Chapter 9: The Fractured Reflection

-----Chapter 9: The Fractured Reflection-----

Nyxen moved forward, but the weight in his chest did not lessen.

The Abyss had always felt indifferent, uncaring, a vast and limitless void that consumed without thought. But now, something was different. The silence was not absence—it was a presence. It watched. It waited.

He had fought before. He had killed before. He had taken before.

But now, something had taken from him.

The eldritch's final words gnawed at him like unseen parasites burrowing into his thoughts.

"Do you truly gain?"

The weight on his shoulders turned crushing.

It was not fear. It was not regret.

It was the slow, creeping realization that something was changing, and he did not know if he could stop it.

---

A faint sound.

Nyxen's steps halted, blade at the ready. His instincts sharpened.

Nothing moved.

But the sound did not come from outside him.

It came from within.

A slow, distorted whisper curled around his thoughts, stretching and twisting his senses.

"Keeep... gooinggg..."

His breath came slow and measured.

This was not new. The Abyss whispered. It always had.

But this time, it was not the Abyss.

This voice was his own.

The thought sent a slow, shuddering pulse through his body.

Something in him cracked.

But there was no time to understand.

The ground beneath him shuddered.

Then—

The screaming began.

---

At first, he thought it was wind—sharp, whistling, howling through unseen cracks in reality.

But wind did not scream in agony.

It did not beg for death.

Nyxen turned.

The ruins behind him shifted, flickering as if reality itself was folding inward.

And from that collapsing darkness, they came.

Not the eldritch he had faced before. Not the flickering, mindless shadows that crawled and lunged with blind hunger.

These were different.

Twisted, hollowed-out husks of things that might have once been men. Their bodies were stretched, elongated into shapes that should not hold form. Their heads tilted at unnatural angles, eyes missing, yet they saw him.

Their mouths gaped wide, splitting too far, skin tearing as they screamed in voices not their own.

They knew his name.

"Nyxen."

The sound shattered through the air, layered, cascading in an unnatural echo.

Nyxen's blood went cold.

Nothing here had ever called him by name.

And then they ran at him.

Not like beasts. Not like frenzied monsters.

They moved with purpose.

Like hunters.

Like soldiers.

Like something that recognized what he was becoming—and sought to end him before he could change further.

Nyxen reacted instantly.

His blade swung in a clean arc. The first creature lunged—

It was fast.

Too fast.

He barely sidestepped in time. Its claws ripped past his ribs, missing flesh but tearing through something deeper—his breath faltered, his vision blurred for less than a second—but that second was nearly his death.

Another rushed him from behind.

Nyxen dropped low, rolling under its attack, then thrust upward, his blade sinking deep into its chest.

It did not die.

The wound split open wider, but instead of blood, its body rippled, shifting, reforming—

No.

Not reforming.

Feeding.

His attack made it stronger.

Nyxen wrenched the blade free and leapt back just as a third one came from above.

There was no time to process. No time to think.

Only to kill before he was consumed.

He had no plan. No strategy.

Only carnage.

---

His blade sang through the air, carving through whatever these things had once been.

One fell, its head caved in with raw force. Another was severed at the waist, its upper half still dragging itself toward him, clawing at the ground with fingers that never stopped reaching.

They did not fight like animals.

They fought like something testing him.

Like something trying to understand if he was truly still human.

But he did not fight like a man, either.

He fought like something that belonged here.

Something that had been made in the Abyss, not cast into it.

Then—

The last creature stopped moving.

Nyxen stood over it, blade buried deep in its chest.

It twitched.

Then, its mouth moved.

"Tookkk yyouu... longg... enoughhh..."

A low, sickening sound came from deep within its throat.

It was laughing.

Nyxen's breath hitched.

He ripped the blade free, but it did not bleed.

It did not thrash.

It simply stared at him, hollow sockets where eyes should be.

Then, it spoke one last time.

"Do you still believe... you're not one of us?"

Nyxen drove the blade down one final time, splitting its skull open.

Silence.

And yet, the words did not leave him.

---

The fight was over.

But something was not right.

Nyxen's hands trembled.

Not with exhaustion. Not with pain.

But with something deeper.

He looked down.

His blade.

The edge was darker than before.

The Abyss had always taken from those who fell within it.

But this time, it had given something back.

His body—it did not ache. His wounds—they did not linger.

He felt stronger.

More whole.

More like them.

Nyxen staggered back, his heartbeat thundering in his ears.

"No."

He clenched his fists.

"I am not them."

But the Abyss did not care what he believed.

It did not ask. It did not offer.

It took.

And he had already begun to change.

---

Something pulled at him.

Not a force. Not a voice.

A whisper deeper than sound.

He felt it in his bones.

In his breath.

In the place where his reflection should be.

Then—

The Abyss spoke.

It did not speak in words.

It spoke in absence.

In emptiness where something should have been.

In a truth too heavy to understand.

And for the first time, Nyxen saw.

Not with his eyes. Not with his mind.

But with something older than fear itself.

And he understood.

There was no "man" left to become.

There was no "monster" left to resist.

There was only what he would become.

The Abyss did not make choices.

It did not give paths.

It waited.

And when the last piece of humanity broke away—

It would be there to welcome him home.

Nyxen's breath came slow.

Controlled.

The world around him faded into silence.

And as he walked forward, the Abyss watched.

Waiting.