Azrakel returned a few days later.
Cale was sharpening the edge of a makeshift dagger against a flat stone when the air folded in on itself. The massive, ocean-colored shape of the abomination settled onto a flat boulder directly across from their temporary camp. Valerie dropped her hand instinctively low, summoning her whip to her firm grip. In the dirt, Revenant pressed himself tightly against Cale's shadow, his system threat mechanics forcing his form to compress completely to avoid drawing attention. Cale's form, on the other hand, was highly rigid and defensive.
"Relax, I don't bite," Azrakel said. His tone carried a feeling of warmth that wasn't actually there, and the trio knew it because it felt deeply unsettling. "If I wanted you dead, your heads would be rolling before I sat down. I am here for something far more interesting."
He produced a small, dark fruit from somewhere within his overlapping layers of presence. Its skin was smooth and black like polished glass. He bit into it, letting dark juice run down his chin.
"Storytelling," he murmured. "You humans do it with such bizarre dedication. I have always wondered what drives that flaw."
He or it sat down and began speaking. For hours, he spoke about the Shattered Plains. He described ancient wars that broke out among gods before the first primitive humans crawled out of the mud. This was something Cale and Val didn't believe. They didn't believe that there were any gods, especially not ones that would get in a fight that would put their subordinates in jeopardy. Azrakel continued, speaking of entities he called the Old Ones. These were entities, he claimed, of such immense power that their mere footsteps left massive valleys in the bedrock of the world. It was another thing Cale found very hard to believe, simply because it was too outrageous to even be considered true. Azrakel went on to recount the Great Hunt, an epoch when the supreme apex predators of the Void rose against one another and tore the entire geography apart. This was the only thing Azrakel had said that Cale could believe, because that was the nature of these fallen abominations.
"You are wondering," he said, flicking his solid gold eyes directly to Cale, "why I am sharing this history with you."
Cale wanted to say no, why the f*ck are you even telling made-up stories?
"Are we supposed to thank you for the intel, you arrogant bastard?" Val said instead, and that was a good compromise. Her voice cut through the quiet expanse like ice.
Azrakel did something none of them expected: he laughed. It was a rich, heavy sound that echoed off the cold monoliths. "No. I am telling you simply because I have absolutely no one else to tell. The other beasts lack the cognitive capacity to listen. In my many years of existence, your Wardens just turn and sprint the other way when my silhouette appears on the horizon. And you two are completely trapped here. You cannot leave this place. So you don't have much of a choice. You will listen."
He continued and detailed the hierarchy among the strongest entities in the Void.
"I am not the most powerful," he admitted somewhere during what Cale forced himself to treat as a boring story, leaning his spine back against the stone surface. "In terms of raw destructive capability, I am perhaps the fifteenth strongest entity in this void. Maybe sixteenth on a good day. There are abominations out there who could crush my vessel with a solitary thought, tear my flesh apart with a casual sweep of their claws, or swallow this entire regional sector in a single gulp. Metaphorically." He smiled, looking deeply amused.
But Cale and Val sure as hell weren't amused. They were scared shitless.
"But I am the smartest. The most patient. The most interesting," he continued without a care in the world.
He spoke of the abomination ranked directly above him, trying to prove he wasn't the strongest: a massive creature of white fire that was entirely mindless and perpetually hungry, incinerating everything it touched. He spoke of the one ranked below him, a mountain of shifting shadow that had not altered its position in a thousand years, simply there. He laid out the games they played, the rigid territories they had carved into the wastes, and the long, agonizingly slow dance of power that had lasted since the Firmament cracked open.
Val leaned forward despite herself. She hated the bastard, but intel was intel. From what she heard, these creatures existed before the crack in the sky. But nobody else knew this back home; if they did, they didn't act like it. He was handing them the tactical layout of the Void, painting vivid pictures of a reality so massive that human life felt trivial by comparison.
Azrakel noticed the subtle shift in her posture. His smile widened. "Ah. You are curious. That is good. In a place like this, curiosity is the only mechanism that keeps you humans alive."
He left when the ambient light of the Void began to move, the featureless grey expanse deepening into a dark, suffocating twilight. This was the closest they had seen to day and night. He rose to his full height and stretched his long limbs, his massive form silhouetted against the colorless sky.
"I must leave, but I will return," he said, looking down at them. "And you will be here."
It was not an invitation. It was a statement of fact. And it was true; they couldn't go anywhere else. This, for now, was the safest place they could find that wasn't crawling with mindless, fallen creatures.
He or it, or whatever it identified as, returned the following day. Then the next. Then the next.
Each time, he brought fragmented stories of the Void. He detailed the First Fallen Beast who had the nerve to pass through the cracked Firmament long before the human Wardens established their outposts, and described the brutal campaigns that ultimately shaped the Citadel. He told them of the Constellation Knights who ventured into the dark seeking glory, only to find their bones rotting in the black sand. He spoke of the rare few who actually survived, individuals who carved their names into the history of the Void using the blood of the things they slaughtered. But he didn't speak on that topic for long.
He discussed his own kind with a cold, detached amusement, as if they were merely actors in a tedious play he had watched too many times. "They are entirely predictable," he noted. "They fight for territory, they kill for sustenance, and they exist for the simple, primitive pleasure of destruction. I fight for entertainment. It is a far more sophisticated pursuit. That's what makes us better than you hypocritical fools."
Eventually, he turned the questions onto them. He demanded to know about their world, the things he didn't already know; he asked them about their territories, politics, and how they were ruled. He listened to their sparse answers with an intensity that bordered on predatory. His gold eyes burned with curiosity, locking onto their faces without blinking.
"Your instructors," he said during one of his visits, dropping his voice. "They train you to slaughter my kind. They teach you to seal our Nests and protect your fragile little concrete cities." He tilted his head. "Do you truly believe you will succeed in the end?"
Cale remained silent and set his jaw. Val tightened her fingers around her whip until her knuckles turned white.
The bastard!
"I have seen empires rise from nothing," Azrakel said softly. "I have watched them turn to ash. Yours will fall too. Everything collapses under its own weight." He smiled. "But perhaps the collapse will not happen today. Perhaps it will not happen tomorrow. And for your short-lived species, that is enough, is it not?"
He departed, leaving those words hanging in the stagnant air while the disarray of the Void pressed back in around them.
The next time he visited, he brought them rations.
It was real food. They saw bread that tasted faintly of honey, cured meat that did not require cooking, and freezing, entirely clear water. Cale stared at the pile in front of him, then raised his eyes to Azrakel.
"Where the hell did you get this?"
Azrakel shrugged. The casual gesture looked bizarrely human on his monstrous frame. "I have my methods. There are spatial rifts that manifest near the Citadel infrastructure on occasion. The Wardens leave supplies unattended. I simply borrow them."
Val reached her hand toward the bread, then hesitated and froze mid-motion. "Why the hell are you doing this?"
"Oh, you mean, 'Why sustain you?'" Azrakel narrowed his eyes slightly. "Because watching you waste away from starvation is a tedious process. And I want to observe what you become when your bodies are not actively failing you. Because…" He paused, a cold calculation flickering across his face. "Because it has been an exceptionally long time since I had anyone capable of sharing a meal."
He did not linger after that admission. He left them alone with the provisions, his physical form fading rapidly into the grey distortion.
Cale sat in the heavy silence. The bread felt unnaturally warm against his cold palms. Beside him, Val had already begun to eat. She took small, highly methodical bites while keeping her gaze fixed entirely on the empty space where the S-rank had been lounging.
"He is playing a massive psychological game with us," Val said, her voice flat. She swallowed a piece of the cured meat. "And the bastard knows we are too hungry to refuse."
"I know," Cale replied.
"Are we going to pull some shit to get out of here, or are we just his pets now?" she demanded, turning to look him directly in the eye.
Cale met her gaze. "What else do you want us to do? We're eating his food, something you feel so comfortable doing, so I say we continue to take his bullshit intel and we map out his blind spots. You never know when bullshit intel might come in handy. We do not make a move until we have an absolute advantage."
From what he had said, Val gathered that Cale believed nothing Azrakel had said, as opposed to her, who had believed some of it.
Deep within Cale's shadow, Revenant shifted. He moved within Cale's shadow, his unnatural voice emerging as a clinical, low rumble. "The entity is absurdly dangerous, human. But he is also entirely isolated. Isolation breeds psychological vulnerability within the system. That is a structural weakness you can eventually exploit."
Val let out a dry snort. "You should win a f*cking award. We exploit a godsdamned horror that can pin you to a wall without lifting a single finger? Bullshit. You look like hell, shadow. Keep your genius tactical plans to yourself."
Cale said nothing more. He forced himself to chew the meat, drank the cold water, and prepared himself for the next descent of the observer.
Azrakel continued to manifest and vanish at his own will. The passing days began to meld into a single exhausting sequence. The narratives he provided grew longer, stranger, and more detached from human logic, turning into a mind-numbing routine Cale clung to just to dull the constant edge of panic. He spoke of some deep, untouched reaches of the Void where time itself ceased to function, and where the most ancient Old Ones still slept undisturbed. He described the First Nest, the singular anomaly that birthed every other horror in existence, hidden somewhere in the infinite grey expanse. He detailed the human teams that attempted to locate it, and the absolute ruin they met.
"You are wondering," he stated, breaking the silence as he stared at them, "why I have not permitted your exit."
"Duh, when the fuck do you plan on releasing us, you godsdamned son of a Terror?" Val muttered under her breath, her jaw tight.
The direct question hung heavily in the crevice. Cale met the solid gold of his eyes without flinching.
"Because my observation is not yet complete," Azrakel said simply. "You are actively changing. Growing. I intend to see exactly what you evolve into."
"And when you are finished watching?" Cale asked, tightening his grip on his weapon, a tiring ritual he'd started solely to make himself feel safe from this Fallen Terror telling bullshit stories.
Azrakel smiled. The look on his makeshift face was entirely devoid of mercy. "Then, we will see."
He vanished with those final words, leaving Cale sitting in the cold quiet. Cale rested his tight hand on the hilt of Soul Drinker, staring out into the grey wastes, waiting for the terrifying abomination to set them free on a whim.