The pillar of light roared skyward, splitting the night with blinding brilliance. Shadows writhed at its base, clawing, reaching, shrieking as if desperate to escape their prison.
Vemy staggered back, heat and cold crashing over him at once. His abyssal aura flared, yet instead of shielding him, it wavered—drawn toward the cloaked figure like a tide pulled by the moon.
The figure didn't advance. He simply waited, flames licking at his body, hood casting his face in half-darkness. "Every abyss chooses its herald," he said. "And yours has waited long enough."
The abyss inside Vemy surged, not with anger but hunger. It wanted to leap, to join him. To bend. To bow.
Jaylin's voice thundered in his skull.
"Don't yield, Vemy! That thing—he's not a savior. He's a seal-breaker. Once the abyss kneels, so will you."
Vemy dropped to one knee, clawing the ground as cracks spread beneath him. His breath came in ragged bursts, the abyss pulling harder, whispering:
Bind. Bind. Bind.
The cloaked figure lowered his hand, fire dimming. "Resist if you wish. But the gate is already waking. Without me, you won't survive what comes through."
The earth convulsed. From the fissures spilled not just light, but forms—monstrous silhouettes with too many eyes, too many mouths. Their screams tore at the air, reality itself bending around their arrival.
Vemy's head pounded, torn between Jaylin's warning and the abyss's hunger.
One path promised power.
The other promised destruction.
And both might mean the end of him.
His eyes glowed, abyss swirling furiously, flames licking his skin like a second heartbeat. His voice was a rasp, nearly drowned by the chaos.
"…If I choose wrong, the world burns with me."
The cloaked figure smiled. "Exactly."
The ground cracked wide open—too late for hesitation.
🔥 Vemy stands on the knife's edge—submit to the cloaked flame, or resist and unleash horrors even he may not control.