I wasn't just a soul in a borrowed vessel. This body his body had a past carved in pain and betrayal.
I saw through his eyes, felt his shame.
He had once dreamed of awakening the sacred power whispered about in hushed tones, the blessing of the Green Light. The ability to wield forces beyond mortal grasp. To become an Awakened.
But the body lay still, untouched by that grace.
His hands trembled, reaching for the dormant spark inside him, but nothing stirred. Not a flicker. Not a whisper.
His younger brother his junior, they called him awakened instead.
The boy's power erupted like a tempest: an S-rank ability, magnificent and terrifying.
Their clan the Blade Clan, ruled by their ruthless father Rowen was stunned. Pride twisted into scorn. They had two sons of the same bloodline, yet only one bore the gift.
And so, the boy was cast out.
His home became the clan's refuse the dump site where forgotten things were thrown away. Rotting wood, broken weapons, and bones buried beneath the dirt.
He lived among the shadows of rejection.
One night, his brother came.
Not with kindness.
But with cold news.
His stepmother his junior's mother and his own brother had tampered with his awakening.
They had stolen his chance.
The boy collapsed into tears, anguish ripping through his chest.
"Why?" he screamed into the night. "Why betray your own blood?"
His voice broke, raw and desperate. The agony was unbearable—deeper than wounds, heavier than chains.
He wanted to kill his brother. To end the mockery of betrayal with blood.
But the truth was cruel: the awakened had powers beyond flesh. Bones hardened like steel. Reflexes honed to impossible speed.
His brother was stronger due to this and with time will become a living storm he beated him to death.
With every strike, the shame and pain dissolved into cold silence.
The last thing the boy saw was the smug grin on his brother's face as he walked away victor and traitor both.
The memory shattered as quickly as it came, leaving me trembling.
The pain was like the one I felt when my died in front of me.