Darkness, But this time, it wasn’t empty. It breathed. The abyss wasn’t void but flesh, pulsing walls of black tissue, veins glowing faint red, pumping shadow like blood through an endless labyrinth.Jace’s body drifted, suspended in a viscous current that dragged him deeper into the monstrous organ. The flood that swallowed him was alive.Each droplet clung to his skin, biting, whispering, trying to burrow into his flesh. He thrashed, but it only dragged him faster, swallowing him into the tunnels of the Heart’s maw. Thump… thump… thump…Each beat of the abyss reverberated inside his chest, trying to sync his pulse to its rhythm. Through the liquid dark, a faint light flickered. White fire, small and desperate.“Maya!” Jace’s voice was muffled, but the Ash-Born turned, her face breaking through the flames. Her body flickered, barely holding together, but her eyes were fierce.“They’re trying to consume us!” she shouted, her voice echoing in the suffocating black.Jace strained agains

The chain rattled as it drew taut, pulling Jace and Maya out of the storm’s pull. For a breathless instant, Jace thought he was hallucinating.The storm still howled, pulling every scrap of flesh and stone into the abyss, yet the cloaked figure stood untouched. The shadow swirling around him seemed to part for his presence, as though the storm itself feared him.The figure gripped Jace’s chain lazily, his other hand hidden beneath a dark cloak that flowed unnaturally, not by wind, but by some deeper force.“Who” Jace’s voice was swallowed by the abyssal gale, his words stolen, yet he knew the figure had heard.The man pulled. Jace and Maya shot forward like arrows. The storm roared behind them, jaws closing, teeth grinding, but the pull of the figure was stronger.With a single effortless motion, he drew them out of the spiral of teeth and set them down on a jagged platform of flesh that clung stubbornly above the abyss.The storm continued below, devouring everything, but the platfor

The silence was worse than the storm. The chains froze in midair. Silver and crimson alike hung motionless, quivering as though they dared not move.The platform beneath Jace and Maya’s feet groaned, trembling like the skin of a beast too massive to comprehend. And then it blinked.The abyssal eye, vast as a city, shuddered with liquid shadows as its pupil dilated. Light, if it could be called light, poured from it, swallowing the cavern in a flood of sickly green illumination.Maya staggered back, shielding her eyes. Her flames sputtered weakly, unable to hold against the crushing aura. Jace gritted his teeth, forcing his chains to coil around him protectively, their black-crimson glow flickering under the weight of that gaze.Even the Sovereign faltered. His silver glow dimmed, his expression tightening for the first time into something close to alarm. “…You weren’t supposed to awaken,” he whispered, his calm tone cracking.The abyssal eye turned. Not toward the Sovereign. Not towar

The crater pulsed with fire. Chains, black-crimson, seared with the glow of living embers, rose in a storm around Jace, blotting out the Sovereign’s silver light.The platform beneath their feet screamed as fissures tore through the flesh, chunks of the abyss falling into the endless dark below.The Sovereign staggered back, his smirk freezing. His silver chains lashed forward instinctively, striking the black storm with enough force to split mountains.But they broke. One after another, his links shattered against Jace’s abyssal chains, sparks of silver scattering like dying stars.Maya stared through her tears, hands trembling. She had seen Jace fight, bleed, defy gods and kings, but she had never seen this.His body should have been broken, torn apart by the Sovereign’s betrayal and the abyssal eye’s wrath. Yet here he stood, alive when survival was impossible. No, not alive. Changed.The abyss had marked him. Jace rose from the crater, his every breath heavy with a power not wholl

The silver spear pierced downward, blazing like a falling star. Jace’s abyssal greatsword flickered, its flame sputtering as the green beam from the abyssal eye seared into his back. His scream ripped through the void, raw, jagged, almost inhuman.The Sovereign’s laughter broke free, ragged and triumphant. “You see?! Even the abyss rejects you, boy! You were never meant to wield its gaze!”The silver spear tore through Jace’s guard, its tip inches from his chest.Maya’s throat shredded as she screamed, lunging toward him. Chains of silver lashed out to stop her, but she ripped through them with raw desperation, blood splattering across her torn arms.“NO!”But the spear struck. The sound was deafening. A blinding flash swallowed everything, so bright it scorched the void itself. The shockwave ripped the platform apart entirely, hurling fragments of flesh and stone in every direction.Maya was thrown into the abyss, her body tumbling helplessly into the storm. Her vision swam, ears rin