Kalem staggered forward, every step a lurching gamble between collapse and stubborn momentum. His arms shook, blood trailing lazy patterns down his torn forearm. His vision frayed at the edges — little flickers of colorless light danced before his eyes. Yet, somehow, a strange clarity cut through it all. He could think. He could move. The terror from the memory attack had shredded his emotions, but what remained felt sharper, more pointed than ever before.
He gasped in the stifling air. The world… wasn't right.
Walls of stone twisted as if caught in the slow motion of some titanic breath. Paths that should have led forward suddenly looped back behind him. Time itself seemed to stutter — the drip of water freezing in midair, then falling all at once, an entire sheet crashing down as if reality had skipped a beat.
Kalem touched the wall next to him, feeling the cold, uneven pulse underneath the surface. It was breathing. Or maybe he was imagining it.
The voices were worse now.
They crowded inside his skull, overlapping like an out-of-tune choir. Some hissed in broken tongues, others whispered almost tenderly, almost like lullabies.
"Not far now," a voice crooned.
"Break your legs," another giggled.
"Safe, safe, safe," muttered a third, rocking back and forth within his mind.
Kalem pressed his palm against his forehead, gritting his teeth. Focus. Focus.
He stumbled onward, drawn by something — a pull at the base of his spine that he dared not question.
The path led him to an unnatural clearing, a cavern within the Abyss, but clearly not formed by accident. The edges were too smooth, the curvature too deliberate, as though something had carved it with monstrous precision.
And there, scattered across the ground, were the signs of those who had come before him.
Half-melted suits of armor, their metallic surfaces warped and rippled like wax left too close to flame. Weapons broken into useless shards, rust devouring whatever had once been sharp.
Kalem knelt down, brushing his fingers across a scrap of blue-enameled plating. Old script had been etched along the edge — a language he recognized faintly from the Arcathis archives, but not enough to understand.
Further along, he found parchments. Pages fused to stone by time and damp, but some words still clung desperately to life.
"—no escape. Only down."
"—prayers unanswered. Became them."
"—the gate demands a toll."
Kalem closed his eyes, feeling the exhaustion curl around him like smoke. How many had come down here? How many had been swallowed, forgotten? Voluntary expeditions, forced banishments, accidents — it didn't matter. None had returned.
He stood, swaying slightly. His hand tightened instinctively around the hilt of his fire sword, the blade guttering with a faint, sullen flame.
Behind him, the voices shifted again, becoming a steady rhythmic chant. He couldn't make out the words, but the cadence crawled under his skin, vibrating against his bones. His name whispered in it — broken, rearranged, sung backwards.
A sharp, sudden movement at the edge of the clearing caught his attention. Kalem whipped his head around, sword raised — but there was nothing. Only the wall, twisting slightly, wrong.
Fractures.
Not just in the stone. In the fabric of the world itself.
Kalem crouched low, breathing carefully. His thoughts were clear, almost eerily so. He understood instinctively now: the deeper he went, the less he could trust what he saw. Or even what he felt.
He would have to anchor himself.
Not to the Abyss.
Not even to the memories of those he'd lost.
But to something even more primal — his own iron will.
Still clutching the scrap of blue armor, Kalem drove it into the ground before him like a marker. A memory. A defiance.
"I am here," he whispered to the darkness.
"I will remember that I was here."
The chant behind him swelled, a tide of meaningless words trying to drown him.
Kalem turned his back to it and walked forward, into the deeper dark, following the unstable pulse of the fractured world — because he had no other choice.
As he moved, another whisper — different this time — brushed against his ear, almost thoughtful.
"Still walking… little light."
Kalem didn't answer. He didn't look back.
The world might be breaking apart around him, but his purpose remained whole.
For now.