thief of fate-Chapter 80: The abyss opened

Darkness was not the absence of light, but a breathing, moving, watching entity. And Irkalos, despite his silence, was closer than ever to becoming a part of it.

He stood motionless, and the ground beneath him was no longer solid. It pulsed. It breathed. As if something deep within was finally awakening from an age-long slumber.

And Axel, just a few steps away, showed no reaction. His hands were behind his back, his features calm, as if he had been waiting for this very moment since ancient times.

Suddenly... Irkalos heard the voice again.

"I’ve tasted you," the voice came not as a whisper, but as an internal flood, as if his own mind had become its priest.

"Something unlike them... unlike the dead, unlike the living. You... are something new."

His body stepped back, not from fear, but from a weight that overwhelmed his soul. He saw his fingertips tremble, not from cold, but from the truth: what the Abyss had tasted... was his very soul.

The earth cracked beneath his feet. Not slowly, but suddenly, violently, with inevitability. The rocks split, moans of imprisoned entities rose, and then the earth opened its mouth, revealing what could only be described as "the Great Rift" a depth without bottom, spinning within itself and pulling all around it without sound, without light.

And from it, the creatures fell.

They were neither beasts nor humans. Some had shattered bodies, some had no faces, some resembled physical screams. They fell, screamed, and their bodies exploded upon touching the air of the Abyss, only to be reborn and die again. A cycle without meaning, without mercy.

Irkalos, eyes wide, watched without blinking. His heart didn’t beat... it stopped, as if trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

"You gave me," said the Abyss. "And I shall give you..."

Heat rose from the depths, followed by a wave of void that made the air around them choke and shatter like fragile glass.

Axel did not move.

"They are descending..." murmured Irkalos in a voice foreign to him. There was no panic in it, only a sense... akin to realization.

At the bottom of the rift, amidst blood, pus, and screams... there was an Arkanis—huge, deformed, crawling on all fours, with a mouth that nearly covered its entire body. It did not look up, did not stop. It simply... began to eat.

Every fallen being was devoured. And if not devoured, it was torn apart so nothing was left to be reborn.

And at that moment, in various parts of the world... the others felt it.

Seryantha

She sat atop a half-ruined tower, legs dangling in the air, carving into a twisted tree trunk with a knife.

"This line isn’t like the others..." she murmured to herself, tilting her head to examine the carving.

Then... she stopped.

She looked around. The air changed. The light changed. Something in the balance of the universe had shifted.

She smiled.

"Finally..." she said with a distorted grin, then inhaled the air as if it were blood.

Diros

He was arguing with himself, as usual. One head wanted to go try a flesh cocktail, while the other wanted to stay for the hunt.

"I told you they don’t know how to mix flesh with blood!"

"And I told you we don’t need such a trivial argument!"

Then both heads suddenly fell silent.

As if something pierced both skulls at once.

"Did... did you feel it?"

"I felt it. The Abyss is breathing."

"We are in danger."

"We are in pleasure."

Gulirath

He was eating.

An unknown, massive, dead creature lay before him, half already torn apart.

He didn’t care about the sounds, the tremors, or the meat rotting before he could swallow it.

But he suddenly stopped.

He raised his head, stared into the void. He saw nothing. But he felt.

Mother of Curses

She stood in a circle of ash, surrounded by ageless corpses. She sang, in a monotonous tone:

"Sleep... sleep... for the rift is coming..."

Then her voice ceased.

She raised her head and stared at the sky, even though what happened was beneath the ground.

She smiled... and smiled... then laughed until her whole body shook.

"It has begun. The descent has begun. The collapse has begun. The glory has begun."

She extended her hands into the void and stepped forward.

"Open your mouth, O Mother, one of your sons has returned to you."

As for Irkalos

Everything around him was collapsing. Even the sky turned into a violet-colored crack that defied the laws of light. Time itself began to falter, as he watched the same creature be born and die in the same moment, thousands of times.

Yet he stood.

And Axel, finally, turned his head toward him.

"Do you hear her?" Axel asked calmly.

"Yes..." Irkalos replied, his voice like a drowning man’s gasp.

"Do you understand her?"

He hesitated for a moment... then said:

"I think... I’m a part of her."

Axel smiled.

"Well done."

Then he began to walk away, toward the rift.

And Irkalos, remained standing. Watching death being reshaped. Watching screams that came not from throats, but from shattered souls.

Yet despite the horror, he felt no fear.

But belonging.

"You are but a thought born in my void," the Abyss whispered inside him.

The Great Rift remained open, spewing from its depths an endless stream of twisted, contorted, cracked creatures those no longer aware if they were born of a curse or a hungry desire.

Axel stood at the edge. Behind him, Irkalos stood, staring in awe at the flood of beings that began to crawl outward.

Low-tier Arkanis creatures, those barely possessing awareness... paused briefly at the world’s threshold, as if something in them sensed the difference between this place and the one they had gnawed in the depths. But they did not question. They did not doubt.

They only looked up at Axel.

In a voice not loud, yet heard throughout the Abyss, he said:

"You may come out now."

The creatures hesitated. Some crawled, some screamed, and some merely looked with eyes that no longer saw.

But Axel continued, his eyes gleaming:

"To eat... to do as you please."

Then, in a slower, deeper tone, like delicious poison:

"To rule this land."

The low-tier Arkanis did not understand the words. But they understood the feeling. Freedom. Hunger. Rage.

And they moved.

They began to crawl upward. Hundreds, thousands, bearing no single form nor one purpose. Some crawled over others. Some devoured their neighbor without thought. But all of them emerged.

As for those with minds those of a rank above savagery they hesitated for a moment.

Then... they too moved.

Laughter. Screams. Greedy movements. As if all had finally realized that the chains were gone, and they no longer needed to hide in the gaps.

The frenzy began.

Distant mountains trembled. Birds fell from the sky. And every creature with a soul shuddered without knowing why.

And Irkalos remained standing there, watching the swarm. As if witnessing an army not born to fight, but to consume. Chaos was being born before him... no, it was rising from beneath him.

Then he looked at Axel.

That being, or what was left of him, who remained calm amidst the storm.

Suddenly, he saw something.

It didn’t exist in reality. No image appeared, no light. But a red screen, floating in the void,

[Continue]

No one saw it... except Axel. No one heard it... except him.

Only he, standing there on the edge of the abyss, read the words like one receiving a sacred commandment.

He thought within:

"Does this please him? Is my master... pleased now?"

He didn’t know. And he never would. But he understood one simple thing:

It didn’t require acceptance.

Only obedience.

And then, something no one expected happened.

Axel smiled.

A real smile, small but strange... not because his face wasn’t used to it,

but because the world itself wasn’t made for any kind of smile.

And Irkalos saw him.

For the first time, he saw that mysterious man smile.

And despite all the ruin, the blood, the crawling,

despite the sounds of creatures tearing each other apart in the background...

Irkalos felt a different kind of shiver.

It wasn’t fear.

It was admiration.

Maybe... awe.

Or, in the worst case... acknowledgment.

Everything was moving.

No writhing.

From the great rift still gaping in the heart of the earth,

countless bodies slithered forth, as if the land itself was vomiting its innards.

Creatures of illogical form beings with heads in their stomachs,

limbs made of exposed bone, eyes floating through the air, unattached to any body.

Some crawled on six legs, some had none, some simply drifted

beings unlike anything the world had ever known.

And they were all... hungry.

Hungry for what was around them. For each other. For the world.

Axel walked upon the hollowed ground, his steps steady amid the swarm.

He wasn’t running. Not even rushing.

He walked as if moving through a field of lifeless dolls.

Chaos howled around him, but he never turned his head.

On either side of him, enormous creatures moved

featherless crows with mouths like cannon barrels,

screaming in a tongue no mind could comprehend,

searching for escape.

Two of them stopped before him, staring,

as if they saw in him a mind untouched by this madness.

But before one of them could utter a sound,

a swarm of Arkanis descended upon them.

They tore them apart with teeth and claws.

Blood sprayed, screams rose, and the bodies vanished.

Axel didn’t stop. He only glanced their way... and kept walking.

"The place is wrong..." he thought. "But getting there won’t take long."

He walked atop a living mountain of shifting bodies.

Each step echoed with a scream, the crunch of bone, or the split of skin.

Then...

The screen appeared.

"Oh, Axel... walking like you know the path, but you know nothing, do you?"

He stopped.

No words came from his lips,

but his eyes read the mockery as if it were a slap.

"No matter. I’ll help you. I’ll give you a choice just like all good gods do."

The earth stilled around him.

Some of the creatures breathed heavier,

as if they too felt the sudden shift.

"Kill the Chosen. All of them. No exceptions. Only then... you live."

[Do you accept?]

[Yes] [No]

Time froze within him.

"The Chosen..." he thought slowly.

"The ones who think the world revolves around them,

that the tournament belongs to them,

that their choices are what save or doom everything..."

"But what about me?"

His breath tightened.

His eyes returned to the screen.

[Yes] [No]

The choice was simple.

But the consequences... were not.

He didn’t press. Not yet.

Instead, he smiled again.

A small, slanted smile that never reached his eyes.

And said in a quiet voice no one could hear:

"Let’s see... who truly deserves to live."