Abyssal Monarch: Rebirth of the Forsaken

The battlefield was a wasteland of twisted metal and scorched earth, a final monument to the war that had shattered their world. Jin-Su stood at the center of it, his obsidian sword lowered, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The weight of the Abyss pressed down on him, but it wasn't the battle with Nyarl'thagas that haunted him most.

No—it was what had come before.

The betrayal.

A Few Months Ago

The Celestial Academy had been alive with celebration. Jin-Su's team—the finest warriors the world had ever seen—had returned victorious from the battle against the Dreadlords, their most formidable enemies. In the Academy's great hall, goblets clinked, and laughter echoed, a stark contrast to the grim war that still raged beyond their walls.

Jin-Su stood at the center of it all, the reluctant hero. Kara, fiery and exuberant as always, raised their drink in his honor, her black scales glinting in the firelight. its battle-worn armor, scratched and dented, seemed almost regal as it laughed and threw its arm around Jin-Su. "Here's to the man who's too stubborn to die! Without you, we'd all be in pieces!"

Jin-Su forced a smile, lifting his own goblet half-heartedly. But there was a weight pressing on his mind, a shadow that lurked at the edges of his thoughts. The others didn't notice it yet, but he could feel it—the first whispers of something wrong. Something lurking just out of sight.

He glanced across the table at Daemon, who sat alone, hunched over a strange, ancient tome. His black robes seemed darker than usual, as if the shadows clung to him unnaturally. Daemon had always been quiet, but lately, there was a coldness about him that made even Jin-Su uneasy. His magic had become… different. Distorted. The way he bent reality felt less like an art and more like a violation.

"Daemon," Jin-Su called across the table, the noise of the celebration dying in his ears. "You've barely spoken since we returned. Everything okay?"

Daemon's eyes, once sharp and full of intellect, looked up, dull and distant. "I've been… reading," he said, his voice thin. "There are things we don't understand. The Abyss… it's far older than we think."

Jin-Su nodded, feeling a pang of unease. "You've been saying that a lot lately."

Daemon's lips twisted into a faint smile, one that didn't reach his eyes. "The Abyss whispers, Jin-Su. If you listen closely enough, you can learn from it."

Weeks Passed

What began as a creeping discomfort soon grew into full-blown paranoia. The Council of Eternity had warned them that the war with the Dreadlords was just the beginning, that a far greater threat was looming—the Abyss itself, and the being known as Nyarl'thagas. Whispers of the Abyss began to seep into every conversation, every corner of their minds.

Daemon was the first to fall.

He had locked himself away in the libraries, poring over forbidden texts, communing with powers no mortal should touch. His spells, once beautiful and precise, had grown twisted and unnatural. The way he manipulated time and space began to feel like he was forcing the universe into submission. And yet, Daemon didn't seem to care. He had become accepting—no, eager—for the power the Abyss offered.

"It's not evil," he had insisted to Jin-Su during one of their rare conversations. "It's just… misunderstood. The Abyss isn't here to destroy us. It's here to help us evolve. We need to embrace it, Jin-Su. The others don't see it yet, but they will."

The cold, detached way he spoke sent chills down Jin-Su's spine. But Daemon wasn't the only one affected by the Abyss.

Kara, once so fearless, began to grow hesitant. It still fought with the same fury, but there was a tension behind its fiery gaze, an edge to its voice that hadn't been there before. It would wake in the middle of the night, trembling, its hands shaking uncontrollably.

"The whispers…" it muttered once, after one of their skirmishes against the Abyss's creatures. "They get louder. I try to ignore them, but… sometimes they make sense. They're always there, even when I'm awake. Telling me things. Things I don't want to hear."

Jin-Su had tried to comfort it, but he could see the cracks forming in her resolve. Kara, the warrior who never flinched, was starting to falter.

Then there was Aelis.

Aelis, ever the watchful assassin, had begun to grow paranoid. She shadowed everyone, even her own teammates, convinced that something was wrong but unable to pinpoint it. She was right, of course—there was something wrong. But it wasn't just Daemon. It was all of them.

"I've been following Daemon," she had whispered to Jin-Su one night. "He's talking to something. I don't know what, but it's from the Abyss. It's corrupting him. Corrupting all of us." Her green eyes were wide with fear, her usual calm demeanor shattered. "I've tried… I've tried not to listen. But it's like the Abyss is… in my head. Sometimes I think maybe we shouldn't fight it. Maybe we're supposed to fall."

Her words chilled Jin-Su to the bone. He had never seen her like this before. Aelis, who had always been so sharp, so focused, was losing her grip.

Althara left without a word as soon as the fight ended. Disappearing from sight and cut all communication. Which was very much like her. Nothing was known. Jin-Su, yearned to know where she was. But there was no clue to be found anywhere.

It was in the Blackened Forest, a cursed land twisted by the Abyss, that the team's sanity began to unravel completely. They had been sent there to investigate a growing darkness—whispers of Nyarl'thagas's presence were growing stronger, and the Council had dispatched Jin-Su's team to confront whatever was lurking within the shadows.

The Blackened Forest had always been a place of eerie, unnatural stillness—its trees twisted and gnarled, their blackened bark pulsing faintly with a sinister energy. The ground was covered in thick mist, the air heavy with the scent of decay. Shadows clung to every surface, distorting reality, making it impossible to tell where the forest ended and the Abyss began. But now, it was worse. The whispers had grown louder, the darkness deeper. The once silent trees seemed to breathe, their branches writhing as if alive. The mist was thicker, choking, and the very air seemed to hum with malice. Whatever was once merely unsettling had become outright malevolent, and every step felt like a descent deeper into madness.

But the shadows had their own plans.

The deeper they ventured into the forest, the stronger the whispers became. Jin-Su could hear them—faint at first, but growing louder with every step. They hissed and murmured in the back of his mind, promising power, revenge, freedom from the pain of the world. The others heard them too, though none spoke of it at first.

Ryzen, their shining knight, had been the first to openly resist. His armor, gleaming in the dim light of the forest, was a beacon of hope, but the Abyss sought to extinguish that light as fast as possible. He had fought valiantly, his massive shield protecting the others from the horrors that crept through the shadows. But even Ryzen, pure-hearted as he was, could escape their whispers, but couldn't escape their clutches.

"It's trying to make us turn on each other," Ryzen used to say all the time. Jin- Su would hear him, but something always made him think he was making things up. It was a hoax, not to listen to him. He doesn't know what he is talking about.

 In the forest his voice heavy with exhaustion. "We need to stay strong. We need to—"

A tendril of shadow had pierced through his armor mid-sentence, cutting him off as it wrapped around him like a living serpent. The whispers grew louder, more insistent, as if they had sensed his resistance. He fought until the very end, his greatsword cleaving through the darkness as his body was consumed.

They couldn't do anything but watch

"Go!" he had roared, his final command. "Before it takes you too!" 

He blew u in a radiant light. Taking the horrors with him. 

They had fled, but something inside them had already been taken.

The weeks following the Blackened Forest mission were a haze of paranoia and fear. No one trusted anyone, least of all themselves. Jin-Su could feel it—the creeping madness, the slow erosion of everything they once stood for. Daemon had fully embraced the Abyss by then, his one eye, dark and hollow, his voice barely recognizable.

"We can't fight it," he had told the group one night, his words ringing through the silent air. "The Abyss isn't something we can defeat. It's not the enemy—it's the solution. It's been trying to show us the way forward, and we've been too blind to see it."

"Not only that, we might benefit by learning from it, imagine all the things we could do by controlling this power!" His voice lightened. 

Jin-Su had argued with him, had tried to remind him of who they were, of what they had fought for. But the Daemon he once knew was gone, consumed by the whispers.

Kara and Aelis… they had tried to resist, but the whispers had become too much. They began to question their decisions, their loyalty, their very purpose. Kara's once-fierce eyes now held a hint of fear, and its grip on the greatsword faltered. Her claws would often tremble. Aelis, ever the vigilant assassin, became withdrawn, her mind fractured by doubt.

It was on that final battlefield, before the Eldritch Monarch Nyarl'thagas, that everything came to a head. Jin-Su had fought with every ounce of strength he had left, his body bruised and broken, his mind screaming against the endless tide of madness. But it wasn't enough.

Daemon had already fallen, his face a mask of cold indifference as he whispered words of the Abyss, pulling the others into its grasp. Kara and Aelis… they had tried to fight, tried to resist the pull, but their eyes were glazed, their minds clouded with whispers.

There she was, Althara, right between them. She Her ice, ever blue and white shining. Was now dark blue as the ocean. They no longer reflected the light but consumed it. Her eyes were fully blackened. Not even her beautiful violet eyes could not be seen. Her face covered with dark tendril like veins. Approached Jin-Su, walked behind him, as if he didn't even mattered to him.

Then she had ended it. A cold blade. Right through his throat.

When the moment came, they hadn't struck out of hatred. They hadn't turned against Jin-Su out of anger or malice.

They had turned against him because they had lost themselves.

The Abyss had taken them, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but broken shadows of who they once were.

When Jin-Su died, the Abyss's influence had overtaken their souls completely. But something about Nyarl'thagas's victory had shattered the hold it had on them. Whether it was Jin-Su's final strike or some cosmic imbalance Nyarl'thagas failed to account for, the Abyss's grasp on reality had loosened in that moment.

The moment Nyarl'thagas won, a shockwave had reverberated through the Abyss's presence, distorting the flow of time and shattering the bonds it held over Jin-Su's comrades. As Jin-Su lay dying, something happened—their consciousnesses flickered back into clarity for just an instant. The remnants of their fractured selves found purchase, and with Nyarl'thagas's influence weakened, their sanity returned.

Their souls, pulled along with Jin-Su into the flow of time, reformed.

When they reunited after their resurrection, there was a shared understanding—a collective guilt and realization that they had been nothing more than pawns, their minds twisted against their will. The Abyss had manipulated their thoughts, but deep down, they had never wanted to betray him. That truth, despite all they had done, brought them back to Jin-Su's side, united in their hatred for the Abyss and the being that had corrupted them.

Though scarred by their actions, they knew that this time—in this second chance—they would fight together.

***

All these memories and events now lay in the past, remnants of a future that had not yet come to pass. Jin-Su had returned to the days when his journey first began—when bonds were forged in the heat of battle, and rivals emerged from the shadows. This was his second chance, a precious opportunity to rewrite his fate and the fate of those he held dear. Armed with all the knowledge he had gained and the powers he had fought so hard to master, he felt a renewed determination coursing through his veins. He could feel the weight of his past mistakes pressing upon him, but now, they fueled his resolve. The Abyss had not yet taken hold of his comrades; their minds were still their own, and together they would stand against the darkness threatening to engulf their world. With every heartbeat, he sensed the threads of destiny weaving anew, ready to be shaped by his hand. The time for action was at hand—he would seize this moment to protect his friends, to cultivate their strength, and to rise against the encroaching shadows. The journey was far from over; it was only just beginning.