The world didn't end when the shadows closed their jaws.
It should have. Rick felt the tendril tighten around his throat, felt the Abyss roar as if it were about to devour his soul. But then—suddenly—there was silence.
Not peace. Not safety. Silence.
It was the kind of silence that wasn't empty, but watching. The silence of a predator before the strike.
Rick's eyes snapped open.
The chasm was gone. The ridge, the forest, the earth itself—swallowed by a pale, endless plain. A sky of dull grey stretched forever, no sun, no stars, no horizon. The air pressed thick against his skin, heavy with iron, as though it were clotting in his lungs.
Piu was beside him, her face streaked with dirt and tears. She clutched his sleeve with both hands, refusing to let go even in this nightmare. A few paces away, Sun stood with dagger raised, though the weapon looked absurdly fragile in this place.
And Devil—
Devil was no longer just a man.
He stood farther off, taller than Rick remembered, his figure blurred at the edges as though reality itself refused to contain him. His crimson eyes burned steady, unblinking. His shadow stretched across the plain, vast and endless, swallowing everything in its reach.
Rick staggered to his feet, clutching his throat where the phantom burn of the tendril still lingered. His chest still seared with the cursed wound, glowing faintly through his torn shirt.
"Where… where are we?" Sun whispered, scanning the horizonless plain.
"In-between," Devil said, voice smooth and measured. It wasn't carried by air but resonated through bone and marrow. "The Abyss answered. And it brought you here."
Piu whimpered, burying her face against Rick's arm.
The plain shifted as Rick tried to focus. Distant shapes—ruins? monoliths? corpses?—blurred and vanished when he looked directly at them. His head spun, as though the world itself rejected certainty.
"You promised we could flee," Rick rasped, forcing words past his raw throat.
Devil tilted his head. A smile cut across his face like a blade. "I gave you a chance. You squandered it. Now the claim is mine."
He raised his hand.
The plain cracked like bone. Crimson veins of molten glow spread outward, jagged and hungry. The ground trembled, splitting open in fissures that pulsed in rhythm with a monstrous heartbeat.
The Abyss was alive here too. Watching. Listening.
"Rick!" Sun barked, snapping him out of his trance. "Move!"
But there was nowhere to move. The fissures encircled them, sealing them inside a jagged ring of fire and shadow. Trapped.
From the rift at Devil's feet, shadows rose—not tendrils, but figures. Gaunt, towering, their faces smooth and eyeless, their limbs jerking like broken marionettes. Each step they took left cracks bleeding crimson.
Piu screamed.
Rick pushed her behind him. Sun stepped up, dagger ready though his arm shook.
Devil lowered his hand. The figures froze.
"You think loyalty saves you," Devil said, crimson eyes burning through Rick. "But loyalty is a chain. And chains always return to the blood that forged them."
He stepped closer. The plain shuddered with every footfall. The veins of crimson glow pulsed faster, brighter.
Rick gasped, clutching his chest. The cursed wound throbbed in rhythm with Devil's steps. His heart no longer beat for himself—it beat for Devil. The Abyss's claim was inside him.
His blood was tethered.
Devil smiled. "Now you understand."
Rick's knees buckled. His vision blurred red. He felt the Abyss tugging at him, pulling his soul through the wound in his chest.
"Rick!" Piu sobbed, grabbing his arm. "Stay with me! Please!"
Her voice pierced the haze. He blinked, focusing on her face—tear-streaked, desperate. She was his anchor.
Sun seized his other arm, holding him upright. "Don't give him the satisfaction. You're stronger than this!"
Devil's smile faltered. His eyes narrowed.
The shadow-figures lurched forward, movements jerky, jaws opening in silent screams.
Rick forced his trembling legs to lock in place. He pulled Piu close behind him, Sun standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Three broken sparks against a storm.
Devil raised his hand. The shadows surged.
And the plain erupted.
---
The shadows screamed without sound as they hurled themselves forward, jaws splitting wider than their skulls should allow. The crimson fissures widened beneath Rick's boots, belching molten light that painted his face in shades of blood.
Piu clung to him, trembling, whispering his name again and again as though each syllable could drag him back from the pull of the Abyss. Sun's dagger flashed, useless but defiant, cutting through the air in arcs of desperate resistance.
"Stay together!" Sun shouted.
But Devil had stopped moving. He no longer needed to advance. His smile was gone; his face was carved from stone, unyielding. His hand rose, fingers spread, and the shadows froze mid-lunge. For a heartbeat, the world was still.
Then the ground shattered.
The fissures beneath Rick exploded outward, light flooding the plain until nothing remained but crimson glow. The pale sky fractured above them, jagged black lines spreading like cracks through glass. Something vast stirred behind those cracks—something with no shape, only hunger.
Rick screamed as the wound on his chest burst open in light. Not blood, not flesh—fire. His own heartbeat tore him apart, pulsing with the Abyss. He fell to his knees, clutching the wound, the glow pouring out between his fingers.
"Rick!" Piu shrieked, grabbing at him. Her tiny hands burned on contact, blistering from the cursed light, but she didn't let go.
Sun dragged her back. "Don't! It'll kill you!"
Devil's voice rolled over them, deeper than thunder. "The claim is complete. His blood is mine."
Shadows surged, not as tendrils now but as a tide—an ocean of black, rising higher than mountains, curling above them like a wave ready to swallow the world.
Rick's eyes rolled back. In that instant he saw not the plain, not Devil, not his friends—he saw through the fissures. He saw a colossal heart of stone and fire beating in endless dark. Every pulse was a lifetime. Every throb a scream. And with each beat, it whispered one truth:
Fall.
His body lurched forward. His blood answered. He was no longer standing by choice—he was being pulled.
"Rick, fight it!" Sun bellowed. He hacked at shadows that didn't bleed, didn't die. "Don't you dare give in!"
Piu sobbed, clawing at Rick's sleeve, desperate to anchor him. "Please! Don't leave me!"
Devil's eyes glowed brighter. For a heartbeat—just one—the faintest flicker of humanity returned. His lips trembled with a word he never spoke. His hand shook.
Then the hesitation vanished.
With a single gesture, the tide crashed down.
Rick's body was wrenched upward, suspended in the torrent of shadow, crimson light bursting from his wound. His scream was lost in the roar as the Abyss itself seemed to laugh through Devil's throat.
The last thing Rick saw before darkness swallowed him was Piu's face—mouth open in a scream, eyes wide with betrayal and terror—as the ground split beneath her and Sun.
The plain collapsed. The sky shattered. The Abyss claimed.
And Devil's laughter echoed long after the world was gone.