darkness: road to divine

The pain continue like a flood gate under pressure being open__ not in the world around him but in the marrow of his bones. It was not a burst of triumph or clarity but a slow, strangling constriction. A presence uncoiled in his chest, cold and vast and watchful. His breath caught. His heart stuttered.

"Ahhhhhhh" still screaming he asked "What is happening?! " 

He clung to the artifact out of instinct, though part of him wanted to hurl it away, to sever the connection before it swallowed him whole. But his fingers wouldn't obey. They tightened involuntarily, as if the artifact had become an extension of his hand, of his will.

The vortex consumed him. He fell, tumbling endlessly through darkness that was too deep, too endless. It was not just empty space; it was awareness. The void was watching. Studying. Testing.

The runes on the artifact glowed, burning with infernal light, their patterns shifting too quickly for his eyes to follow. They whispered in languages older than the world, promising… what? Power? Ruin? Both?

"This is madness", he thought, but his mind was already slipping, drowning in sensation and fear.

And beneath that fear, buried deep in some dark corner of his heart, a sliver of exhilaration twisted like a thorn.

The fall ended as abruptly as it had begun.

He landed hard on broken stone, the breath knocked from his lungs. For a moment, he simply lay there, trembling, the artifact still clutched in his shaking hand. The silence pressed in again — but now it was worse. It wasn't absence. It was anticipation.

Slowly, he forced himself upright, limbs aching, head spinning. 

The artifact still rested in his hand.

The world around him slowly reassembled itself: broken buildings, cracked streets, skies painted with bruised reds and sickly greens.The world around him had reformed from the chaos, but it was wrong. The edges were too sharp, the shadows too deep, the colors too vivid. The air vibrated with a subtle hum, as if reality itself was holding its breath.