Chapter 20: The Abyss That Whispers

The fall was endless.

Raphael was plummeting through a chasm that did not exist, where gravity was not a force but a suggestion. The darkness around him rippled, not empty, but filled with something unseen—something watching.

His instincts screamed.

This wasn't just a fall. Something was waiting below.

He twisted midair, body tense, resonance surging to stabilize himself. But there was nothing to push against, no surface, no boundary, just a sinking descent into a space that was not space.

Then—

A voice.

A whisper.

"How far will you go?"

It was not the voice from before. This one was different—softer, yet heavier, like it carried the weight of an entire existence.

Raphael's eyes narrowed. His resonance pulsed outward, a shockwave meant to carve a foothold in the void. Instead, the sound of his own power was swallowed whole.

His pulse quickened.

This abyss—it wasn't just an absence of light. It was something alive.

Then—he hit something.

Not ground. Not air. Not space.

It was like crashing into a memory.

The darkness warped, bending into a shape. And suddenly—he was not falling. He was standing.

But where?

The abyss had twisted into something else.

A city stretched before him, vast and ruined, its structures broken and hanging in the void like relics of a forgotten age. Towers bent at impossible angles. Roads spiraled into nowhere. And in the sky—there was no sky. Only an eye, vast and unmoving, watching from a rift in reality.

Raphael exhaled sharply, his gaze steady.

"What is this place?"

"A threshold," the voice responded. "One you have long ignored."

Footsteps echoed behind him.

He turned—and froze.

A figure stood there, familiar yet unrecognizable.

Tall. Broad. A presence that commanded the space around it.

It was him.

No—it wasn't.

The man before him bore his features but carried an aura that did not belong to him. His eyes burned with something Raphael had never seen before—something boundless, terrifying, and absolute.

The figure smiled.

"I am the resonance of what you refuse to become."

Raphael's heartbeat slowed.

This wasn't a mere illusion. This was something more.

Then the figure moved—too fast.

A fist drove toward him, shattering the air itself.

Raphael barely reacted, twisting at the last second, but even as he dodged, the force of the strike ripped through space, carving a rift that swallowed everything behind him.

This wasn't a test.

This was a challenge.

The abyss was watching.

And so was he.