Kalem stepped into stillness.
It was wrong.
Not the quiet of absence, nor the silence of exhaustion—it was forced. Like something had muffled the air itself. His first breath inside the clearing tasted like ash and frost. No wind. No echoes. Just the sound of his boots scraping across smooth, dustless stone.
He limped forward.
The space was vast—impossibly vast. The tunnel behind him narrowed into the gloom, but this chamber… it opened up into an artificial canyon. The ceiling was high and curved, as though it had been carved by divine hands, and along its walls were half-crumbled pillars bent at unnatural angles, spines of once-sacred architecture now twisted by the Abyss.
And there—at the center of it all—was the gate.
Kalem stopped walking. His breath caught.
The door stood tall, easily forty feet high, framed in dark metal that pulsed faintly with a dull, internal light. Its surface was engraved with symbols—some recognizable, others impossibly old—runes of sealing, of denial. But the marks weren't glowing. They were still. Dormant.
Its color wasn't quite black. It was the shade you saw behind your eyes when you were afraid. A dead void carved into a boundary. The texture shimmered faintly, as if it weren't stone or metal at all, but something halfway between. He couldn't tell if it was absorbing light or simply refusing to reflect it.
Around its base, dozens—maybe hundreds—of corpses lay scattered. Some half-rotted, others reduced to armor and bone. Weapons littered the floor like fallen teeth. He saw hammers, blades, crystal staves. All broken. All useless.
Some had died fighting. Others looked like they had died begging.
Kalem dropped to one knee.
His breath came ragged, the sting of his wounds finally crawling past the numbness and into his awareness. His chestplate was cracked and burned. His shoulder—torn open. His side was slick with dried blood, and his thighs trembled beneath the weight of each movement.
He had run. Fought. Bled.
And for what?
To stand here. Before this door.
He looked at the crate—what remained of it. It had fallen apart during the escape. Splintered, its reinforced sides broken open. A trail of tools and weapons lay across the corridor behind him like breadcrumbs for ghosts.
He hadn't gone back for any of them.
Only his sword remained in his hand. The fireblade. Still faintly glowing, more ember now than flame.
The voice didn't speak.
Not now.
That disturbed him more than anything else. It had screamed during battles. Mocked him in silence. Whispered through pain.
But now… nothing.
He exhaled and leaned back against the smooth platform before the gate. Cold stone met his spine.
In the unnatural stillness, Kalem allowed himself to breathe. One long, ragged draw of air.
"So this is it," he whispered, barely audible.
The door loomed over him.
He studied the corpses again. Many bore the sigils of surface nations long gone. One looked eerily familiar—a soldier's armor style he recognized from home. He had fought alongside men in similar garb in the early days of the Abyss War.
They had died trying to enter this place.
Or maybe trying to keep something from leaving.
He didn't know which disturbed him more.
With a shaking hand, Kalem reached into his pouch and pulled out a shard of dry moss. He chewed it numbly, barely tasting the bitterness. It was all he had left for sustenance. The rest of his rations were gone. Eaten. Spilled. Forgotten.
This moss had kept him alive.
Barely.
Minutes passed. Maybe longer.
Time did not move here. There was no sun. No pulse of day and night. Only the cold, the waiting, the breath of the Abyss at the edge of his thoughts.
Then, finally—he stood.
He walked forward.
Not with defiance. Not with courage.
Just necessity.
He reached out and placed his palm on the door.
It was warm.
And wrong.
He recoiled at first, not from heat, but from a sense of deep and personal recognition. Like touching the scar of a memory he didn't know he had.
The door didn't move. But beneath his palm, the runes flared faintly. Only for a second.
And then—
He heard them.
Not one voice.
Voices.
Dozens. Hundreds. Whispering at once, layered over one another like silk and shattered glass. Some laughed. Some wept. Some screamed.
He staggered back, clutching his ears—but the sound wasn't in the air.
It was inside.
"It hears you." The voice—the old one—returned. But it wasn't alone anymore.
A chorus echoed through Kalem's skull. Names he didn't recognize. Languages he didn't understand. Phrases like:
"You're almost ready."
"Let us out."
"We remember your name."
"You were always going to come here."
"The gate needs a hand."
"Don't forget your own symbol."
Kalem gasped and dropped to one knee, the noise receding as quickly as it came.
He stared up at the gate.
The silence returned—but now, it watched him. He could feel it.
A presence behind the structure. Something vast. Ancient.
Waiting.
Kalem lay down beside the structure. Not asleep. Just… still.
He would rest.
Not to recover.
But to face whatever this gate led to with his eyes open.