Chapter 17: Edge of the Abyss
775 Words
Chapter 17: Edge of the Abyss
Aric Blackthorn’s gaze clouded, not with fear, but with the weight of understanding that settled like wet stone in his chest.
From Rowan’s initial explanation, some secret and foolish shard of him had hoped — maybe this was survivable, maybe there was a trick to it. But no. That fragile illusion shattered like glass beneath a boot.
This was a dead end dressed as a test.
Among all the ominous things Rowan had revealed, one detail screamed louder than the rest.
They were all my age.
The descendants who vanished into the pit had only just begun to bloom, power fresh and unstable, not yet rooted. They were young. His kind of young.
Not like the veterans who had entered and returned untouched, aloof and stoic. No, these were fledglings who never came back.
Aric’s thoughts twisted dark, circling like carrion birds.
Will I vanish too?
He asked without hesitation, "Where did they go?"
If he knew, maybe he could anchor something. Anything.
Rowan turned to him and shook his head slowly, with the solemn weight of a man who had seen too many questions die unanswered.
"No one figured it out."
Aric said nothing. The silence turned heavy, suffocating.
Even Rowan seemed subdued, letting the gravity hang between them. Seris remained quiet too, her silence not passive, but observant, pensive.
That glimmer of hope Aric had clung to crumbled fully now, like a decayed tooth torn from the gum.
Centuries have passed…
Two hundred years since the disappearances, and not a single soul had clawed their way back.
Maybe they were just sent somewhere they weren’t strong enough to survive.
The pit spat out adults whole. But the young, still malleable in spirit and bone, were digested.
Aric inhaled slowly, bracing himself against the futility.
It didn’t change anything.
He was still going in.
And he still had to come back out.
He nudged the flank of his Gravethorn gently, urging it faster, wind pressing harder against his face. A silent acceleration.
Rowan blinked, then followed. Seris said nothing, simply joined the pace.
And so the trio advanced.
Until they arrived.
The Darkness Pit.
The Gravethorns came to a gradual halt before it — a gaping wound in the land, vast and devouring.
No fences, no warnings, no protective runes. Every attempt to contain it had failed spectacularly: shattered glyphstones, broken spires, entire wards sucked in and obliterated by an unknowable gravity.
Aric dismounted, eyes narrowing.
The abyss breathed. He could feel it.
Cold. Wrong. Ancient. Hungry.
Tendrils of black mist snaked from the rim, curling upward like the incense of dead gods. It didn’t feel like a place. It felt like a predator.
He heard Rowan dismount behind him, the soft impact of his boots pressing into dust.
"Ninth Vein," Rowan murmured, voice low and bitter like an apology long overdue.
"I can’t tell what’s coming. I don’t pretend to understand your path. But…"
He stepped forward and bowed.
"You would make a fine Blackthorn. One of the finest."
Aric didn’t blink. He simply nodded. A man receiving a blessing he would carry like a scar.
"Thank you."
He turned back toward the pit —
"Ninth Vein!"
Seris.
Her voice cracked with something he hadn’t heard before: vulnerability. Sharp and fragile.
He turned.
She stood by her Gravethorn, fists tight at her sides. Not afraid. Determined.
Then, without a word, she tossed something.
A flick of silver.
He caught it. A coin.
He looked to her again, confused.
Her voice came again, steadier.
"Never give up."
For the first time in so long…
He felt something flicker.
Warmth. Fragile, foreign. Like light under an avalanche.
Someone was rooting for him.
Someone cared if he came back.
His fingers curled around the coin so tightly his knuckles went bone-white.
His crimson gaze sharpened.
"I won’t."
He nodded once, then turned.
The cold surged as he stepped closer to the edge, wrapping around his bones like shackles of frost.
He remembered everything:
His mother’s scream.
His father’s dying breath.
The Blood Sovereign’s decree.
The years of swallowing pain, of being broken again and again.
And now, at the edge of annihilation, he felt no fear.
No doubt.
Only a vow.
He would not die.
He would claw his way back if it cost him everything.
He would tear the realms apart, stitch them back together, and rewrite the rules if he had to.
And when he returned —
He would bring wrath with him.
"No matter what," Aric whispered.
The pit inhaled.
And he jumped.
The cold surged around him, hungry and endless.
And the darkness swallowed him whole.
- Writer
