Chapter 1 — The Awakening
Darkness.
That was all he knew. Not the simple absence of light, but a smothering, suffocating abyss that pressed in from every side. It was weight and silence woven into one, heavy and cold, as if the void itself had swallowed him whole. No horizon, no above or below, only endless black stretching into forever.
And yet even in that nothingness, there was pain.
It came sharp at first, a single lance through the marrow of him. Then another. Then a thousand more. Not piercing his flesh, not skin or muscle… but something far more fragile. His soul. The agony sank into him like hooks dragging through silk, tearing and twisting, pulling him apart thread by thread. Each wave left him thinner, hollower, a fabric unraveling at its core.
He tried to scream, but no sound rose from his throat. The silence swallowed even that.
Thought scattered. Memory broke. Identity itself seemed to dissolve into the darkness, leaving only raw sensation, bare nerve.
Through the haze, faint noises bled in.
At first, they were distant, thuds, metallic chimes, a strange ringing that vibrated through the air like a struck wire. Then they grew sharper. Hurried footsteps. Clattering tools dropped on stone. Voices, several of them, muttering quickly in a tongue he didn't know. Their syllables clashed like blades, harsh and frantic, each word a tremor through the void.
Shapes flickered at the edge of his sight. Not shapes… stains of pale light bleeding into the black. They wavered, shifting, then resolved into silhouettes. Humanoid, thin and bent with movement. Figures leaning over him, their hands darting, their faces hidden by the blur of his unsteady vision. They moved with urgency, with fear, muttering to one another in broken bursts.
He tried to follow them, to turn his head, but his body refused.
It felt alien, heavy, unresponsive, a vessel not his own. His limbs were stone, his chest a hollow weight pressing down on itself. Breath came ragged, raw and sharp, each inhalation dragging like knives across his lungs. He tasted iron with every gasp, bitter and metallic, as though blood itself had turned to vapor.
Where… am I?
The question drifted through his mind, faint, weak, barely more than thought. And before it could form, something else surged up to answer.
Hunger.
It was sudden. Violent. Not the dull ache of an empty belly but a force that seized him whole. It writhed through his veins like molten fire, coiling tight and relentless. It was older than thought, deeper than need. It was not a call to eat. It was a demand to consume.
Flesh. Bone. Breath. Soul.
Everything.
The hunger gnawed at him, an endless void inside the void, bottomless and cruel. His body trembled under it, as though his own form wasn't enough to contain the want. He could almost hear it, a rhythm that wasn't a heartbeat, pulsing through him: devour, devour, devour.
And beneath it… something stirred.
A whisper.
So faint it could have been his own thought, an echo slipping sideways through his mind.
…rael…
The sound brushed him like silk dragged over a blade, soft, deadly. It cut through the haze and sent a shiver crawling down his spine. He reached for it, desperate, but it slid away like smoke through his fingers, vanishing into the dark.
The voices above grew sharper. He could hear the panic in them now, one clipped and quick, another breaking on itself. Their words tangled, overlapping. A hand struck metal. Sparks of white light flared, searing his vision, then died into the blur.
The hunger flared again.
A new taste filled his mouth, metallic, richer this time, thicker. His tongue pressed to his teeth, and he knew with certainty it was blood. Not his own. Not entirely.
The figures above him… their movements were different now. He could hear them clearer, feel them clearer. Not voices. Not footsteps. Hearts.
Each beat hammered in his skull, a deep drum resonating with the rhythm of his hunger. Their breaths rasped loud as storms, their pulses flickered like torches in the black. Their very souls trembled before him, visible, audible, tangible. And his mind, blank and broken only moments ago, filled with one raw truth.
They are prey.
The instinct surged through him so violently his body shuddered with it. He wanted to rise, to lunge, to tear the light from their flesh and drink it whole. The tremor crawled through his muscles, foreign but irresistible, as though his bones themselves knew the command.
But the weight of the void was not done with him.
Before he could move, the darkness surged again, not absence this time, but presence. It folded over him like a tide of stone, crashing, burying, dragging him back down into nothing. His vision fractured. His hearing broke. The scents of blood and metal and fear vanished all at once.
Only silence remained.
And in that final moment, just before consciousness shattered completely, he heard it again.
Closer. Sharper. Undeniable.
Azrael.
Not a whisper this time. A name. A truth. A claim.
And then… nothing.