Shadow Slave: Immortal Ice

Eirwen woke up.

And the moment his eyes snapped open, his world was nothing but chaos.

He was caught in surprise, somewhere in a raging ocean.

It was endless, a vast and wrathful thing that devoured everything that dared to come in contact with it. The waves rose like titanic giants, tall enough to crush mountains and swallow entire cities whole. Storms raged without end in the enraged skies, lightning splitting the heavens and thunder rolling like an angry god's roar whose only goal was to eradicate this disgusting and evil place.

The sea was alive with fury and madness, and it knew no mercy.

''What is this?!' Eirwen managed to cry out in his mind before waves crashed into him like falling planets, massive walls of water that smashed his body to pieces in an instant. Bones shattered. Flesh tore. His ribs caved inward, his skull cracked, his entire body crushed beneath the sheer force of the storm's wrath. He died - only to come back an instant later, whole again, gasping for breath that did not come.

Barely a second passed before it happened once more.

Cold water filled his lungs before he could even think. His body was weightless, tossed like a ragdoll in the chaos. He kicked, clawed at the water desperately, fighting against the pull of the deep. But the ocean did not let go.

It slammed him under, crushed him, dragged him down. He drowned in agony, his chest burning, his limbs flailing, his mind screaming - only to jolt back, alive again, choking on water.

Dying. Living. Dying. Living.

Another wave. Another impact. Another death.

The agony was horrible and endless.

It broke him over and over, snapping his spine like dry kindling, caving his lungs in with the weight of a mountain before filling them with seawater. He could not even scream, only gurgle in agony.

His body reformed again and then the water took him down.

The storm above blurred into a mass of shadowy clouds and crackling lightning, barely visible through the churning surface of the raging ocean as he was dragged under, swallowed whole by the hungry abyss.

But Eirwen fought, thrashing, clawing, trying to swim.

Yet, it was useless. The dark waters wrapped around him like ethereal chains, pulling him down mercilessly.

He needed air. His lungs burned. And then they burst.

A sickening rupture tore through his chest as seawater surged inside again -the sensation now familiar after dying over and over-, flooding every inch of his body and ripping through him from the inside out. He was drowning, choking, dying AGAIN.

Eirwen's mind screamed. His body spasmed, convulsing in sheer pain. His vision blurred, the world fading into darkness..

Then nothing.

For a moment, there was peace. Silence.

Then he woke up, and it began again.

Drowning. Suffocating. Dying.

Again.

Again.

AGAIN.

His panic turned to pure rage.

Eirwen knew what this place was, he has seen it before.

Whenever he activated [Kraken's Grasp]. The first time he received his Soulrune and witnessed Abaddon plunge into the raging storms. The deep, agonizing and relentless storm that echoed from the depths of his soul whenever he devoured something.

It was all Leviathan's fault. Had he sent him to hell? Not the stupid Underworld, but real hell.

A hell where people suffered for eternity.

Had God -or the gods, or whatever the fuck existed up in the sky- finally decided to punish him?

'Punish me for what?!' Eirwen screamed in his mind as another wave crashed into him the moment he came back -for what felt like the hundredth time.

Groaning in pain, he gurgled on more seawater, feeling it rush into his lungs again as most of the bones in his body shattered -only to regenerate immediately. 'There is nothing to punish me for!' Eirwen's frenzied and unreasonable thoughts raged on, refusing to surrender to despair even in the middle of the unbearable pain. 'Punish me for being strong?! For not wanting to be a weak piece of shit that can't do anything?!'

Eirwen refused to die this time. There was nothing the young Sleeper hated more than death.

Fingers curled into claws against the thick water; teeth clenched in defiance and rage as the cold and dark waters burned his eyes. It was as if countless, ethereal and demonic arms were dragging him further down into the abyss, but he still tried to resist.

Summoning his power, he reached inward, calling upon the strength of his Aspect so he could use [Kraken's Grasp] and turn his body into something more fitting for this place.

There was nothing though...

No response from his Aspect came. He couldn't feel his Souls, his Cores, or even his Essence. Not even the Spell itself.

At that moment, Eirwen was nothing more than a shell -trapped in an endless cycle of death and revival as the raging ocean tore him apart over and over. Death refused to claim him, denying him any escape from this torture.

And of course, the ocean did not care. It existed only to devour and destroy, its wrath endless and cruel. Above, the storm howled sharply, the wind shrieking like countless agonized voices of sinners and monsters. Rain hammered down onto the titanic waves.

By then, that same stormy sky had become nothing more than a distant and unreachable smear of gray and black, as if mocking him.

There was no land. No mercy. No escape.

Only water. Only fury. Only death.

But the deeper he sunk into the depths, Eirwen started feeling uneasy.

Something was waiting there.

A presence in the deep, vast and immeasurable ocean. Something so colossal that the ocean itself and its rage seemed insignificant in comparison.

At first, it was only a sensation. An unnatural feeling of wrongness. The knowledge that something was there, yet nothing to prove it, only the eerie and suffocating feeling of dread and approaching death. But then, movement.

Something was down there, moving even.

Something awake.

Something hungry.

Eirwen's chest seized, his body frozen by an instinct that accompanied every single creature to ever exist.

The depths stretched infinitely beneath him, filled with nothing but vast and unknown darkness. The weight of the presence grew heavier, more suffocating, and then-

He saw it.

His mind broke.

It was not a creature. It was not a thing.

It was beyond reason, beyond nightmares, beyond what the human mind was meant to comprehend or ever witness. A formless abyss, a shifting mass of darkness that writhed and coiled, stretching beyond sight. The deeper he sank, the clearer did something become.

It had always been there.

Waiting.

Watching.

The ocean had never been empty. The endless darkness deep down always was it…

Suddenly, the eyes opened.

One by one. Hundreds if not thousands. An eternity of them, each unblinking and staring deep into him. There was no cruelty in them. No hatred. No rage.

Only hunger.

While the wrathful storm embodied the anger of whoever ruled over this place, the ocean itself was pure cruelty.

And this... horror beyond human comprehension, clearly represented hunger.

A hunger that had always been and that would always be. A hunger without beginning or end to it.

Eirwen's rage was gone. His despair was nothing, but his fear was everything.

His mind cracked further. His thoughts shattered and spiralled from confusion to madness, from despair to a fear so absolute it paralyzed him. His limbs stopped moving. His body forgot how to fight. He did not breathe, did not struggle.

And then, through the black water, through the crushing silence, a sound rumbled. Not a voice, not words, but something deeper.

The abyss stirred.

The water trembled.

The darkness moved.

It reached for him.

***

"AAGHHHH!" Eirwen screamed, shooting up into a seated position.

Goosebumps erupted across his mostly bare body as violent tremors shook his whole being. His skin was ice-cold yet burned like fire, his face a bluish hue, soaked in sweat and pure terror.

Rushed footsteps echoed through the cave that he found himself in for whatever reason.

"Eirwen!"

It was a girl's voice. Andromeda's voice.

Before he could react, she crashed into him, her arms locking tightly around his neck in a tight hug. But the moment her body made contact, pain shot through every inch of his body.

It burned. It fucking burned like hell.

Even the icy air brushing against his skin felt like molten lava. But this pain was nothing compared to what he had just endured.

Nothing compared to the agony of being crushed to death by tons of water, again and again. Nothing compared to the horror of his body bursting from the inside out, drowning in an ocean just to simply come back and repeat the whole process.

Shoving the memories back, Eirwen focused on something else.

'Leviathan!' He roared in his mind, demanding attention. The blonde Sleepers face contorted with pure anger at the devil while Andromeda buried her face in his shoulder, relieved that he was back.

For a second, no answer came. Then, a deep and ancient voice echoed in his mind. 'Welcome back, child.'

Eirwen clenched his jaw, forcing himself not to rip Andromeda apart in frustration. His body trembled with growing fury. 'What the hell was that just now?!' he demanded answers, the torturous memories surging back before his eyes even though he tried hard to push them back.

Leviathan was silent for a brief moment before his voice coiled around Eirwen's senses. 'It was death.' His words were sharp and unpleasant to the ear, practically scratching onto Eirwen's already destroyed brain. 'The worst kind of death one can experience.'

Then, after two seconds of silence-

'Either way, child… your suffering was not in vain.'

Not in vain? What did Leviathan mean by that?

'Could it be…?' Eirwen thought, stunned by what his companion was telling him.

Without hesitation, he quickly opened his Runes, inspecting them closely. His eyes scanned every shimmering particle of the screen before him.

The first thing he noticed was that [Kissed by the Sun] was gone, alongside his two Recordings, both most likely destroyed after the explosion he had caused. It hurt a lot, but that didn't matter now.

Finally reaching the Attributes section, Eirwen read what was displayed:

Attributes: [Lucky Bastard], [The Child of Gods], [Gluttonous Depths], [Echoes of the Drowned]

'A new Attribute again?!'

The pain and anger that had consumed him moments ago were suddenly replaced by confusion and curiosity. His bright golden eyes shimmered with light as he focused on expanding the Runes further.

Attribute: [Echoes of the Drowned]

Attribute Description: [Those who are devoured by the abyss are not lost, but claimed. The depths remember, the depths consume, and through their vessel, They begin to reclaim what was once theirs.]

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