The world was gone.
Not swallowed. Not shrouded.
Consumed... Totally Consumed..
The tree Agon had stood near no longer existed. Not rotted, not broken.. it was simply erased, as if it had never been. His body dropped in the silence, feet touching ground that wasn’t ground. A faint thud echoed, impossibly sharp in the absence of anything else.
And yet, he was calm.
He always tried to be...
Fear serves no purpose.
The words echoed within him, not as a reassurance but as a simple truth. Fear changed nothing. Fear led nowhere.
He exhaled softly, his gaze drifting into the blackness. Not forward, not upward, not anywhere.. because directions did not exist here.
Only emptiness. Pure emptiness
Then.. he loosened his detection.
Not tentatively. Not carefully.
Completely.
Like ink spreading through water, his detection extended outward, latching onto anything, everything.. every ripple in the void, every shift in absence, every flicker of something that should not exist.
He walked.
His steps were slow, calm, each one carving echoes into the silence, each noise swallowed almost instantly, leaving behind nothing but the certainty that he had moved.
He walked.
And walked.
And then his senses screamed.
A flicker, a distortion, something pushing through the void where nothing should be.
He turned.
It was there.
At a short distance, a shape emerged.
Not formed. Not revealed.
Emerging.
Its silhouette stood, devouring all light that did not exist, darker than even the void around it. But Agon’s gaze remained unshaken. His Mist Vision saw it.
An altar.
A monument of ruin, born from a world that had long ceased to be.
It towered. Not in mere size, but in presence.
A structure not meant to be seen, not meant to be known... yet there it was, vast and unyielding, untouched by even the all-consuming darkness that had devoured the rest of existence.
At its base, stone warped and cracked, shifting with silent malice. Its surface, an abyssal black that did not reflect, did not absorb, did not acknowledge anything beyond itself.
From its sides, they unfurled.
Wings.
Tattered. Bound in emptiness. Vast, endless things, blacker than the void that surrounded them, stretching out with a presence that made even this abyss darker.
Not wings meant to fly.
Not wings meant to move.
But wings meant to reverberate.
To proclaim.
The Darkness itself revered this altar.
Even here, in the nothingness, where all things had been stripped bare.. this remained. Untouched. Untainted. A source beyond even the absence of existence itself.
Agon’s breath was slow, measured. His gaze, unwavering.
But in his mind, one certainty settled.
Haran was not just a foe.
He was a deadly one.
It was then... A crack!
Faint. Subtle. But impossible to ignore.
It came from the altar.
The stone trembled.
The wings twitched.
And then.. A single flap.
CRACK!
The abyss shuddered.
The sound ripped through the abyss.
A jagged fissure split across the altar’s surface, thin at first... like a hairline fracture in ancient stone. Then, as if something within had grown impatient, more cracks tore through, spreading like splintering glass.
The wings twitched.
Once.
Then again.
Their tattered remains rippled, slow at first.. almost hesitant before surging into a full flap, an unnatural motion that sent waves rippling across the abyss, silent but undeniable. The air itself trembled. The void twisted.
Something inside was about to break free.
Agon’s mind raced.
Think.
He had seen the patterns before, the way the world unraveled before calamity struck. But this.. this was different. There was no calculation, no certainty, no power in him that could predict what would emerge.
So he did not try.
He simply braced himself.
But in that moment... It stopped.
The cracks.
The wings.
The altar.
Everything froze, held in a moment so still it felt wrong... like reality had caught its breath, waiting.
Then, from atop the altar, it emerged.
At first, it was small.
A mere shape, ascending slowly, unnaturally, wreathed in a thick, black cocoon.
The cocoon writhed.
Not in the way a trapped creature might struggle, but in intentional movement, the outer layer shifting as tendrils of obsidian black coiled and uncoiled like pulsing veins.
The tendrils were alive.
Not mere bindings, but extensions of something greater, something waiting. They wrapped around the cocoon in spiraling layers, their surface slick yet matte, like they absorbed all light yet exuded none. Each motion was slow, methodical, like the unraveling of a nightmare given form.
It rose.
Higher. Higher...
Spinning.. turning its form slowly peeling apart.
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Little by little.
The tendrils loosened, falling away like dying limbs.
The cocoon shrunk.
Bit by bit.
Until, finally...
A figure stood in its place.
It was humanoid, but not human.
Its skin was the color of ash, so dark, so void-like, that looking at it felt like staring into an abyss that stared back. The body was indistinct, its form shifting between blurred outlines and something almost solid.. as though it had not yet fully decided on what it should be.
A ring floated above its head.
Dark. Circular. A crown with no jewels, no markings.. just a perfect, unbroken void that seemed to devour even the concept of space.
Then, behind it..
The wings.
They spread.
Once more.
Slow. Intentional... The black, ruined feathers shifting like torn remnants of an existence long forgotten.
Yet even as it stood there, half-formed, the world shuddered in its presence.
There were no garments.
No fabric.
No armor.
Yet, piece by piece, something grew upon its body.. black as the void itself, lightless yet distinct. Not clothes, but an extension of its existence, forming into a robe-like shape, flowing, yet never truly moving.
Then...
It opened its eyes.
A slow, drawn-out motion, as if awakening from something ancient, something that had been waiting far too long for this moment.
Two ashen-glowing eyes peered through the void.
The figure smiled.
Not in amusement.
Not in cruelty.
Just the simple acknowledgment of something that had always been inevitable.
Its gaze locked onto Agon.
"Welcome to my world, Agon."
The voice was not loud.
Yet the darkness itself trembled.
A reverberation beyond sound, beyond speech.. something that etched itself into the fabric of this abyss, an unchallenged truth.
[SYSTEM]
PERSONA: DARKNESS ANGEL HAS AWAKENED
+
A chill ran down Agon’s spine.
No matter how calm he was, no matter how much he had braced himself...
He knew.
The tide had just turned for the worst.