Bruno's heart pounded as he stepped back, his eyes locked onto the thing standing before him. It wasn't just a creature—it was wrong. A twisted, shifting stain on reality, something that had no fixed form, no defined edges. Dozens of unnatural eyes blinked out of sync across its body, observing him from impossible angles.
Then, it moved.
Not by stepping forward, not by lunging—it simply flickered. One moment, it was in the distance, the next, it was right in front of him.
A wave of pressure slammed against Bruno's body. His vision blurred, his limbs turning heavy. The ground beneath him sank, as if trying to drag him into something deeper than the Abyss itself.
"Move!" Silas shouted.
Bruno reacted on instinct, throwing himself to the side just as a thin, elongated limb slashed through the air where he had stood. The space it touched didn't just break—it disappeared, like reality itself had been erased.
His pulse roared in his ears. If that thing touched him, it wouldn't wound him. It would remove him from existence.
Silas wasted no time. He lunged, his jagged blade flashing through the dim glow of the ruins. But as the steel made contact—nothing. The creature's body shifted like liquid shadow, letting the weapon pass through harmlessly.
Silas cursed, stumbling back. "It's not solid!"
Raine's voice cut through the chaos. "The runes! Look at the ground!"
Bruno's gaze darted downward. The symbols beneath them were shifting, re-aligning into patterns—like something was guiding them.
The Abyss wasn't just watching them. It was testing them.
Bruno gritted his teeth. "We're not supposed to kill it outright."
Silas frowned. "Then what the hell are we supposed to do?!"
The creature flickered again—this time behind Silas.
Bruno's eyes widened. "Behind you!"
Silas barely managed to turn before the thing's limb lashed toward him. Bruno reacted, his instincts overriding thought. His fingers clenched, and something deep within him stirred.
A pulse of cold energy surged through his body.
The air around him bent, and the force pulling him toward the creature suddenly reversed—as if he had grabbed hold of something unseen and pushed back.
The creature jerked, its many eyes snapping shut for a brief second.
Bruno's breath came fast. He had felt it—an opening.
It could be affected.
But not with brute force.
He turned his focus toward the shifting runes beneath him, following their movement. Instead of resisting, he let himself move with the Abyss, aligning his body with the strange, unnatural flow of energy.
The creature twitched.
Silas and Raine saw it too—the more Bruno matched the pattern, the more unstable the thing became.
Bruno took a deep breath. "We don't fight it—we make it break itself."
Silas hesitated for only a second before following Bruno's lead, shifting his stance. Raine did the same, her body moving in sync with the unseen rhythm.
The moment they fully aligned, the runes flared.
The creature convulsed. Its body fractured, like cracks spreading through glass. The Abyss itself seemed to reject it.
Then, without warning—it shattered.
Not into blood. Not into dust.
It simply ceased to exist.
The suffocating pressure vanished. The runes beneath them dimmed.
Silas let out a slow, uneven breath. "What the hell was that?"
Bruno swallowed hard, his mind racing.
"It wasn't just a monster," he muttered. "It was part of the Abyss. And we weren't supposed to kill it."
Raine wiped sweat from her forehead. "Then what did we do?"
Bruno exhaled, staring at the empty space where the creature had been.
"We made the Abyss erase it for us."
And that realization sent a chill down his spine.
Because that meant the Abyss had rules.
And something far worse was still waiting ahead.
-To Be Continue-
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[A/N] THE NAMELESS WATCHER:
It was once whole. Now, it is a wound in reality, a thing that exists between moments, never fully here nor gone. It does not hunt—it waits. Those who meet its gaze do not die. They simply cease.
Silas called it a Sin of the Abyss—a being that was unmade and yet not freed, trapped in endless reflection. What shattered it? What keeps it from vanishing?
No answer remains. Only the Watcher.
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