anwhile, Damon was standing at the edge of a fractured walkway, hearing the whispers of the abyss, whispers of laughter, pain and the nas of those who had been long forgotten due to corruption.
Beside him, the two survivors stared at the Rift in the center of the city, a swirling mass of cursed mory and corrupted abyssal powers.
"We won’t be able to follow you beyond the next tier," the man said grimly. "Even standing this close... we feel our minds fraying."
The woman nodded slowly, her eyes glazed as if viewing sothing Damon could not see, "Once you make it through everything, you’ll reach the rift. Be careful, no-one’s ever returned from the rift, and at this point, the closer you get, even cause and effect start to disagree."
Damon nodded and stepped forward,
Damon stepped forward, the Codex of Judgnt floating beside him, its radiant chains lightly swaying like serpents in anticipation.
BloodReaper was on his back, whispering hungers through his bond. His Gloves of Slaughter were also on his hand.
He began to walk forward through to the inner sanctum, and he could quickly feel reality warping around him. Bridges that were made of translucent thought, steps that shattered and rebuilt with every footstep.
Damon walked forward as the world scread around him.
Every ti he blinked, the environnt changed extensively. The buildings which were near destruction were all of a sudden rebuilt, grass would appear, and then it’d be a desert with intense heat, the changes were rapid and extensive.
Water was flowing upwards and screams echoed from the shadows. As Damon walked deeper and deeper, he finally saw a group of citizens, all of whom were corrupted and huddled in the ruins of a collapsed square.
They weren’t hostile, yet. Their eyes were blank, their mouths muttering prayers to gods Damon. Black veins glowed faintly beneath their skin.
One girl looked up, her eyes a mirror of Artemis’s causing Damon to narrow his own eyes.
"...Save us..." she whispered.
Then her face twisted, folding in on itself like paper crushed by a child’s hand, and Damon moved on.
The last functioning soul pylon stood in front of a yawning chasm. It was barely upright, held together by ti-locked mana that pulsed with steady rhythm. The survivors gave him one final nod.
"Good luck, traveler," the woman said. "If you return, we’ll know it’s truly over."
"If I don’t," Damon replied, "then I’ll drag it down with ."
He stepped onto the bridge beyond the pylon, and reality broke.
The space warped and Damon arrived in the inner sanctum, close to the rift in the middle of the city.
Damon stepped forward, and suddenly he was walking in a city of light, golden towers stretching to infinity, laughter echoing through sunlit plazas. People passed him, smiling, unaware of the encroaching dark.
Then everything bled.
The light dimd. The towers cracked. The people lted into sobbing shades. Damon turned, and he was now walking in shadow, blood pooling in alleyways, cries of war echoing from nowhere.
This was not illusion. It was mory. The city rembered its life... and its death.
He pressed forward, his [ Eyes of Oblivion ] the only reason he didn’t lose himself. He saw the threads of ti, tangled and choking. He stepped carefully, moving between monts, dodging echoes of battles that had yet to happen or never did.
And finally, he reached it.
The High Resonance Tower.
Now a cathedral of ruin and horror, it stood twisted, a spire made of fused flesh, bone, and spiritsteel. Veins of black mana pulsed along its spine, and chains of Abyssal Will spiraled into the air, tethered to the Rift that floated like a dying star above its apex.
The cathedral’s doors were open.
Inside, it was... impossible.
He stepped into a space that expanded and contracted with thought. Pillars scread as they crumbled, reforming as arches above him. A choir of the damned sang a wordless song in reverse.
At the center, on a throne made of petrified regret and broken tilines, sat a figure.
It was... him.
No.
It wore his face.
The Abyss had made a mockery of him, Damon twisted and elongated, eyes burning with false starlight, his aura dripping corruption. Its smile was wrong.
"You took too long," it said in his voice, "so I beca you."
The real Damon narrowed his eyes, "You’re not ."
The entity stood, its cloak unfurling like bat wings stitched from collapsed dinsions.
"I’m what you could be. What you will be. Once you stop fighting."
Damon didn’t hesitate.
["Damnation’s Chain."]
Golden chains erupted from the Codex, slamming into the fake Damon’s chest. But they didn’t bind.
The copy exploded into shadows, reappearing above him with a scream, a corrupted version of BloodReaper descending in a spiral arc.
Damon blocked, the real BloodReaper clashing with its twin.
~BOOM!~
The class was absolutely thunderous, as the blades t, sparks of corrupted energy and mana shattered the malford cathedral around them.
Damon’s BloodReaper pulsed in his hands, its voice howling in rejection of its imposter twin.
The Abyssal mirror twisted mid-air, sorsaulting through folded space. Every movent it made was precise, graceful, and wrong.
Damon could feel the dissonance every ti him and the mirror clashed. When his attacks carried weight and conviction, the mirror’s strikes were hollow and dull, puppeted mimics of purpose.
The false BloodReaper swept low to try and catch Damon off guard, but Damon wasn’t caught by it, easily dodging the slash, pivoting and driving his elbow into the entity’s ribcage.
There was no impact, its body fragnted like smoke, only to reform behind him.
[ Retribution Halo! ] Damon roared, light exploding outwards from the Codex hovering near his shoulder, forming a corona of radiant judgent, and it instantly pushed the creature backwards, burning away the rot, but only briefly.
Light exploded outward from the Codex hovering near his shoulder, forming a corona of radiant judgnt. It pushed the creature back, burning away the rot—but only briefly.
"You can’t purify what you already are," the mirror sneered, its voice echoing with twisted undertones.
"You’re not !" Damon hissed, [ Eyes of Oblivion ] flaring as he sliced at a collapsing angle of space.
He stepped sideways into a crack in ti, erging ten seconds mont, blade first. He expected resistance. Instead, the air thickened.
A ripple moved through the cathedral, and two forms dropped beside the Abyssal mirror. It was Artemis and Astralene, or the Abyss’s imitation of them. But twisted. Wrong.
Artemis stood straight-backed, but her hair floated unnaturally in the air, each strand writhing like serpents. Her eyes were hollow pits, blacker than void, and the spirits that usually danced around her were now skeletal remains, whispering lies.
Astralene’s figure shimred with prismatic distortion, her body half-transparent, fractured across tilines. The familiar warmth of her aura was gone, replaced with sterile calculation and an inhuman smile. Ti motes orbiting her were cracked and bleeding backward.
Damon’s heart panged, but he didn’t flinch.
"You think copying them will break ?"
"No," the mirror Damon replied, "but they’ll remind you what you will fail to protect if you die here."
The twisted Artemis raised her hand, and corrupted spirits surged from her palm like specters chained in agony. They scread as they rushed Damon, claws extended.
[ "Void Lockout!" ] Damon snapped.
The world dimd as his aura pulsed with forbidden void essence. All mana, including the incoming spiritual attacks, stuttered. The spirits flickered, and shattered into ash midair.
But it was only a distraction.
Astralene blurred forward through a crack in ti, striking Damon’s side with a pulse of collapsed possibility. He slid back, crashing through a molten pillar that reford as a staircase behind him.
The mirror Damon appeared before him, bringing the false BloodReaper down like a guillotine.
Damon brought his own scythe up,
~CLANG!~
The shockwave blasted the entire cathedral outward, sending warped pews and flesh-wrought statues scattering like ash. Damon twisted and retaliated, driving his fist into the mirror’s gut, only for it to vanish again into spatial fragnts.
Above, corrupted Astralene began to chant, her voice layered in reversed echoes.
Ti distorted.
Damon was suddenly struck by a wound that hadn’t happened yet, his arm torn and bleeding from a future strike. He roared in pain, clenching his fist to cauterize the damage with pure mana.
"You’re not real!" Damon shouted.
"But real enough to kill you," she replied, her smile serene and cruel.
Twisted Artemis now floated, her corrupted spirits fusing into a construct of bones and grief, a massive spectral serpent with her face stretched across its head. It scread, and Damon’s vision blurred.
[ Saint Grade Shadow Stalker Technique. ]
His body lted into the darkness, vanishing just before the serpent’s mouth snapped shut around him. He reappeared beside corrupted Astralene, who didn’t even turn before thrusting backward.
He was ready.
[ Saint Grade WarMonger Technique! ]
The impact hit, but instead of faltering, Damon absorbed it. Grew stronger. His foot slamd down. BloodReaper swung in a golden arc of light.
Astralene’s copy shattered into shards of stolen monts and regret, her eyes widening before disappearing entirely.
Damon spun mid-air, [ Judgnt Flash! ], a beam of gold-light erupted from his blade, punching through the spectral serpent’s skull and blowing apart the twisted Artemis illusion.
Only the Abyssal mirror remained.
It floated in the center of the warped cathedral, unfazed.
"You see? This is why the Abyss wants you. Your pain, your rage, your despair, it’s delicious."
The mirror’s body began to crack, revealing sothing darker beneath, an eye of the Abyss embedded in its chest, pulsing with black starlight.
Damon narrowed his eyes.
"I’ve faced worse than myself."
["Overclock."]
Golden lightning surged into his body. Every nerve burned with celestial wrath. Ti slowed. Sound muted.
He shot forward, vanishing mid-step.
The mirror raised its scythe, too slow.
Damon appeared behind it.
~SLASH!~
A clean cut through the shoulder to the hip, severing the corrupted eye. The mirror scread, a sound that fractured thought and space. Chains erupted from the Codex of Judgnt, piercing its limbs, tearing through its corrupted soul.
[ Damnation’s Chain! ] he said again, and this ti, the spell judged true.
The Abyssal mirror convulsed, its voice breaking into distorted sobs and mocking laughter as the golden chains glowed, pulled, then unraveled the very concept of the entity.
It didn’t explode.
It simply... stopped existing.
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