Kalem's boots crunched over the fragmented remains of what had once been a path—maybe. He couldn't be sure anymore. Down here, everything was memory in decay. Shapes that once meant something, now smoothed by time and rot into uncertainty.
But there was something different about this part of the Abyss. The oppressive atmosphere, that terrible heartbeat beneath the stone, had softened. Just slightly. The walls no longer pulsed with those ash-colored veins. The air was still heavy, but it carried less malice. Less hunger.
Kalem paused at the edge of a jagged descent where the tunnel widened into a vast hollow. His body still screamed in quiet rebellion, bandages clinging to raw skin, muscles sore from fever and fire. He leaned on his weapon crate for support, breathing slowly. Controlled.
Ahead, embedded in the abyssal wall like a secret, stood a ruin.
It didn't belong here.
Even the Abyss seemed confused by it—its borders frayed, like the terrain refused to touch it directly. Columns of pale stone stretched upward into a crooked dome, fractured but still standing. And at its heart: a temple, or what was left of one. Time had peeled it away like parchment, but the lines of its architecture spoke of something ancient. Sacred.
He stared for a long moment, heart thudding. Then limped forward.
The floor of the ruin crunched underfoot—glass, perhaps. Or crystal. He wasn't sure. The structure shimmered faintly in the abyssal gloom, as if lit from within by something too deep to reach. A slow radiance, barely perceptible, but present.
Kalem reached the temple entrance. Two doors—partially collapsed—revealed a long central chamber. Strange glyphs lined the inner walls, half-melted and eroded, but still holding a kind of weight. Not language, exactly. More like impressions. Fear. Hope. Something between prayer and warning.
And at the far end of the chamber: a well.
It wasn't made of stone. It was a basin of raw crystal, jagged and pulsing with faint white light. The glow was faint, but steady—like moonlight filtered through snow. As Kalem stepped closer, the air grew warmer. Cleaner.
He stopped a few feet from the edge, every instinct taut.
The voice was silent.
For the first time in what felt like forever, there was no sound in his head but his own breath. No whispers. No half-mocking laughter crawling across his thoughts.
"…Where are you?" he asked the silence.
No answer.
He glanced down at the crystal basin.
The glow intensified slightly. He felt it before he saw it—his wounds, twitching. The heat in his leg, the deep muscle ache in his ribs. His skin crawled as torn tissue slowly knit together. The seared flesh from his cauterized wound tightened, but no longer throbbed. Even the nausea he'd been pushing through began to fade.
Kalem knelt beside the well, exhaling sharply.
He didn't touch it. Didn't need to.
Whatever this was—whoever made this—left something behind. A trace of intention. A fragment of purity that hadn't yet been devoured by the Abyss.
His mind cleared. The fog of hallucinations ebbed like a receding tide. He closed his eyes, and for the first time in what felt like days, breathed without pain.
It didn't last.
The longer he stayed, the more he felt a second sensation creeping in under the light: unease. Not malevolent. Just… alien. Like the well saw him. Like it remembered him.
Kalem stood slowly, bones stiff but his stance stronger.
"This place… isn't for me," he muttered.
He limped around the interior, eyes tracing the glyphs, memorizing as much as he could. There was a story here. A history buried beneath madness. Someone had built this place—long ago—and tried to preserve something in it.
But even this sanctuary was decaying. The cracks in the walls were widening. The light in the well flickered occasionally, like it was running out.
He knelt beside his crate, opened one of the compartments, and removed a dull metal shard. He used it to scratch a symbol onto the inside of the collapsed entrance—a mark only he would recognize. A trail sign. If he needed to return, he would know this place again.
Then he looked back, one last time.
The light shimmered, barely brighter. A goodbye, or a warning.
Kalem turned and walked out.
As he passed the broken threshold and re-entered the Abyss proper, the pressure of the environment returned like a hand on his throat. But he could bear it now. He felt something in his spine shift back into alignment—not physically, but spiritually.
He had found a place where the Abyss hadn't won.
Not yet.
He wasn't whole. Not even close. But he was alive. His hand on the crate was steady now. His steps, though limping, no longer dragged.
The voice remained silent.
Kalem smiled faintly to himself.
"I'll find the end of you," he whispered to the dark.
And the dark, this time, said nothing.