I woke to silence.
Not the kind you find in an empty room or a quiet dawn—this silence was thick, suffocating, almost physical. It clung to my skin like damp cloth, crawling into my throat, settling in the hollow behind my sternum.
Then came the scent.
Iron. Rot. Something sour and aged, as though time itself had spoiled.
My eyes opened slowly, heavy like they were glued shut. A dull ringing accompanied my senses—like distant church bells muffled underwater. My fingers twitched. They touched something wet. Sticky. Cold.
Blood.
My breath stuttered.
At first, I thought I was dreaming. Nightmares were familiar companions, after all—failure, laughter, disappointment, the echo of my brother's last breath. But nightmares were noisy things filled with taunting voices and frantic shame.
This was silent.
And real.
Bodies lay everywhere.
Hundreds—no, more than that. A sea of mangled flesh spread out across blackened stone, limbs twisted, faces frozen in expressions that didn't look human anymore. It wasn't just death; it was slaughter. The ground was soaked crimson, thick enough that every shift of my hand drowned my palm in blood.
My pulse didn't spike.
My breath didn't quicken.
I simply... looked.
A few years ago, even the sight of a dead cat on the roadside would have ripped something soft inside me. But soft parts of me had rotted long ago. When dreams died, they took tenderness with them. After my brother's coffin sank into the earth, anything resembling emotional instinct sank with it.
So I lay there, drenched in gore that wasn't mine, staring blankly at a massacre too vast to comprehend.
It was the kind of scene heroes awaken into in fantasy novels—chosen ones transported to mystical battlefields.
But I wasn't chosen.
And I sure as hell wasn't a hero.
A twitch of movement caught my eye.
A shadow fell across me—massive, living, breathing.
The ground trembled with each step. A figure emerged through the fog of scarlet mist: towering, muscles carved from obsidian, skin cracked like volcanic rock, horns arching high like twisted spires of bone. Eyes burning. Not metaphorically. They literally glowed with molten hatred or hunger or something older than rage.
His presence pressed against me like a physical force.
Predator. Apex. A god of violence wearing flesh.
He stopped in front of me.
I stared back at him, neck tilted slightly only because it felt like effort to fully raise my head. His breath rumbled like an animal ready to tear open ribs and feast on marrow. Blood dripped from his claws, pattering into the lake of crimson like rain on a rooftop.
I felt nothing.
Shock? Gone years ago.
Fear? Burned out long before that.
Hope? Dead since the day I failed to simply be someone worth staying for.
The monster leaned close, nostrils flaring as though inhaling my essence. Waiting. Expecting a scream or terror or pleading.
I simply blinked.
His voice, when it came, was a low growl that vibrated the stones beneath me.
"Why do you face death with empty eyes, little human?"
His language wasn't one I recognized, but somehow, I understood every word. Or maybe whatever realm this was didn't care about my comprehension—it simply forced meaning into my skull like a knife into flesh.
My mouth moved, voice hoarse like it hadn't been used in years.
"What else is there to feel?"
He narrowed his burning eyes.
"Weakness. Fear. Despair. Your kind drowns in them."
I didn't laugh—not really. My lips curled into something almost like amusement, brittle and hollow.
"I drowned long before this."
For a moment—just a moment—silence shifted. As if the world inhaled.
He observed me with an expression I could not place. Confusion? Annoyance? Interest? His shadow swallowed me whole, yet I still couldn't bring myself to care.
He lifted a hand, placing a claw the size of a dagger to my throat. Blood welled where it touched. Warm. Sharp. Real.
"Name."
Not a request. A demand.
The instinctive response almost slipped out: Jaka. But that name felt far away, meaningless now.
Still, I whispered it.
"Jaka."
His head tilted—as if tasting the word.
"That name is dead. This flesh…"
His claw pressed harder to my neck but didn't pierce further. "…is Simonstita Aumar."
The name thundered in my mind, foreign but familiar, as though echoing from inside rather than outside. My throat tightened—not from fear but from some strange internal pull. As if two strings tied to my thoughts jerked at once—one mine, one not.
Two memories flickered behind my eyes.
My brother laughing, brushing dust off my unwashed hair, calling me "Jak."
A battlefield, fire raining from twisted skies, a blade splitting screaming armor.
Two lives. Two souls.
Fighting. Blending. Colliding.
I exhaled slowly.
"Jaka," I repeated, weaker.
"Simon," something inside me whispered back.
The creature—no, the king, because nothing else could hold this presence—leaned back.
"Stand."
My body ached as I pushed myself up. Legs trembled. Not from fear—just unfamiliarity with strength that wasn't mine. Bones that didn't belong to my old life. Muscles that felt carved from a creature built to kill.
I looked at my hands.
Scarred. Hardened. Dried blood caking knuckles.
A warrior's hands.
A murderer's hands.
The king's voice rumbled again, deeper this time.
"Rise, Simonstita. Rise, broken one."
My head lowered—not in obedience, but because an old habit of shame tugged at my posture.
The abyss king's eyes burned brighter.
"Your eyes… empty. Yet you live."
His lips curled—not quite respect, not quite curiosity.
"Good. The abyss does not need hope. It needs hunger."
I stared at the endless field of corpses, then back at him.
"What do you want from me?"
He turned away, cloak of shadow dragging across bodies like death itself walking.
"Nothing."
That word struck harder than any blade.
Forgotten in my own world.
Forgotten in this one too.
"If nothing, then why am I here?"
He paused.
"Because fate wastes nothing—not even trash."
There was no cruelty in his tone. No mockery. He spoke of trash like a fact, like describing stone or night or blood.
My chest didn't sting. It should have.
But I'd already accepted that truth long ago.
He began walking away, deeper into darkness.
"Live or die. Crawl or devour."
His voice echoed like eternal judgment.
"Abyss cares not."
I looked once more at the slaughter around me.
At hands that were mine yet not mine.
At a future I never asked for.
And with a tired breath, one sentence slipped from me, soft but resolute in its emptiness:
"Then let the abyss see what a failure can become."
---
Orba's Perspective
Silence claimed the battlefield again after the Abyssal King's departure—an oppressive quiet so dense that it felt carved from stone and grief. The river of blood still steamed, rising in faint red wisps that coiled toward a sky choked by black mist.
And from the shadows beyond the carnage, something moved.
Not lumbering like the lesser fiends scavenging corpses. Not slithering like hungry parasites born of rot.
This presence glided. Controlled. Noble, in a way only monsters of high order could be.
I stepped into sight.
My form was lean compared to the Great King's colossal physique. Where he resembled a nightmare forged from mountains, I was a shadow wreathed in regal cruelty—silver mane cascading across obsidian horns, armor etched with runes older than this plane, and eyes—cold, calculating silver that swallowed light rather than reflected it.
Ninth Abyssal Monarch.
Orba.
Architect of a thousand betrayals.
I watched the newcomer—Simonstita—still kneeling, drenched in gore, chest rising slow and steady as if he were merely waking from a nap rather than witnessing a divine slaughter.
How… fascinating.
My voice did not break the silence; it coiled through it, silk on steel.
"…Unmoved."
Simon's eyes shifted toward me—not frantic, not afraid. That emptiness again. Not defiance. Not submission. Just a void that neither resisted nor yielded.
Most beings trembled in my presence. Even lesser monarchs watched their tone. Yet this one looked as though he had already drowned in oceans deeper than my gaze could reach.
A mortal shell holding something… unbecoming.
I circled him, boots splashing quietly through congealing blood.
A curiosity. An anomaly. A potential tool.
The Abyss loved hunger, madness, ambition.
But emptiness? Emptiness was rare. Emptiness was dangerous.
What ambition can you manipulate when desire is dead?
And yet—emptiness can be filled. Sculpted. Carved into a blade.
"Most who stand before him collapse into despair," I murmured, not expecting a response. "But you stare into eternity with hollowness instead."
Simon said nothing. His breathing remained steady. His gaze followed me, calm, detached, as though trying to place me not as a threat but as a fact.
A dull ache pulsed in the air—like the aftertaste of divine anger. The Great King had acknowledged him. That alone demanded scrutiny.
"Tell me…" I whispered as I leaned closer, taloned hand resting lightly beneath his chin, tilting his face up. "What are you?"
He blinked once. Slowly.
"Nothing."
I felt amusement stir somewhere deep within me—an ancient ember rarely lit.
Mortals boasted or begged.
Demons snarled or roared.
But he declared his own emptiness without pride or shame.
How exquisite. How utterly broken.
And broken things… could be reforged into horrors.
I let my hand fall, withdrawing like a serpent recoiling after tasting prey.
"Good."
A smile curved my lips—cold, predatory, calculated.
"Then you may yet become something."
I pretended to ponder, as though my interest were a whim. In truth, my mind raced with blueprints of war and conquest. The Great King's eyes had lingered on this vessel. That alone made him worth possessing—if not in body, then in loyalty, in spirit.
If I could mold this hollow shell…
If I could make him mine—
Then even kings would one day bleed beneath my ambition.
"Rise."
He stood, movements steady though the world around him writhed with dying magic.
"You will come with me."
His brow twitched—subtle skepticism, perhaps confusion. He did not resist.
That intrigued me more.
"Why?" he asked.
No fear. Not even curiosity. Just… request for function.
I chuckled softly.
Oh, this would be delightful.
"Because the Abyss wastes nothing," I echoed the Great King's words, twisting them into my own doctrine.
"And you, little shadow, have yet to discover what you can devour."
A gust of corrupted wind swept across the wasteland, carrying faint whispers—mourning souls, dying curses, or the abyss itself breathing.
I turned my back to him, cloak dragging across corpses like a curtain closing on an old era.
"Follow. Learn. Break. Become."
Each word a thread, binding him to my design.
"I will teach you what it means to rise in the abyss."
He did not bow or kneel.
He simply walked behind me—obedient?
No. Not obedience. Not submission.
Just direction.
A purpose given, not chosen.
And hollow things with direction…
can be the deadliest tools of all.
Deep inside my chest, a thrill fluttered—sharper, darker than excitement.
"In time," I whispered to myself, unseen grin growing,
"you will either become my greatest weapon…"
I glanced back once, watching him, expression still empty but eyes beginning to flicker—like embers seeking fuel.
"…or my most beautiful ruin."
Either fate, truly, was satisfying.
And so we walked into the abyssal dusk—
a king and a broken vessel, a predator and a question, a puppeteer and a blade yet to feel its edge.