Chapter 44 – Echoes of the Abyss

The air shimmered as the last remnants of Harbinger’s existence scattered like dust in the wind. But Ren didn’t move. His fingers twitched at his side, the weight of the battle pressing against him like an invisible force.

The abyss had quieted.

But the silence felt wrong.

A slow, rhythmic sound began to rise—a distant heartbeat, reverberating through the void. It wasn’t his.

Ren turned sharply. The throne of the forsaken still stood, but it was changing. The cracks along its obsidian surface pulsed with an eerie crimson glow. Something was trying to emerge.

“Damn it.”

Ren stepped back, every instinct screaming that whatever was coming was worse than Harbinger. The whispers that had once been tempting murmurs had become frantic cries.

The abyss was afraid.

The glow intensified.

Then—

BOOM!

The throne shattered, releasing a wave of abyssal energy that sent Ren skidding backward. A monstrous hand emerged from the fragments—clawed, skeletal, dripping with black ichor.

A voice rumbled through the void.

“You refuse the throne… yet you take my power?”

Ren’s eyes narrowed. The presence before him wasn’t Harbinger. It was something worse.

Something ancient.

Something that had been watching him from the beginning.

A second hand emerged, gripping the edges of the broken throne. Then, a face—featureless, hollow-eyed, yet impossibly menacing—rose from the abyss.

Ren felt it before he even heard it.

A name.

A name that didn’t belong in this world. A name that sent cracks through the very fabric of reality.

“Erebus.”

The being turned its gaze to Ren.

“You think you can deny me?”

Ren gritted his teeth. His power had grown, but he wasn’t ready for this. Not yet.

And Erebus knew it.

The abyss shifted. The battlefield was no longer his to control. This was Erebus’ domain now.

And Ren had just stepped into it.