Underworld's Chosen Like None Other

The Becoming

"Not a puppet. A partner. You wield my power, but your will shapes it. The prison bows to strength, Warren," The ring answered, "Show it". The voice softened, "no more fear, no more scraping. Respect. Power. A throne in the shadows",

Then, Warren woke up all of a sudden. Everyone feared he was dead as he had suddenly collapsed and his heart stopped beating. The medical team were en route.

" I passed out- that was a dream-" Warren realized. "How true were what he said? " He wondered.

Warren’s collapse came moments after he walked past Dax and his crew. He quickly looked at the crown of the Abyss stucked onto his finger.

"Only you can see me" The voice he had a conversation with when he passed out spoke to him again, and he retracted his hands immediately as he stood up like nothing weird just happened.

The ring, an obsidian band etched with faintly glowing runes, pulsed with an unnatural heat, sending a jolt through his body. His vision blurred, his knees buckled, and the cold concrete of the prison rushed up to meet him as the ring’s ancient power flooded his mind. Darkness swallowed him whole and so he passed out. It was the binding ritual.

---

Now, the world felt different—sharper, heavier, alive in a way he’d never known. His eyes fluttered open, the dim light of the prison slicing through his senses like a blade as everyone gazed at him like a newly hatched chick. The flicker of the fluorescent bulb overhead buzzed with a clarity that made his skull throb, each hum distinct, almost musical.

His breath came steady, deeper than before, as if his lungs had doubled their capacity overnight. He flexed his fingers, and the motion felt precise, powerful, like the hands of a stranger grafted onto his own.

The Crown of the Abyss gleamed on his finger, its weight both grounding and unnerving, a constant reminder of the force now tethered to him. His pulse thrummed in sync with the ring’s faint pulse, as if his heartbeat had merged with something ancient and vast.

Warren took a step, expecting the usual creak of his joints or the dull fatigue that had haunted him for weeks in this hellhole. Instead, his body moved with fluid grace, muscles coiling and releasing like a predator’s. He stood, taller somehow, his shoulders squared without effort. The air carried scents he’d never noticed—the stale sweat of his cellmate’s empty bunk, the metallic tang of the bars, even the faint chemical whiff of the guards’ cheap cologne lingering from their last patrol. His ears caught the distant clank of a gate, the muffled curses of an inmate three cells down, sounds that should’ve been lost in the prison’s constant din.

His mind, though—that was the real change. It buzzed with a clarity that bordered on overwhelming. Fragments of knowledge swirled, unbidden: the precise angle to strike a man’s jaw for a knockout, the pressure points to paralyze an arm, the recipe for a salve to clot a wound in seconds. He saw the prison’s power structure like a map in his head—The Vikings crew running contraband through the laundry, the guards’ shift patterns, the weak links in the warden’s chain of command. It was as if the ring had unlocked a library in his skull, its pages written in blood and shadow.

Yet, beneath the newfound strength and awareness, a flicker of unease stirred. Warren felt like himself, but more—like a version of himself forged in a crucible he didn’t understand. His reflection in the cell’s cracked mirror showed the same lean face, the same tired eyes, but there was something new: a glint of command, an aura that made even his own gaze falter for a moment. The other inmates would see it too, he knew. They’d sense the shift,

Dax couldn't help it either as they watched him strode away into his bunk.

Warren clenched his fist, the ring’s warmth spreading up his arm. He felt invincible, yet tethered—like a man who’d traded one cage for another, subtler one. “Alright,” he muttered, voice steadier than he felt, addressing the ring. “You’ve rebuilt me. Now what?”

The *Crown of the Abyss* pulsed once, silently, as if to say: BEGIN

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