Sign In To The Body Of Chaos At The Start

Damon stood at the edge of the obsidian platform, feeling the sensation of power humming through his body. The energy wasn't violent or an uncontrolled surge of a breakthrough or a tidal wave of uncontrolled magic that often followed an evolution.

This was something else, it was ordered and harmonized. He felt like his energy had been refined and precise. The moment he moved, his steps folded the reality around him.

The newly mastered Laws of Darkness and Space rippled in his aura. Not just mastered, claimed. He was no longer a student of these forces.

He was their wielder.

Space bent gently around him with each step, and shadows obeyed without needing to be summoned.

"Perfect," he whispered to himself.

He took a single step forward, and space peeled open. There was no stairwell or a magical bridge.

Simply a corridor of emptiness carved by his will, leading directly to the final floor of the trial. A place Talia had sent him to conquer. The test that would determine whether he was worthy to remain beside Artemis.

With a light breath, Damon walked forward, and reality folded behind him, sealing the trial of self-reflection shut.

He passed into a realm of silence. No enemies, no walls. Just a vast, open dome of dark stone stretching wider than any arena he'd ever seen.

The moment he had arrived here, he knew.

This was the climax.

A floor that didn't hide its threat or mystery. A battlefield forged purely for confrontation.

It was massive, an endless arena of white-grey stone, latticed with black veins that pulsed like slow heartbeats.

Pillars floated in mid-air above the battlefield, chunks of broken architecture drifting silently, defying gravity. The sky was a dome of seething void, streaked with writhing Abyssal essence, as if the space itself had become infected by corruption.

And then, it spoke.

"I wondered how long it would take before you stood here."

Damon looked across the chamber. At the far end stood the Eye.

That same cocky, sardonic entity that had been watching him all throughout the trial. Only now, it no longer hid itself behind illusion.

The floating eyeball twisted and snapped open into a fissure of brilliant violet light, and from that rupture emerged something entirely new.

A being of vast stature now stood where the floating gaze once hovered, a knight of pure obsidian plate, towering three meters tall, cloaked in chains of silver and shadow. A colossal greatsword rested over its shoulder, held with casual ease in one massive hand.

The Eye still floated in its helmet, nested in the hollow where a face should be, glaring out like a cursed jewel.

Damon didn't move, "So. You finally decided to show yourself."

"I am the Warden of the Abyss," the knight replied, his voice low and thunderous, like a drum sounding from inside the earth. "And you, Damon... are the one we've been waiting for."

Damon's expression didn't change, but he said nothing.

The Warden took a slow step forward. The ground didn't shake. Instead, the air folded subtly, space itself bending as the weight of the creature's presence settled into the world.

"Your performance was... intriguing," the knight continued, beginning to walk forward. Each step sent subtle shockwaves across the arena. "You could have been one of us. Still might be."

The Eye pulsed within its helm.

"You walk with the power of shadows, yet deny the truths they offer. You bend space, yet cling to limited ideals. You fight the Abyss, Damon, but it is part of you. As much as your breath or your blood."

Damon crossed his arms. "If you're trying to convince me to kneel, you'll need a better speech."

The Warden gave no response for a moment, then tilted his head, eye flickering in eerie stillness.

"You misunderstand me. I don't demand your obedience. I offer you clarity. Tell me… why do you fight the Abyss?"

"Because it destroys. Because it consumes. Because it annihilates without reason."

"And?"

Damon narrowed his eyes, waiting for the Warden to continue speaking.

After a few seconds, the Warden took another step forward, the echo of his boots strangely muted.

"Do you think that existence is made of kindness? That creation rewards harmony?" The voice grew quieter now, more intimate, as if the Abyss itself leaned closer, "The Abyss is not evil. It is truth, Damon. Everything fades. Everything is devoured. We are simply honest about it."

Damon didn't blink, "I've seen what your 'truth' leaves behind. Corpses. Madness. Worlds reduced to screaming echoes. That's not honesty. That's perversion."

The Warden paused. "Is it? Or is it the final mercy? To free beings from the suffering of existence? From time? From hope?"

"You talk like you're a savior."

Damon ignored that last sentence and stepped forward now, slowly. "You want me to join you. Why?"

The Warden lifted his massive greatsword from his shoulder, the blade silent despite its size, and pointed it lazily to the ground.

"Because you are us."

"No," Damon said, firmly. "I am not."

"You carry the Abyss inside you. The taste of nothingness in your soul. And you've begun to understand that darkness is not absence, it is origin. You've begun to question the light."

Damon's fists clenched, "And I will keep questioning. But I won't stop fighting you."

The Warden's head tilted again, "You say that now. But when you see what waits beyond this tower... you may come crawling back."

A silence passed between them.

Then, finally, the Warden straightened.

"So be it. But know this, Damon, you were meant for more than this futile resistance. I will carve the truth into your bones."

The Eye pulsed.

And the air changed.

Not gradually. Not as a rising crescendo. One moment, there was calm, and the next, the battlefield exploded.

Space warped around Damon as a blow came not from the front, but from three angles at once. He threw himself backward, folding the distance with a flash of teleportation.

The Warden had moved.

Not teleported. Not phased. He had stepped forward, and space had obeyed, placing him within striking distance.

Damon's instincts roared at him to get out of the way.

He raised his hand and invoked a shield of warped air, bending the flow of force around him. The greatsword passed through the distortion and still smashed into his barrier with enough strength to flatten mountains.

Damon flew backwards, skidding across the stone floor, his boots carving burning streaks of light.

He landed on his feet and twisted his fingers.

"Collapse."

The ground beneath the Warden rippled, and a miniature black hole bloomed at his feet, dragging gravity itself into its orbit.

The Warden looked down, unimpressed. With one stomp, space around him shattered like glass. The singularity ruptured, scattered by the weight of his existence.

"You think you're the only one who understands Space?" the knight growled, lifting his blade.

Damon replied by throwing up dozens of shimmering portals, then immediately vanished through one.

The next few moments became a blur of movement.

Damon phased through folds of reality, slicing with Spacial Cleaves that blinked into and out of visibility. The Warden's blade met them mid-air, slashing with impossible control, dispelling the attacks with single, precise cuts.

Then, the Warden struck the ground.

The arena shook.

From the point of impact, tendrils of black chain erupted outward like serpents, writhing and hissing, each one tipped with barbs made of warped dimensions. Damon leapt over them, but the chains followed, moving as if they ignored time.

Damon reached high and clapped both hands together.

"Shadow Net!"

A lattice of pure black spread out around him, catching some of the incoming chains and melting them into liquid void, but others pierced through, slashing toward his sides.

A ripple of space bent them away at the last moment.

Damon spun, hurling a compressed orb of spatial gravity toward the Warden. The knight caught it mid-air, and crushed it in his palm.

Damon's eyes narrowed, "You're strong."

"I'm inevitable."

"I don't believe in inevitability."

"Then I will teach you to."

They launched forward again.

The battle had begun. Neither held back.