The terrain had changed again.
Kalem had stopped trying to understand the logic of it—if there was any. The Abyss didn't obey geography. It bled into itself, reshaped like a wound trying to heal and fester at the same time. One moment, he was walking through narrow gorges of glassy stone; the next, the floor opened into a wide, circular basin—sunken, surrounded by jagged cliffs that arched in like teeth.
He paused on the edge, squinting down. There was no fog here, no mist to hide what lay below.
Shapes.
Humanoid shapes. Dozens. Maybe more.
They stood still at first, motionless as statues. But Kalem knew better. He'd seen enough to recognize tension in stillness. He kept a hand on his fire blade and the thunder-spear strapped to his back. The crate hovered behind him, humming low with warding enchantments.
He descended.
Cautiously.
The basin floor felt soft—too soft. Not sand, not ash. Something fibrous, like flesh disguised as soil. The weight of it tugged slightly on his boots. Not enough to trap him… but enough to want to.
The figures stirred.
Kalem stopped.
They were people. Or they had been. Faces pulled taut and thin, eyes milky, flesh threaded with faint, glowing veins. Some wore remnants of armor—Imperial, scavenger, even Abyssal cult markings long outlawed. Others were draped in nothing but moss and webbing.
They didn't attack.
They reached.
One raised a hand, fingers trembling.
Another swayed in place, lips moving as if trying to remember speech.
Kalem stepped forward, careful.
A dozen faces turned toward him in unison. No eyes blinked.
Then one spoke.
"…still has… his name…"
The voice was dry. Sandpaper against stone. It came from a woman whose mouth hung wrong, like it had been broken and reset by something that didn't understand how faces worked.
"You still have your name," she said again. Her jaw clicked. "Don't lose it."
Another joined in—this one male, older, drooling something dark from the corner of his mouth. "Don't speak theirs."
A third: "They waited. They listened. Now they are."
Kalem's hand hovered at his blade.
They weren't attacking.
But the way they moved—not toward him, but around him—blocking exits, circling wide in shambling arcs—it was a cage made of people.
"I'm not here to hurt you," Kalem said quietly, unsure if he was speaking to them or himself.
A child-sized husk reached up, its fingers curling around empty air inches from Kalem's arm.
"Is it light?" it asked, gazing at his fire blade. Its eyes didn't move. Its voice was pure confusion.
"Go back," another moaned.
"No light down here."
"It burns when you name it."
Kalem's breath hitched. He clenched his fists.
His heart was racing faster than it had in hours.
One figure stepped closer. He hadn't even noticed her before—she'd blended into the cluster, face shrouded by tangled hair. Her voice was low, almost calm. "You'll forget your shape first. Then your reason. Then your words."
Kalem tried to push past her.
She grabbed his wrist—gentle, not aggressive. Her grip was weak.
"You're leaking," she said.
He looked down.
Blood.
His old wound had reopened somewhere between fights and crawling through tunnels. He hadn't noticed. Adrenaline had hidden the pain.
The hollow ones noticed.
Several of them suddenly swayed toward him, nostrils flaring. The air grew still.
Hungry.
Kalem pulled free.
"No," he said, to no one in particular. "No. You're not getting this."
He pressed forward. The basin was tightening. Every step he took, more of them stirred—reaching not to kill, not to bite, but to take. To pull pieces of him into them. Identity. Warmth. Thought. Anything they could cling to.
One voice, impossibly close, whispered near his ear.
"You should give it freely. It hurts less that way."
Kalem lashed out.
The fire blade crackled as it split the air—but he held back, barely grazing the nearest husk. They recoiled, not from pain… but from recognition.
A name weapon.
A tool of surface memory.
They hated it.
Or feared it.
He kept going, faster now, boots squelching over the floor as the fibrous ground tried harder to cling. He almost tripped over one of the crawling forms, skeletal and hissing something like prayer.
Kalem's pulse roared in his ears.
He could see the edge of the basin—just a dozen meters more.
But something grabbed his ankle.
A husk, buried to the chest in the ground, its face unblinking, mouth open like a smile.
Kalem turned and stabbed the ground near its shoulder—not in rage, not to kill, just to make it let go.
It did.
The scream it gave wasn't human.
Wasn't even animal.
It was wrong.
The others wailed with it. A chorus of lost voices, some shrieking, some sobbing, some just whispering over and over again: "You still have your name…"
Kalem ran.
He broke the edge of the basin and collapsed to his knees just outside the rim. His fire blade hissed as he dug it into the soil beside him, casting flickers of warmth into the air.
The husks didn't follow.
They stood there, lining the basin, heads tilted, watching.
Some waved.
Some didn't move at all.
Kalem sat there, panting, the weapon crate humming faintly behind him.
The voice returned.
"Do you understand now?"
Kalem didn't answer.
"You think death is the worst end," the voice continued. "You don't know what it means to forget."
He covered his ears. "Shut up."
"You can still hear me."
He pulled out a vial of water and poured it over his wrists, letting the chill bite into him. He wasn't bleeding anymore. He wasn't screaming. He was here.
Still Kalem.
Still himself.
But only barely.
The husks turned, one by one, and wandered back into the fog at the center of the basin.
He watched them disappear.
And for the first time in days…
He wept.