Shadow stood at the edge of the battlefield, the void wings of his reborn body spreading nightmare across the skies.
Behind him, the ruins burned.Before him, across the dead canyon, rose the Heart Shrine.
It was ancient.Older than any Architect.Built by hands not quite human.
A towering monument of obsidian and cracked white stone, it pulsed faintly with a heartbeat that did not belong to the earth.
Ash rained from the broken sky.
Shadow and Eve approached slowly — Ashborn rolling behind them, its tires leaving trails of smoking fire.
Eve's voice trembled as she spoke:
"This place… it's alive."
Shadow said nothing.He felt it too — the Shrine wasn't just built on power.
It was power.Living. Watching. Hungry.
At the base of the Heart Shrine, enormous doors loomed, carved with symbols from a dead language — warnings, prayers, or maybe curses.
Shadow reached out, and with a single touch, the doors groaned open, revealing a spiraling staircase descending into endless black.
Without hesitation, he stepped inside.
The Heart Shrine was no temple.It was a containment vessel — a prison forged to hold something monstrous.
As Shadow and Eve descended, ancient murals flickered into view along the walls, lit by the dim glow of veins of abyssal light.
They told a forgotten story:
The Architects were not the first masters of the world.
Before them came the Abyssborn — creatures of thought, dream, and hunger.
The Heart Shrine was built by desperate survivors to trap the last of the Abyssborn.
The cost was their entire civilization.
At the bottom of the stairwell, Shadow found it:
A crystalline heart, suspended in chains of black gold, pulsing slowly with dark fire.
The last fragment of an ancient god.
And it spoke — directly into Shadow's mind:
"You are my child now.You are my sword, my fury, my final breath."
Shadow fell to one knee — not in submission, but in transformation.
The Heart unleashed its true power into him.
Chains of searing light wrapped around his arms, his chest, his mind — binding him tighter to the abyssal force inside him.
In that moment, Shadow truly became more than a man.
He became a Reaper.
Not just a rider of apocalypse —The living will of the Abyss itself.
Behind him, Eve stood trembling.
She realized what he was becoming — something no mortal soul could control.
Tears streamed down her face as she whispered:
"Shadow... if you finish this... there's no coming back."
Shadow turned toward her —his eyes twin pits of crimson void,his voice layered with a thousand dead tongues.
"There is nothing to come back to."
He placed one gauntleted hand over the crystalline Heart.
And crushed it.
The Shrine shook violently.The ancient seals broke.A new nightmare was born into the world.