Kael felt the abyssal tendrils rush toward him, an overwhelming force that threatened to consume him whole. His instincts screamed at him to dodge, to fight back, but something inside him something deeper told him to listen instead.
As the shadows reached him, they didn't tear into his flesh.
They wrapped around him.
For a moment, his mind plunged into darkness.
A thousand voices whispered at once fragments of forgotten wills, lost souls swallowed by the Abyss. Their cries clawed at his sanity, trying to drag him under.
But then, Kael realized something.
These voices weren't just screaming.They were calling to him they were part of him.
The entity loomed over him, its many crimson eyes watching with a cold, ancient amusement. "You cannot control what you do not understand," it murmured, its voice vibrating in Kael's bones. "You are but a flicker of what was lost."
Kael gritted his teeth. No. That wasn't true.
The Abyss had been trying to claim him since the day he was reborn in this world, but now, he finally understood it wasn't about resisting it. It was about accepting it.
Not as something that owned him.
But as something that belonged to him.
His heartbeat slowed, the chaotic power within him no longer thrashing wildly. The shadows that had once sought to consume him shifted, bending to his will instead of fighting against him.
Kael opened his eyes.
The tendrils around his body weren't suffocating him anymore. They were part of him, an extension of his own strength.
He clenched his fists, feeling the abyssal energy pulse through his veins like second nature. The entity's gaze flickered, as if sensing the change.
Kael smirked.
"Not bad," he murmured, flexing his fingers. "Now, let's see how you like it when the Abyss fights back."
The darkness around him exploded outward, no longer wild and untamed but under his control.