The Black Abyss

Amon's consciousness gradually awakened. Pain electrocuted his entire body from his hard fall towards the cliff's bottom. Panic soon settled in Amon's heart; he could not see anything and thought he has gone blind from his fall.

Forcefully calming himself down, Amon's heavy breathing and anxiety slowly subsided after considerable effort.

"I'm not blind. I have been hard-pressed towards the cliff's Black Abyss." Slowly Amon gathered his strength and stood up. He was surrounded by darkness, could not see, hear, or feel anything but the ground beneath his shoes. Congregating his Source energy, he tried to fly upward, the harder he tried, the stronger the gravitational pull was on his body.

Looking up, Amon cursed the ancient one entire clan and eighteen ancestors. He could not comprehend why the ancient one wanted him dead. It was their first meeting, he had no meaningful interaction with any Dragon beforehand, nor did he own anything of value that could warrant this unprovoked assault.

"Zexian, she is all alone up there. Fuck!" Amon's felt his heart tear itself in worry.

"They would not kill a mentally and physically disabled child. Yes, that would be too low, but again I was pushed towards my death for no rhyme or reason. Why? If my clan finds out, that's a war on four fronts; the Dragons will be fighting on their own. I hope my ancestral mother makes herself new shoes out of your old scales, you useless reptile."

Amon continued his cursing and shouting, a way for him to release his frustration.

"Why have I not died yet?" Bewildered, Amon tried to inspect himself in the darkness. His body does not seem to have any severe injury, just pain from his fall.

The Phoenix sat down, cross-legged.

"Others before me could not have died from the passage of time, right? Something must have killed them. If my speculation is correct, then a previously unknown Prime Ethereal Treasure is down here with me." Amon musing ended when he noticed his body started releasing a faint white-bluish light.

Gazing at his hands, and squinting his eyes at the white wisps emitted from his body. "My...my soul? Fragments of my soul are leaving my body? But this is impossible."

The gears in Amon's head started turning fast. Souls are formless, shapeless, and, most importantly, they are invisible and immaterial. To the best of Amon's knowledge, nothing in existence could directly command souls, make them visible, and draw them out slowly out of a living being without touching the soul's container, a person's spirit.

Standing up, Amon decided to follow his soul departing wisps. They were slowly floating away from his body, heading deeper within the darkness. It was a long tiresome blind walk, with many turns, left and right.

The tired Phoenix soon glimpsed a white light cutting through the darkness like a sharp sword. His footsteps sped forward. He was getting weaker and weaker by the second from his withering soul. Going from complete obscurity to blinding bright light forced Amon to cover his eyes with his arm as he got closer to the light origin.

For the first time since he had fallen into the accursed cliff, Amon heard a sound that was not coming from him, a loud heartbeat.

Slowly removing his arm from his eyes, but using his hand like a cap above his eyes to dim the bright white light, Amon focused at the loud heartbeat direction.

It was a small heart, no bigger than Amon's fist, suspended in the air without any support and pulsing loudly. Slowly walking forward towards the pulsing heart, Amon caught it in his hands. It did not resist Amon and just kept beating endlessly in his hand, one pulse every second, taking the form of a different creature's heart with every pulse.

Puzzled, the Phoenix watched his soul's wisps leave his body, enter the heart, then exit the heart every other pulse. The shreds of his soul that entered the heart left it changed, purified with nothing of Amon spirit mark and identity left in them, just pure soul energy.

Following his purified soul tendrils with his eyes, he saw them float upward, towards the blinding light. Curious, he squinted his eyes, seeking to identify the blinding light origin. Once he did, he fell on his knees from sheer shock.

A gigantic white, rotating sphere made of purified soul energy floated high above where the pulsing heart was before Amon picked it up. The Phoenix lost all his strength and released the heart from his clutch. The pulsing heart floated naturally to where it used to be and continued doing what it always has done.

Chuckling weakly, Amon spoke. "This is how everyone before me died, and this is how I will die. The loathsome heart is somehow commanding my soul to leave my body slowly, purifying it, eradicating any connection to me, and merging it with the souls that it purified before my soul."

Amon sent his Source energy towards the heart, inspecting it, looking for its conscious. After a while, Amon gave up.

"I don't believe it. It is completely inert, just a throbbing muscle with no spirit or a conscious of its own. How is that possible? All the known Prime Ethereal Treasures had long formed their own senses and awareness before they were found. Is the heart not one of them? What is the point of collecting that many souls?"

Biting his teeth, Amon stood up. Swiping his hand over his storage ring, he extracted his black, long spear out. The spear was well made but nothing fancy, a gift from his father when he finished mastering his father's created Profound Ethereal Art.

"Untainted Zealot Sinking a Star."

With a jump, Amon compressed his Source at the tip of his spear, nine revolutions of lethal fast compressions. Thrusting his spear at the floating heart, he released his compressed Source in the form of his two Ether cores laws, Fire and Darkness, a deadly combination that has served him well in his short young Phoenix life.

A loud explosion thundered within the Black Abyss. The heart kept hovering motionlessly, unharmed, and unbothered.

Landing quickly on his feet, Amon noticed his soul leaving his body at a faster rate. He knew he fucked up and being punished for it, instead of having perhaps days to live, he now has a few short hours at most.

Anger filled Amon's heart; he stomped his left foot and threw his spear with all his remaining might at the pulsing heart. It was a futile effort that won Amon his second prize, an even faster absorption rate of his soul.

Falling to his knees, Amon accepted his fate. There was nothing he could do. There was no escape as Primordial creatures far more potent than he had tasted the same future.

Smiling faintly, Amon fixed his seating position and sat with his back straight. He decided he will die with his dignity intact, doing what he loved to do the most, solving another mystery.

Gazing at the heart, he spoke. "Every Prime Ethereal Treasure represented a specific law, a concept of reality. They were the physical, living, sentient expression of a perceived concept concerning reality even if a particular concept has no corporal form or exists in any tangible way.

You are inert. You are neither sentient or living. This leads me to conclude whatever law you represent is wholly cut off from the laws of life and death. Your act of commanding souls then purifying them may have misled me to think you represented the law of souls, but that could not be right if you were completely cut off from life and death."

Putting a hand under his chin Amon observed the ever-changing heart more.

"Physically, you change shape and form every second. There does not appear to be any rational order to which creature's heart outline you will take next. One moment a human heart, the next a feline heart and like that randomly forever."

Amon frowned. "What are you?"

Time slowly passed, Amon could barely keep his eyes open; only fragments of his soul remained within his spirit and body; he was without a doubt at death's door.

"Chaos? That can't be right; what does the law of chaos has to do with souls? Besides, the core notion of chaos is randomness; it is not disconnected from the laws of life and death. It should have gained its own spirit and awareness by now if it represented the law of chaos."

Tiredly, and with great effort, Amon looked up at the bright rotating white sphere. "What do souls become after the accursed heart is done purifying them of any spirit mark and identity? A masterless, unsullied, soul energy."

"Energy...eh?" Amon feebly burst out in laughter.

"A living being soul is a unique form of energy. The key to the whole puzzle is energy. I presume you somehow are able to control any type of energy, regardless of its origin. Then, you are the law of energy? No, energy does not explain the chaos aspect you display by changing forms randomly at a constant interval."

Amon's head dropped down. He no longer had anything more to give, just a small fragment of his soul remained in his body. Opening his mouth and speaking in a low, hardly audible volume, the young Phoenix spoke for the last time before he met his end, presenting his final conclusion.

"The arrow of time. The ultimate fate of everything. The cosmos chaos enforcer. The inception of the ancient past and the conclusion of the inevitable future. The first moment before life and death, and the first moment after life and death. You are not the lowly Heart of Chaos or Energy. You are the terrifying Heart of Entropy. The physical expression of the sole Omni concept of the cosmos, the one universality that will never be overthrown."

The Heart of Entropy for the first time since its existence stopped pulsing, and with it, time for the first time since the birth of the cosmos stopped marching forward. Time halted for its master halt, and the rest of the universe's infinite expansion was brought to a forceful stop. When Entropy halt, reality itself submits and stops.

Amon's chest, without warning, exploded in a shower of blood and flesh. The rotating mass amount of soul energy the Heart of Entropy has collected over the eons rushed towards Amon's chest, following its master.

Lifting his right hand sluggishly, Amon tried to sense what has remained of his destroyed chest. He finally realized what has caused his chest to explode in the first place, the Heart of Entropy wrecked Amon's heart and took its home.

Rapidly changing forms without pulsing, the Heart of Entropy settled in the shape of Amon's precious heart, the heart of a Phoenix, and it momentarily stopped. Like it changed its mind, the heart morphed and took the shape of a unique heart form, never seen or held by any creature before.

The Black Abyss returned to its former utter darkness when the Heart of Entropy collected all the souls it had purified within its heart walls. The heart pulsed out loudly a single time, allowing time to march forward once more.

Amon felt an incredible gravitational pressure on his being, flesh, and bones fusing forcefully, pushing Amon to collapse onto himself. All that remained is a single, boiling, fast-spinning blood droplet of what was a mighty Phoenix and a Prime Ethereal Treasure.