The world did not end when the shadows closed their jaws.
It should have.
Rick felt the burn of the Abyss coil around his chest, his throat caught in the phantom grip of tendrils, his heart hammering against the cursed wound. Yet when he opened his eyes again, there was no void, no ground, no forest—only silence.
Not peace. Not safety.
Silence.
It pressed down like weight, heavy and suffocating, the silence of a predator crouched before striking. The kind of silence that wasn't absence but attention—watching, waiting, tasting his fear.
Rick's breath came ragged, raw in his throat. He staggered to his feet, fingers clawing instinctively at the wound that glowed faintly through his torn shirt. The cursed mark pulsed in rhythm with something deeper, something far beneath this place.
The plain around him stretched endless—white as bone, grey as ash. No sun, no moon, no stars, only a dull horizonless pallor. The air was thick, metallic, clotting in his lungs as though he breathed rust.
"Rick…"
A small hand clutched his sleeve. Piu's wide eyes were red with tears, streaked with dirt. She trembled but refused to let go.
A few steps away stood Sun, dagger raised, body taut. The blade looked fragile here, like a toy carved from tin, but Sun's grip was firm, his jaw set.
And then there was Devil.
He stood farther off, taller than before, his form blurred at the edges as though reality itself resisted holding him. His shadow stretched vast, swallowing everything in reach. His crimson eyes glowed steady—bright, merciless, and endless.
Rick's stomach churned. The cursed wound flared hotter.
"Where… where are we?" Sun whispered.
Devil's voice resonated, deep and smooth, not carried by air but vibrating through bone.
"In-between. The Abyss answered. And it brought you here."
Piu whimpered and pressed herself closer against Rick's arm.
The plain shifted when Rick tried to focus. He glimpsed ruined towers, twisted monoliths, corpses… yet they dissolved when he looked directly at them. Certainty slipped like water through his fingers.
"You promised we could flee," Rick rasped, forcing sound past his raw throat.
Devil tilted his head. A smile carved 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 fissures tore outward beneath his feet, veins glowing molten red, pulsing in rhythm with a monstrous heartbeat.
The Abyss was alive. Watching. Listening.
"Rick! Move!" Sun shouted, snapping him from the trance.
But there was nowhere to run. The fissures encircled them, a jagged ring of fire and shadow. Trapped.
From the rift at Devil's feet rose shadows—figures, gaunt and eyeless, limbs jerking like broken puppets. Each step they took left cracks bleeding crimson light.
Piu screamed.
Rick shoved her behind him. Sun raised his dagger, though his arm shook.
Devil lowered his hand. The figures froze.
"You think loyalty saves you. But loyalty is a chain. And chains always return to the blood that forged them."
The plain trembled with his steps. Rick gasped as his wound throbbed in time, his heart beating not for himself but for Devil. The Abyss's claim bound his blood.
Devil smiled. "Now you understand."
Rick's knees buckled. His vision blurred red. Piu's voice pierced the haze, desperate, begging him to stay. Sun grabbed his other arm, dragging him upright.
For the first time, Devil's smile faltered. His eyes narrowed.
The shadow-figures lunged, jaws splitting wider than skulls should allow. The fissures flared, vomiting crimson light.
Rick's chest burst in flame. He collapsed, light pouring from his wound. Piu clutched him despite the burn, her hands blistering. Sun dragged her back, shouting.
Devil's voice thundered.
"The claim is complete. His blood is mine."
The sky fractured above, cracks spreading like shattered glass. Something stirred behind them—vast, formless, hungry.
Shadows rose like an ocean, higher than mountains, curling above them to crash down.
Rick's body was wrenched upward, suspended in the torrent. His scream drowned in the Abyss's laughter. His last sight was Piu's face—eyes wide, mouth open in 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.
---
Rick's body hit ground that wasn't ground. Smooth, cold, endless. He staggered upright, gasping, clutching his chest. The wound glowed like molten metal, each pulse tearing through his nerves.
Silence again. Watching. Waiting.
He spun. Piu? Sun? Gone. Only endless plain, pale and grey, veins of crimson threading outward like a spider's web.
Then—
Thud.
A sound, heavy, rhythmic.
The plain shook.
Thud. Thud.
The silence cracked. Rick fell to his knees as the fissures widened, bleeding light. Beneath him, far below, something massive moved.
The heartbeat.
Not his. Not Devil's.
The Abyss itself.
The fissures yawned open. Rick screamed as the ground split and swallowed him.
He plummeted.
Through light, through shadow, through a storm of screaming voices that weren't voices but echoes of every soul the Abyss had devoured. Their words clawed his mind:
Fall.
Chain.
Obey.
Mine.
He slammed against something vast. Not stone, not flesh—something in between. It pulsed beneath him. The surface was veined, glowing, alive.
He staggered upright.
And realized what he stood on.
A Heart.
Colossal. Beating. The Abyss's heart.
Each throb rattled his bones, each pulse whispered across his blood. His wound flared brighter, the chain pulling taut. His knees nearly buckled.
"Rick…"
The voice was not Piu's, not Sun's, not Devil's. It was older. Endless. A whisper that crawled through marrow.
"You are claimed."
Rick's scream died in his throat. His chest convulsed. The chain inside him pulled, dragging him forward across the living surface of the Heart.
"No!" He fought, digging his fingers into the pulsing ground. Flesh tore beneath his nails. Light bled upward.
The voice deepened, vast as eternity.
"Kneel."
Rick's body bent unwillingly. His legs folded. His spine arched. His forehead lowered toward the beating surface.
He strained, every muscle locking, every vein burning, but the chain inside him tore his defiance apart.
---
"Kneel."
The word did not simply echo; it struck. It reverberated through Rick's skull like a hammer against brittle glass. Each syllable carried a weight that ground against bone, pressed into marrow, and split thought into jagged fragments.
His veins bulged as if they might rupture. His body trembled violently, tendons straining against their limits. And yet, no matter how hard his will resisted, something inside—something older, darker—dragged him downward. A chain, invisible yet unbearably real, coiled deeper into his essence, searing him from within like molten iron.
Rick's breath fractured into shudders. Warmth gushed from his nose and mouth, blood spilling freely. The metallic tang coated his tongue, filled his throat, but there was no strength left to spit it out.
The Heart beat.
A colossal thrum, vast and merciless, rattled his ribs. Each thunderous pulse was a hammer-blow against his consciousness, shattering thought as swiftly as they formed. There was no room for memory, no room for self. Each beat devoured his will, leaving behind only raw obedience.
And then—movement.
From the far reaches of the abyss, shadows stirred. Titanic shapes, rising like mountains against the bleeding sky. Their forms were impossible to count, impossible to comprehend: too many limbs twisting and curling, jaws splitting wider than horizons, silhouettes stitched from nightmare. They circled the Heart, drifting like carrion beasts around a still-living prey. Patient. Starving. Waiting.
"Kneel."
The command lashed again. Rick's muscles convulsed. His knees slammed into the pulsing surface beneath him. The impact jolted through bone, but the pain was drowned beneath the scream that tore from his throat—raw, ragged, unbidden.
The ground answered his agony.
The living plain beneath him split apart, veins of crimson bursting outward. From the fissures erupted chains of light, not metal but something far crueler. Crimson, radiant, searing. They coiled upward with serpentine hunger and lashed around him.
His wrists bound first, joints grinding as the light cut through flesh. Then his chest, constricting until breath came in shallow gasps. Finally, his throat, burning like a noose pulled taut.
The chains sank deeper. Through skin, through muscle, through bone. They fused with marrow, with spirit, each link embedding itself into his essence. His body arched, trembling against the invasion, but there was no escape. These were not shackles meant to hold flesh. They were shackles meant to rewrite him.
The sky convulsed.
Above, the plain shattered into fragments of obsidian glass. Jagged shards cascaded downward, tumbling like a broken constellation. They fell endlessly into the abyss, fading from sight as though consumed by something deeper still.
Rick's eyes rolled back, vision drowning in red haze. His mind shrank to a single truth: submission. Resistance was not defiance here—it was annihilation.
And then… something moved.
From beyond the horizon of shadows, a figure stepped forward.
It was not Devil. Not angel. Not anything born of human tongue or imagination. Its presence bent the very air, warping space around it. The ground buckled with each step, reality trembling at its edges as though too fragile to contain the thing's weight.
Its outline writhed like smoke one moment, calcified like bone the next. Limbs lengthened, shortened, folded into themselves. Its head—if it was a head—shifted between shapes that no eye should behold. Every glance left Rick nauseated, as though his mind were trying and failing to understand a language older than time itself.
The voice that followed was worse.
It did not speak into his ears. It spoke into the marrow of his being, resonating in the cage of his ribs, rippling through his blood. The words were neither loud nor quiet. They were infinite.
"Awaken, Vessel."
The chains tightened instantly.
Rick's breath collapsed into nothing. The noose of crimson crushed his throat until his vision spotted black. His wound—still gaping across his chest—erupted in light, not blood. Veins glowed, arteries pulsed with foreign brilliance. The warmth coursing through him was no longer his. His blood was not his own.
The colossal Heart roared beneath him, each beat shaking the abyss. The titanic shadows encircling it screamed silently, their mouths yawning open in expressions of hunger or worship. The sound was not heard but felt, vibrating deep within his skull.
And then—the maw.
The horizon itself split apart.
The Silent Maw yawned wide, jaws stretching beyond infinity. Its teeth were not teeth but obsidian spires, mountains honed into blades. Darkness surged upward, swallowing fragments of shattered sky, devouring the very chains that bound him, consuming light as though it were nothing more than dry tinder.
Rick's body convulsed. He tried to scream, but his lungs offered nothing. His mouth gaped in silence, his throat burned raw, and still no sound emerged. Terror drowned him whole, suffocating him more thoroughly than the chains ever could.
The Silent Maw surged closer.
It was not hunger. It was not rage. It was inevitability. The kind of darkness that swallows suns and leaves galaxies cold. An ending that did not care, did not notice, did not stop.
Rick's heart thudded once, weakly.
Then again, slower.
And again, fainter still.
Each beat struggled against the colossal rhythm of the Heart beneath him. Each thrum felt less like life and more like surrender. His essence was being rewritten, stolen, claimed.
The figure loomed above, faceless, boundless.
"Awaken."
Chains of crimson blazed until his skin blistered. His flesh split, light spilling from wounds that should have bled. He could not even clutch at them; his arms were bound, his hands no longer his own. His body was no longer his own.
The abyss trembled as the Silent Maw opened wider, stretching past thought, jaws of infinity reaching to consume him whole.
Rick had no breath left to scream.
No voice left to defy.
Only terror remained—
And even that was not enough.
To be continued…