Pain. Endless, all-consuming pain.
Kael's body felt like it was being torn apart and rebuilt at the same time. He could feel something reaching into him, unraveling his very essence, forcing him to witness things that no mortal or even god was ever meant to see.
Memories that weren't his flooded his mind. The birth of a universe. The collapse of another. The rise of entities beyond gods, beyond creation.
And then—darkness.
But it wasn't just absence. It was alive.
"You still stand?" the abyssal voice rumbled, both amused and intrigued. "Few can withstand the weight of the First Darkness. Fewer still can wield it."
Kael's vision blurred, his breath ragged. He could feel something changing within him, something fundamental. The power of the abyss was not like the Well of Eternity, nor was it like the divine essence Sylas had stolen.
It was raw. Formless. Limitless.
And it was sinking into him.
Lyra's voice cut through the haze. "Kael! Fight it!"
Kael gasped as he felt his own self slipping, his mind teetering on the edge of something vast and endless.
"What are you?" he demanded, forcing himself to remain conscious.
The abyssal entity laughed, the sound making the ground beneath them shudder. "I am the first witness. The last shadow. The void before creation."
It leaned closer, its shape twisting, ever-changing. "And now, I shall be your power."
A sudden rush of force slammed into Kael's chest.
His body convulsed. The abyss was binding itself to him.
His veins burned as darkness seeped into every fiber of his being, rewriting him at the most fundamental level. Where Sylas had taken the light of the ancient gods, Kael was taking something else entirely the power of the void before gods even existed.
A counterbalance.
A force to break the ascendant.
Kael clenched his fists, the ground beneath him cracking as his body stabilized. His eyes flickered open but they were no longer the same.
Lyra took a hesitant step back.
"Kael… your eyes."
He turned his gaze toward her. Where once his irises were golden from the remnants of the Well of Eternity, now they were pitch black, with galaxies swirling in their depths.
The abyss had marked him.
Kael exhaled slowly, the air vibrating around him.
For the first time since Sylas's ascension, he no longer felt powerless.
He lifted his hand, and the shadows answered.
The voice of the abyss echoed one last time.
"Go now, Abyssforged. Show the False God what true power is."
And with that, Kael rose from the darkness.