Abyss remained silent, its essence slithering through the decayed remnants of UltSans' mind. It had been observing for a while now—a long while. The memories here were vast, layered, and tangled, like a web woven from suffering itself.
Some were clear, vivid, filled with raw emotion. Others were fractured, scattered beyond repair, but still recognizable.
Then, it saw something different.
Deeper.
Half-faded memories. Barely clinging to existence, as if they had been erased, forgotten, or forcibly buried.
Abyss drifted toward them, curiosity growing. These fragments weren't just damaged—they were rotting, dissolving into the very void that birthed UltSans.
And yet… something still lingered.
Something important.
UltSans blinked, snapping out of his thoughts.
Something felt off.
It took him a moment to process why—then he realized. He was no longer alone.
He turned his gaze forward.
A group of guards stood before him, weapons raised.
A fully armed security team surrounded him, forming a tight formation. Their uniforms bore the Ravencroft insignia, their visors reflecting the flashing red emergency lights.
They weren't standard security. They were professionals.
At the head of the group stood a woman—sharp-featured, rigid posture, exuding authority.
Commander Riven. A high-ranking security officer of Ravencroft—efficient, methodical, and ruthless when necessary.
Riven's voice was sharp, her tone leaving no room for argument.
Riven:"We tracked an anomaly in this section of the facility. Identify yourself. Now."
UltSans hesitated.
His hollow sockets flickered, scanning the guards one by one. They were tense, but disciplined. Trained.
He tilted his head slightly.
UltSans:"What do you mean?"
Riven's patience was already wearing thin.
Riven:"Identify. Yourself. Now."
UltSans let out a small sigh, raising his hands slightly, but with no real concern.
UltSans:"Alright, chill... I'm Raziel. Mostly known as UltSans, but... it's a pseudonym."
Riven's sharp eyes studied him carefully. She wasn't just listening to his words—she was analyzing everything. His body language, his tone, even the faint flickers of energy that warped the air around him.
Then, her gaze flickered toward the broken containment cell.
Abyss was gone.
And UltSans was standing right next to it.
Her expression hardened.
Riven:"Take him."
UltSans blinked. His head tilted slightly in confusion.
UltSans:"Huh? Take me? What?"
The guards moved in.
But the moment their boots scraped against the cold floor—
Something changed.
UltSans' right hand lifted.
Bones erupted into existence, jagged, sharp, and deadly. They hovered around him, a maze of white spears pointed directly at every guard, stopping them in their tracks.
The air grew heavy.
UltSans' right hand was closed, except for one finger, lazily half-lifted—a silent warning.
The guards immediately halted, adjusting their stance but maintaining their aim. Their fingers hovered over their triggers, waiting for the next move.
Riven hesitated.
She wasn't just calculating how to contain the situation. She was calculating the risk of losing her entire team in a single mistake.
The tension was suffocating.
Then, UltSans spoke again.
His voice was calm, but now he was the one in control.
UltSans:"Alright... now I'm the one asking... Where am I?"
Riven remained still.
Her mind raced through possibilities. This wasn't a standard escapee. This wasn't a rogue test subject. This was something else entirely.
Still, she answered.
Riven:"You're in Ravencroft Institute, a highly secure facility. How did you get in here, and who sent you?"
UltSans frowned.
UltSans:"An Institute?… What is a lab doing in a high school?"
Riven scoffed.
Her grip on her weapon tightened slightly, but she didn't pull the trigger.
Riven:"This is not a high school! This is an institute! A maximum-security facility. For... special cases."
UltSans hesitated.
His empty sockets flickered slightly.
UltSans:"... Alright, I guess an institute is some sort of lab... Or maybe a research building... But what special cases?"
Riven's expression darkened.
She ignored his question.
Her voice came again—sharp, demanding.
Riven:"Answer me. Who sent you?"
UltSans stared at her for a moment.
His gaze, empty yet somehow piercing.
Then, with a simple shrug—
UltSans:"... No one."
Silence.
For a moment, no one moved.
No one spoke.
The tension thickened.
The guards' fingers twitched near their triggers. Riven's mind calculated the next step.
But deep within UltSans—
Abyss was still watching.
The air was heavy, suffocating with the weight of what was about to happen. Riven stood her ground, her stance unshaken despite the palpable shift in the atmosphere. Her sharp eyes remained locked onto UltSans, her voice cutting through the silence like a blade.
Riven:"You have two options," she declared, cold and unyielding. "Come with us and make this easier for yourself, or resist—force us to kill you."
UltSans didn't react immediately. His gaze flickered between the guards, their weapons locked onto him, and then back to Riven. For a moment, it seemed as though he might comply.
Then, he laughed.
It started as a low chuckle, casual—almost dismissive. But it didn't stop. It deepened, echoing unnaturally, spreading through the room in waves. It was wrong—not just in volume or tone, but in existence itself. The sound shouldn't have been possible, vibrating on a frequency that seemed to distort the very air around them.
The guards flinched. Riven's fingers tightened on her weapon.
UltSans:"You're not in the position to choose," he said, his voice rich with amusement, dripping in mockery. His grin widened, though there was nothing warm in it. "Tell me, what makes you think you can kill me? Because you have a gun? You think that means power? It's just a tool to murder. The intention doesn't matter—the result is always the same."
The guards shifted uneasily, fingers twitching over their triggers.
Then, the world began to change.
The edges of the room darkened, the light bleeding out as if something unseen was swallowing it whole. The shadows deepened, thickened—became something else. Within moments, the security team was engulfed in absolute void.
And then—the faces appeared.
Glowing red visages, twisted and grinning—two slanted, monstrous eyes and a wide, laughing mouth. They flickered in the darkness, shifting, multiplying.
They didn't speak.
But their laughter was felt.
It invaded the mind, a silent cacophony that scraped against the inside of the skull, twisting thoughts into paranoia and panic. The guards broke. Their shouts turned into screams, their movements frantic, wild—gripping at the emptiness around them, reaching for each other but finding nothing.
For Riven, it was different.
She couldn't see the faces.
She heard something else.
Gunfire.
Distant. Muffled. Abrupt.
A burst of shots—then silence.
Then again.
Each time, the sound grew fainter, further away—as though being consumed by the darkness itself.
And then—she felt it.
Cold. Sharp. Pressed against her throat.
The void shattered.
Light returned, flickering weakly, revealing the room once more—or what was left of it.
The guards were gone.
No.
Not gone.
Their remains were scattered across the floor—mutilated, shredded, their bodies torn apart by something unseen. Blood smeared across the walls, dripping from the ceiling. The air reeked of metal and death.
Riven's breath caught in her throat.
The blade at her neck pressed deeper.
Its crimson glow cast an eerie, hellish hue onto her face.
UltSans leaned in, his voice a whisper—low, menacing.
UltSans:"Give me a reason not to kill you."
Riven's mind raced.
Her instincts screamed for her to move, to fight back—but she couldn't. The weight of the moment crushed her into stillness. No words came.
Before she could react—
The blade moved.
A flash of red.
A final breath.
Her body crumpled to the ground.
Lifeless.
UltSans let the knife slip from his fingers—
But it never hit the floor.
Before it could, it disintegrated into ash, vanishing as if it had never existed.
From within, Abyss observed.
It had seen death before. It had witnessed violence, carnage, slaughter.
But this was different.
One moment, the guards had been alive, flinching in fear. The next, they were panicking, their eyes darting wildly as if they were seeing something that wasn't there.
And then—
They were simply gone.
UltSans had summoned the knife from nothing. A weapon that wasn't real—yet had killed as if it was.
Abyss felt something alien, something it couldn't quite define. Confusion. Intrigue. Fear?
It had bonded with monsters before.
It had controlled killers, warlords, and murderers.
But this?
This was something else entirely.
UltSans didn't just kill. He warped reality around his will.
Abyss shuddered.
It didn't understand how he had conjured that weapon. How he had erased those lives so effortlessly.
But more than that—
It felt something new.
Deep within itself.
Something shifting. Mutating. Changing.
Abyss wasn't just inside a host.
It was inside something far beyond human.
And the longer it stayed, the more it could feel it—
That force.
That raw, consuming energy.
It was like melting, like being reshaped at the most fundamental level.
Abyss had never felt Determination before.
But now, it was drowning in it.
And for the first time—
It realized that it could not pull away.
It was bound.
It was changing.
It was becoming something else.