Prologue: The Last Battle of Abaddon

Apollyon Ramos knew what immersion felt like.

He had spent countless nights chasing it.

When the university became too loud, when his students' voices followed him home, when another therapy session ended with the same frustrating conclusion of “You are making progress, Professor Ramos, even if you don't remember anything still.”

Apollyon would retreat into the worlds he understood better than his own.

Immersive RPGs.

They were his guilty pleasure.

Not the cheap ones that required a headset and a controller.

He preferred the full-sensory systems.

Neural immersion.

Haptic feedback.

Environmental simulation.

The expensive games where the distinction between player and character became dangerously thin.

He liked becoming someone else.

Perhaps because, somewhere inside him, he had always suspected there is more to his true identity than being simply a tragic attempted murder victim.

That night, however, there was no machine beside his bed.

No immersion rig.

No neural interface.

No game waiting to be launched.

Yet when sleep took him...

Apollyon Ramos entered a world more vividly than any game he had ever played.

He spawned standing.

That was the first thing he noticed.

There was no transition.

No loading screen.

No familiar opening sequence.

One moment he was nowhere.

The next, he was inside a body.

His boots rested against black stone.

Cold wind tore across his face.

Something enormous moved behind him.

Wings.

Apollyon instinctively tried to turn.

His body responded.

But not quite when he wanted it to.

He looked down.

Armor covered his arms.

Blackened metal.

Ancient symbols.

A faint, celestial glow pulsed beneath the plates like molten veins.

Apollyon flexed his fingers.

The hand moved.

Perfectly.

He looked around.

The world was rendered with impossible detail.

Black mountains.

Rivers of fire.

Floating fragments of stone suspended over an endless void.

A sky fractured by enormous veins of white light.

And beyond it all, a colossal Rift.

A wound in in the fabric of reality.

Apollyon stared.

His gamer instincts immediately took over.

This is insane.

The environmental rendering alone was beyond anything he'd ever seen.

He almost laughed. “Okay.”

His voice echoed across the landscape.  “Whoever designed this...”

He looked down at the armor. “...you've officially gone over budget.”

Nothing answered.

Apollyon searched for an interface.

Usually, immersive RPGs gave him something.

Health.

Inventory.

Quest.

Map.

Character statistics.

And yet, nothing appeared.

Apollyon stared. “What the hell? Where is the interface?”

He reached toward the invisible interface.

His hand passed through it, but nothing appeared.

He laughed nervously. “Okay. Not very interactive.”

Except there was something wrong.

He could feel the wind.

Real cold wind seeped through his armor as he smelt burning smoke too.

And Blood.

Apollyon though he would get sick by the scent of burnt flesh and blood…but he wasn’t.

He could feel the weight of the sword hanging at his side.

And beneath all of it...he could feel a heartbeat.

Not his.

Someone else's.

Apollyon suddenly understood that this wasn't a game.

He wasn't controlling the character.

He was inside him.

Watching.

Feeling.

Experiencing.

But unable to choose.

Then he saw her.

A woman stood across the battlefield.

In full glorious obsidian armor with the sheer radiance of blue flame emanating from within her taking Apollyon’s breath away.

Her long silver hair whipped around her face, as her piercing golden eyes challenged him.

Apollyon forgot how to breathe.

His gamer brain searched desperately for an explanation.

NPC.

That was the first thought.

An NPC.

A beautifully rendered story character.

Maybe a boss.

Maybe the final boss.

Except no game character had ever looked at him like that.

Her expression wasn't programmed rage.

It was heartbreak.

Raw.

Human.

Devastating.

And somehow...familiar.

Apollyon's chest tightened, just as the body he occupied reacted.

Pain.

Love.

Terror.

Longing.

He felt all of it at once.

And then the woman spoke.

“You've lost the blessing, haven't you?”

Apollyon's blood went cold.

“The Creator no longer speaks to you.”

The man whose body he inhabited remained silent.

Apollyon waited for the dialogue prompt.

There wasn't one.

He waited for the character to respond.

Nothing.

The woman stepped closer.

“All of this...” Her voice trembled. “This entire farce.”

She swallowed. “You never planned to marry me.”

Apollyon frowned.

Marriage?

This was getting too realistic.

The man finally spoke.

“Did you really believe I would bind myself to the one destined to end me?”

Apollyon's stomach dropped.

The voice was deep.

Regal.

Broken.

“You were born to kill me, Lualhati.”

Apollyon froze.

The name struck somewhere deep inside him.

Lualhati.

He didn't know her.

He had never heard the name.

Yet his soul reacted as though someone had opened a locked door.

And suddenly Apollyon understood something terrifying.

He wasn't playing this character.

He wasn't dreaming about him.

He was remembering him.

And Apollyon felt a surge of anger inside him forcing him to tell her she was wrong.

But the man's mouth moved without his permission. “Did you really believe I would bind myself to the one destined to end me?”

His voice was hollow.

Cold.

Apollyon felt every word like a blade being driven into his own chest.

“You were born to kill me, Lualhati. Don't pretend it was ever anything else.”

She took a step backward.

The expression on her face was the same expression Apollyon had seen on patients in the hospital waiting room when doctors delivered terrible news.

Disbelief first.

Then pain.

Then the slow realization that something precious had just been taken away.

“No,” she whispered. Her golden eyes shimmered.

“No…You said you would protect me.”

Apollyon felt the tightening in his chest.

He could feel the restraint.

The unbearable effort it took for the fallen hero to keep his face expressionless.

Something dark moved beneath his skin.

Apollyon sensed it before he understood it.

A pressure.

A shadow.

A violent current of Ether coiling around the man's soul.

“She must kill me.” The whispered thought lingered.

And suddenly Apollyon understood what the man was doing.

He wasn't trying to hurt her.

He was trying to make her hate him.

The realization horrified him.

Why?

Why would anyone willingly make the person they loved believe they had never loved them at all?

He sneered. “Of course I will protect you, Lu.” The tenderness hidden beneath the cruelty nearly broke Apollyon.

“Wouldn't you keep the poison bound to kill you safe?”

The blue flame around her began to surge.

“I should have known.” Her voice trembled. “All this talk of peace...”

The ground beneath her feet cracked. “Of protecting me...”

The Rift behind her pulsed. “Of love—”

The word broke. “Lies!”

The sky answered as lightning tore across the darkness.

“You never wanted to build anything with me!” Her voice became a roar. “You just wanted to control me!”

The earth seemed to have exploded as fire erupted from beneath her feet.

Apollyon instinctively tried to shield his face, but there was no point.

He was inside this man…this fallen warrior.

Inside this memory, this impossible reality, Apollyon watched in awe as Lualhati's body ignited from within.

Not ordinary fire, it was blue flame that raised beneath her skin like molten sunlight.

Flames wrapped around her shoulders.

Then her arms.

Then her torso.

Armor emerged from the fire.

Jagged.

Volcanic.

Divine.

It looked less forged than born.

Her silver hair lifted behind her, burning like the tail of a comet.

Her eyes became completely gold.

Apollyon could barely breathe.

She was magnificent.

Terrifying.

Heartbroken.

And impossibly beautiful.

Then she opened her hand.

Smoke gathered around her fingers.

Light followed.

Something ancient answered the call.

Apollyon watched as the smoke condensed into a blade.

A balaraw.

Its edge shimmered with ancestral memory.

It wasn't merely a weapon, but history.

Blood. Duty. Prophecy.

Everything Lualhati had inherited from those who came before her had become steel in her hand.

Across from her, her foe spread his wings.

Apollyon finally saw them fully.

Six immense wings which would have been magnificent once, he was sure of it; but was now blackened and broken at the edges.

Feathers drifted into the darkness like pieces of a dying star.

The fallen hero summoned his armor.

But it did not gleam.

It was dark.

Cracked.

Burned.

A mirror of the dying warrior he had somehow become.

His sword appeared in his hand, though not radiant as Lualhati’s; it was solemn.

A weapon made not to conquer, but to fall with honor.

The two stood at the precipice of the darkness.

Behind them, the obsidian bridge stretched toward nothingness.

Before them waited the great unknown.

Apollyon could feel something approaching.

An ending.

She charged, and the first clash of their blades cracked the earth.

BOOM.

Apollyon felt the impact through every bone in Abaddon's body.

The force threw flames into the sky.

A vortex formed above them, spiraling faster and faster; as though the heavens themselves were being dragged into their grief.

Lualhati struck again, the man parried.

Again.

He blocked.

Again.

He moved.

The battle became almost impossible to follow.

It was like watching an RPG boss fight at maximum difficulty while simultaneously being trapped inside the boss's body.

Except there was no exhilaration.

No score.

No victory meter.

No respawn.

Only pain.

Lualhati's balaraw screamed against the man's sword.

Every collision shook the bridge.

Every strike carried years of love and betrayal.

She fought with everything she had.

The man fought with restraint.

Apollyon noticed it.

The first time Lualhati exposed her left side, the man could have struck…but he didn't.

The second time she overextended, he stepped away instead.

The third time, he deliberately turned his blade aside.

He wasn't fighting to win.

He was fighting to convince her that he wanted to.

Lualhati screamed. “You're holding back!”

The man said nothing.

Her balaraw struck his shoulder.

Armor shattered.

Flames exploded.

Abaddon staggered.

Apollyon felt the pain as if the blade had entered his own flesh.

He wanted to scream at her.

Stop!

He wanted to scream at him.

Tell her!

But the memory continued.

The man raised his sword.

Lualhati charged.

Their weapons met again.

BOOM.

The Rift widened.

The Abyss trembled.

A voice whispered through to him.

Not loud.

Not threatening.

Almost intimate.

Apollyon heard it as clearly as if someone had leaned beside his ear.

A prophecy.

A command.

A sentence that had haunted the man long before this battle ever began.

She must kill you.

The words echoed.

She must kill you.

Apollyon suddenly understood.

The entire battle had been moving toward this moment.

The man wasn't trying to survive.

He was trying to make sure Lualhati could kill him.

The realization struck him with such force that the dream began to collapse.

The battlefield blurred.

The fire became white.

Lualhati's face was the last thing he saw.

Her golden eyes.

Her tears.

Her balaraw raised above him.

And beneath all the rage, beneath all the betrayal, Apollyon saw what the man had been desperately trying to hide.

Love.

Absolute.

Devastating.

Unconditional.

Then the blade descended.

Apollyon screamed.

And woke.

*******

Apollyon shot upright in bed.

His lungs seized.

For several seconds, he couldn't tell whether he was awake.

His hands gripped the sheets.

His heart hammered against his ribs.

The bedroom was dark.

Quiet.

Real.

Rain whispered against the windows.

The faint hum of the air conditioner filled the room.

Apollyon stared into the darkness.

Beside him, Diana stirred. “Apollyon?”

He turned and saw that she was still half asleep, her dark hair spread across the pillow.

“What happened?”

He couldn't answer as his breathing slowly steadied.

Diana pushed herself upright. “Another nightmare?”

Apollyon swallowed. “Yeah.”

She reached for him, and he let her.

Her arms wrapped around his waist.

Her warmth should have comforted him.

Instead, he found himself staring beyond her shoulder.

He could still see the warrior woman.

Not clearly anymore.

Only fragments.

Gold eyes.

Silver hair.

Fire.

A blade.

And grief.

So much grief.

“Who was she?” he whispered.

Diana lifted her head. “Who?”

Apollyon blinked. “Nothing.” Then looked away.

He didn't tell her, because suddenly he wasn't sure he knew either.

He lay back down and Diana rested her head against his shoulder.

“It’s just a dream,” she whispered. “You are safe.

Apollyon closed his eyes.

Safe.

The word should have meant something. Instead, his mind returned to the woman.

To…what was her name again?

Apollyon tried to shake the memory back, but it fleeted away like memories of his dream.

He didn't know who she was.

He didn't know where she came from.

He didn't know why her anger had hurt him more deeply than any nightmare he had experienced in the past two years.

But this was the first time he had seen her clearly.

Not a shadow.

Not a fleeting silhouette.

Not a face that disappeared whenever he tried to remember it.

He had seen her in her remarkable glory.

A warrior.

A woman forged in fire.

A woman who had loved someone enough to destroy him.

Apollyon slowly exhaled as his eyes grew heavy again.

Perhaps it was only a dream.

Perhaps his mind was simply creating another story from fragments of forgotten history.

Perhaps tomorrow, he would laugh about it.

Perhaps he would tell Dr. Mercado that his subconscious had finally developed an elaborate fantasy RPG.

Yet as sleep returned, Apollyon found himself hoping for something he could not explain.

He wanted to see her again.

Just once.

To know her name.

To understand why her face hurt.

Why her anger felt personal.

Why watching her raise that blade had felt like remembering the end of a life he had never lived.

Beside him, Diana's breathing settled into sleep.

Apollyon closed his eyes.

And somewhere beneath the consciousness of the man called Apollyon Ramos, something ancient stirred.

Something that remembered the battlefield.

Something that remembered the crown.

Something that remembered her.

He surrendered to sleep again.

Quietly…Almost hopefully.

Hoping that if the dream returned, the warrior woman would be there.

And perhaps, this time, she would look at him without hatred.

*******