thief of fate-Chapter 75: The beginning of the road opening

Axel returned to the Abyss without a sound.

No screech of a gate, no tearing of space just a dark flicker in the air that pierced the silence, then vanished.

The first thing that greeted him was the smell.

Not the usual rot that haunted these lower layers, but something closer to old blood, pus, and the breath of a mouth that had devoured life. He raised his head and looked.

The ground was mined with corpses.

Arkanis. Dozens no, hundreds. Severed limbs scattered in the open, chests split, eyes frozen in their final terror. Some bodies were headless, others sliced cleanly in half. And others... had been eaten.

Bite marks. Huge fangs had torn through flesh to the bone. Axel didn’t stare long, didn’t examine the chaos like someone in shock, but like someone who knew it, lived it or perhaps created it once.

Unrestrained chaos, but...

He thought, stepping away from a corpse still exhaling its final bubble of darkness.

He walked calmly. Every time he passed a still-living Arkanis, they retreated immediately, without saying a word. It wasn’t respect... but something older.

Instinct.

But what made them crawl back, tremble, wasn’t Axel this time.

It was what lay at the end of the path.

Irkalos.

Even before seeing him, Axel felt him.

The air pressure had shifted. As if the layers of the world were being crushed into a single point. A faint, steady pulse that carried the ghost of a storm.

"Don’t go near..." whispered one of the Arkanis hiding behind a rock, pressing on a wound that bled dark black.

"He’s..." another murmured, "a Predator... but he’s not... not entirely himself."

Axel didn’t reply, nor did he show any interest.

He didn’t stop.

How many times have you seen this scene? Corpses... whispers... eyes afraid to look up. But you... you never trembled, did you, Irkalos?

And finally, he saw him.

He stood in the middle, his back slightly hunched, breaths heavy and audible despite the distance. The ground around him was scorched, the twisted imprint of his feet etched into the dirt. In his hands... another corpse.

It wasn’t lifeless yet.

He threw it away like someone bored of a broken toy.

"Irkalos," Axel finally spoke, his tone devoid of tension.

The Predator raised his head slowly. His eyes were red like fresh blood, and his tense muscles trembled with suppressed rage.

"..."

He didn’t speak.

Axel stepped forward twice, then stopped. The air around Irkalos wasn’t just energy... it was pure hatred.

"Have you calmed down?"

A short, sharp laugh escaped the Predator’s lips.

"Calmed down?" he said in his rough voice, tasting the word like something bitter. "I was about to kill him."

"But you didn’t," Axel replied, neither blaming nor soothing just stating.

"You pulled me back," Irkalos said slowly, as if trying to control himself. "You dragged me when I... I could have."

He stepped closer again, his fist clenching and unclenching as if searching for a new neck to break.

"That person... he wasn’t stronger than me," he growled. "He was crumbling! If you’d given me one more moment... just one..."

He doesn’t know who he fought.

Axel thought calmly, eyes fixed on the fury in Irkalos’s face.

"You would’ve died," he said at last.

"No. I would’ve won."

"You’re bleeding internally," Axel pointed out coolly. "Your muscles are torn. Your breath was erratic, and your pulse failed. You would’ve exploded before you broke his bones."

Irkalos stared into his eyes for a moment, then growled low, as if rejecting the truth but unable to refute it.

"Who was he?" he finally asked, slowly, his still-burning eyes full of rage.

Axel was silent, looking at him for a long moment, then answered:

"His name doesn’t matter now."

"Is he one of them?" Irkalos whispered hoarsely, as if the word itself carried weight.

"Not completely," Axel replied, turning his gaze to the devastation around them. "But you gave me more than I needed."

Irkalos scowled a genuine scowl he didn’t bother hiding.

"Why did you bring me back?"

"Because you were about to lose control."

"And what’s the problem?" he growled. "Let me lose it. What’s the point of my power if you leash it every time?"

Axel stepped closer, his voice this time lower and sharper.

"Because they looked at you with fear."

The Predator froze. He turned slowly, and in his eyes glimmered something strange... not rage, but something deeper.

"Fear... is my power."

"Fear..." Axel murmured, then stepped until only a few paces separated them. "But you’re not just a beast. You’re... something more."

Irkalos looked at Axel as if he didn’t understand didn’t want to understand.

"Do you want to become a machine? Something that never stops until it explodes?"

"And the alternative? To leash myself like them? To become a slave to your control?"

"I never made you my slave, but my sword," Axel whispered, his voice dripping calm. "But a sword... when it can’t tell friend from foe, becomes a threat to the one who wields it."

"I’m not a tool," Irkalos muttered, looking at his hands hands that had claimed countless lives.

"That’s why I kept you alive."

The Predator contemplated the words, his sharp eyes studying Axel like he was trying to pierce his chest and uncover the truth.

Then suddenly, he turned, and punched a stone wall behind him.

The resulting blast shattered the silence, and stones rained down.

"Don’t try to tame me, Axel," he said in a low voice, thick with something... sorrow, perhaps, or betrayal.

"I don’t want to tame you," Axel answered. "I want to see you rise. Not as a mindless monster... but as something that terrifies even when still."

"I already am," he said bitterly, then looked at the corpses around them. "Do you see this? This... is who I am."

"No, this..." Axel raised his hand and pointed to Irkalos’s chest. "...is what happens when the battle poisons you."

They fell silent. This silence was different—not a threat, but something closer to confession. A truth they both knew but didn’t want to speak aloud.

Irkalos turned his back and finally sat on a broken stone. He closed his eyes, and his heavy breathing began to ease.

"I felt it," he said suddenly. "My fear of him."

"That’s normal," Axel replied, sitting across from him. "Sometimes... fear is the only thing that keeps us alive."

"But I hate it."

"So do I."

A short laugh escaped Irkalos’s mouth, like mockery directed at himself.

Then, suddenly, he raised his eyes and looked directly at Axel.

"So, what now?"

Axel answered after a pause:

"The real enemy hasn’t appeared yet."

"And that man?"

"Just the beginning."

And you, Irkalos... will be the end of many.

He finished in his mind, unable to say it aloud.

Silence sat between them like a third presence heavy, unmoving.

Irkalos still sat, his broad shoulders rising and falling more slowly now, his eyes fixed on a patch of blood. The remnants of rage still burned within him, but they had become silent embers.

As for Axel, he watched him with complete calm, as if waiting for something to ripen something that could not be rushed.

Axel..." Irkalos spoke in a low voice, yet it carried a strange doubt.

The other didn’t reply, just looked at him.

"You’ve always seemed to me... as if you understand humans more than I do."

Axel looked at him for a moment, then turned his eyes upward, toward the ceiling of the Abyss, as if he could see through it to the surface of the world.

"You watched them, didn’t you? Hid among them. Listened to their language. Studied their faces. While I was sent to tear them apart. So tell me, honestly..."

He paused for a moment, then said it clearly:

"Why weren’t you the key to our people? Why wasn’t it you who learned about them? Why did you make me do it?"

There was bitterness in his question. A feeling that the path he walked hadn’t entirely been his choice. And that the one before him this enigmatic figure who never revealed his full intentions knew more than he let on.

Axel gave a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and said in a tone that wasn’t mocking, but reminiscent:

"When we met for the first time, didn’t I tell you something?"

Irkalos remembered. That meeting was branded in his memory: Axel standing before him, only saying:

I’m different."

"...You told me you’re different." Irkalos replied after a moment, as if repeating a confession he hadn’t wanted to believe at the time.

Axel nodded.

"And that’s why I wasn’t the key." He said it simply, as if it were a self-evident truth.

"As for teaching..." he continued, his voice dropping a notch, becoming more sincere. "Seeing is better than explaining."

Irkalos stared at him for a long time. Those words, simple as they were, carried an unexpected weight. He, who was thrown into a world unlike his own, who was forced to fight his instincts, was not handed knowledge but experience.

"You were watching me." He murmured.

"I was watching you learn." Axel corrected.

Silence fell again, but this time it wasn’t tense it was strangely intimate.

"And you..." Axel continued after a moment, then looked at him with a different gaze, a deep one.

"You have learned enough."

Irkalos looked up at him, mouth slightly open without speaking, as if he had been waiting for that sentence for a long time.

"What remains for you now..." Axel said, rising slowly, "is just one step."

"What is it?" Irkalos asked, his voice low, but filled with genuine longing.

"To decide what you will become."

Irkalos was surprised not by the words, but by their truth.

"A monster? A human? Something else? The choice... is no longer mine."

Axel took two steps forward, then turned and looked toward the Abyss behind him. When he spoke again, his voice wasn’t only for Irkalos’ ears it was for the entire world.

"Soon..." he said, and there was an unfamiliar tone in his voice, something like awe. "The Abyss will open."

"Open?"

"Yes." Axel was serious. His eyes. "The veil will be lifted. The boundaries that separated us from them will shatter."

"I studied them. Analyzed them. Learned enough about them... about their fear, their hope, their fragility that breeds cruelty." He paused, as if every word now weighed more than a sentence. "And I watched you... see that with your own eyes."

"So, this is the reason?" Irkalos asked, his tone starting to shift, as if something within him was crystallizing. "You were preparing me... for that moment?"

"I wasn’t the one who prepared you." Axel replied. "You did that yourself... You survived, you fought, you thought, you questioned. I was just there."

The words fell like heavy rain, drawing a new path between them.

"And if the Abyss opens..." Irkalos whispered, as if a vision was being born in his mind. "...where will I be?"

"At the beginning of your true steps."

He looked at him for a long time, then stood up. This time, his stance wasn’t that of a threatening predator but of a being who knew something great was about to happen.

"And if I choose to be... more than a tool? More than rage?"

"Then..." Axel said, and looked at him with something like respect, "they will fear you..."