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📜 Prologue — The First Descent
The night was heavy with silence, the kind that carried weight, as though the stars themselves were holding their breath. Owusar Duath stood upon the temple's edge, gazing at the sigils etched into the stone floor. They glowed faintly, guardians of order—symbols of balance enforced by the ancient Guardians.
He had trusted the ones who brought him here. He had believed in their promise of brotherhood, of shared destiny. Yet when the circle closed and the glyphs flared crimson instead of gold, he understood.
Betrayal.
The friend who once laughed with him now whispered an incantation, binding him inside the circle.
"Forgive me, Owusar," the betrayer's voice trembled, "but the Guardians cannot allow your essence to grow. You are chaos-born. A threat."
The ground shattered. Darkness tore open beneath him, swallowing stone, light, and breath. Owusar fell—through the world, through reality itself—into the abyss.
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He awoke in a wasteland of shadows. A crimson moon bled across the sky. The air tasted of rust and ash. Towering over him were shapes not meant for mortal eyes: demons, creatures born of fallen myths. Their bodies were twisted echoes of legends—winged beasts, horned kings, serpents with faces of flame.
A voice, low and guttural, whispered through his bones:
"Another mortal thrown into our feast."
They surged forward. Their hunger was not for flesh alone, but for essence, for the soul's flame.
Owusar ran. His body was frail, untrained for such horrors, but his will—his defiance—was a storm. He stumbled across broken ruins, their walls carved with fading glyphs, remnants of a forgotten sorcerer's circle. His hand brushed one, and the stone ignited, burning into his palm.
The world trembled.
A book of shadows appeared before him—its cover bound in chains of living flame, its pages written in symbols that twisted like living serpents. The Abyssal Codex.
It spoke, its voice neither male nor female, but a harmony of whispers:
"You are chosen by neither Guardian nor Demon. You walk the line of chaos. Survive, and I am yours. Fail, and I will devour you."
The first page burned open, revealing a single rune: Umbra.
Instinct moved his lips before thought could stop him. He spoke the word.
The shadows obeyed.
Chains of black light erupted from his hands, binding the closest demon. It shrieked as the rune etched itself into its flesh, and then collapsed, dissolving into ash. Owusar felt power flood into him—raw, alien, intoxicating.
But along with power came a whisper of temptation, coiling in his ear:
"More… take more… feed…"
Owusar Duath stood in the nightmare realm, the first of his kind—no longer just mortal, not yet demon, not yet Guardian.
The Codex pulsed in his hands, its runes shifting with hunger. He knew the truth in that moment:
This was not a gift. It was a chain.
But if he could master it, he would not only break free—he would break the very script of destiny itself.
And so began the legend of Owusar Duath, the Shadow-Born, first bearer of the Abyssal Codex.
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