Before the darkness swallowed him, Nero felt something look his way.
The gaze was ancient and seemed older than time itself.
But he was not sure.
Maybe it was his mind imagining things right before he died.
That was probably it.
The next moment however, he was unable to form a thought as a splitting pain cut through his mind and soul.
Then, there was a flood of light.
"I-Is this heaven?" Nero muttered to himself as he slowly tried to open his eyes.
The light faded just a bit.
Nero stood transfixed to the spot.
The light was now gone, but in its place, was a radiance that put every other light to shame.
And the source of this radiance...
Was an eye.
An eye at the very beginning of everything that could ever exist.
An blind eye that could see nothing and yet, everything, all at once.
An eye that saw everything at the inception of time itself. An eye that will see the destruction of everything.
A wretched eye.
A holy eye.
After eons of being shut like the gates of the Niel, it finally looked.
In an instant, Nero felt his mind explode with the radiance of a billion stars.
***
The night had endured for a while.
The silver moon in the sky was hazy and unmotivated, barely giving its molted radiance to the cursed lands below as it sank behind the horizon. Its descent meant the welcome of a new day frought with disaster and death. A norm in a world entrenched in depravity.
Somewhere in the Thorne Empire...
In a secluded mansion at the very edge of the City Bridgehorn, the capital city.
In a dark room...
The room was filled with all manners of strange items;
Skulls of men and abominations. Austere orbs and amulets. Vials filled with colorful fluids.
Dried out corpses of large insects and birds. A hollowed out carcass of a Grey Crow.
The air within the room was musty and filled with a dreadful, macabre presence that reeked of madness and evil.
Sitting in the room, was a strange man, whispering strange things. His eyes were open. Yet, there was no light in them.
He was a blind man.
A mumbling, mad, blind man.
Suddenly, his cracked, dry lips stopped muttering.
His grey eyes widened.
For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, a streak of light swam through the slightly open window.
It was the first light of dawn.
A raspy gasp crawled out of his throat.
"Those eyes..."
Tears streaked down his worn, wrinkle laden face.
"The time has come."
Slowly, the rose to his feet.
As he rose, every other thing in the room was consumed by his shadow.
His lifeless eyes ignited with a flame so dark, it consumed all the little light in the room.
His voice now fractured and indistinguishable, could be heard,
"The time has come, for the beginning of the end."
***
In a place far away from the Thorne Empire...
In a land of lifeless dunes of sand sprawling endlessly in every direction.
In these lands of scourge and drought, demonic creatures with curved horns and eyes with horizontal pupils; the spawn of Azazel, roamed freely.
And yet, sitting upon one of these dunes, with tanned skin basking under the everlasting sun, was a woman dressed in garbs that fluttered in the wind like a dark river.
Her features were hidden by a dark veil covering her face, but the garments did nothyto hide her sensual curves.
Yet, even with the unmistakable allure rolling off this odd woman, there was something rather uncanny and terrifying about her.
Perhaps it was the way she sat with her hands resting on her thighs.
Or maybe it was the way her body trembled ever so slightly from time to time.
Or maybe it was the strange nature’s of the many eyes that existed in odd parts of her body, each and every one of them with horizontal pupils just like the demons that surrounded her.
There was a sickening crunch as her neck suddenly twisted unnaturally towards the Eastern sky.
"The time has come." The words fell from her sultry yet abhorrent lips with the bearings of a curse.
***
In the frigid lands of the Niel, across a frozen wasteland where time itself was locked in place.
A slumbering evil nesting underneath the blankets of thick ice stirred.
Its eyes opened.
And it gazed up into the sky.
The cold winds continued to blow as a faint, but obvious rumble stretched out across the wasteland.
***
Nero heard a whisper.
In this dream that didn’t seem like a dream anymore, he heard a whisper.
The whispering voice was soft and caring like a mother’s arm.
But it was also furious and powerful like a warrior’s cry.
It belonged to the strange eye that had his very essence frozen in space and time.
At first, he thought he was dead. But he didn’t think so any more.
And this thing staring at him, didn’t seem so malevolent anymore.
When he looked again, he realized that the ’eye’ wasn’t truly an eye.
Instead, it was more of a strange construct floating in a sky of endless white.
It was made up of circular rings that outline an enormous orb covered with all sorts of strange patterns and runes he had never seen before.
The words spoken by this being, he had never heard them before. But for some reason, he understood it perfectly;
***
"You have been recognized by the Divine Will as the one true Heretic."
"Because of that, you are the perfect ’Witness’."
"Your mind, body and soul shall be changed."
"You will be given a name and eyes that seemed the very essence of all things, so that you may bear witness to the beginning of the end of times."
"Your name is— Angel of Judgement, Armageddon."
***
The moment the last words were heard, Nero felt his entire existence crumble apart.
The enormous ’eye’ in the sky turned and churned, its runes bleeding light that seeped into his essence, overwriting his entirety until he was no more.