Chapter 2: Awakening in the Dark

Darkness. Silence. Cold.

Kael's consciousness stirred. His body felt… strange. Lighter, yet heavier. Familiar, yet foreign. He lay motionless, surrounded by an eerie void where the air itself felt alive, shifting and whispering around him.

Pain flickered through his nerves, but it was distant—like a lingering echo rather than something immediate. His heartbeat, slow and deep, pulsed with a rhythm that was no longer purely human.

Then he felt it.

Something was watching him.

His breath hitched. It wasn't just the eerie stillness of the Abyss. This was different—an actual presence. It lurked beyond sight, immense and suffocating. The weight of its gaze alone made his skin crawl.

A low rumble vibrated through the void.

You are not the first to fall.

Kael turned his head sharply, scanning the endless darkness. The voice—no, the entity—was all around him.

"But I will be the first to rise," he said, voice steady.

A deep chuckle resonated.

Bold. But can you prove it?

Before he could respond, the ground beneath him shifted. Or rather, it ceased to exist.

Kael plummeted once more, but this time, something rose to meet him.

A blackened wasteland stretched before him. Ruins of forgotten civilizations jutted out like broken bones, their jagged edges glowing faintly with a sinister blue light. The sky—or whatever passed for it—swirled with shifting darkness, flickering with distant, hungry eyes.

Kael stood slowly, his boots crunching against the brittle, cracked ground. His body felt… altered. His wounds were gone, replaced by a strange energy thrumming beneath his skin. His senses were sharper, attuned to the unnatural world around him.

Then, the ground trembled.

From the shadows, they emerged.

Abyssal Wraiths.

Twisted creatures, their forms half-solid, half-smoke, slithered toward him. Their eyes—multiple, shifting, never in the same place twice—gleamed with insatiable hunger. They were remnants of those who had fallen before him, devoured by the Abyss and reshaped into its mindless thralls.

Kael clenched his fists. Fight or be consumed.

His instincts screamed at him to move, but before he could react, a wraith lunged—its clawed limbs slicing through the air like knives.

He barely dodged. The unnatural speed of the creature sent a cold realization through him—this was unlike any battle he had faced before.

Another wraith struck. Then another.

He couldn't hold back. He had to become something more.

A memory flickered in his mind—the voice from the darkness, the entity that had spoken to him.

Embrace it.

Kael gritted his teeth. He had no choice. He reached deep inside, into the foreign energy coiled within his core.

And he let it loose.

Darkness exploded from him in a wave, tendrils of abyssal energy lashing out like living shadows. The first wraith shrieked as the darkness tore through it, its form unraveling into mist. The others hesitated, sensing something far more dangerous than themselves.

Kael exhaled. His hands trembled, coated in the same black energy that had destroyed the wraith.

He had changed.

And he was just getting started.