They walked for a while, observing the ruined structure and trying to make sense of things. Although they didn't know what to expect or how to understand the situation they were in.
Bruno asked raine, "For how long we are gonna walk—"
The air changed.
Bruno felt it before he saw it—the faintest shift in pressure, like stepping into a vacuum where the world forgot to breathe. His foot fell forward, expecting solid ground, but the texture beneath him had changed.
No crunch of broken stone. No shifting dust.
Just silence.
He stopped.
A second later, Raine halted too.
"…We're not in the same place, are we?" she muttered.
Bruno's jaw clenched. His instincts screamed, telling him to turn around, but something inside whispered: Don't look back.
He ignored it.
His head turned.
His stomach dropped.
The path they had just walked—the ruins, the skeletal remains of dead structures—was gone. In its place stretched an endless, glass-like plain, slick, dark, and wet-looking, as if someone had spilled ink across the land. Yet when he lifted his boot, it wasn't wet at all. The substance didn't stain, didn't ripple.
It wasn't liquid.
It wasn't solid.
It was nothing.
"Bruno…"
His head snapped back toward Raine—then past her.
A figure stood behind her.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't blink.
It was there.
A towering shadow, featureless, faceless, wrapped in something like a cloak of darkness that wasn't fabric at all but a shifting, living void. Its form flickered between shapes, limbs lengthening and shrinking, chains drifting around it, rattling in the absence of wind.
Bruno's breath turned shallow.
This was not a creature.
This was something older.
Something watching.
Then—
It moved.
Not in a step. Not in a shift.
One moment, it was standing still.
The next, it was closer.
A pulse of something wrong slammed into his mind—like a whisper at the edge of his hearing, like static buzzing just beneath his skull. He flinched.
Then it spoke.
Not in words.
Not in any human tongue.
It was a soundless understanding, a wave of meaning that flooded his mind, drowning his thoughts, forcing something else into his skull.
Memories.
Memories that weren't his.
A city older than time, built upon the bones of something long dead. Towers reaching for a sky that had never seen light. Statues with no faces, standing vigil over streets paved in bloodstone.
People—or something like them—kneeling before an empty throne. Their mouths moved, whispering a prayer in a language his ears couldn't comprehend, yet somehow, deep inside, he knew what they were saying.
It is watching.
It is waiting.
The abyss does not forget.
Bruno gasped as reality crashed back in.
His knees hit the ground. His lungs burned, chest tightening as if the weight of the vision was still pressing down on him. He clutched his head, nails digging into his scalp.
Beside him, Raine screamed.
Not in pain.
In pure, primal terror.
Her eyes were wide—too wide—staring at something that wasn't there. Her lips moved frantically, whispering words that made no sense, her body convulsing as if something was crawling under her skin.
The thing—The Watcher—stood unmoving.
It was doing this to them.
Bruno's fingers clenched into fists.
MOVE.
He forced his body up, legs trembling. The weight in his mind tried to pull him back down, but he gritted his teeth and fought.
His vision swam. His head screamed.
But then he saw it.
The faintest glow.
At the very center of the Watcher's form, buried in the abyss of its being, pulsed a crimson shard.
A core? A weakness?
He didn't have time to think.
Bruno moved.
His body felt sluggish, as if wading through thick air, but he pushed forward, his steps uneven but determined.
The Watcher remained still, its faceless void fixed on him.
Bruno lunged.
His hand stretched toward the core, fingers brushing against something colder than death itself.
And then—
The world shattered.
A sudden pull.
Like a hand yanking him from beneath water, he was ripped from the void.
Bruno hit the ground hard, his body slamming onto rough stone. The feeling of solid earth beneath him was so real that for a moment, he didn't move. His breath came in short, panicked bursts.
He was back.
The ruins. The broken city.
The Watcher was gone.
But Raine—
His head snapped toward her.
She was still trapped.
She stood motionless, eyes wide and unfocused, caught in the nightmare the creature had forced upon them.
Bruno's heart pounded.
Think.
He had touched the core. Had something changed?
No. The Watcher wasn't dead. It had merely released him.
But why?
His gaze flickered back to Raine.
She wasn't moving.
If he left her, she would be erased.
His fingers clenched.
No.
Not happening.
Bruno stepped forward.
His mind screamed at him, don't go back—but he ignored it. He reached out, grabbing Raine's arm.
And suddenly—
He saw.
He wasn't just pulling her body.
He was pulling her mind.
The abyss surged back. The visions attacked again.
But this time, he resisted.
This time, he fought back.
His fingers tightened around her wrist, forcing her toward him, dragging her back from the edge.
At first, she didn't move.
Then—her breath hitched.
Her lips stopped whispering.
Her fingers twitched.
Bruno gritted his teeth, pulling harder.
Raine's body lurched forward—
And then, just like that, the nightmare broke.
She collapsed into him, gasping for breath, eyes wild with confusion.
Bruno didn't let go.
The Watcher was gone.
But it had left something behind.
A name. A whisper at the edge of his thoughts.
Not in a voice.
Not in words.
But in understanding.
He knew what it meant.
The First Gate is open.