The guards, their faces grim and tense, affixed chains and hooks to the flaming Iron Maiden, dragging it slowly toward the cliff's edge. The crowd watched in uneasy silence, their attention fixated on the grotesque procession. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, mingling with the sound of crackling flames.
Amidst the morbid scene, few noticed the subtle changes in the environment. The sunlight dimmed, shadows stretched unnaturally, and the air grew thick and oppressive. A chill crept over the onlookers, though no one spoke of it.
When the Iron Maiden reached the edge, the priest stepped forward, raising his arms to address the crowd one last time.
"Let this vile vessel, both of flesh and sin, be cast into the abyss, never to harm the righteous again!"
Before he could command the guards to push it over, a voice interrupted him.
"Hold on, old man."
The priest froze, his eyes wide with disbelief. Kaelix's voice, calm and almost conversational, echoed from within the flaming Iron Maiden. It should have been impossible for him to speak, let alone sound so composed.
"Do you know," Kaelix began, his tone laced with mockery, "how long I've been in jail for?"
The priest blinked, caught off guard. "I do not," he admitted reluctantly.
Kaelix chuckled darkly. "Figures. You holy types never bother with details. And do you know," he continued, "that when I was caught, they paraded me around the city? Shackled, beaten, humiliated at every single corner of this dump?"
The priest frowned. "I… did not. But know this—your words will not earn you pity."
"Pity?" Kaelix scoffed. "I don't believe in pity. I just thought you should know. You've seen my face, you've heard my crimes, yet you still don't understand." He paused, the air around them seeming to grow heavier with each word. "But if you care for your flock, Father, make sure they check under their beds before bedtime."
A deep foreboding gripped the priest's heart. He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, the darkening sky above rippled unnaturally.
A collective gasp rose from the crowd as the air itself seemed to tear apart. Rifts, jagged and pulsing with an eerie glow, appeared across the cliffside. Within the rifts, countless glowing eyes peered out, unblinking and malevolent.
The priest staggered back, his hands clutching the Angelic Codex. He recognized the creatures immediately: beings from the Outer Void, horrors that transcended mortal understanding. His voice broke as he screamed, "Run! Everyone, leave this place!"
Panic erupted as the first of the monsters emerged from the rifts. Nightmarish creatures of impossible shapes—some with wings that blocked out the dim light, others with grotesque limbs that dragged across the ground, and still others that slithered or swam through the air—poured forth in an unholy tide.
The beasts descended upon the crowd, their movements swift and merciless. Screams filled the air as people were torn apart, devoured, or crushed underfoot. Some tried to flee, but the monsters caught them before they could reach safety. Others tried to fight, only to be overwhelmed. A few, in their desperation, hurled themselves off the cliff, only to be intercepted mid-fall by flying horrors or devoured upon touching water by the swimming horrors.
Inside the Iron Maiden, Kaelix could hear the chaos but could not see it. The flames crackled around him, the searing pain dulled by the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He listened to the screams with a detached curiosity. "Did my traps go off early?" he muttered to himself.
Meanwhile, the priest shouted at the guards, "Send the signal! Warn the city!"
One of the guards lit a flare, launching it high into the sky. But as the signal arced downward, the city below erupted in chaos. Explosions rippled through the streets, flames consuming entire buildings. Black smoke billowed into the sky, and the priest's heart sank as he realized the full extent of the devastation.
Kaelix chuckled faintly, his voice muffled by the Iron Maiden. "Ah, there it is. Took long enough." He smirked despite the agony coursing through him. "Guess they finally tripped the wires."
The priest's hands shook as the truth settled in his mind. Kaelix had orchestrated this—a boy not just of evil deeds but of cunning and malice far beyond his years. Shame burned in his chest as he recalled the fleeting pity he had felt for the boy.
"You…" the priest whispered, his voice trembling with both anger and despair. He stepped toward the Iron Maiden, gripping its edges. "You monster!"
With a surge of fury, he shoved the flaming Iron Maiden over the edge of the cliff. It tipped forward, its fiery shell tumbling into the abyss below.
As Kaelix fell, the screams and chaos above grew faint, replaced by the rush of wind and the roar of the ocean below. His lips curled into a faint smile, his thoughts focused not on his imminent death, but on the countless lives he had managed to touch—if only to destroy them.
And as the abyss swallowed him whole, the sky above rippled again, the invasion of the Outer Void spreading beyond the cliffside. The priest fell to his knees, the weight of his failure pressing down on him as the world descended into darkness.
As the flaming Iron Maiden plummeted, a massive rift tore open beneath the cliff's edge, swallowing the cage and its occupant whole. The priest's voice caught in his throat as the golden flare of divine light above was replaced by the suffocating darkness of the abyss.
From the rift, countless glowing eyes stared back at the world, their gazes filled with malice, indifference, and curiosity. A low, otherworldly hum reverberated across the cliffside as enormous, sinewy tentacles began to emerge. They writhed like serpents, pulling themselves free of the void. Their sheer presence exuded madness, their very movements bending the air and reality around them.
The monsters from the Outer Void paused in their rampage momentarily, their gazes shifting toward the climbing appendages. The priest, still on his knees, clutched the Angelic Codex tighter as despair washed over him. His lips quivered as he muttered broken prayers, pleading for the heavens to intervene, for the light to dispel the abyssal darkness. But his prayers felt hollow against the suffocating silence of the rift.
As the eldritch horror climbed closer to the cliff's edge, madness began to claim those who dared look at it for too long. Some screamed uncontrollably, clawing at their eyes to escape the visions. Others simply froze, their minds shattered by the sheer incomprehensibility of what they saw.
Meanwhile...
Kaelix, still encased in the flaming Iron Maiden, felt the sensation of falling, the rush of wind, and the distant screams of chaos above. Yet, as moments passed, something changed. The air seemed to vanish, replaced by an oppressive stillness.
At first, he sighed, a breath of grim satisfaction. He had succeeded, after all—his traps had gone off, and chaos had followed his departure. Even as the flames licked at his body, burning through his skin and nerve endings, he found himself oddly calm. Pain had been his constant companion for so long that now, with the nerve endings in his limbs charred to numbness, it was just another background noise.
His mind wandered.
"So, this is it, huh?" he thought, his internal voice tinged with irony.
He thought of his life, each memory like a shard of broken glass. Escaping the orphanage at five. Joining crime syndicates. Stealing, lying, killing—doing whatever it took to scrape by another day. His regrets were few, but they were sharp.
"I never got to live long enough to do more. To fuck this place up even harder."
A bitter laugh bubbled up in his chest but died in his throat. He thought of the dream he once had as a younger child—the naive wish to become an Ascendar. He remembered the tales: the feats of power, the adventures, the accolades. He had longed for the Liberation ceremony, the chance to awaken his Nexus and gain a power that could lift him out of the gutter.
"Guess that wasn't in the cards for me."
As he mused, Kaelix realized something was wrong. He should have hit the ocean by now. He hadn't heard the crash of water, felt the cold embrace of the sea, or even the suffocating pressure of drowning.
"Am I already dead?"
The thought sent a chill down his spine, though the fire around him continued to crackle. But he could still feel the confines of the Iron Maiden. He still felt the faint flickers of pain from his seared body.
"No, I'm still here. But... where?"
He strained to listen, but there was nothing. No wind. No ocean. Just an all-consuming silence.
Something wasn't right.
Kaelix tried to shift his body, but the spikes of the Iron Maiden dug deeper into his flesh. He winced but didn't cry out. Instead, he gritted his teeth, pushing through the haze of pain as a creeping unease began to gnaw at the edges of his mind.
"This... this doesn't make sense."
The oppressive silence was suddenly broken by a low, guttural whisper. It wasn't a voice, not in the conventional sense, but something that resonated directly in his mind.
"Little one... you linger."
Kaelix froze, his heart pounding in his chest.
"Who's there?" he demanded inwardly, his voice trembling with a mix of defiance and fear.
The whisper grew louder, surrounding him like an unseen storm.
"You fell, yet you remain. You burn, yet you persist. You seek... power."
The air around him—or whatever space he was now in—shifted. It felt alive, pressing against him from all sides. The Iron Maiden trembled, its metal groaning as if under immense pressure.
"What... what is this?" Kaelix whispered to himself, his bravado faltering.
"This is your reckoning, child of ash. You sought the light of Ascendance, but it is the shadows that claim you."
The whisper gave way to a deafening roar as the Iron Maiden was ripped apart by an unseen force. The jagged remains of the cage were hurled into the void, leaving Kaelix exposed. His burned, broken body floated in the abyss, illuminated by a sickly green glow emanating from an enormous, swirling vortex below him.
For the first time in his life, Kaelix felt small—not the defiant criminal or cunning schemer, but a speck in the vast expanse of something far greater, and far more terrible, than he could comprehend.
The voice spoke again, this time with undeniable authority:
"You are chosen. Rise, Kaelix. Rise, and become more than mortal."