Chapter 37: The Abyss Beckons

The fall seemed endless.

Leo's body plummeted through the void, his surroundings nothing but blackness, an endless chasm where time and space didn't exist. There was no sense of up or down, no ground beneath his feet. He couldn't tell if he was falling for seconds or years. It felt like a timeless descent.

The silence was suffocating, the kind that gnaws at your mind. The whispers that haunted him before—those distant voices—were closer now, crawling under his skin, curling around his consciousness.

"You are already ours."

Leo gasped. The voice echoed through his mind, cold and disembodied. It wasn't just one voice—it was the sound of a thousand souls speaking at once. The Hollowing. It was closer than ever.

He tried to scream, to call out to his friends, to reach out for anything. But his mouth couldn't move. His limbs were frozen in place, the weight of his thoughts pressing down on him. He was trapped.

The darkness around him began to shift. Shadows twisted, forming shapes—large, grotesque, and impossibly massive. They were no longer empty. No longer formless.

In the center of this shifting void, a silhouette appeared. It was huge, towering above Leo. There was no definition to its form—just a mass of black smoke, shifting in an endless rhythm. And within it… faces.

A hundred faces. Screaming. Torn apart. Twisted in agony.

Leo's stomach turned. He tried to look away, but their eyes were locked onto him, those hollowed-out, empty sockets staring directly into his soul.

"He resists."

The voice rumbled from the abyss, deep and unnerving. It wasn't one voice now—it was a chorus. Every face, every shadow, was speaking through a hundred thousand mouths. The words weren't just heard—they were felt. They coursed through his veins, burning into his very essence.

Leo's chest tightened.

"Why do you fight?" The voice continued, each syllable a knife scraping his insides. "You know there is no escape. The world has already decided your fate."

The darkness seemed to pulse, the air around him thickening, pressing in.

"You have already seen the truth. You simply refuse to accept it."

His breath caught in his throat. His pulse hammered in his ears, a deafening rhythm. He could feel it—that presence—crawling through him. An ancient power, long dormant, now trying to break free. Leo's mind raced. He needed to get out of here.

"I won't… I won't be yours!" Leo shouted, even though the words were barely audible in his head. He felt his strength drain away, his body growing weaker as the pressure around him intensified. But even as his words left his mouth, he knew they were meaningless. The darkness was already taking hold.

The faces stared at him, each one seemingly recognizing him.

"They will all die." The voice purred. "And you will be the one who kills them."

Leo's heart dropped. His breath was shallow, panic rising in his chest. He could see it—his friends, his comrades, dying at his hands. The faces of Kaelara, Eris, Marcus, and even Dante, twisted in pain as Leo watched them fall to the Hollowing.

"No!" Leo screamed again, his voice a hoarse whisper. "I won't…"

But the darkness only tightened its grip on him. It felt as if his very thoughts were being consumed.

And then, he saw them.

The figures stepped out of the void, their outlines blurred and sickly, as if the shadows themselves had bent reality to bring them forth. His friends. Marcus. Kaelara. Eris. All of them, standing motionless, as if they were merely shadows of themselves.

They stared at him, but their eyes… empty. Hollow.

No life. No soul.

"Leo…" Kaelara's lips barely moved as she spoke, but the sound came through loud and clear. It was a voice he knew—her voice. But it wasn't her. Not anymore. Her face was twisted in agony, her mouth stretched too far. "Leo… you will kill us all."

The words cut through Leo's soul. Every part of him screamed for release, screamed for it to stop.

"No!" Leo cried. "No, I won't do that! I won't let you die!"

But there was no response. The faces—his friends—simply stood there, watching him with those dead, hollow eyes.

And then—Dante.

Dante's form emerged from the shadows, his once proud and mocking smile now a grotesque caricature. His eyes, burning with the same malevolent fire as the Hollowing, looked directly at Leo.

"You've already made the choice, Leo." Dante's voice echoed in the abyss, distorted and full of malice. "You'll be the one to bring about the end of everything."

Leo recoiled, trying to push back against the suffocating pull of the void, but it was no use. The darkness was in his head now, crawling through his thoughts, twisting everything. He could see his friends—his family—falling apart around him.

And there was nothing he could do.

The entity that was once nothing—that thing made of shadows and faces—reached out. Its arms were not human. They were distended limbs made of darkness, reaching out to grab him. Leo felt his body jerk forward, drawn into its grip.

"You will become us."

The words stabbed through him like a knife to the heart. And with them came a wave of anguish.

But just as the darkness reached for him, just as it seemed Leo would be swallowed whole, there was a shudder—a sharp crack in the abyss.

Then—everything stopped.

Leo's vision blurred. The faces, the void—they began to fade, slipping into a deep, endless darkness.

And then—he was falling again.

This time, Leo crashed onto hard stone.

His body jerked violently as the world around him snapped back into focus. His lungs burned as he gasped for breath, his hands clawing at the cold, cracked floor beneath him. He was… alive.

The shadows still lingered on the edges of his vision, but the presence that had gripped him was gone. For now.

"Leo!" Eris's voice cut through the haze. She was kneeling beside him, hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him to his feet.

Leo's head spun, his vision a blur as he tried to process what had happened. The voices. The faces.

The darkness.

"Leo, what happened?" Eris asked, her eyes searching his face. "What did you see?"

Leo swallowed hard, but he couldn't bring himself to speak. The truth was suffocating him. What if it was true? What if the vision had been a glimpse of something far worse?

He couldn't tell them. Not yet. Not until he understood it all. Until he could figure out how to stop it.

"We need to move," Leo muttered, his voice ragged. "We're not safe here."

Marcus approached, his sword still drawn, eyes narrowed. "What did you see, Leo?"

"Not now," Leo replied. His voice was rough, even to him. "We're not out of danger yet."

Kaelara stepped forward, eyeing Leo closely. "You're not telling us everything. Whatever you saw—whatever that was—it's changed you. You're not the same."

But Leo didn't answer. Instead, he turned away, his eyes falling on the book once again.

It was still there—resting on the pedestal, as if nothing had happened.

But Leo knew. The darkness was just beginning.