Kalem adjusted the bindings of his cloak as he crept deeper into the tunnels. These corridors were narrow—claustrophobically so—and the air was thick with damp, sour heat. His shoulders brushed against the walls, jagged with twisted rock and strange calcified growths like fungal ribs. The tunnel wasn't just tight—it wanted to close in.
His weapon crate scraped softly behind him, tethered with reinforced rope that resisted both heat and wear. He'd bound it tighter this time, silenced the metal with cloth wrappings, but every now and then it still gave a metallic sigh—like the Abyss was reminding him how heavy his survival had become.
Each step forward was slow. Measured. His boots sank into damp ash or scraped across bone-like fragments. The tunnel dipped downward gradually, and the deeper he went, the less stable the ground felt. Sometimes the rock crunched beneath his foot when it should not have.
That was when he first noticed it—an extra sound.
Not his own breathing, which was heavy. Not the distant, sluggish thump of the Abyss's strange pulse. Something else. Just behind.
Footsteps. Perfectly timed with his own.
Kalem stopped.
So did they.
He turned slowly, drawing no weapon yet, just listening. The tunnel behind him stretched into blackness, only faintly lit by the flickering glow of his enchanted blade sheathed on his hip. The crate sat motionless. No sign of movement.
He stepped forward again.
Step.
Then again.
Step.
But the sound wasn't right. It wasn't echoes—it was mimicry. Slightly off-beat, like something was trying to walk with him, just barely out of sync. And then…
Crunch.
From behind him. A fraction of a second late.
Kalem spun, sword drawn in a blur, flame briefly licking the edges. Nothing. Only his own breath, ragged now. The air here tasted of rust and old smoke.
He moved again—faster now.
A sound followed. A low scrape, then the unmistakable cadence of hoofbeats.
His breath caught. He stopped.
"...Onyx?" he whispered.
Silence.
Then, faintly, from far down the tunnel:
Chuff.
The way Onyx used to exhale when impatient. He had heard that exact sound a hundred times—after long rides, after fights, after cold mornings in camp.
"Impossible," Kalem whispered.
But his legs moved. Faster, reckless now. He pushed into the tunnels ahead, rounding a bend—and halted.
The corridor ended in a strange pocket-chamber. In its center, impaled to the wall like a grotesque display, was a corpse. It was clad in soldier's armor, though rusted beyond recognition, half-fused into the stone. The weapon it had once carried—a glaive—was jammed through its gut and deep into the rock behind. Its mouth was frozen open, head thrown back. Not screaming. Still screaming.
Its jaw had snapped at some point, maybe from the force of the impact, maybe after. The eyes were long gone, sockets hollow and weeping some black residue that reeked of burned ink and copper.
Kalem didn't speak. He didn't look at it for long. Just long enough to see the strange, warped shadow behind the corpse—like the wall had folded around it slightly. As if the Abyss had molded the space around the death.
He turned, meaning to go back the way he came—only to find that the corridor behind him had shifted. It was narrower. He was certain the path had been taller, wider.
Now it was little more than a jagged crawlspace.
A scrape echoed behind him. The corpse?
No. From within the tunnel. Deeper now.
He ducked down, pulling the crate behind him slowly. The rope cinched at his waist, the crate barely fitting through the tight corridor.
Then came the whisper.
"Crawl faster."
Kalem clenched his jaw, breath catching in his throat. He did not answer. He couldn't. The voice wasn't like the mocking tone before. This one was too close. Too real. Not like sound. More like contact.
The tunnel pressed in. He had to lie flat now, dragging himself forward with his elbows, boots scraping against unseen debris. The crate ground behind him.
Then—scrape.
It was following.
Something was back there, dragging across the tunnel walls. It made no sound of breath, no movement of limbs. Just that dragging hiss. Metal on stone, or worse—bone on bone.
Kalem pushed forward faster, body protesting from his lingering injuries. His wounded leg screamed, but he forced it to move.
Scrape.
He resisted the urge to turn. Turning wouldn't help. If it caught up, he'd have no room to fight.
The tunnel opened—barely—into another chamber. He pulled himself free just as the dragging sound halted abruptly behind him. When he looked back, there was only the tunnel. Empty. Still.
But he could smell it. Something foul. Like old milk turned to ash.
He rolled onto his back, chest heaving.
"You're not real," he muttered to the dark. "You're a trick. A ghost. A fragment."
But the crate behind him pulsed—just once—as if responding.
He turned away from the entrance, further into the chamber. The floor here was smoother. Scorched. No bones, no corpses. Just a strange, circular marking etched into the floor, barely visible in the glow of his blade.
A symbol he didn't recognize. But it looked familiar.
Then the whisper again, clearer this time:
"Don't leave it behind."
Kalem's eyes flicked back to the crate.
It hadn't moved.
But something had touched it. Something unseen.