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Chapter 5 – Whispers Beneath the Ash
The sun had not risen in this part of the shattered world for centuries, yet Erevan stood tall amidst the ruin, his cosmic skin dimly aglow beneath the eternal twilight. Each step he took echoed through the charred remnants of what had once been a city—now a tomb, etched in soot and silence.
He walked alone, as always. The silence suited him. The ruins were honest—dead and decaying, no longer pretending to be anything but what they were. It was the living that wore masks, after all.
Behind him trailed the remnants of yesterday's battle. A crater miles wide still smoked, where a Watcher had fallen—one of the Tower's twisted avatars sent to reel him back in. Erevan hadn't just killed it. He had unwritten it, tearing apart its existence until not even memory dared remain.
But even victory brought no peace.
He came to a halt beside the skeleton of a collapsed cathedral, its spires bent like broken fingers clawing at the sky. The stained glass had long since been scorched away, but Erevan could still feel the prayers woven into its stones. Desperation had soaked into the foundation. And despair? Despair was always easy to read.
A voice spoke from the shadows.
"You're late."
Erevan didn't look. He didn't need to.
A woman emerged from behind a pillar, her form half-wrapped in flowing black fabric that shimmered with fractured starlight. Her face was veiled, but her presence was unmistakable—Seris, one of the few beings in the multiverse Erevan hadn't killed on sight. She was a Keeper of Forgotten Names, a relic from the pre-Tower age, and one of the last links to the truths Erevan had once bled for.
"I wasn't aware I had an appointment," Erevan replied, his voice low, almost detached.
Seris approached slowly, her steps deliberate. "You carry too many ghosts, Erevan. Even here, the dead cling to you."
"I didn't come for philosophy."
"No," she said, folding her arms. "You came for answers. And I came to warn you: the next floor isn't like the others. It listens."
Erevan's gaze darkened. "The Labyrinth."
Seris nodded. "And deeper still lies the name you abandoned."
For a moment, Erevan said nothing. Wind stirred the ashes at his feet.
He turned his back to her and began to walk again. "I abandoned nothing. The Tower took everything."
Seris didn't follow, but her voice lingered like smoke. "Then be careful, Abysswalker. The Labyrinth remembers. And names have power, even if you try to forget them."
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Beneath his skin, the suit stirred. The fragments of dead universes pulsed as if in agreement, whispering memories he had no time to entertain. He pushed forward.
The Labyrinth of Names awaited him. A place where memory was currency and truth was a weapon.
And deep inside it, buried beneath layers of forgotten selves and rewritten histories—something waited. A piece of Erevan he had sacrificed long ago. Not out of necessity... but choice.
And choices always came with a cost.
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