The path upwards towards the Silent Peaks was steep, unforgiving.
They stopped to rest as true dawn painted the bruised undersides of the perpetual clouds far above, the thin air biting sharp and clean in Kallum's lungs. He sat on a cold stone ledge, gazing back towards the hazy direction of Ildaren, now utterly lost in the distance.
Elyria's words from the cave echoed in his mind. Aberrant. Deviant. Difficult to pinpoint. Not Grief. Something else. Something forged in that lightless pit the Order called a sanctuary.
He closed his eyes, the phantom throb in his arm pulsing in time with his troubled thoughts. The memory, always lurking just beneath the surface, always cold, surged…
Darkness.
Not merely the absence of light, but a palpable presence, a crushing weight – both physical and psychic – that pressed in from all sides, heavy as fathoms of sunless ocean. It muted sound, stole breath, and seemed to leech warmth directly from bone marrow. This was the Abyss, the scar tissue of creation, vast and impossibly deep, bleeding its cold, ancient sorrow into the world above.
And Kallum, young, desperate, fueled by a hope so fierce it bordered on delusion, descended into its maw.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, blocking out the oppressive dark, forcing the image of Elara's face to the front of his mind. Not the hollow-cheeked pallor of her last weeks, the scent of medicinal herbs clinging faintly to her skin, but her face from the summer before – laughing, eyes bright as sun-warmed river stones, as she dared him to climb the old bell tower. 'Don't look down, Kallum!' she'd teased, her voice carrying clear and strong. Now, her breaths were shallow whispers against pillows, each one a victory hard-won. That memory, that strength, was his shield here.
His booted feet slipped on paths of glassy, obsidian-like rock that seemed to writhe with captured, internal light. He clung to his cold-flame lantern, its ethereal blue glow a pathetic shield against the overwhelming emptiness.
The silence here was profound, unnatural, broken only by the faint, multi-layered hum vibrating through the rock, through his boots, into his very soul – the Chorus. A billion billion voices of the lost and consumed, harmonizing into a single, continuous note of unbearable cosmic sorrow that clawed at his own grief, threatening to subsume it. Occasionally, it would spike, a wave of pure, undiluted terror or rage washing through him from the collective consciousness.
He checked the map again – tanned Delver skin, marked with glowing, faded lines – its forbidden knowledge a heavy weight in his hand.
Elara, he thought, the image of her pale, weak smile a talisman against the encroaching despair. The Order offers prayers. The Abyss may offer miracles... or damnation. He didn't care which, as long as it saved her.
He pressed onward, deeper. The pressure built, making his ears pop, his head ache. Strange, faint lights flickered in the vast distances – nebula-like clouds of phosphorescence, brief sparks of energies unknown. The geometry of the place felt wrong, shifting subtly when not directly observed. The air tasted of ozone, frozen metal, and something indescribably ancient, leaving a faint, greasy residue on his tongue.
Then came the Echoes.
They drifted from the oppressive darkness like strands of solidified nightmare, skeletal, vaguely humanoid shapes woven from mist and shadow. Eyeless sockets fixed upon his flickering lantern, drawn to the warmth of his living emotion.
One glided close, extending translucent fingers. Kallum flinched as the memory hit him – the fragile weight of Elara's hand, impossibly cool, limp in his own as he kept vigil by her bedside. No! He recoiled, pushing the vision away, but the Echo seemed to solidify slightly, feeding on the spike of raw grief.
Another brushed his arm, a touch like frozen silk. The memory of his parents' funeral, the empty rituals, Solen's hollow words of comfort. He cried out, slashing with his blessed blade. It passed through, disrupting the form momentarily. They weren't physical. They were psychic parasites.
He fought them with gritted teeth, shielding his mind with Elara's face, forcing down the rising tide of sorrow and fear. He stumbled past them, heart pounding, the Chorus swelling around him. He fled their silent, grasping pursuit, their psychic weight clinging to him.
Shaken, drained, soul-weary, he almost missed it. He was leaning against a rock face, catching his breath, consulting the strange, tanned Delver map again – its glowing lines pulsing faintly. Near his current position, a previous owner had scrawled a tiny, barely legible symbol beside a notation: 'Silence Anomaly' or perhaps 'Void Echo.' He'd dismissed it before as Delver superstition. But now, a distinct lack caught his attention. The ever-present, soul-deep hum of the Chorus felt... muffled here. Strained. As if passing through thick felt. He focused, listening intently, and beneath the muted sorrow, he detected a faint, alien resonance – a low, rhythmic thump-thump-thump that felt manufactured, wrong.
Ahead, a section of the cavern wall seemed subtly different in texture where the sound was weakest. Driven by a sudden, sharp spike of dread mixed with desperate curiosity sparked by the map's note and the sonic void, Kallum approached cautiously. The air beside it felt unnaturally still. A faint shimmer, barely visible, distorted the rock face. He recognized the subtle signature – refined, complex – of a high-level Order ward-illusion. Why...?
With trembling hands, pushing past a wave of dread, he pressed against the shimmer. His fingers met a yielding surface. He pushed through, into a carved passage beyond.
Discreetly etched above the threshold, layered beneath the fading illusion, was the symbol of the Order of Quiet Light. His blood turned to ice.
He extinguished his cold-flame lantern. The corridor relied on its own light: strange, bioluminescent fungi pulsed with a cold, blue-green light from niches, and large, multifaceted crystals in the ceiling throbbed softly.
He moved forward with extreme caution. The heavy silence was broken only by his own harsh breathing, the distant, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of whatever infernal machine lay deeper within, and a low, resonant hum that vibrated up through the stone floor, felt more than heard. The air here was cold, sterile, smelling sharply of ozone, metallic reagents, like burnt sugar and freezing iron, and underneath it all, the unmistakable coppery tang of stale blood and decay.
He hugged the walls, peering through reinforced crystal viewing portals. Labs carved from the living rock. Stone slabs stained dark, slick under the pulsing light, etched with runes that seemed to squirm slightly at the edge of vision. Upon them, Abyssal creatures, chitinous horrors and things of shifting geometry that defied easy focus, were splayed, vivisected with gleaming tools of obsidian and bone wielded by hooded, masked figures. Occasionally, a wet, bubbling sound from a fluid-filled tube, or a low, resonant zzzzzt from an arcane apparatus punctuated the quiet.
Further on, tall cylindrical vats – some of crystal, some seemingly grown from dark, pulsating organic matter with a texture like bruised fruit – held failed experiments. Twisted human forms suspended in murky fluid, bodies hideously fused with rock or abyssal matter, faces locked in eternal screams. Chitinous tubes pumped viscous liquids that glowed with a sickly green or oily purple light into them. Technicians scribbled notes onto wax tablets or dark slates.
He crept past an open doorway, heart pounding, hearing the scrape of metal on stone, pressing himself flat against the cold wall as two robed figures walked past, their voices low and clinical, discussing 'acceptable specimen degradation rates'.
He saw the bindings.
Delvers strapped to stone platforms within blazing ritual circles. Raw Abyss-stuff, a roiling liquid darkness drawn through runic conduits, was channeled into them via complex focusing lenses. He watched one convulse, flesh blackening and cracking before imploding into fine, cold dust. Another mutated hideously before being incinerated.
The technicians noted everything. Weaponization, Kallum realized, cold horror gripping him. Not study. Not defense. Power. Control.
Deeper still, drawn by the rhythmic thump and a sickening thrum of concentrated power, he found the central ritual chamber.
Crimson runes pulsed on the floor with a wet, visceral light around a massive, brutally carved black altar slick with fresh gore. Priests in darker, silver-trimmed robes chanted in a harsh, guttural language. On the altar, a bound figure convulsed weakly, their life force visibly draining into the pulsing runes.
And overseeing it all, near the altar, stood Father Solen. His face pale, strained, a mask of forced piety barely concealing something else beneath.
"Solen?" Kallum whispered, the name catching in his throat.
He must have made a sound. A priest looked up sharply. "Intruder! Seize him!"
Knights in black, rune-etched armor moved instantly. Hands clamped onto Kallum. He fought wildly, shouting Solen's name. "Why?! What is this?!"
Solen flinched, finally looking at Kallum. For a heart-stopping moment, Kallum saw true agony war with conviction in the priest's eyes, a flicker of the man who raised him, his knuckles white where he gripped a ritual dagger, quickly suppressed. The conviction won. Zealotry, or perhaps terror, hardened his gaze into something unrecognizable. "Forgive me, Kallum," Solen whispered, his voice thin. A muscle feathered in his jaw. "It is necessary. For the Order. For the true Light."
He turned away.
He turned away.
That final act, that ultimate betrayal, shattered something deep within Kallum. The image of Elara's fading smile flashed behind his eyes – this corruption was everything he fought against, embodied by the man he trusted most. Rage, cold and absolute, surged through him. He kicked back, breaking a knight's grip, stumbling backward.
His back hit the altar's sharp edge. His hand slapped down onto its surface.
Onto the pulsing runes. Onto the warm, sacrificial blood. Onto the nexus of suffering and power.
In that instant, everything converged: Elara's fading light; the Echoes' despair; the lab horrors; the sacrifice's final agony; Solen's betrayal; his own grief, his fury, his shattered faith. All compressed into a single, unbearable point.
The Abyss answered.
Not with heat, but with cold. An absolute zero burst from the point of contact, surging up his arm. Pain beyond imagining, like being flash-frozen and shattered simultaneously. He heard a sound like immense tearing silk mixed with fracturing glass, resonating deep within his bones. The air tasted like lightning and frost. He felt something imprint itself onto his very being, burning intricate, complex patterns along his nerves, into his soul – patterns that seemed to fold in on themselves, repeating with chilling, mathematical precision even as they spread.
Umber darkness, shot through with pulsing shadow and shards of icy light, erupted along his arm, solidifying, hardening the air around it. The crackling energy didn't just hiss; it pulsed with a strange, discordant rhythm, a counterpoint harmony to the main Chorus, like a broken chant repeating endlessly beneath the surface chaos. The Chorus outside seemed to resonate differently for an instant, focusing through him, a terrible theme reiterated with cold, new power.
Judgment. The word echoed in the sudden, terrifying silence within his mind. Balance.
Then, the energy erupted outward. Not a chaotic explosion, but a focused wave of shattering force and profound cold.
The obsidian altar cracked, splitting down the middle. The knights holding him were thrown back, armor frosting over, screaming in agony and terror. The runes on the floor flickered and died, the chamber plunging into chaos as the ritual catastrophically failed.
Blinded by pain, operating purely on primal instinct, Kallum scrambled away. He fled back through the desecrated corridors, the anomalous power singing its cold, sharp song of retribution within him, a terrible reprise begun.
He left behind the Order's profane secrets, the fragments of his former life, marked now by something ancient, unknown, and unforgiving. Fleeing into the only sanctuary left – the crushing, familiar darkness of the Abyss itself.