I look down at Silva.
He coughs.
Blood spills from his mouth, thick and dark, splashing against the stone. Each breath drains the color from his skin, pale creeping outward as red stains his lips and chin.
I step aside, never taking my eyes off him.
"I will… I will kill you," he shouts. The words fracture midway, collapse into another wet cough. More blood follows.
"I don't think you can," I say, a quiet chuckle slipping out.
He coughs again. And again.
Blood keeps coming—seeping from his torso, from his left leg, the places where I shot him. It spreads beneath him, uneven and heavy, soaking the floor until there's no tile left to see.
My muscles finally loosen.
The tension drains out of me, leaving my body light.
I keep watching.
The screaming.
The threats.
The twitching of his body.
The weak, angry attempt to swing his right hand.
Each movement becomes slower. Softer. Loses its shape.
Until there's nothing left to slow.
Ding.
The clock tower bell rings, marking midnight.
Isaak Silva is no more.
I turn away.
Out of the building. Through the vaporgates. Leaving Haverstock behind me.
The time we spent is short but Kayla can rest now.
My heart finally settles. The tight ache in my chest finally fades, like something unclenching after being held too long.
As I walk outside, darkness swallows the blood on my coat. Shadows veil my movements; no one glances my way, no one notices, no one is watching.
I keep walking through the streets until I reach my warehouse.
I step inside.
And lock the door from within.
Still holding Silva's eye from before, I set it on the heavy table.
Then I return to my throne. My body sinks into it like a weight finally unshackled, vertebrae and joints sighing in quiet relief. The tension knotted into my shoulders loosens, spreading downward. Limbs heavy yet unburdened.
Slowly, I peel off my coat, letting it fall beside me. The shirt underneath comes next. Every movement draws a twitch from muscles that haven't rested.
My fingers trace over my wounds, feeling the sharpnels from the exploding knife. Tiny, pointed, stubborn. They haven't dug deep, but they sting.
I pluck them one by one. From my hand first, then my left shoulder, and finally my back. A thin thread of blood drips, some already clotting—slow but visible.
I reach for the cylindrical bag by my throne, pull out my diary, and flip through until I find the section on the Abyssal Eye. The pages whisper under my fingers. Instructions line the paper, clear and sharp in the dim light.
I rise, the diary still open in my hand, and move toward the heavy table. My elbow sweeps across its surface, brushing away what remains of Kayla from before—smears of dried blood and black kuor. The steel catches the light again, dull but clean.
My fingers return to my wound. The blood has gone tacky, clinging to my skin. I press it to the table and drag it across the surface, slow and deliberate, drawing a perfect circle—wide enough to consume nearly half of the table's rectangular span.
Along the inner edge, I write as the diary instructs. Curved marks form beneath my fingers, characters flowing like tied silk—balanced and deliberate, each stroke bending rather than breaking, closer to drawings than letters.
When the last mark settles, I reach for Silva's eye and place it at the very center of the circle.
Then I turn to the western wall.
From one of the steel shelves, I take three flasks. Nyxamere essence. A handkerchief soaked with Ashlynn's blood. Black kuor. I set them on the table, just outside the circle.
"It's time to begin."
My voice cuts through the silence.
First, I take the handkerchief and lay it gently over the eyeball, positioning it so the pupil presses directly against the stain of Ashlynn's blood. The eyeball shimmers strangely beneath my fingers, blurry at the edges, as if it refuses to stay whole in my sight. It wavers, unfixed, yet aware.
Next, I uncork the black kuor flask. The liquid trickles slowly, deliberate, tracing the inner circle I drew earlier. Each drop slides along the curve like a living thing, obedient to my hands and the diary's instructions.
The third flask comes last—nyxamere essence. Indigo liquid, restless and vibrating, spills over the handkerchief, coating the eyeball. Its warmth seeps through, leaving a subtle numbness in my fingers, yet the essence hums beneath it, insistent, alive.
I begin to chant, voice low and measured. The letters I wrote in my blood glow faintly, trembling. They writhe, snake-like, stretching and slithering toward the inner circle of black kuor. Each curve undulates with intent, merging, twisting, until thick, writhing tendrils form. Black tiny tentacles creep toward the eyeball at the center, slow, deliberate, alive.
I lift the handkerchief. The tentacles writhe inward, sinking into the eyeball, merging with it as veins form beneath its blurry surface. Indigo deepens in the pupil, dark and shifting, like a night that absorbs all light. The nyxamere essence and Ashlynn's blood have been absorbed perfectly, binding themselves into the eye.
The transformation is complete. The Abyssal Eye stares back at me—not yet fully awake, but already aware. Blurry, indigo, and impossible to look at directly, it hums quietly, promising power beyond comprehension.
I lift the eye, holding it close to my face. My gaze drifts between it and the diary, back and forth.
The eye looks the same.
I read the final instruction. My stomach tightens. It is unlike anything the diary has asked before.
My body freezes. I swallow.
I look back at the eye. It only stares in return, black veins pulsing beneath the surface, writhing slowly—as if breathing.
My heart accelerates. The room stretches. Time thickens. Sweat beads along my brow.
I read it again. Slower. Just to be sure.
My hand curls into a fist.
Thud.
I slam my palm into the table. The impact shudders through the steel, the echo rolling across the warehouse.
"Dang it," I mutter.
I draw in a deep breath, then force it out, loud and ragged.
Slowly, deliberately, I raise my hand to my left eye. My fingers press in. Slip past the lid. Sink into the socket.
Warm blood spills over my knuckles.
Pain lances anew, sharper than any shrapnel wound, but I push through.
"Arghhh—!"
My scream tears through the warehouse, bouncing off walls, refusing to die.
The veins snap one by one as I pull. Vision collapses on my left side, darkening, narrowing—
Until it's gone.
My eyeball drops onto the table.
I guide the Abyssal Eye toward the empty socket. The black veins writhe, reaching—trying to bind before contact is even made.
I push it in.
The veins surge, latching onto my own, threading themselves through flesh with a wet, intimate certainty.
Light returns first.
Then haze.
The blur thins, recedes—
And clears.
My left side sees again.
Suddenly my head feels dizzy.
I return to my throne and sink into it, letting my weight settle.
The room tilts. Light bends. My body leans back, supported.
The dizziness pulls at me. My eyes close, and the world softens into nothing.
—
I drift.
A darkness unlike anything I've known swallows me whole. There is no ceiling, no walls, no edges—only the void. Beneath me, water stretches, still and black, reflecting everything but itself.
I look down. My reflection shimmers on the surface. Yet when I strain to see my face, it eludes me. Only a blur stirs where my eyes, my mouth, my features should be.
The water trembles, responding to my heartbeat. Ripples distort the shadowed self I cannot grasp. Every movement only scatters the image further, leaving me staring into a mirror that refuses to reflect.
Silence presses from all sides, thick as ink, and I feel the Abyssal Eye pulse at the edge of my vision.
Footsteps ripple in the water from behind me.
I turn—and there, smiling, is my own face.
The surface beneath me quivers. A sudden pull grabs my ankles, tugging, insistent. The water is no longer still—it coils and stretches, dragging me downward. My body resists, muscles thrashing, but gravity is nothing; the liquid abyss has a will of its own.
I sink. Slowly at first, then faster. My chest tightens. My lungs burn. Light and sound blur together, distant, impossible. The Abyssal Eye pulses faster, heartbeat echoing in my skull as the water swallows me further.
"Wake up."
The voice comes, close, as the black water slides over my face.
—
Morning light greets my face as I open my eyes.
The pain that haunted me, the weight that dragged at my body—both are gone.
I feel light. Rested.
Voices from outside drift in, rising and falling like a melody.
The smell of smog no longer cuts like a knife in my nose.
Everything I see is sharp. Clean. Crystal clear.
For the first time—
My eye is watching.