The air in the Abyss was heavy—thick with something that made every breath feel like drawing smoke through gauze. Kalem moved slowly, one hand pressed to his ribs, the other gripping the hilt of his crimson longsword. Even with his blade drawn, even with flame illuminating the jagged terrain ahead, it was not enough to banish the darkness that coiled between the stones.
He had managed to drag his weapon crate into a relatively secure crevice. Some of the gear had cracked during the fall, but most of it remained intact. His fingers lingered on the latches as he opened it—rows of weapons, each enchanted and familiar. In the Abyss, they were more than tools. They were memory. Identity.
A screech echoed from deep within the shadows ahead. Not the high, panicked sound of prey. This was deeper. Wet. Like bone grinding against waterlogged sinew.
Kalem's grip tightened. "I remember you," he muttered.
The malformed thing—its silhouette twitching unnaturally—stepped into the edge of his swordlight. Its legs were bent at the wrong angles, backwards-jointed like a spider's. Its skin was mottled and slack, hanging like it had been melted off then reapplied wrong. Half a human face clung to its shoulder. The rest of its head was a lipless maw, breathing in labored huffs that seemed to vibrate the ground.
It hissed and charged.
Kalem didn't wait. He surged forward, feinting to the right, sweeping a jet of flame across the ground. The thing leapt—far too fast. Its talons caught the rocky ceiling, then ricocheted down toward him.
Kalem ducked, rolled. Too slow. A claw caught his shoulder—pain bloomed down his arm.
He gritted his teeth, ducking behind a pillar of petrified root. The flame blade wasn't working. Too much motion. Too little impact.
He reached for the crate again, flipping the latch with one good hand. His fingers brushed steel and chose the twin shortblades—the ones etched with lightning runes.
It came again, crawling across the walls like an insect.
Kalem stood his ground this time.
The moment it lunged, he stepped forward—not back—bringing the shortblades up in a cross-guard. He twisted mid-step, letting its weight carry it just past him, then plunged both blades into its back.
The creature shrieked. Its flesh writhed and popped around the metal.
Kalem channeled a surge of energy into the enchantments. Lightning screamed through the creature's frame. Its back arched, limbs spasmed—and it collapsed, twitching violently.
Kalem stumbled back, panting. His arm was bleeding, and he could feel the heat of fever rising—too soon. Infection, or poison.
He cursed under his breath and dropped to his knees beside his pack. From one of the side compartments, he pulled out a slim vial of silver fluid and a needle-tipped injector. The kind only used when wounds risked turning worse. He bit down on a piece of cloth and slammed the needle into his thigh.
The burn was instant. Like fire spreading through his veins.
"Hold it together…" he hissed.
Then came the voice.
"You bleed. You adapt. That's good."
Kalem froze.
The whisper wasn't from the shadows. It was inside. Behind his thoughts. But clear.
He rose to his feet, shortblades still buzzing faintly.
"Show yourself."
Nothing.
"You're learning the rhythm. One of few."
His heart pounded—not just from exertion now. This wasn't madness. It wasn't his thoughts. It was… watching.
"You're not real," he muttered. "Just a side effect. A trick of the dark."
The voice only chuckled. Or maybe the rock around him did. It was hard to tell. The boundaries between self and space felt thinner down here.
Kalem looked at the twitching corpse. Even dead, the creature's muscles flexed in wrong directions. Its chest opened briefly, not from breath—but as if something inside was still shifting.
He burned it. Not out of caution—but necessity.
The flames cast long shadows across the nearby tunnel wall, and as they danced, Kalem saw something else.
A symbol.
Carved into the stone behind the creature's corpse. Old. Etched deeply. Resembling the war-sigils used on surface barracks, but warped—twisted like it had been melted, then redrawn in the hand of something dreaming madness.
He reached toward it with his gloved hand. The rock beneath was warm.
"This place remembers war."
The whisper again.
Kalem turned back toward the crate. He needed to move. Patch up, scout forward, mark this path.
He slung the shortblades back into their sheaths and chose a blunt-headed spear next—one imbued with impact magic for short, brutal strikes.
As he walked, he passed the remains of the creature again. From its melted skull, a single eye had rolled free and was now watching him from the ground—still twitching.
He didn't stop to crush it.
The Abyss had begun its introduction. And Kalem knew now—this place wasn't just alive.
It was aware.