Chapter 3;- Whispers of the Abyss

Death was not what he expected.

Rhaegar Crowne had died. He knew that with certainty. He had felt the arrows tear through him, the sharp agony of steel piercing flesh, the numbing cold creeping into his limbs as blood poured onto the stone beneath him. He remembered the moment his body gave out, the last thing he saw—a sky painted in twilight, the sun dipping below the horizon, casting the world in shades of deep crimson and gold.

And then… nothing.

Or rather—something else.

A suffocating emptiness.

A realm of cold, unyielding blackness that pressed against him from all sides, dragging him downward.

The silence was deafening, a void without breath, without time, without existence itself.

Was this death? Was this what waited beyond the mortal coil?

No.

Something lurked in this darkness.

Something watching.

Rhaegar tried to move, but there was no body to move. There was nothing—no ground beneath his feet, no air in his lungs, no sensation beyond the oppressive weight of the abyss around him. Yet, somehow, he was falling.

Or was he being pulled?

Then, he heard it.

A whisper.

Soft. Cold. Eternal.

"You were never meant to die this way."

The voice slithered through the blackness, curling around his thoughts, seeping into the very essence of his being.

"Betrayed. Cast aside. Humiliated before insects unworthy of your blood. Was this truly the fate of Rhaegar Crowne?"

The voice—it knew him.

Something coiled deep within his chest, something raw and ancient. The memories of his life flashed through his mind in an instant—his childhood spent training in the art of war, the years spent clawing his way through the ranks, the victories won with his blade, the loyalty he had offered—only to be thrown away.

The throne he bled for. The king he protected. The betrayal that led him here.

"You were powerful once." The voice grew clearer now, more defined, no longer a whisper but a presence looming over him in the abyss.

"Would you like to be powerful again?"

A chill ran through the nothingness around him.

This was no god speaking to him.

No benevolent force offering salvation.

This was something else.

Something old.

Something hungry.

"Who are you?" Rhaegar's voice echoed in the abyss, though he had no lips to speak, no lungs to push sound into the void.

A slow, echoing chuckle responded.

"Names have no meaning here, mortal. But you… you have meaning. You were cast down before your time. The world still remembers your name. The ones who betrayed you still draw breath."

Rhaegar's thoughts darkened.

The king.

Sebastian.

The nobles who had laughed as he was torn apart. The soldiers who had cheered his suffering. The wretched, backstabbing cowards who had taken everything from him.

Was this how it ended? Forgotten in a pit of darkness? A memory erased by time?

No.

He had fought his whole life. He had bled for his victories. He had built empires with his hands.

And he would not let it end like this.

"I want to live." The words came before he even realized he had spoken them.

A deeper, more twisted chuckle.

"Live?" The voice purred. "No, Rhaegar Crowne. You do not wish to live."

The abyss tightened around him.

"You wish to destroy."

A pulse.

A cold, searing pain unlike anything he had ever felt before ripped through his very soul.

Rhaegar screamed.

Flashes of crimson light streaked across the void, symbols and sigils he did not recognize carving themselves into the nothingness around him. They burned like brands, searing into his fleshless form, digging deep into something beyond his physical body—his very existence itself.

The abyss was changing.

No.

He was changing.

"I offer you a choice, Rhaegar Crowne." The voice became clearer, closer, wrapping around him like unseen chains. "You may fade into nothing, as all forgotten men do. Or… you may take my hand, and be reborn."

The void trembled.

A shape began to form before him. A hand. Pale, withered, unnaturally long fingers stretched toward him from the blackness, waiting.

A warning screamed in the back of Rhaegar's mind.

This was no salvation. This was damnation.

But damnation… meant a second chance.

His fingers curled into a fist.

"I will take everything from them."

The hand did not move.

"I will burn their cities."

The abyss rumbled.

"I will carve their names into the stones of their ruins, and I will make them beg for the mercy they never gave me."

The hand stretched closer, barely an inch away now.

"Good," the voice whispered, almost pleased.

Rhaegar's fingers clasped the outstretched hand.

And the abyss devoured him.

The abyss pulsed around him, a living thing with no form, no edges, no escape.

Rhaegar tried to breathe, but he had no lungs. He tried to move, but there was no ground to step on, no body to command. He was trapped in a space where time did not exist, where he could not tell if he had been falling for seconds or centuries.

And yet, the voice remained. It did not echo like it should have in an empty void. Instead, it slithered through the darkness, brushing against his mind like an unseen predator circling its prey.

"You are afraid."

Rhaegar's mind burned.

He would not be weak. He had faced death without flinching. He had endured agony beyond human limits. He had stood before kings and gods alike, unbowed.

And yet, here in this abyss, he was afraid.

Because this place—this thing speaking to him—it was not of the world he had known. It was older, colder, something beyond human comprehension.

"You think yourself powerful," the voice mused, as if reading his thoughts. "But you are nothing now. Just another forgotten soul sinking into oblivion."

Oblivion.

The very thought of it sent a wave of rage through Rhaegar.

He had clawed his way through life, built his name with blood and steel, carved his legend into the bones of his enemies. And yet, it had all been stolen from him in a single moment of betrayal.

Sebastian's accusing gaze.

The soldiers who had once sworn loyalty to him, dragging him through the mud like a common criminal.

The king. His king. The man he had served without question. Watching. Saying nothing. Letting it happen.

Rhaegar's fury surged like a wildfire in his chest, burning away the last remnants of fear.

"I am not nothing," he growled, even though he had no voice to speak, no mouth to shape the words.

A low chuckle.

"Prove it."

The abyss trembled, and suddenly—pain.

It was unlike the pain he had felt in life. It did not burn like fire or stab like steel. It was deeper, worse—a pain that peeled back his very soul, layer by layer, unraveling him thread by thread.

Rhaegar screamed, though there was no sound.

Memories flashed before him, each one torn from his mind and displayed in the blackness like fragile glass before it was shattered.

He saw himself as a child, barely old enough to wield a blade, training under his father's strict gaze. The first time he bled in battle. The first time he killed.

He saw the faces of those who had stood beside him—his men, his comrades, his friends—all gone now.

He saw her.

A face he hadn't allowed himself to remember in years.

Dark hair, fierce eyes, a smirk that had once made his world brighter.

A memory stolen by war, now ripped from the depths of his mind, forced before his eyes once more.

And then—gone.

The abyss devoured it.

Rhaegar roared in fury.

"What is this?!" He demanded, though the words had no sound.

"Truth," the voice whispered. "Everything you were… is fading."

The thought sent a jolt of terror through him.

His memories. His existence. It was all being unraveled, piece by piece, devoured by the darkness.

He fought. He clawed at the abyss, reaching for the fragments of his past before they could slip away, but it was useless.

The blackness swallowed everything.

Soon, he would be nothing.

And yet—the voice remained.

"Do you see now?" it murmured, cold and ancient. "Death is not the end. Oblivion is."

Rhaegar shook with rage. He would not allow this. He would not let himself be erased, forgotten, undone like he had never existed.

"You want to stop it?" The voice taunted, almost amused.

The abyss rippled.

A single shape appeared before him, shining faintly against the endless dark.

A hand.

It was not like a mortal's hand. It was too long, too thin, too wrong. Its fingers curled, beckoning.

"Take it, Rhaegar Crowne."

A warning screamed in the back of his mind.

This was no divine intervention. No mercy.

This was a bargain.

A deal with something far worse than death.

But death had already taken everything from him.

He had nothing left to lose.

His fingers closed around the hand.

The darkness exploded.

Pain unlike anything he had ever known ripped through his very existence.

It was not the searing pain of a blade slicing through flesh, nor the dull ache of broken bones. It was worse. It was a pain that dug into the fabric of his being, reshaping him from the inside out. It felt as though invisible hands were tearing at him, unraveling his soul thread by thread, weaving it back together into something… else.

Rhaegar wanted to scream, but his voice was lost in the void. His body—if he even had one anymore—was contorting, shifting, breaking apart and rebuilding itself in ways he couldn't comprehend.

His skin burned as if molten iron had been poured into his veins. His bones cracked and reformed, stretching, strengthening. Something was changing inside him.

The abyss trembled.

He was no longer simply falling—he was ascending.

Darkness swirled around him, twisting into shifting shapes—whispers and shadows, figures with hollow eyes, voices chanting in a language he did not understand. The agony didn't stop. It only grew, spreading through him like wildfire, consuming everything he was.

"A price must be paid."

The voice was everywhere. Inside him, around him, part of him.

Rhaegar barely understood what was happening. His mind was being peeled open, his thoughts exposed like raw wounds, memories slipping through his fingers.

Images flashed before him, memories that had long been buried:

His father's approving nod the first time he bested a sparring opponent.

His mother's hand brushing against his cheek before she was taken from him.

The day he first pledged his loyalty to the crown. The day he believed he was fighting for something greater. The day he thought he mattered.

And then—the betrayal.

The king's cold, impassive gaze as the accusations were thrown at him.

The way his soldiers hesitated, just for a moment, before dragging him to his execution.

The pain. The humiliation. The final betrayal that shattered him.

All of it—the memories, the emotions—were ripped away from him.

He reached for them, clawed for them, but the abyss was merciless. It devoured everything, leaving only a raw, empty void where his humanity had once been.

"No," Rhaegar rasped, his voice no longer entirely his own.

The abyss laughed.

"Your past is gone. Your suffering is only beginning."

A sudden pressure crashed against him, forcing him to his knees—though he had no solid ground to kneel upon. The darkness constricted around him, binding him, reshaping him.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears—then slowed.

His breath came in ragged gasps—then stopped.

For a moment, he was nothing.

And then—

He felt it.

Something ancient. Something powerful.

It seeped into him, coiling through his veins like liquid shadow, filling the void where his humanity had been stripped away. It was cold—colder than death, colder than steel, colder than the king's betrayal.

But it was also alive.

Darkness surged through him, flooding his body, his mind, his very essence. It burned away the last remnants of who he had been, leaving behind something else.

Something more.

Rhaegar's eyes snapped open.

For the first time, he saw the abyss clearly.

The shifting shadows were no longer unknowable. He could see them now—the souls that had been consumed before him, the countless echoes of the damned, their suffering etched into the void itself.

And he understood.

The voice was right. Death was not the end. Oblivion was.

But he had escaped oblivion.

He had been remade.

And the world would pay for what it had done to him.

A new voice—his voice—spoke in the abyss, deeper, colder than before.

"I am not nothing."

The abyss shook.

Rhaegar raised his hand, watching as shadow curled around his fingers, answering his call. It was no longer something foreign, something to fear.

It was his.

He clenched his fist. The darkness obeyed.

The whispering figures bowed.

And in that moment, he knew—

He was no longer just a man.

He was something more. Something stronger. Something unstoppable.

The abyss had given him power.

And he would use it to burn the world that betrayed him.

A single thought formed in his mind, sharper than any blade, heavier than any chain.

"Let me return."

The abyss hesitated. The shadows stirred.

And then, without a word, it released him.

The darkness shattered.

And Rhaegar Crowne opened his eyes.

At first, there was nothing.

No sound. No sensation. No breath in his lungs.

Then, like a tidal wave, reality crashed into him.

His body was heavy.

Not with exhaustion or pain, but with power.

Every nerve, every fiber of his being felt different. More alive. More lethal.

Rhaegar took a breath—his first breath since his death.

The air was cold and thick with the scent of damp stone and something faintly metallic—blood.

He lay on hard ground, rough and uneven. Darkness stretched around him, yet he could see. Not with human eyes, but with something deeper, something woven into his very soul.

Slowly, he pushed himself up. His limbs responded effortlessly, yet they felt foreign. He glanced down at his hands.

They were his—but not as he remembered.

Pale, but not weak. Veins darkened with something otherworldly pulsed beneath his skin. His fingers curled, and with a mere thought, shadows coiled around them, licking at his knuckles like living serpents.

He exhaled sharply.

He was alive.

Or something close to it.

Memories flooded back—the chains, the blades, the pain, the abyss swallowing him whole.

And then—rebirth.

But what was he now?

A faint scuff of boots against stone pulled him from his thoughts. His senses sharpened. The world around him was no longer dull and muted as it once had been. Every sound, every movement, every breath was crystal clear.

He was not alone.

Rhaegar turned his head, and the sight before him sent a slow, predatory smile curling across his lips.

A guard.

The man stood at the entrance of what appeared to be a dungeon chamber, a rusted lantern flickering in his grip. He was frozen in place, staring at Rhaegar as if he had just risen from the grave.

Which, in a way, he had.

The guard's breath hitched, and his grip tightened around the hilt of his sword.

"W-What in the gods' name…"

Rhaegar pushed himself to his feet. The moment he stood, the air around him shifted.

Power hummed beneath his skin, raw and untamed. His heartbeat was steady. His body no longer ached. The chains were gone.

He was free.

The guard staggered back.

"You're—you were dead!" the man stammered. "I saw you die! We all did!"

Rhaegar tilted his head, rolling his shoulders. His body responded perfectly—stronger, faster, as if it had been reforged into something greater.

He took a slow step forward. The guard flinched.

"Do I look dead to you?" Rhaegar's voice was calm. Too calm.

The guard's face twisted in horror. He drew his sword.

"Stay back, demon!"

Rhaegar smirked.

Demon.

A fitting title.

The guard lunged.

Rhaegar moved instinctively.

Before the blade could reach him, shadows erupted from beneath his feet, coiling around the steel like living tendrils. The sword froze mid-air, trembling.

The guard's eyes widened in terror.

"What… what is this?"

Rhaegar lifted a hand, and the shadows obeyed. With a mere flick of his fingers, the blade was wrenched from the guard's grasp and sent clattering against the stone wall.

Panic set in. The guard tried to run.

He didn't get far.

The darkness lashed out, wrapping around his legs, dragging him to his knees. He screamed, struggling, clawing at the stone floor.

Rhaegar watched with detached amusement.

This was new.

This was power.

He crouched beside the struggling man, watching the sheer terror in his eyes.

"You called me a demon," Rhaegar murmured, gripping the man's chin, forcing him to meet his gaze. His fingers were cold. His touch sent a violent shudder through the guard's body.

"Tell me," Rhaegar whispered, tilting his head. "Do I feel human to you?"

The guard was trembling.

"N-No…" he choked.

Rhaegar smiled. Good.

A memory surfaced—of the crowd that had gathered to watch him die. The nobles who had sneered. The knights who had turned their backs.

The king who had ordered his execution.

They would all pay.

He released the guard's chin, standing to his full height. The man scrambled back, eyes darting between Rhaegar and the exit.

Rhaegar sighed.

"I could let you go," he mused. "But we both know what you'd do."

The guard's breathing was ragged. "I—I swear, I won't—"

Rhaegar didn't let him finish.

With a flick of his wrist, the shadows tightened—and the man's scream was cut off with a sickening crack.

Silence.

Rhaegar exhaled, rolling his shoulders.

It was effortless.

No remorse. No hesitation. No weakness.

He turned, stepping over the lifeless body, moving toward the dungeon door. The flickering lantern cast his elongated shadow against the stone walls.

For the first time in his life, Rhaegar felt whole.

Not a knight. Not a traitor. Not a broken man begging for justice.

Something else entirely.

And soon, the world would know his name.