Darkness was not the absence of light.
It was the world itself.
Ashen regained consciousness inside a void so absolute that even the concept of "seeing" felt foreign. No shapes. No outlines. No suggestion of distance. Only a pressureless, eternal darkness that consumed depth, sound, and meaning alike.
He lay on something cold and unnaturally smooth. Not stone. Not metal. Not anything that belonged to a world with laws. It felt like the polished curve of a giant fang or a bone that once belonged to a god.
His breath trembled.
The sound died the instant it left his lips, swallowed by the airless gloom.
Slowly, he lifted himself upright — naked, shivering, skin prickling under the devouring cold.
His fingers brushed his hair.
Black.
Long, reaching his neck.
Soft, tangled, familiar.
Good.
At least something felt normal.
Something belonged to him.
He touched his eyes next.
Cold.
Strangely sensitive.
He blinked — or thought he blinked. There was no sensation of light.
The darkness did not permit such things.
A faint vibration trembled through the ground.
Then another.
Like footsteps.
But not bipedal.
Skittering.
Clawing.
Many limbs scraping across the smooth surface of the world.
Ashen went still.
The vibrations multiplied slowly — two, maybe three distinct rhythms, each wrong in its own way.
The first creature approached from his right.
Its steps were uneven, like mismatched limbs struggling to synchronize.
When it came close enough for Ashen to sense it, he felt a wave of cold rot sweep over him — a smell like wet stone and decomposing metal.
It exhaled.
A rasping, hollow sound through a throat that seemed too narrow to breathe.
Its body shifted in the dark, joints cracking.
He could not see it — but his mind constructed an image from the sounds:
A creature that moved like an enormous centipede, but dragging flesh rather than lifting it.
Dozens of legs scraping the ground.
Skin stretched thin over a rib-like exoskeleton.
And a twisted face that had too many empty sockets where eyes should have been — as if something had clawed them out repeatedly.
The second creature circled behind him.
Its movements were slower.
Measured.
Predatory.
It made a sound like wet fabric being torn.
Then a soft plop, almost like a droplet of sludge hitting the ground — but heavier, more intentional.
Ashen felt heat radiating off it, humid and sickly.
This one seemed built of melted organs pressed together, pulsating softly.
Its limbs were thin as wires but bent at random, unnatural angles.
Every motion caused a faint sloshing, as though liquid slithered inside its body.
The third creature stayed farther back.
Watching.
Breathing.
Its breath was the loudest — a low, vibrating hum that crawled into Ashen's spine.
A throat too deep.
A chest too hollow.
He imagined a creature standing upright, tall and gaunt, neck elongated like a stretched shadow, head tilted in curiosity.
Mouth opening vertically instead of horizontally.
Teeth arranged in spirals rather than rows.
These were not animals.
They were mistakes.
Biological errors given movement.
And they were all hungry.
The creatures did not avoid him.
They drew closer, inch by inch.
One scraped the ground behind him, tasting the air.
Another breathed against the back of his neck, its breath cold as grave-dust.
The third vibrated the darkness with its humming growl, pacing just beyond reach.
His body locked.
Move, he told himself.
But terror pinned him in place.
Then—
A single sound ruptured the silence.
A long, distant keening, high and thin, like metal screaming through water.
The creatures reacted instantly.
Not with fear —
But with agitation.
Bloodthirst.
Ecstasy.
Something was falling.
Something colossal.
The air trembled violently, as if a cosmic pressure had torn through the fabric of the Abyss.
A bright crack — impossibly bright — split the darkness above.
Not light.
A wound.
A wound in the world.
White radiance bled through it like molten silver pouring from a cracked celestial heart.
The creatures shrieked — their bodies contorting, limbs spasming, jaws tearing open too wide.
The centipede-thing thrashed violently.
The sloshing creature split along its seams, reforming its shape in panic.
The tall, humming entity let out a warped croak that vibrated the ground.
They surged toward Ashen as the rift widened, limbs clawing, bodies convulsing, rushing with rabid desperation to devour whatever miracle dared intrude upon their world.
Ashen stared upward, breath caught in his throat, as the radiance condensed — swirling, spiraling, compressing into a meteor of cold, merciless brilliance.
Then it fell.
Straight toward him.
He didn't scream.
There was no air to carry it.
Only a silent widening of the eyes, reflecting the impossible light.
The meteor struck him directly in the chest.
And the world erupted.
A shattering sound ripped through the Abyss — the first true sound this realm had ever heard.
A sound that did not belong.
A sound that pushed back the darkness for a single, blinding heartbeat.
Ashen's vision exploded with white agony.
His black hair burned from root to tip, bleaching into pure, ashen white in a flash of celestial heat.
His pupils dissolved, reformed, flooded with pale luminescence.
The light pierced into him —
not just his flesh
but his soul,
splintering something ancient,
awakening something that should have remained buried.
Creatures lunged toward him in the chaos, shrieking, their forms warping under the glare — carapaces splitting, limbs distorting, organs steaming.
Ashen collapsed, convulsing, lungs tearing for breath that refused to come.
His chest felt punctured by ice.
His consciousness flickered.
The world dimmed.
Not back into darkness.
But into a deeper, thicker void — one that pulsed like a living organism around him.
As vision slipped away, he felt it:
A seed.
Cold.
Heavy.
Ancient.
Writhing into place inside his soul.
Growing.
Anchoring.
Claiming him.
His last sensation before unconsciousness was not fear.
It was hunger.
Not his own.
The seed's.