The world shifted again, not with violence or spectacle, but with a subtlety that only the ancient—or the cursed—would notice. A slight tremor whispered through the wind, just enough to unsettle the rhythm of the trees. Shadows stretched longer than nature intended, curling at their edges like tongues tasting the air, probing for something long forgotten.
He felt it, even seated beside his daughter, her laughter rising like music as his son chased tumbling leaves with a wooden sword. Outwardly, everything remained calm—the soft breeze, the golden light dappling the grass, the slow stitching of his wife's hands as she mended the boy's tunic—but something old had entered the realm. Older than language. Older than stars. And it reeked of purpose.
His gaze drifted skyward. The clouds floated in place. The sun, unchanged, still smiled down upon them. Yet beneath that calm veneer, the world had held its breath.
"Stay here," he said quietly, rising to his feet.
His wife didn't stop sewing, but her fingers slowed, and her eyes narrowed.
"Something's coming?"
He gave a single nod.
And then he was gone—not with fanfare or smoke, not with rippling shadows or flashing sigils—just absent, as though reality had forgotten to hold him in place.
He reappeared far from the safety of his home, deep within a ravine swallowed by time and neglect. A place that should not have existed. The trees here refused to grow. The wind feared to enter. The soil lay dusted in grey, as if the breath of some ancient god had died here and never risen again. No birds sang. No insects stirred. The world held stillness in reverence—or fear.
At the crater's center, what once had been a gate now stood as a wound carved into the very skin of existence. The original stone arch had crumbled long ago, reduced to fragments, but something deeper remained. It pulsed just beneath the surface—breathing, bleeding shadow into the dirt. Alive.
He stood at the crater's edge, his eyes narrowing on the sigil scorched into the ground. Its runes were glowing, not in any known color, but in a hue that defied perception, a shade that brushed against thought and bent the mind to see it.
And then, it came.
Not a beast. Not a god. But something that defied all frameworks. It didn't walk, or slither, or fly. It simply existed. Its presence unraveled the air around it. Grass beneath it withered to dust. Stone cracked in silence. Even the sunlight seemed to recoil, casting long, trembling shadows as though terrified to touch it.
He didn't retreat.
"Name yourself," he said, voice steady.
The creature answered not with sound, but with sensation—a pressure against memory itself. Each word it spoke surfaced fragments from his past: the crackle of fire devouring a village, the scream of steel splitting bone, the soft whisper of a child's laughter, the rattle of chains soaked in blood. It was like something was rifling through his soul, searching for a thread worth pulling.
"I am the First That Hungered."
His brow twitched ever so slightly.
"You're from the Abyss."
"I am the Abyss. The Source. The Breath Between Worlds."
It did not move forward, and yet its presence pressed against his skin, crawling beneath the flesh like a thousand tiny mouths whispering hunger.
"You carry my mark, child."
He stiffened. "Gluttony."
The creature pulsed, rippling in a way that felt like satisfaction.
"My fragment. Cast into creation to corrupt and consume. It found you. Festered. Fed. Became."
His hands clenched into fists.
"That power was a curse. I never asked for it."
"No. But you nurtured it. Shaped it. Forged legends with it."
"I resisted it."
"And still you wear it."
He said nothing. The air between them thickened.
"I've left that behind," he finally said. "I chose a different life. A quiet one. As a man. As a father."
The creature laughed, though no sound came. It rippled, amused.
"Your blood betrays you. Your children—already their shadows awaken. The world trembled when one flickered."
He remembered. The day his child's shadow reached out and crushed a celestial army with a single convulsion of will.
"They're becoming what I fought not to be."
"And what will you do?" the thing cooed, a lover's mockery in its tone. "Will you break them to save the world?"
Silence fell again, heavy as tombstones.
In the sky above, high within the Heaven Realm, the Angel of Judgment stood tall before the assembled Council of Twelve. Her wings were folded, her face unreadable.
"The Abyss has bled," she said, her voice slicing through the chamber like frost.
The divine murmured in alarm. Even the youngest Judge leaned forward.
"The wound is open," she continued. "And the Glutton stands at its edge."
The Oracle stirred, a single eye glowing within its translucent body. "Then the prophecy awakens."
The Fifth Judge's voice was tight. "Will he fall?"
The Angel said nothing. For she had looked into the Mirror of Truth and seen a fracture. Not of body. Not of realm. But of soul.
Back in the crater, he stepped closer to the pulsing creature, not out of trust, but from need. He had to understand.
"What do you want?"
The Abyss shifted, and in the blink of an eye, it wore his face. Not the one he saw in the mirror each morning, but a distorted mockery. A shattered version of himself, skin blistered with shadow, eyes hollow with hunger.
"You will devour again," it said, using his voice.
"No," he murmured.
"You will choose to. And the first… will be one of your own."
His breath caught.
"I'll never—"
"If not by your hand, then by theirs. If not by choice, then by fate. But blood will feed the Abyss once more."
The thing stepped back, disintegrating into tendrils of smoke that slithered into the cracks of the sigil, each whispering like falling ash. Its final words carved themselves into his mind, pulsing like a wound that would never close:
"The Abyss does not end. It only waits."
And just like that, the world fell silent again.
He returned home at dusk.
The sky above bled orange into crimson, the light catching his daughter's braid as she threaded wildflowers through her mother's hair. His son had fallen asleep beside the riverbank, his wooden sword resting across his chest like a knight guarding a dream.
It looked unchanged.
But the fracture had deepened.
"They're safe?" his wife asked, her voice low, as though she already knew the answer.
"For now," he said.
She reached for his hand without looking. Her grip was warm, steady. "Then that's enough."
He wanted to believe her. He wanted to hold that moment, let it seal over the fear. But the creature's words echoed, louder in silence than any scream.
That night, he stood alone by the river. The moon shimmered on the water's surface, fractured by the current, just as his thoughts were fractured by prophecy.
"It will begin with one of your own."
He had buried the Demon King. He had built a home from ruin. He had chosen love over power, silence over conquest.
But fate had not closed its ledger.
And deep beneath the Lower Realm, where roots twisted like veins and shadows moved with thought, the Abyss Gate breathed. In that darkness, something stirred—slowly, blindly, and with purpose.
It opened its eyes.
And it remembered the name of the one who had once worn its crown.