Silence.
A low, vibrating silence—not stillness, but the kind of deep, omnipresent quiet that settled into the marrow and crawled along the nerves like cold fire.
Kalem stirred, coughing dust from his lungs.
His body screamed. Pain flared in a dozen places—sharp in his ribs, dull in his left thigh, a fiery throb in his shoulder. For a moment, he didn't move. He simply lay there, eyes closed, trying to remember what had happened—why everything hurt.
And then he remembered the fall.
The ridge. The rupture. Onyx's bellow—his weight—his final shove.
Kalem's eyes snapped open.
Darkness.
Not the ordinary kind. This was thick, oppressive. A dark that bled into his vision, smothering all sense of direction. The only light came from a crack in the stone ceiling far above—pale, distant, and quickly fading.
"Onyx…" Kalem's voice cracked, dry, raw.
He called again, louder.
"ONYX!"
Nothing.
The silence answered.
Kalem's throat tightened. He forced himself to sit up, biting back a groan as his ribs screamed. His left leg had twisted under him unnaturally, swollen and purple where his shin met the knee. Not broken, but close. His armor was dented, cracked at the shoulder, and his right bracer was completely gone.
His gear—
He scrambled to his knees, using one arm for balance, feeling the stone floor around him. Cold. Damp. Uneven. His fingers brushed something—metal.
With effort, Kalem sat up straighter and muttered, "Light."
A flare of red ignited in his palm as the fire sword appeared, humming with faint energy. Its glow pushed back a small circle of the void, revealing jagged rocks, broken debris… and the eerie, pulsing fungi that clung to the walls like tumors.
He exhaled through his teeth.
"Looks like I'm in the Abyss."
The air was heavy. Breathing hurt. Every motion stirred up a strange smell—old blood and something fouler, something wrong. Kalem scanned the small area the light allowed him to see.
His crimson spear was embedded in a nearby rock, scorched at the shaft.
His dagger belt lay in pieces to the side.
His resonance blade was missing.
But he was alive.
Barely.
He tore off what remained of his cloak and fashioned a brace for his leg. Then he used the edge of the sword to cut clean strips of cloth from his inner sleeve, wrapping his ribs and shoulder tight. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do.
The fire sword's glow flickered—something disturbed the air.
Kalem froze.
He heard it then. Not just silence—but movement within it.
A low, wet dragging sound. Something breathing—but not through lungs. It was a sucking, rhythmic sound, like a parasite pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
He tightened his grip on the sword, rising slowly to one foot. His breath caught.
The terrain was… unnatural.
The cavern floor wasn't just rock—it had grown things. Spindled roots that weren't roots, veins that twitched slightly when his boot brushed them. Patches of skin-like moss. Fungi that blinked when touched by the firelight.
"This isn't a cave," he muttered. "It's alive."
Kalem glanced upward again. The distant light was gone. Either the gap had closed, or it had simply grown too far.
There was no going back the way he came.
No telling where the ridge had broken.
No path. No map.
Just him, the sword, and the monsters he hadn't met yet.
He moved carefully, using the blade for both illumination and support. Every step took him deeper into the shifting dark. The firelight danced across alien structures—pillars of bone, melted statues, enormous chitinous husks lining the walls like the discarded shells of monstrous insects.
Then the sound came again.
This time, closer.
Kalem turned fast, fire sword ready.
He saw it—just for a second.
Something writhing against the cavern wall. Human-sized. Twisted. Limbs too long, or maybe too many. Its body shimmered with wet membrane, its face covered by a mass of wriggling feelers. It scurried across the ceiling and vanished behind a jagged outcrop—silent, save for the wet dragging sound left in its wake.
Kalem didn't speak.
He just stood there.
Breathing.
Sweat prickled his brow despite the cold.
That thing wasn't like anything he had seen on the surface. It wasn't a howler. Not a mawborn. Not a dreadcore.
Something else lived down here.
Something worse.
He didn't follow it. Not yet.
He turned slowly and moved the other way, picking a path through the bio-organic ruins. His firelight began to cast twisted shadows—shapes that didn't match the surroundings, like things waiting just outside the edge of light.
And in that moment, Kalem realized something else:
He wasn't the hunter down here.
He was the hunted.