CHAPTER 69: IS THERE AN ABYSS IN THE ABYSS ? - 4

The corrupted angel looked at him then—truly looked at him.

Its white eye focusing, the melted half of its face twitching, a grotesque parody of life.

"...You have to die," it said, not with malice but with the certainty of someone quoting scripture, each word a weight that pressed on the soul.

Nyxsha stepped forward, her snarl tearing through the silence like a blade, her golden eyes blazing with fury.

"You want to kill him?" she roared, her claws unsheathing, her massive form trembling with protective rage.

But Azareel gently held up a hand, stopping her, his silver eyes steady on the angel.

"I’m immortal," he said simply, his voice calm but resolute. "You can’t kill me."

The mutated angel swayed slightly, its divine wing twitching, its corrupted one dripping more fluid that steamed on the floor.

"Not with steel... but with rot, with the fetid breath of the void itself. With despair so deep it consumes the light. With suffering that twists the very essence of existence. With agony that fractures the soul into splinters of nothingness. With the weight of guilt so suffocating it drowns hope. With shame that claws at the mind, tearing it apart from within. With betrayal that gnaws at the heart like an eternal wound. With the crushing, unholy gravity of this forsaken realm," it rasped, its voice a twisted hymn of annihilation, each word like the dripping of blood into an infinite chasm.

Azareel blinked once, his silver eyes narrowing slightly, his heart steady despite the chill of the words.

"You mean... you want to corrupt me?" he asked, his voice soft but probing, searching for the truth beneath the angel’s sorrow.

"If your light dies," the angel said, its good eye glinting with a flicker of hope, "mine will rise again. Balance will shift. I will be taken back. That’s what they told me."

Azareel stood still, his silver eyes steady, his breath misting in the cold. "Who is ’they’?" he asked, his voice a quiet anchor in the void.

The answer came without hesitation, chilling the air like a prophecy unveiled.

"A voice from the heavens," the angel rasped, its voice trembling with reverence and despair, the glowberries flickering as if the words had stolen their light.

The silence stretched like skin pulled taut over bone, brittle and unyielding, the air heavy with the weight of unspoken sorrow.

Azareel stood still, his silver eyes, steady but brimming with empathy, his torn white tunic fluttering in the stale air.

"A voice... from Heaven?" he repeated softly, his voice a gentle thread in the oppressive dark, cutting through the silence like a prayer.

The corrupted angel didn’t blink, its beautiful eye glistening faintly, not with hope but with a desperation that had rotted into belief, its melted half twitching grotesquely.

"I waited," it murmured, its voice shaking, brittle as dry leaves crumbling in the wind. "Waited for the gates to open. For wings to lift me. For light. But only silence answered. Until... the voice came."

"Do you trust it?" Azareel asked, his voice calm, searching, his silver eyes unwavering despite the chill creeping up his spine.

The angel’s face twitched, a flicker of doubt passing through its milky blue eye.

"What else can I trust? My prayers curdled. My flesh broke. But the voice... they finally forgave me, it gave me a purpose. A way home," it rasped, its voice heavy with centuries of longing, each word a weight that pressed on the soul.

Azareel took a careful step forward, his bare feet silent on the smooth, unnatural floor, his stumps aching faintly.

"And that way is through me?" he asked, his voice soft but resolute, his silver eyes searching the angel’s warped visage.

"Yes," came the answer, final, soft, cracked, like a scripture carved in broken stone.

The women stood silently behind him, their monstrous forms tense, their eyes glowing in the dim light.

Sylvara’s amber eyes widened, her vines curling tighter against her chest.

"The deeper the Abyss, the older the wounds," Virelya muttered, her golden, slit-pupiled eyes narrowing behind her cracked porcelain mask, her coils shifting uneasily. "He’s been trapped here longer than any of us."

Nyxsha’s claws clicked against the ground, her golden eyes blazing with suspicion. "He’s... ancient and old," she growled, her black fur bristling, her tail lashing once.

Azareel’s gaze didn’t waver, his silver eyes fixed on the hollow that remained, the angel’s warped form a testament to time’s cruelty.

"I’m sorry you were left behind," he whispered, his voice heavy with heartfelt sorrow, his words echoing in the void like a prayer for the forgotten.

The angel closed its eyes, and began to weep again—

No sobs, no heaving chest, just... tears, quiet and endless, each drop hitting the frozen ground with a delicate, sharp echo, like falling glass, hissing faintly as if the earth recoiled from their touch.

The sound was wrong, a mournful hymn that clawed at the soul, chilling the air with its weight.

Azareel stepped forward slightly, his lips parted, his silver eyes wide with worry, his heart aching for the creature before him.

Then he felt it—a shift, not in the ground but in the air, the taste of the world changing, growing thicker, bitter, like rot swimming through syrup, the scent of corrupted spirit, of burned feathers and stagnant divinity.

The ground at their feet cracked again, not with force but with decay, a subtle fracture snaking through the smooth surface.

A pulse spread outward from the crying angel, a dark mist unfurling from beneath its feet, rising in long, writhing tendrils like something alive, desperate to escape its shadow.

It shimmered at first, like silk catching light, but the moment it touched the edge of Sylvara’s vines, they shriveled with a hiss, curling back as if burned.

Sylvara recoiled instantly, gasping, her amber eyes wide with pain, her flowering hair drooping as petals fell.

Her glowing berries—once vibrant with warm light—withered in seconds.

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