The abyss didn't lurch.
It whispered.
A low, crawling murmur seeped into the air, curling along the jagged rifts like smoke. The entity didn't rush Vemy. It didn't even move. Instead, its thousand eyes blinked once—and the world tilted.
The cracks of Prismarine fire around him bled backward, reversing like rivers running upstream. His wings faltered mid-flap. And then—
—he was elsewhere.
Not void. Not battlefield. Not even reality.
A mirror of himself stood before him.
The other Vemy's gaze was hollow, his skin spidered with Prismarine fractures that pulsed like diseased veins. He lifted his spear, but when he spoke, his voice was layered—his, and something older.
"You fight and fight. But every shard you break cuts deeper into your own flesh. You'll burn before you ever win."
Vemy grit his teeth. "You're not me."
"Not yet."
The spear struck—not steel against steel, but thought against thought. The abyss shuddered as the clone dissolved into threads of glass, splintering into dozens of Vemys, each one carrying pieces of his failures. His first kill. His lost master. His laughter with Akiar when he still believed the fight could be won without blood.
They spoke in unison, jagged echoes filling his skull.
"You don't resist for defiance.
You resist because you're too afraid to let go."
A pulse of agony tore through him. His own ring—the fragments orbiting him—trembled, as if listening to the lies.
[System Alert: Cognitive Intrusion Detected.]
[Prismarine Integrity – 89% → 77%.]
The entity's form loomed just beyond the storm of illusions, unshaped, a spiral of black-glass geometry. It didn't need to strike. It was cutting at him from the inside, one shard at a time.
Vemy staggered, blood running from his nose. His spear flickered with unstable light.
And yet—
He laughed.
It wasn't steady. It wasn't strong. But it was his.
"You really don't get it, do you?" His voice cracked as he raised his weapon, forcing his wings of fractured Prismarine back into shape. "Every lie you show me—I've already lived it. Already bled for it."
The illusions hissed, hundreds of mouths moving with his face.
"You cannot fight what you are."
"No," Vemy spat, eyes blazing, "but I can fight what you're trying to make me."
He slammed his spear into the abyss beneath him. The shards orbiting him screamed, vibrating as though in pain—and then surged outward, piercing the illusions one after another. Each false Vemy shattered like glass, leaving only the original—bleeding, cracked, but standing.
[Prismarine Affinity Stabilized: 81%.]
The entity shifted for the first time, geometry folding into a jagged spiral that twitched. If it could feel surprise, this was it.
Vemy dragged his weapon into a guard stance, shoulders trembling, grin wide despite the blood.
"Now stop hiding in my head," he growled, "and come bleed with me."
The void trembled.
The Aberrant Entity moved.
And the real battle began.