Episode 4: The Legend of Abaddon

Earthly Realm, Year 2010 of the Second Earth

By the brook behind the Illustre ANcestral Home

"It's not important," Her guardian's said, his tone shifting slightly, as if weighing the implications of her request. "What's important is that you remember who you are, Lualhati. You have a purpose."

"I know," she replied, but the words felt heavy on her tongue. As she approached the threshold of womanhood, the duality of her life felt increasingly suffocating. "But what if I also want to experience life... like normal teenagers."

"Normal is subjective," he said. "You are a teenager and also a keeper of your family's legacy. You can be both. But it requires choice, courage, and sometimes sacrifice."

"Like when I can't even think of going out on a date because every night, I have to train handling my weapon, the Balaraw." she laughed bitterly, rolling her eyes at herself.

"Every moment you choose to embrace your desires is a moment of freedom," he replied, a hint of encouragement in his voice. "It's okay to explore. The world is vast, filled with opportunities."

"Easy for you to say," she muttered. "You're a voice in my head. You don't have to deal with this duality."

"Perhaps I am more than a voice," he replied, his tone playful yet serious. "In the darkness, I am a guide. I see the weight you carry, Lualhati, and I am here to help you navigate it."

"And I've grown so fond of our conversations, but I feel like I'm losing myself," she admitted, staring into the brook. "---including you."

"You will never lose me," the angel's voice whispered, steady and sure, as if reading her thoughts. He reached out to her, and being hugged by him seemed so natural, so right. "I am here only for you." Yet though his touch felt warm, she barely can see him there.

"You can always find me, in your dreams, in your moments of need. Your journey is your own to define but know this: I will always be with you, as you need me to be."

Her heart swelled with emotion, a mixture of gratitude and something deeper, something that made her feel both vulnerable and strong. "What if I never get to meet you? What if you're just a dream?"

His laugh, warm and gentle, filled the space between them. "Perhaps that is the beauty of it. We are not defined by sight alone. Trust in what we share. What we have is real, Lualhati."

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, letting the sound of the brook and his voice wash over her. "I'm sorry to vent out on you my frustration with Abaddon and him failing in his reign of the Abyss leaves me to clean up his mess. It's not fair."

"You cannot judge what you know not of, Lualhati. You have to be Abaddon to judge Abaddon."

Lualhati was taken aback by what the voice said. Was he defending Abaddon? Just a minute ago he was comforting her! "If only you can show me how it is to be the King of the Abyss." She challenged him.

"Mayhap, maybe I can."

Before Lualhati realize what's happening, she felt her spirit leave her own corporeal body which she saw still lying on her bed. And as swiftly as a blink of her eye, she was in someone else's ethereal body.

And Lualhati knew, it was that of the Angel of Destruction. It was that of Abaddon.

The voice then spoke again, "Hear me now, Lualhati, because Abaddon's truth you will see. Perhaps this is what it will take for you to see what is fair."

*******

And then it began.

At first, Lualhati thought it was just a vision a projection of pain, disassociated and dreamlike. But the moment Abaddon screamed, the sound did not just ring in her ears, it tore through her throat too. She clutched her chest, or rather his, feeling the agony as if it were her own. A searing echo of disintegration rippled through her consciousness, making her knees buckle in a body that wasn't hers.

She staggered, dazed by the sensory overload. Sight, sound, pain...they were all amplified and foreign, yet heartbreakingly intimate. She could feel the weight of those celestial wings. Radiant, now darkening before her very eyes warping, bending, cracking. Each feather's fall felt like the memory of a star dying. She wanted to scream for it to stop, to cry out, "No more!", but the voice caught in her throat...his throat.

This is what he became.

Lualhati's breath hitched. Her thoughts, still her own, yet now entangled with Abaddon's raced. Is this what he lives with? This is what he became to protect us from something worse?

His horror was hers now: the reflection in the lake below, the disfiguring loss of light, the sensation of divinity unraveling. She felt it like a ripping of silk from the inside out. His wings, once a testament to creation, now warped into monstrous blades; terrible, beautiful, and unforgiving.

Her spirit quaked inside his immense form.

She saw it now, not just as an outsider looking in, but as one who was inside, a borrowed passenger in a soul too heavy with purpose. His transformation wasn't a punishment it was a sacrifice. He hadn't fallen. He had descended willingly, maybe even defiantlyto,  contain something darker still.

A sudden shiver of emotion, not hers, pulsed within the shared space.

Shame. Regret. Fierce love. Loneliness that could crush galaxies.

Lualhati gasped. He was not just enduring it. He was choosing it again and again.

Tears she hadn't realized were hers now streamed down her cheeks. She trembled beneath the magnitude of what she saw. Abaddon hadn't lost his way. He had carved out a new one. Alone. Unthanked. Misunderstood.

And she...she...had resented him.

Her anger, her bitterness at the havoc his Fallen had wrought, suddenly shriveled into something small. Naive. Childish. The world she'd known. Ff clinic shifts, of healing battered villagers, of juggling high school and destiny had seemed overwhelming to her. But this?

This was not burden. It was obliteration.

"I didn't know," she whispered aloud, her voice muffled against the roar of shadow and storm that churned within the Abyss.

The voice, his voice, echoed gently in her head again, not triumphant, not scolding, but tender.
"Now, you do."

Lualhati contnued to feel Abaddon's burden as he embraced his new existence, not as a shackle, but as a tool a canvas upon which he could carve a future. His power was born of suffering, but it could be wielded to shape something greater than mere torment. The Abyss, his kingdom, was a place where those lost in darkness could confront their past and, if they dared, emerge from it. It was a place of transformation. A place where even the deepest despair held the spark of hope.

As he soared deeper into the Abyss, feeling the pull of the shadows around him, Abaddon could not help but feel a strange kinship with the realm itself. It was a mirror of his own journey a place where the divine could be torn apart and remade. And perhaps, in time, he could help others do the same.

His gaze swept over the realm he now ruled. A kingdom forged not from creation, but from the very essence of rebellion. The Abyss, a dark and turbulent sea of regret, despair, and defiance, stretched out before him, its layers of torment and transformation beckoning. Yet, within this darkness, he could see the flicker of potential spirits struggling to rise from their own fall.

In the heart of the Abyss, Abaddon understood that his reign was not one of mindless destruction, but of balance. Light and dark, pain and redemption they were all woven into the fabric of existence. His purpose, now clearer than ever, was not to rule over suffering, but to transform it.

His journey had brought him here, to the deepest corners of the Abyss, and now, as its King, he would guide his fellow fallen toward a path of understanding and redemption. Through suffering, he would lead them to salvation. And perhaps, just perhaps, the light they had forsaken could one day return.

*******

The Abyss Realm at the dawn of the Second Earth

The Abyss loomed vast and unyielding, a stronghold carved from shadow, where the breath of exiled angels still lingered, faint and bitter. Here, the sky never turned, and time stilled like a wound that refused to close. Cloaked in obsidian armor veined with pulsing light, Abaddon stood at the edge of what once was Heaven's fallen hope. His blade. a sword not of vengeance, but of divine charge; hung at his side, humming with the voice of the Great I Am.

When Lualhati first felt his descent into the first surface of the Abyss, it was not through sight but through sensation. A low, growing thrum in her chest. The air crackled with tension. Shadows thickened and came alive. Faces emerged: angels made monstrous by pain. Their hatred clung to her skin like ash.

"Abaddon!" Belial's voice cracked through the dark, laced with contempt. "You dare return here? You who were cast down with us, and yet call yourself king?"

The words struck not just Abaddon, but her. Lualhati flinched...not from the insult, but from the truth it dared to speak. She felt Abaddon's resolve coil tight.

"Favor can be reclaimed, Belial." His voice did not waver. Join me, and together we can rise from this abyss of despair."

"Or fight you, if you prefer," Belial retorted, drawing a sword of his own. "I challenge you!"

"Very well," Abaddon said, the edge of his blade gleaming ominously. 

And as the first blades clashed, Lualhati screamed silently inside his mind.

She felt each strike as if her own bones bore it. Not pain, not yet, but a rising terror. The kind that came with realizing the legend was not a story told in hushed tones... but a man who bled, fought, and stood alone anyway.

Sparks flew. Shadows recoiled. Their duel was not just steel against steel. It was memory against prophecy. When Abaddon disarmed Belial and pressed the blade to his throat, Lualhati felt a surge of power so cold it scalded. It terrified her how much she understood it.

Lualhati felt such awesome strength within Abaddon's being, fueling his resolve. With each strike, she sensed the power coursing through his armor, a gift from the very essence of creation. Finally, with a swift maneuver, he disarmed Belial, sending his sword skidding across the ground.

"Yield!" Abaddon commanded, his blade poised at Belial's throat.

Belial scowled but nodded begrudgingly. "You've bested me. But remember, this won't end here."

Abaddon sheathed his sword and moved deeper into the Abyss, his mind racing. He encountered others-some who pledged loyalty, but many who challenged him. The battles drained him, each fight a test of his will, but Abaddon pressed on, feeling as though he was destined to succeed.

More followed. Challenges. Blood. Oaths. Abaddon fought not just enemies, but the crushing weight of leadership. Each name, Asmodeus, Seraphiel, Malachai; was a song of betrayal or brotherhood, echoing through the black corridors of his will.

As he journeyed deeper into the Abyss, he faced many others-some who pledged their loyalty, while others challenged him to fights that drained his will. Each victory brought him closer to his goal, but the weight of leadership pressed heavily upon him.