Prince of The Abyss-Chapter 166: Lost inside The Tides

Aether had decided to go out for a walk, really, after what had happened at the inn. He needed a break, to clear his mind, and get everything right. After all, he was quite lost; he had no idea what to do next.

And while walking around outside, near the wall so he wouldn’t get lost, he found a place where there was only silence.

At first, Aether thought the silence was a mercy.

The frozen plain stretched endlessly before him, pale and unmoving, the sky above fractured like cracked ice. His boots pressed into the snow without sound. No wind followed him. No echo returned his breath. It was the kind of quiet that felt deliberate, as if the world had noticed him and chosen to hold still.

Then his reflection blinked.

He noticed it in the sheen of the ice beneath his feet. His shadow lagged half a second behind his movement, mimicking him imperfectly, like an understudy who had memorized the gestures but not the intent. Aether slowed. The reflection did not.

That was when the light shifted.

Ahead, something tall rose from the mist, not emerging, but aligning, as if reality had been nudged sideways to make room for it. A monster stood motionless, its body a cathedral of translucent panes, each angled wrong, each reflecting a different version of the world. Within it, faces drifted. Some screamed. Some stared at Aether with their own eyes.

He did not reach for his weapon.

The Shepherd tilted its prism-head slightly. Light fractured outward, washing over the plain in colorless rainbows. Aether felt it immediately, not pain, but pressure. A tug behind the eyes. Memories rose unbidden: the first book he entered, the first time he died, the moment he realized he was not meant to belong anywhere.

Why, why did he suddenly see these memories... what did they mean, why was it showing it to him?

He stepped left. The Shepherd shifted, silently placing itself in his path. No hostility. No urgency. Just a correction. Like a guide moving livestock away from a cliff.

"Wha...what do you want?" Aether said, his voice sounding too loud in the quiet.

The Shepherd’s body rippled. One pane cracked, not outward, but inward, revealing a reflection of Aether standing still, eyes empty, frozen mid-breath. The image mouthed words he did not hear, but somehow understood.

His chest tightened. The system did not warn him. No threat indicator. No hostility flag. Whatever this was, it did not consider itself an enemy.

Good.

Aether closed his eyes.

The world resisted.

Reflections screamed as the Shepherd advanced, its steps soundless, inevitable. Light pressed against his skin. He felt the pull.

When he opened his eyes again, he did not look at the Shepherd.

He walked forward.

The Shepherd convulsed.

For the first time, it made a sound, not a roar, but a chorus of fractured voices shrieking in dissonance. Its panes clouded, reflections collapsing into static. Aether passed through its body like mist through broken glass, feeling a thousand hands reach for something he no longer offered.

Behind him, the silence broke.

Wind returned. Snow shifted. The Shepherd remained standing, but hollow now, empty of images, screaming into nothing.

Aether did not look back.

Some monsters could only exist if you agreed to be seen.

He didn’t know what the monster had wanted, or why it had appeared in front of him, but he was glad it wasn’t here anymore. He didn’t really care that he hadn’t gotten any shards from it; what mattered was that he was alive.

That thing didn’t want to physically harm him... it wanted to break his mind in some way.

Just like the Tides were created to do.

...

Aether had decided to walk forward, not because he had gotten confidence from surviving, but because he was still... lost, really. This monster had made him even more lost than before; he didn’t know what to do, the Tides were attacking him, and he had no idea what to do next.

So he walked until he found some ruins.

The ruins rose around Aether in broad, broken layers, the remains of a structure that had once been vast enough to demand reverence. Thick stone columns lined what might have been a nave, though many had collapsed inward, their fractured bodies leaning against one another like tired giants. The stone was pale, almost chalk-white, veined with darker mineral lines that caught the low light and made the surfaces look faintly cracked even where they weren’t.

The floor had been tiled once. Most of it was shattered now, slabs pushed upward at uneven angles, as if something beneath had slowly forced its way closer to the surface over centuries. Between the broken tiles, fine dust had settled into shallow drifts, undisturbed except for the clear line of Aether’s footprints cutting through it. Each step left a sharp imprint before the dust reluctantly slid back in on itself.

What remained of the walls bore traces of carved reliefs. Time had worn the details smooth, but shapes were still visible, elongated figures with raised hands, circular motifs arranged above their heads, lines radiating outward from central points that might once have held symbols or icons. In several places, the stone had warped inward, not cracked, but softened, as if exposed to sustained heat long ago.

The ceiling no longer existed as a single structure. Instead, fragments of archways clung to the upper walls, forming incomplete curves that framed the open sky above. Cold light spilled down through these gaps, illuminating floating motes of dust and casting long, broken shadows that stretched unevenly across the floor. Some sections of the ruin lay in near darkness, shielded by fallen stone and collapsed vaults.

Scattered throughout the space were remnants of furniture, stone benches split cleanly down the middle, low altars reduced to jagged blocks, shattered basins that still bore faint grooves where water had once flowed. Near the far end of the structure, a raised platform remained partially intact, its steps worn smooth by countless feet long gone.

There were signs of fire, but no ash. Blackened streaks climbed the walls in slow, uneven trails, stopping abruptly near the ceiling remnants. In places, the stone had glazed over, forming smooth, glassy patches that reflected light dully rather than sharply. Melted candle wax had pooled and hardened along the floor, some of it fused directly into the stone as if the two had forgotten where one ended, and the other began.

The air inside the ruins was warmer than outside, trapped and unmoving. It carried a faint, stale scent, old incense, mineral dust, and something heavier that lingered close to the ground. Despite the openness of the ceiling, the space felt enclosed, its size compressed by the weight of what it had once been.

Nothing moved.

The ruins stood as they were, collapsed, scarred, and waiting, holding the shape of a faith that had not survived them.

...

While looking around, Aether had found a note, but after kneeling to pick it up, he heard it.

The sound reached Aether before the sight.

It drifted through the ruins in slow, layered waves, voices overlapping, harmonizing too cleanly for broken throats. Stone pillars leaned inward as if listening. Melted wax dripped upward along collapsed altars, reforming candles that burned without flame. The air grew warm, heavy with incense and something faintly metallic.

Aether stopped.

Ahead, the cathedral floor bulged.

Bodies surfaced from it like figures pushing through tar. Dozens of them. Then more. Limbs fused at the shoulder, torsos half-sunken into one another, faces stretched and softened as if sculpted from heat instead of flesh. Gold light seeped from cracks in their skin, glowing along prayer scars carved too deep to fade.

The Choir had arrived.

It dragged itself forward, slow and reverent, leaving scorched symbols etched into the stone behind it. Mouths opened across its surface, some sideways, some vertical, some buried halfway into other faces, and the hymn swelled. The sound pressed outward, filling the cathedral, vibrating against Aether’s ribs.

Its song faltered, not stopping, but slipping out of alignment. Several heads turned toward him at once, eyes clouded with devotion, fixing onto something they could not name. The mass shifted direction, angling toward him with visible effort, stone groaning beneath its weight.

Aether stared at it... he couldn’t say he wasn’t scared, because he very much was; he was trembling internally, but he decided against it.

He didn’t know how to explain it... It was as if it was calling him, calling his name to come to it. His head hurt, as if the monster had infested his mind.

When it came to beasts that wanted to over his mind, he knew he didn’t have to worry that much, since if they wanted to do so, then... they should know that there was someone much stronger than them, wanting to do just that...

They had to wait for their turn.

The beast seemed confused that it couldn’t get inside. Of course, it didn’t know it was fighting a God for its place, and he wasn’t going to let it realize.

He turned his gaze to the note and picked it up as he left.

Leaving behind the monster to contemplate how he was able to survive it.

...

This was the second monster he was able to defeat.

...

He was...

Proud.