CHAPTER 190: CHAPTER 190: CHAINS OF CRIMSON

The platform screamed under the abyss’s pull. Metal cracked like bone, whole slabs tearing away and dropping into the glowing void below. Lin dangled at the edge, his body twisted in crimson chains that weren’t metal at all but living light—writhing, tightening, each link embedding into his skin like barbed wire. His veins pulsed to the abyss’s rhythm, his eyes burned in alternating flashes of black and red.

Keller’s grip on Lin’s arm was iron, but his boots skidded across the platform, sparks showering from steel as his strength began to fail. Min-joon clung to Lin’s other arm, his small frame trembling violently, tears streaming freely. His voice was hoarse from screaming.

"Don’t let go! Don’t you dare let go!"

"I’m not—!" Keller spat, muscles straining, "—but he’s not fighting it anymore!"

Lin’s head lolled forward, crimson flickering under his skin like molten fire. The abyss’s colossal eye pulsed, its voice splitting the air with godlike force:

"ASSIMILATE."

The word was not just sound—it was command. Keller felt it sear through his skull, a vibration in his teeth, his bones. His vision warped for a split second. He saw Lin’s face flicker—then another version of Lin, but hollow-eyed, a machine’s skeleton beneath his skin.

He blinked hard, teeth clenched, but the vision didn’t vanish. It multiplied. Min-joon’s terrified face fractured in Keller’s mind—one version pleading, another smiling blankly with abyss-red eyes.

"Shit," Keller hissed through clenched teeth. "It’s in our heads."

Min-joon whimpered, clutching Lin tighter. "It’s lying—it’s lying!" He shook his head violently, as if to dislodge the images. "Lin isn’t—he isn’t one of them!"

But Lin’s lips moved. His voice came ragged, warped, layered with the abyss’s resonance.

"We... belong. We were made for this."

Keller’s chest tightened. For a split second, his finger twitched toward his sidearm. If he shot Lin—disabled him—the chains might release. But that meant risking Lin’s life, maybe ending it outright.

The abyss whispered again, quieter this time, invasive, intimate.

"Shoot him. Let him fall. Spare yourself. You can’t carry him forever."

Keller’s vision blurred again. He saw himself firing, Lin’s body tumbling into the abyss, Min-joon screaming until the void swallowed the sound. For one fractured heartbeat, it felt like a mercy.

"Don’t you dare!" Min-joon’s scream cut through the vision, his grip iron on Lin’s arm. His voice cracked raw. "If you shoot him, Keller—I’ll never forgive you!"

Keller’s jaw locked. He dragged his gaze from the abyss, forcing the hallucinations down. He snarled through gritted teeth, spitting into the void: "You don’t get to make the choices for us."

Inside the abyss, Lin’s mind fractured.

He wasn’t on the platform anymore. He stood in a corridor of endless white walls, ceiling lights humming, the air sterile and suffocating. The sound of boots echoed in the hall. His hands were bound in steel cuffs, and ahead of him stood Jin.

But Jin wasn’t smiling.

He looked exactly as Lin remembered—the sharp jaw, the cold eyes, the faint smirk that said he always knew more than everyone else—but here, he wasn’t mocking. He was calm, almost... pitying.

"You know why you can’t win, don’t you?" Jin’s voice echoed, low and cutting. "Because you’re fighting yourself. You keep clawing away at something that is you. The abyss isn’t your enemy. It’s your reflection."

Lin tried to speak, but his throat locked. The chains burned deeper into his chest, his arms, his spine.

Jin circled him slowly, hands clasped behind his back. "Why resist? They made you for this. You’re nothing but sharpened steel, a weapon wearing skin. Stop pretending to be human, Lin. Stop clinging to what you can never be."

The words slithered like poison. For a moment, Lin’s knees buckled. Maybe Jin was right. Maybe every choice, every defiance, every act of rebellion was nothing but a delay before the inevitable.

Then, faintly, like a distant thread, another voice broke through.

Min-joon’s.

"You saved me... you saved Keller... machines don’t save people."

The words trembled, fragile, but they cut deeper than Jin’s monologue.

Lin’s fists clenched, the steel cuffs creaking. He glared at Jin, voice breaking but raw. "You’re wrong. I’m not a weapon. I’m not your echo. I’m me."

The corridor cracked, walls fracturing like glass. Jin’s smirk faltered, his voice warping into static. "You can’t—"

Lin roared, tearing the cuffs apart with his bare hands.

On the platform, Lin’s body convulsed. The crimson chains tightened, embedding deeper, splitting skin—until he threw his head back and screamed. The sound was not inhuman, not abyssal. It was painfully, violently human.

His aura erupted, not chaotic but focused, a razor storm of light and shadow. The chains shattered one by one, exploding into shards that disintegrated before they hit the floor. The abyss eye flared brighter, furious, the entire chamber trembling.

Keller and Min-joon were thrown back by the shockwave, slamming against the platform rail. Keller shielded Min-joon with his body as sparks and fragments rained around them.

When the light dimmed, Lin stood free. His chest heaved, blood streaking down his arms where the chains had pierced, but his eyes—though flickering—were his own.

He raised his head and glared into the abyss. "You don’t own me."

The abyss’s voice thundered again, but this time it cracked with static. "UNACCEPTABLE."

The colossal eye convulsed, splitting down the middle. Something larger, darker, began to stir within. The platform quaked as machinery roared alive, gears shifting deep below.

Min-joon clutched Keller’s sleeve, whispering in horror: "It’s... waking something else."

Keller’s jaw set tight, his gun raised though it looked pitifully small against the void. He glanced at Lin. "Whatever you did, you pissed it off."

Lin wiped blood from his face, shoulders squared. His voice was hoarse, but steady. "Good. Let it come."

From the abyss, a new shape began to rise—vast, skeletal, and alive, its body made from the bones of machines and the husks of failed experiments. The eye was only its beginning. What loomed now was far worse.

The abyss hadn’t lost. It had just shown them its true form.