Awakened Eyes

Kael's breathing was still ragged as the last traces of the creatures vanished into the mist. His head throbbed, his vision flickering between reality and the strange, distorted world he had glimpsed moments ago.

Something had changed.

The Abyss still pulled at him, but now… there was something else. A force pushing against it. **Something inside him had awakened.**

Saren sheathed her sword but kept a wary eye on him. "Kael," she said cautiously. "What just happened?"

Kael hesitated. How could he even explain it? That voice—**"Wake up."** It wasn't from the Abyss. It wasn't from the creatures.

**It was from within him.**

"I saw them," he finally said. "Not just as shadows, but as… trapped souls. Corrupted fragments."

Saren's brow furrowed. "That's not normal, Kael."

"Yeah," he muttered. "I figured."

Silence stretched between them.

Then, suddenly—**pain.**

A sharp, burning sensation shot through Kael's skull. He stumbled, gripping his head as his vision **fractured.**

The world **twisted.**

---

**Flashes.**

A battlefield, soaked in blood.

A man clad in armor, his face obscured, standing over a pile of corpses.

A symbol—**a crescent eclipse, burning in the sky.**

Then—

A voice.

*"You were never meant to resist."*

Kael gasped, the vision **shattering.** He fell to one knee, clutching his chest as reality returned in a rush.

Saren was beside him in an instant. "Kael!"

He forced himself to breathe. The pain faded, but the weight in his mind remained. The vision had been brief—but it felt **real.**

And that voice…

It wasn't the Abyss.

It was something **else.**

Kael looked up, his eyes meeting Saren's.

"We need to find out what's happening to me," he said.

Saren nodded, her expression unreadable. "Yeah. Before it's too late."

Kael didn't argue.

Because for the first time—**he wasn't sure which side he was on anymore.**

--