The Eye of the Abyss

Arthur's mind spiraled through a void of burning visions, fragments of something ancient latching onto his thoughts like parasites. His body wasn't his own—his very existence felt as though it was unraveling, piece by piece, memory by memory.

The flames. The screams. The eyes.

Then—silence.

Arthur's breath hitched as his senses returned in a crashing wave. His body was heavy, aching, as if he had been thrown into a storm and spat out the other side.

He was lying on something cold. Stone, rough and uneven. The air was thick, suffocating, laced with the stench of decay.

He opened his eyes.

And immediately wished he hadn't.

Above him, in the cavernous abyss, something watched him.

It was a shape beyond definition, something that defied logic and reason. It was neither human nor beast, its form shifting in and out of existence like smoke caught in a dying fire. It had no true face, but there was an eye—vast, pulsating, and filled with knowing. A gaze that saw everything.

Arthur's blood turned to ice.

His instincts screamed at him to move, to run, to do anything but lie there beneath its gaze. But his body was paralyzed, trapped in place by an invisible weight pressing down on his chest.

Then, the whispers returned.

"You have seen… now you must remember."

The voice wasn't spoken—it was imprinted directly into his mind, crawling beneath his skin like something alive.

Arthur clenched his teeth. "Remember what?"

The thing above him shifted. The eye pulsed, its glow intensifying until the darkness around him trembled.

"What you are."

Arthur gasped as another wave of visions consumed him.

He was no longer himself.

He stood in a battlefield of ruin. The sky above was split open, a gaping wound of swirling red and black. The earth beneath was scorched, lifeless.

And in the distance, they stood.

A line of figures, clad in shifting, ethereal darkness, their forms flickering like dying embers. They bore weapons unlike anything human—blades wreathed in black fire, spears forged from the bones of something long dead.

And before them, at the center of it all, a man.

Or at least, what was left of one.

His armor was broken, his body torn, but he did not fall. A dagger was buried in his chest, its blade humming with an otherworldly power. And yet, even as he bled, even as his form flickered between existence and nothingness, he stood.

His eyes burned with a terrible, unyielding light.

Arthur staggered back. The weight of the vision pressed against his skull, forcing him to his knees. He knew—somehow, he knew—who the man was.

Azrael.

The Angel of Death.

And the dagger lodged in his chest…

Arthur's breathing turned ragged.

He had seen that dagger before.

In a book. In a memory. In the abyss of his own mind.

He had felt it.

The whispers surrounded him once more.

"You are the last."

The battlefield blurred, the visions unraveling. Arthur gasped as he was yanked back into his own body, the cold stone floor pressing against his palms. His heart pounded against his ribs, his breath ragged and shallow.

Above him, the eye still watched.

But now, something was different.

The weight on his chest lessened. His body was his own again.

And deep inside, beneath the fear, beneath the horror, something else stirred.

A name.

A truth.

The whispers did not need to speak it.

Arthur already knew.

He was not just Arthur Winner.

He was the last fragment of Azrael.

And something—someone—wanted him to remember.

The darkness around him began to shift. The world tilted.

Arthur barely had time to react before the abyss shattered.

And he fell.