Edward's hand hovered inches from the surface of the Heart of the Abyss.

Up close, the artifact didn't look like a jewel or a stone. It looked like a tear in the fabric of the world, a hole where reality had simply given up and leaked out into something colder, darker, and infinitely older. It pulsed with a wet, rhythmic thumping sound, like the heartbeat of a sleeping leviathan.

The air around it was freezing. Not the kind of cold that nips at your nose on a winter morning, but the kind of absolute zero that exists in the void between stars. It was a cold that promised the end of all movement, all heat, all life.

"Edward," the Whispering Blade murmured in his mind. The ancient soul sounded terrified. "Don't do this. I've seen men—better men than you—try to harness a fraction of this power. It doesn't just kill you. It unmade them. It erased their names from history."

Edward didn't move his hand. He could feel the magnetic pull of the thing. It wanted him to touch it. It was hungry.

"I know," Edward whispered back. "But look around."

He didn't turn his head, but he knew the scene. The city of Y'ha-nthlei was groaning. The walls were cracking. The pressure of the ocean outside was winning. Chris was broken on the floor behind him. Seraphiel was gone. His friends—Sarah, Fenris, Selene—were watching him from the edge of the chamber, battered and exhausted.

If he walked away now, he stayed Edward Ross. He stayed a fugitive. He stayed the man who was always running, always reacting, always just barely surviving.

To stop running, he had to become something that nothing would dare chase.

"I'm not doing this because I want to," Edward said, his voice barely audible over the thrumming of the Heart. "I'm doing this because the world doesn't leave room for weak men."

He closed his eyes. He took a breath that rattled in his bruised chest.

And then, he slammed his hand onto the Heart.

The reaction wasn't immediate. There was no flash of light. There was no thunderclap.

Instead, the world just... stopped.

The sound of the dripping water vanished. The groaning of the dying city ceased. Even the beating of his own heart fell silent.

Edward felt a sensation like falling. He was plunging into an ocean of black ink. It filled his mouth, his nose, his lungs. It was thick and oily, tasting of salt and ancient iron.

Hunger.

The word wasn't spoken; it was stamped into his consciousness. It was a hunger so vast it could swallow stars. It wasn't his hunger. It was the Heart's.

You are meat, the void whispered. You are a speck. You are fuel.

Edward felt his identity beginning to dissolve. It was like sugar in hot water. His memories of the academy, of the bullying, of the first time he held a dagger—they were all being stripped away, drifting off into the endless dark.

He felt the temptation to just let go. It was so peaceful here. No pain. No Inquisition. No running. Just the quiet, eternal sleep of the deep.

Yes, the void crooned. Sleep. Be consumed. Be part of the whole.

His hand, in the real world, began to turn grey. The corruption was racing up his arm, turning flesh into stone, blood into ice.

Edward's mind drifted. He saw Sarah's face. She was smiling. It was the memory he had refused to sell to the Abyssal Merchant. It was the one thing he had kept pure.

Give it to us, the void demanded. We want it.

That demand was a mistake.

Something snapped deep inside Edward's chest. It was a small spark, buried under layers of trauma and monster souls and blood. It was the Sovereign's Spark. The part of him that had looked at a goblin spear and jumped in front of it anyway. The part of him that had looked at a god-like system and said, "No."

Edward stopped falling.

In the black void of his mind, he opened his eyes. They weren't human eyes anymore. They were burning red.

"I am not fuel," Edward said. His thought-voice was small, but it cut through the silence like a razor.

The void paused. You are nothing.

"I am the one who ate the wolf," Edward snarled, his will expanding, pushing back against the crushing pressure. "I am the one who ate the lich. I ate the treant. I ate the man who hated me."

He reached out in the mental darkness. He didn't try to swim. He tried to grab.

"I don't get consumed," Edward roared, his anger fueling the fire. "I am the consumer! I am the Soul Devourer!"

He clamped his mental jaws around the vastness of the Abyss. It was like trying to bite the ocean, but he didn't care. He bit down. He pulled. He forced his will onto the ancient, alien power.

Submission is not an option! the void shrieked. It lashed out, trying to crush his mind with the weight of a billion tons of water.

Edward laughed. It was a jagged, broken sound. "You think pressure scares me? I've been crushed my whole life. This is nothing. Now... OBEY."

He activated his class ability. But he didn't just use it; he poured every ounce of his soul, every drop of his suffering, every jagged edge of his broken life into it.

[Soul Assimilation: OVERDRIVE]

He didn't ask for the power. He didn't bargain for it. He took it. He grabbed the throat of the Abyss and squeezed until it stopped struggling. He forced the chaos into a shape. His shape.

In the physical world, the chamber exploded.

It wasn't an explosion of fire. It was a silent detonation of pure shadow.

A shockwave of black energy erupted from Edward's body. It hit the walls of the chamber and didn't bounce off; it soaked in, turning the ancient stone black instantly.

Fenris, Kira, and Selene were thrown backward, skidding across the floor. They scrambled to their feet, weapons drawn, squinting into the center of the room.

"Edward?" Sarah called out. Her voice was trembling. She was clutching her staff so hard her knuckles were white. "Edward, answer me!"

There was no answer.

The sphere of shadow that had engulfed him began to swirl. It condensed, spinning faster and faster, spiraling inward until it was absorbed entirely into the figure standing in the center.

Edward was still there. But he wasn't Edward anymore. Not entirely.

He stood taller, his spine straightened by a terrible, unnatural posture. His clothes—the tattered leather armor he had worn for months—were gone. In their place, a suit of armor had formed from the shadows themselves.

It was a sleek, organic-looking plating that shifted and moved like liquid smoke. It was black, but not a flat black. It shimmered with the iridescent colors of an oil slick—deep purples, midnight blues, and sick greens.

Along his arms and neck, where the skin was exposed, faint markings had appeared. They looked like scales, dark blue and overlapping, hard as diamond. They patterned his skin like tribal tattoos, marking him as something belonging to the deep.

But it was the eyes that froze Sarah's blood.

Edward looked up. His eyes were no longer brown. They were no longer the red of his predator mode.

They were glowing with a cold, piercing light, the color of bioluminescence in the deepest trench of the ocean. They were the eyes of a creature that lived where the sun never reached.

He took a breath, and the sound was like the intake of a massive bellows.

[System Alert]

[Unique Achievement: Dominated the Heart of the Abyss.]

[Class Evolution Triggered.]

[Soul Devourer -> ABYSS KNIGHT]

[Rank Updated: SS]

Edward looked at his hands. He flexed his fingers. The air rippled around them, distorting like heat haze. He felt... heavy. Not physically heavy, but spiritually dense. He felt like a planet. He felt like he had enough gravity to pull the moon out of the sky.

The whispers in his head—the goblin, the wolf, the lich, Chris—were silent. They were terrified. There was a new king in the headspace, and he was quiet.

"Edward?" Sarah stepped forward, tears streaming down her face. She looked at him with a mixture of hope and utter heartbreak. "Is that... is that you?"

Edward turned his head slowly. The movement was fluid, too smooth to be entirely human. He looked at her. For a second, the cold, alien light in his eyes flared, and Sarah flinched.

But then, he blinked. The glow dimmed slightly. A flicker of recognition—of humanity—surfaced through the layers of abyssal pressure.

"Yes," Edward said.

His voice had changed. It was deeper, resonating in the chest of everyone who heard it. It sounded like it was being spoken by two voices at once—one human, and one that sounded like grinding stones deep underwater.

"I think so," he added.

Fenris stepped up beside Sarah. The wolf-girl didn't look scared. She looked... entranced. Her nostrils flared, taking in his scent. To her, he didn't smell like a monster. He smelled like power. He smelled like the Apex.

She dropped to one knee, lowering her head. It wasn't a bow to a commander. It was a submission to an Alpha.

"Strong," Fenris grunted, her voice filled with awe. "Pack is... strong."

Selene, ever the pragmatist, was already scanning the exits. She looked at Edward with a calculating gaze. She saw the scales. She saw the terrifying aura. She knew, objectively, that this was a nightmare scenario. A human absorbing a Dungeon Core usually resulted in a mindless abomination.

But Edward was standing. He was speaking. He was in control.

"Well," Selene said, her voice trying for casual but landing on nervous. "That's a look. Black is definitely your color, darling. But we have a problem."

She pointed upward.

The absorption of the Heart had consequences. The Heart wasn't just a battery; it was the anchor that held the reality of Y'ha-nthlei together. It was the only thing keeping the crushing weight of the ocean from collapsing the magical bubble the city existed in.

CRACK.

A sound like a gunshot echoed from the ceiling. A fissure, thin as a hair but glowing with white stress lines, appeared in the dark stone above them.

Then another. And another.

Water began to spray through the cracks. It came in high-pressure jets, cutting through the air like knives.

The floor beneath them buckled. The entire city groaned, a mournful, dying sound that vibrated through the soles of their boots.

Edward looked up. His new abyssal senses expanded outward. He didn't just see the cracks; he felt the structural integrity of the entire dungeon failing. He could feel the millions of tons of water pressing down, eager to crush them into paste.

"We have to leave," Edward said. His voice was calm, shockingly so given the circumstances. "Now."

He raised his hand. The shadows that formed his armor lashed out, forming a protective canopy over Sarah and Fenris as a chunk of the ceiling the size of a carriage crashed down exactly where they had been standing a second ago.

"The portal!" Kira shouted, pointing to the far end of the chamber where a shimmering vortex—the exit—was flickering, unstable. "It's closing!"

The ground lurched violently. Chris's body, forgotten on the floor, slid toward the edge of the pit and tumbled into the darkness below. No one watched him go.

"Run!" Edward commanded.

It wasn't a suggestion. It was an order that compelled their muscles to move.

They sprinted. The chamber was disintegrating around them. Pillars toppled. Statues of elder gods shattered. The water was rising fast, flooding in from the sides, swirling around their ankles, then their knees. It was freezing cold, sucking the heat from their bodies instantly.

Edward brought up the rear. He didn't run like a man anymore. He moved with a terrifying, gliding speed, his feet barely touching the ground. He was the Abyss Knight, and the destruction around him seemed to part for him.

He used his new strength to grab a falling pillar that would have crushed Selene, catching the multi-ton stone with one hand and tossing it aside as if it were made of Styrofoam.

"Go! Go!" he roared, the double-voice echoing over the roar of the rushing water.

They reached the vortex. It was shrinking, destabilizing.

"Jump!" Edward yelled.

Fenris grabbed Sarah and leaped. Selene and Kira followed, diving into the swirling light.

Edward paused for a fraction of a second. He looked back at the dying city. He looked at the place where he had shed his last layer of weakness. He felt the crushing weight of the ocean pressing in, trying to claim him.

You belong to us now, the water seemed to whisper.

"I belong to no one," Edward said.

He turned and dove into the portal just as the ceiling finally gave way.

The entire ocean crashed down into the chamber, obliterating everything in an instant. The ancient city of Y'ha-nthlei was crushed, ground to dust, and silenced forever.

But the monster it had created had escaped.

Edward Ross was gone. The Abyss Knight had risen. And the world was absolutely not ready for him.

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