Author's Note: I want to thank you from the heart for 39k views.Every read, every comment, every favorite makes this story come alive in a way I never imagined.
Thank you for walking this far with me.Now… take a deep breath.
Enjoy.
The vibration of the ground changed — it stopped being the echo of the creatures' footsteps and became something deeper, almost a heartbeat.
The air around Éon rippled as if the world had forgotten its own laws.
He took a single step.
That step made the world tremble.
The creatures didn't advance.
They were pulled.
As if invisible hands had grabbed their bodies and dragged them into the blade's reach.
When Éon inhaled, the wind recoiled.
"Moon Dance… Full Moon."
The ground shuddered.
When he exhaled, the slaughter began.
The first creature came from the side — fast, heavy — and Éon turned his torso with his hips low, using the momentum from the previous step.
The blade carved a dense arc, heavy and loaded.
Fullmoon Impact.
The strike hit the base of the creature's neck, breaking everything.
The body collapsed like rotten wood.
The second came right behind.
Éon stamped down, shifting his weight to the heel, letting the creature use its own mass against itself.
The blade rose in a short, violent curve.
The beast's jaw separated from its face before it understood anything.
The third one leapt from the front.
Éon surged forward — didn't retreat — and rolled his shoulder, slipping past the charge by mere centimeters.
His elbow struck the creature's flank, breaking its balance.
Moon's Embrace.
Rotational Throw.
The creature was launched like dead weight, tumbling across the ground.
But then—
Something failed.
One of the ones he'd knocked down came back — far too fast.
The attack came in a diagonal slash.
Éon raised the katana, but not along the ideal line.
The claw tore into his arm.
Hot.
Deep.
The impact forced him back three steps, breaking his axis, his posture, the rhythm of the dance.
His breath faltered.
For an instant, thought tried to take over the body — to calculate, correct, understand.
And that was exactly what broke him.
The rhythm collapsed.
The air grew too heavy, the sound too slow, the body missing only because it thought.
The creatures advanced — fast, chaotic, desperate.
And then…
…before fear could turn into action, something deeper than thought reacted.
It wasn't choice.
It wasn't technique.
It was pure reflex shaped over years.
A brief emptiness opened inside him — not the Abyss' emptiness, but the emptiness of technique.
That silent space between one strike and the next, where the body moves before the mind.
And the body moved on its own.
His vision shook.
The creatures ahead seemed to multiply, shadows ready to tear his mistake apart.
The body wanted to react in panic — to strike just to push them away.
And in that instant…
The silence inside him broke.
Not outward — inward.
The body moved before any creature could react.
The first lunged.
Éon didn't even look.
His foot slid half a palm to the side, a minimal, sharp shift — and his injured arm turned with it, using the pain as a pivot.
The blade dropped in a short cut.
Precise.
The creature's skull opened like wet wood.
The second tried to grab him from behind.
The body turned before the touch reached him — not by decision, but by old habit, trained until it became reflex.
His hips rotated.
"Fullmoon… split."
The impact shattered the creature's clavicle and hurled it aside with a wet crack.
The third came crawling, fast.
Éon lowered his center of gravity, the blade almost grazing the ground.
A brief flash reflected along the metal.
"The Gleam."
The creature blinked — a single mistake.
Enough.
The cut rose with contained violence.
The head fell, rolling across the ground, knocking three times before stopping.
In the same moment, Éon's body had already spun again, returning to the dance, every movement locking into the next as if his breath dictated the precision.
The next creatures didn't come in a line.
They circled.
An irregular, crooked, broken ring — a pack deciding who would take the first bite.
Guttural sounds reverberated through the air, a mixture of growl and something that resembled deformed speech.
Their red eyes didn't blink.
They tasted the air.
Tasted the blood.
And when Éon stepped forward half a pace, preparing to reclaim the rhythm—
They answered.
All at once.
But without coordination.
Without logic.
Pure instinct.
Two leapt from the right — not together, but in broken rhythm, as if trying to catch his timing through error, not precision.
One crawled low on the left, too low to catch with the corner of the eye.
Another climbed atop a dead creature, using its body as an improvised platform to gain height.
It was living chaos.
Living hunger.
Black, muscular bodies twisting in patterns no normal training could anticipate.
But Éon's body didn't hesitate.
He slipped into the chaos.
Into instinct.
Into the dance that needed no mind.
The first creature on the right fell over him like a compact mass.
Éon gave a half turn, a minimal shift that would make no sense to anyone — and the blade rose right after, without arc, without warning.
The creature's face split in two.
The second, right behind it, lunged with a harsh scream.
Éon's foot slid forward — and his whole body entered the strike.
Split Impact.
The creature's torso spun backward before its legs understood.
On the left, the crawling creature tried to grab his ankle, black claws scraping the ground.
Éon's body dropped suddenly, knee nearly brushing the earth.
The blade passed close to the soil.
The cut was so clean the head only realized the separation when it was already rolling through dust.
And then—
The one atop the carcass came.
Large.
Heavy.
Clumsy and fast at once.
It crashed toward Éon like a living boulder.
He didn't retreat.
Didn't raise the blade overhead.
He simply turned his hips.
A turn almost too small to justify the result.
But enough.
The creature passed within centimeters, missing — and Éon let its weight complete the wrong movement.
His elbow met the base of its skull at the exact moment.
A dull crack.
The body collapsed lifeless.
But others came.
Faster.
More aggressive.
More chaotic.
The pack was shifting its attack not because it thought, but because it reacted to him — predators testing prey, searching for the single possible mistake.
And there, at the center of that circle of hunger and fury…
…the ground seemed to sink beneath his feet.
Not truly.
Not in the physical world.
But inside his mind.
It was subtle at first — a deep, distant echo, as if something called from the bottom of an ancient well.
The Abyssal Trance.
Again.
Éon's vision shivered at the corners.
The shadows around him stretched, gaining shapes that didn't belong to the world.
The distorted creatures, red eyes burning in the darkness… for an instant they seemed more than they were.
They seemed like echoes of the Abyss.
His heart tightened.
The air thickened.
His body kept fighting — precise, perfect, instinctual.
But the mind… the mind was falling.
Sinking.
The same sensation as before:
— the silence widening inside— time draining— his conscious self being pulled downward— the abyss opening like a giant mouth wanting to swallow him whole
His heart faltered — not a beat, but its rhythm.
A dry void opened in the center of his chest, as if something had ripped the air out from the inside.
The sound of the world vanished.
Only the echo remained.
A space where anything could enter.
And then the voice came.
Low.
Grave.
Sometimes distant, sometimes far too close.
"Return."
The strike Éon delivered to the next creature wasn't even thought.
He only realized its head had rolled when the voice echoed again — clearer, heavier, as if coming from the chest of someone far larger:
"You've descended too deep… return."
The Abyss vibrated beneath the words.
As if someone were speaking underwater.
As if the voice wasn't just sounding, but holding Éon by a thread.
A third creature lunged.
Éon cut its arm into two pieces, but his vision darkened for an instant.
The ground spun.
His breath broke.
The abyss pulled harder.
And the voice grew stronger.
More demanding.
Almost irritated.
"I warned you: if your mind gets lost… Order and Chaos will collide."
That wasn't metaphor.
It was the raw truth of the Trance.
The only discipline that held order inside him was beginning to give way.
Éon's blade froze for a second — far too dangerous.
The creatures felt the hesitation.
They leapt.
Three at once.
His mind fell another level — deep, heavy, suffocating — and the voice became almost a muffled roar:
"Éon, return."
That voice wasn't memory.
Wasn't imagination.
It was Éreon calling him back — because his consciousness had gone too deep.
The Abyss was trying to pull him under.
The body fought on its own.
But the consciousness…
…the consciousness hung by a thread over the Abyss calling his name.