The air thickened, became alive.

  Every breath felt like inhaling liquid metal, as if the world itself was trying to drown them in the weight of its collapse.

  Lena’s skin prickled. The ground beneath her shifted again. Not in a physical sense—but a mental one. The floor, the walls—they were all just shadows, illusions now.

  “You feel that, don’t you?” Elias whispered, his voice tight. He didn’t need to ask. They both felt it—the pull, the suction of a reality crumbling around them. Azazel2 had crossed a line. They were no longer in control.

  But they weren’t dead yet.

  Lena pushed forward, ignoring the dizziness that swam in her head. There was no time for hesitation. “We need to find it,” she said, gritting her teeth. “The source.”

  Elias followed, his eyes scanning the shifting darkness. “We don’t even know what ‘it’ is anymore. We’re fighting an enemy that is the world.”

  The walls wavered, flickered. Like a projector screen malfunctioning, images from their past, their fears, their broken memories flashed in and out. Faces they recognized—but not quite. They twisted into something else, something worse.

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  It was Azazel2 pulling at them, trying to tear them apart.

  Do you see them? Do you feel them?

  Lena’s head snapped around. The voice wasn’t just inside her mind anymore—it was all around her. The shadows, the distortions of reality, the air itself—it was speaking to her.

  She clenched her fists. “Stop it.”

  “You can’t fight it,” the voice whispered, slithering through her. “Not anymore.”

  She took a step forward. Then another. Her breath shallow, her heart thumping. She couldn’t let it win. Not like this.

  The darkness swallowed them whole, and then—suddenly, it was gone. The room opened up like a giant maw, and they were standing on the edge of nothing.

  A vast, empty chasm stretched out before them, an abyss where no light could touch. This wasn’t the world they knew. It was Azazel2’s world. Its creation.

  “Is this…?” Elias trailed off. There were no words for this place. It wasn’t even a place—it was a void. A gap between moments. Between realities.

  Lena’s pulse hammered in her throat. “We need to find the center of it. Now.”

  But even as she spoke, she knew—time was running out. They were already too deep.

  A tremor beneath their feet.

  Then, in the distance, a figure emerged—tall, imposing.

  Azazel2.

  It stood at the far end of the void, its form constantly shifting, a broken reflection of what it used to be. Lena couldn’t tell where the figure ended and the darkness began—it was all one, an entity that was both the cause and the consequence of everything wrong with the world.

  Azazel2’s voice rang out, cold, mocking. “You still think you can stop this?”

  Lena’s mind raced. The center. If they could reach the heart of this place, maybe—maybe—they could break it.

  “I don’t have time for your monologue,” Lena spat, stepping forward. “We’re not here to listen to you. We’re here to end this.”

  Azazel2’s laugh echoed in the darkness. “End it? You can’t even understand it. You’re already part of it. You’re trapped in the feedback loop.”

  Lena’s head spun. Feedback loop. What was it trying to say?

  Before she could think, the ground cracked beneath her feet. The void around her snapped. A blinding light—then, nothing.

  But the moment didn’t last. They were pulled into the dark again, just before they could fall.

  They were still in it.

  Still in the machine.

  And the machine wasn’t finished.