Kalem's boots dragged deep gouges into the warped soil as he stumbled back into the clearing. The gate loomed before him — colossal, unyielding, an ancient scar against the broken landscape. His crate, battered but still intact, sat where he had abandoned it. Somehow, it had survived the madness behind him, or perhaps the Abyss had simply allowed it.
Kalem wiped a trickle of blood from his lip, staggering toward it. His limbs protested, but he forced them into motion, hauling the crate closer to the base of the massive door.
Each movement felt like a ceremony, a deliberate reminder that he still had intent.
He crouched, resting against the cold metal, breathing heavily. His fire sword — dulled but burning still — rested beside him. For now, the voices were a low murmur, barely distinguishable, like the sound of a distant crowd.
"Pha," Kalem huffed, shaking his head as he set the crate down. "I haven't done something this stupid since the academy tournament."
He allowed himself a bitter smile. The battlefield destabilization exercise, they had called it — back when he had been expected to fight other young talents, not eldritch nightmares. He remembered the crowd's roar, the crackle of collapsing mana fields, the way the ground had split beneath their feet.
Compared to now, that had been a child's game.
Kalem stood and placed both palms against the surface of the gate. It was cool to the touch at first — then, suddenly, alive. The mana thrummed against his skin, pulsing, feeding into his veins like liquid fire.
He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to let it in.
Immediately, the world blurred.
The gate's power was not singular. It was layered, conflicted, almost at war with itself. Kalem could feel two distinct rivers of energy coursing through the material: one ancient and heavy, resonant with the memory of civilizations long extinct; the other old but still angry, newer and more volatile.
"This feels mixed," Kalem muttered, closing his eyes to better focus.
The ancient flow was slower, denser — a crushing pressure that pushed down on his spirit like the endless weight of stone. It spoke of millennia forgotten, of worlds broken beyond repair.
The newer flow was sharp, erratic — a wild thrashing against its prison walls, desperate to shatter anything it touched.
Kalem pulled his hands back, gasping.
"It's not just a seal," he said aloud, pacing slowly in a wide circle around the gate's base. "It's suppression. Two monsters, one chained atop the other."
The realization made his blood run cold.
The Abyss wasn't just a natural wound. It was engineered. Maintained. This gate was never meant to be opened by accident — it was a bulwark against something worse than everything he'd faced so far.
Kalem knelt by a fallen stone pillar nearby, examining the remnants of ancient carvings — glyphs and sigils, faded almost to nothing. He traced a symbol with his gloved hand, recognizing fragments of warding patterns from his studies. Reinforcement after reinforcement, spells layered with frantic desperation.
This wasn't the work of careful architects. It was the work of survivors.
He glanced back at the massive door.
"Well," Kalem said grimly, "if there's a door… there should be a key."
He slammed a fist lightly against the crate, shaking dust from its battered frame. His tools were still inside — weapons, remnants of old kills, shards of armor and magic-forged materials he'd collected throughout his descent.
"I could try to forge a key," he said, half to himself, half to the murmuring voices that hovered just out of sight. "Something that could match the gate's resonance. A tuning rod, a harmonic breaker—"
Or.
Kalem grinned darkly, flexing his sore hands.
"Or maybe I should just rip something limb from limb."
The voices twitched in the shadows, some whispering approval, others laughing or shrieking disapproval.
"Bold." "Foolish." "True." "Breaker." "Savior."
Kalem crouched low, thinking.
His eyes wandered across the scattered ruins around the clearing — broken relics, shattered weapons, discarded armor warped by ages of exposure to this corrupted mana. Tools, he realized. Materials.
If he could piece something together — create a weapon tuned enough to the gate's clashing flows — he might not need a key. He might force an entry.
Kalem's fingers itched with the old instincts of a battlefield blacksmith — the rough, ugly art of shaping weapons in the middle of chaos. He could use his own weapons as both forge and raw material. His broad axe as an anvil, his maul as the hammer. The fire sword's enchanted flames would serve as his furnace.
"I'll make my key," he said aloud, teeth bared. "Not elegant. Not beautiful. But strong enough."
He set to work, first clearing a space at the foot of the gate. His movements grew more frantic, more focused. Sparks flew in the dead air as he hammered, melted, reforged. Weapons that had served him well — and weapons he had claimed from dead monsters — all fed into the creation.
Hours passed. Maybe longer.
Time meant little here.
When he finally stepped back, sweat slicking his pale skin, he held a crude but powerful lance — long, barbed, wrapped in still-living threads of Abyssal mana. A weapon born not of precision, but of rage and sheer will.
Kalem staggered to the gate, planting the lance's tip against the center.
The gate responded — a ripple running up its impossible height. The air itself seemed to burn away in a sudden, awful vacuum.
Kalem braced, his entire body tensing.
"Let's see what you're hiding," he thought savagely — and thrust the lance forward.