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Author's Note:
Before we dive into this chapter, I'd like to clarify a small detail for those who have been following the story closely.
During the revision of previous chapters, I decided to adjust a few character names to better fit the tone and atmosphere of the Abyss.Kael has been changed to Kaleth, and Lira is now Lina.While the changes are minor, I believe these new names better capture the spirit of the world I'm building.
So if you notice these differences in upcoming chapters, please know it's not a mistake — it's a deliberate correction as part of refining the story.
Thank you for your understanding and for continuing this journey with me!
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Abyssal Code Records
Kharis Larva
Habitat Level: Levels 2–5
Danger Rating (Abyssal Codex): Ash (1)
Notes:
• Completely harmless, except when threatened, when it spits a mild acid
• Emits healing light.
• Considered a high priority resource for POTIONS.
• Protection programs for Kharis larvae exist in the upper levels.
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The silence of Level 3 was deceptive.
Rheell remained still, pressed against the shadows of a crack in the rock, with Lumis pulsing softly against his back like a second heart. A week had passed since the anomaly, since that Noctis and its nightmare message. But the abyss waited for no one. Least of all humans.
Below, deep within the guts of Level 3, something creaked.
A Ghul-Teke, barely distinguishable from the stone, was dragging its claws across the ground, blind to danger. Rheell didn't breathe—he didn't need to—but his muscles tensed like abyssal steel springs.
Lumis dimmed its glow, becoming a blot of liquid shadow.
Hunt.
The Ghul-Teke lifted its head, nostrils flaring. Too late.
Rheell dropped onto it like a rockslide, his claws—honed by months of killing—sinking into the soft joint between the creature's plates. The Ghul-Teke howled and twisted, but Rheell already knew how to break it. One swift move, a pull upward, and the shell gave way with a wet crack.
Lumis slid forward, its eager tendrils searching for the exposed flesh. Not to eat. To mark. A jet of golden fluid burst from its body, sealing Rheell's wounds before the Ghul-Teke's acid could burn him.
Victory.
But something smelled wrong.
It wasn't the blood. It wasn't the abyss.
It was them.
The Humans Advance
Level 3 was no longer the same.
Where once there had been only darkness and the echoes of beasts, now machines roared.
Rheell had watched them from above, hidden among the stalactites:
Level 1: A tangle of iron bridges and blue torches. Humans clad in leather and metal hauled crates, barking orders in a language Rheell hadn't yet deciphered.
Level 2: Laboratories. Glass cages filled with Kharis larva, their golden flickers fading as tubes drained their essence. Potions, Rheell understood. The humans drank them and healed.
Between Levels 2 and 3: The camp. Green recruits in ill-fitting armor, flinching whenever the wind whistled. Some returned without legs. Others, without eyes.
But the worst was at Level 5.
A fortress.
Towers of bone and metal anchored into the rock, lit by those blue lights that didn't flicker like fire but purred like domesticated beasts. From there, the strong ones descended: warriors whose armor didn't creak, whose blades cut the air as if the abyss itself obeyed them.
Rheell had watched them kill an Alpha Karnash in minutes.
Too fast. Too organized.
Lumis pulsed with unease.
Level 2 was no longer safe.
The Skavrith—those gray, screeching creatures—had multiplied like mushrooms on rotting flesh. Rheell saw them lurking in the cracks, their white eyes gleaming with cowardly hunger:
Ambushes: They fell in packs upon careless humans, biting at ankles, stealing daggers, dragging the wounded back to their lairs.
Cruelty: They didn't kill quickly. They played with their prey, tearing off fingers to collect, whispering things in a language that sounded like nails scraping stone.
One night, Rheell stumbled upon a Skavrith treasure: a heap of rusted armor and... a child.
Not a warrior. A small boy, skinned alive, his eyes still open in a slow blink of agony.
Lumis moved first.
Rheell followed.
It wasn't hunger.
It was instinct.
The boy—his fear, his pain, his memories—tasted like something Rheell had never known before: knowledge.
The first bite brought images: a woman singing, a hand stroking his hair, home.
The second, words: "Mama... it hurts..."
The third, the brain, spongy and warm, burst in his mouth like a forbidden fruit.
Lumis coiled around the skull, absorbing the marrow, the fragments of soul trapped in the bones.
When they finished, something inside them clicked.
Rheell stared at himself in a pool of stagnant water.
He was no longer a beast.
Skin: Stone-gray, crisscrossed by golden veins pulsing in time with Lumis.
Form: An eight-year-old boy—but wrong. Too agile, too sharp. His hair—was it hair?—was a tangle of bioluminescent fungal vines.
Mind: He now thought in full images. "Hide. Learn. Survive."
Lumis, at his side, was a tender nightmare:
Size: Like a three-year-old girl, but with elongated arms and a gelatinous tail trailing golden mucus.
Eyes: Amber, like human fire, but without pupils.
Ability: She could heal wounds with a touch, but also... remember.
The fragments of the boy now lived within them.
They found a cave where the walls bled a black resin that masked their heat.
Campfire: Rheell tried to mimic the humans. He broke blue mushrooms, piled them up, and struck stones until sparks flew. The fire—blue, like their torches—bathed them in light.
Cooking: A dead Skavrith roasted over the flames. The smell was... different. Better. Or worse? Rheell wasn't sure, but Lumis licked her lips with a bubbly sound.
That night, they dreamed of the boy again.
"Mama," his memory whispered.
Rheell didn't know what it meant, but Lumis—curled against his chest—emitted warm pulses.
As if she understood.
Rheell and Lumis, their bodies strengthened after their mutations, now inhabited the caves of Level 4.
Their instincts, still sharpened by necessity, whispered to them to explore deeper.
It was then they discovered an impossible place: an expanse where the rock gave way to a dome so vast it mimicked a broken sky.
Thick mist floated like suspended clouds, and within it moved colossal shadows: creatures resembling oxen and birds—forms distorted by the abyss.
Amazed, they moved forward, hidden among giant mushrooms and twisted roots.
In the distance, they saw something even stranger:
Humans.
"Archers! Formation!"
The voice of a human, apparently the captain, rang out over the murmur of the mist.
"Target that Velkrash! Quickly, before it gains altitude!"
The creature soaring through the air beat its ragged wings, the sharp bony edges whistling like blades in the wind.
A shriek tore through the stone.
The bird dived, tearing into a soldier's back before he could raise his shield.
"Watch out for its claws!" roared the captain, drawing his blade, while the wounded man collapsed, convulsing.
The battle was fierce.
Arrows hissed through the air, some striking the monster's wings. The Velkrash spiraled wildly, slashing with cuts that tore through flesh and metal alike.
A young warrior, trembling but determined, managed to shoot an arrow into the creature's right wing joint.
The beast shrieked.
Losing balance, it fell like a meteor, crushing two more soldiers before laying exposed.
The captain did not hesitate.
With a sharp order, his men swarmed the beast, brutally skinning it to harvest its hide and bones before worse predators could arrive.
Then they withdrew, leaving behind only bloodstains and the lingering rumor of death in the air.
Hidden behind a thicket of mushrooms, Rheell and Lumis watched in fascination.
They learned.
They saw how humans hunted, how they worked in packs, how they finished off their prey without mercy.
This was different from simple instinct.
This was planned hunting.
And soon, they would have a chance to put it into practice.
Later, while exploring a plain covered in titanic mushrooms, a vibration in the ground alerted them.
From the mist emerged a titan:
Drelgor, as the humans called it, a blind monster with a skull-like head and sensory tentacles thrashing like hungry roots.
The Drelgor detected them instantly.
With a muffled roar, it charged.
Lumis vibrated in alarm; Rheell was already in position, claws extended.
The battle was brutal.
The Drelgor lashed its tentacles with blind fury, grabbing Rheell by the leg and slamming him into the ground.
Lumis responded by spraying a jet of acid, partially dissolving one of the tentacles.
Freed, Rheell used his agility to climb the side of the monster, digging his claws beneath the hollow skull.
The Drelgor roared, staggering.
Together—with Rheell's speed and Lumis's cunning—they managed to bring it down, finally striking a killing blow to its exposed heart.
Panting, victorious, they mimicked what they had seen from the humans:
They skinned the creature, looted its flesh and hide, and dragged their trophies back to their lair.
There, they practiced their new knowledge:
Weaving crude layers of cured hide to cover their bodies and conceal their forms.
The craftsmanship was rudimentary, but it served its purpose: camouflage.
Meanwhile, at the upper camp, Lina was reviewing exploration maps.
Something caught her attention in the distant mist: two small figures walking together.
She frowned.
"Children... at this level?" she murmured.
An elderly researcher approached, curious.
"Children, you say?" he asked in a rasping voice.
"There, in the Pradus sector," Lina pointed, uneasy.
From afar, they looked like two children—one older, one smaller—covered in dirty hides.
"Hmm..." muttered the old man, his face hardening. "That's not normal. We'll report to the exploration team."
Lina, worried, ran to inform her captain, Kaleth.
"Children, Lina? Not again with your theories," Kaleth growled, recalling her past obsession with Kharis larvae.
"This time it's different!" she insisted. "Even the Major saw them!"
Goran, leaning on his obsidian axe, shrugged.
"The abyss changed, Kaleth. Ever since that anomaly... nothing's the same."
After a tense exchange, Kaleth agreed to form a search party.
He himself would lead it, alongside Goran and three other veterans.
The expedition crossed fields of phosphorescent mushrooms and beast skeletons until, finally... they saw them.
Two cloaked figures moving erratically.
"We have them," said Kaleth, raising his sword. "But... something's wrong."
The air reeked of viscera and death.
The hides dripped with old blood.
And from the clothes of the smaller one, something protruded: a gelatinous tail, swaying silently.
Kaleth paled.
"Stop!" he ordered, advancing cautiously. "Children...? Turn around!"
While exploring, Rheell and Lumis noticed the humans too late.
Lumis trembled, her light pulsing like an alarm signal.
Humans.
She remembered.
She remembered the experiments. She remembered the fear of her kind.
A primal fury overtook her.
Lumis turned first. Under the hood, her pupil-less amber eyes burned with ancestral hatred—the hatred of Kharis enslaved in human laboratories.
As Kaleth approached, he hesitated. "Gods, it's a spawn of—"
Lumis did not hesitate. From her mouth, a jet of acid sprayed, hitting the captain square in the face.
Kaleth screamed.
The acid instantly corroded his flesh, his cry freezing the blood of all present.
Rheell, driven by a savage instinct, lunged.
His claws sliced through the captain's throat like knives through silk.
Kaleth fell, convulsing.
Chaos.
Goran and the others barely reacted before the two beings—no longer children—leapt into the void of a nearby pit, vanishing into the darkness.
Goran screamed in rage.
"KALETH!!"
But it was useless.
His friend, his brother-in-arms, lay dead at his feet.
It had all happened in the blink of an eye.
Death in the abyss did not ask permission.
It simply took.
With burning tears, Goran gathered the mutilated body.
When they returned to the camp, the news spread like a plague.
An urgent order was issued, as Kaleth had been a distinguished member of the High City Knights:
"Unknown monsters. Childlike appearance. Hostile. Report to the council."
Lina stared into the horizon, trembling, horrified by what had occurred.
They weren't children. They weren't beasts.
They were something new that had emerged from the abyss.
And the abyss was just beginning to reveal its new horrors.
Meanwhile, in the High City's investigation committee hall, murmurs and the scratching of quills on parchment filled the air.
In the center, around a circular table strewn with blood-stained maps and records, high-ranking officers, field commanders, and abyss scholars debated in hushed voices.
A gas lamp swayed overhead, casting monstrous shadows across weary faces.
High Marshal Raimond, his ceremonial armor still dusted with abyssal grime, rose and struck the center of the table with his staff.
"Silence."
The voices died as if the air itself froze.
The aged investigator Elkan, his eyes clouded from too much time underground, unfurled a scroll.
"Official report from Level 4 patrol, Pradus sector," he read in a dry voice. "Confirmed loss of Captain Kaleth at the hands of... two unknown entities."
An uncomfortable murmur spread.
"Entities?" sneered General Ross, a veteran of the Level 6 campaigns. "Weren't they just wild children in disguise?"
"With respect, General," interjected a young researcher, her voice firm despite the tension,
"witnesses report anomalous behavior: corrosive secretions, claws, and movement impossible for normal humans."
Ross scoffed.
"So what? Minor mutations? The Abyss does that every year. I wouldn't even get out of my chair for a couple of rat-faced kids."
Marcus closed his eyes in frustration.
"Let's not forget," Elkan added gravely, "there were previous reports of unusual activity in that sector... a mutated Xhar-Voth, environmental distortion traces... and now these appearances."
A brief silence fell.
From the shadows, a voice colder than steel spoke:
"And the Noctis?"
It was Counselor Agatha, in charge of High-Level Threats.
"Have you forgotten what those two kids fought during the last operation?"
The mere mention of the Noctis sent shivers through even the most seasoned officers.
"We don't have direct confirmation," Marcus replied, though he sounded more hopeful than certain.
Agatha narrowed her eyes.
"Maybe. But the Abyss doesn't hand out new anomalies without a cost."
She leaned forward, her bony fingers tapping a map where the Pradus sector glowed faintly red.
"My suggestion: proceed with local elimination operations. Hunt down the entities. Initial threat category: low priority."
"Low?" protested the young researcher.
"The real anomaly is the Noctis," Agatha cut in without looking at her. "Not two abyssal brats."
Marcus nodded slowly.
"Send scouts. Authorize a moderate bounty for proof of elimination.
And..."
He paused.
"Increase surveillance in the deeper levels. If there's a pattern... we'll know soon."
The scribes nodded, sealing orders with black wax.
The meeting ended as it had begun: in whispers, broken promises, and eyes unwilling to meet the truth.
Because even if they refused to admit it...
something was changing.
Something neither their glories nor their spears could stop.
Meanwhile, deep in the abyss, Rheell and Lumis gnawed at the raw flesh of a beast.
Lumis's hood shifted with the rhythm of her glowing pulses—now red, like Kaleth's blood.
The abyss had changed them.
But not as much as they would change the abyss.