Something enormous moved far in the distance.Not walking — but crawling.
The sound was soft at first, almost a whisper beneath the silence. Then came the scraping — the wet, rhythmic drag of something alive, something vast, clutching at the ground with a thousand pale fingers. Izumi's breath hitched. His body refused to move, his eyes locked on the horizon as the violet light flickered again — and the shape became clearer.
Dozens of thin, elongated limbs pressed into the blackened soil, their movements wrong — fluid yet deliberate, as if it didn't understand how to exist here. Its body shifted like liquid metal, forming and unforming, dissolving into the air and then hardening again with a sound like cracking bone. Wherever it touched, the ground pulsed and sank, leaving behind shallow craters that shimmered with faint, violet residue.
It had no face.Only a single hollow slit where its head should have been, glowing faintly with a red light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Izumi's stomach dropped. His blood turned to ice. He didn't need eyes to know — the thing was looking at him.
The next pulse of light revealed it closer.Another, and it was closer still.
Izumi stumbled backward, boots scraping against unseen stone. His breath came out sharp, ragged, his pulse deafening in the suffocating quiet. The creature didn't move quickly — it flowed, stretching and collapsing, like a shadow sliding over a wall. Yet each motion was purposeful, aware.
And as it moved, the ground beneath it… breathed.The veins of mist that coiled along the floor expanded, exhaled, as though the world itself recognized the creature's presence — and feared it.
Then the violet light pulsed once more — violently this time. It burst outward like a heartbeat gone mad, flooding the darkness in a wave so bright that Izumi flinched and threw an arm over his face. His skin tingled where the light touched him — warm, alive, almost protective.
It pulsed again, softer — and then once more, as if gasping for breath.The last pulse lingered.And in that lingering glow, something spoke.
The voice was not sound — it was inside him. It hummed through his bones, pressed against the inside of his skull until his vision blurred. It was neither male nor female, neither human nor divine. It was everything at once — ancient, tired, yet gentle.
"The Abyss trembles, yet its voice reaches me — run, child of dawn… not in fear, but in—"
Izumi's mind screamed. The final word shattered before it reached him. He felt it trying to enter his thoughts, but something inside him — something buried — rejected it violently. His ears rang. His body shook. He tasted iron.
And then silence.Only the echo of that broken message remained, looping in his mind.
Child of dawn… run… not in fear…
"What the hell are you?" Izumi rasped, clutching at his temples. "Why can't I hear it? What are you saying to me?"
But there was no answer — only the monster's scream.
The creature convulsed, every limb thrashing as the violet light seared against its form. Its slit-mouth split wider, spilling a sound that made the air ripple — not a roar, not a cry, but the sound of existence unraveling. It clawed at itself, tearing through its liquid flesh as if trying to rip the light out of its body.
Izumi staggered backward, shielding his ears, heart hammering. The ground quaked beneath him, cracks of light spreading like roots through the dark earth. The thing writhed, melting into its own shadow.
Then — silence again.
He didn't think.He couldn't think.
Every instinct in his body screamed one thing: Run !!!
So he did.
He turned toward the direction where the last pulse had come from — the fading shimmer of violet still echoing faintly in the black horizon — and sprinted. His boots struck the earth in uneven rhythm, his lungs burned with cold, metallic air. Behind him, the sound of the creature's agony echoed like a dying god.
The void bent around him as he ran.The mist parted, then reformed, whispering fragments of words that vanished before he could understand them. Time slipped again — seconds stretched into minutes, minutes into infinity. But he didn't stop. He couldn't.
Because for the first time since he'd awakened in this place, he wasn't alone.
Something knew him.Something in this dead world had spoken his name — not the one he remembered, but one older. One hidden.
Child of dawn…
The words repeated in his mind as he ran toward the dying light, toward whatever lay beyond the dark horizon.And somewhere far behind him, the creature's scream twisted into a whisper — soft, mournful, and full of hate.