As dusk bled into full night, Kallum and Elyria made camp beneath the sheltering overhang of a twisted cliffside. Jagged peaks of the Silent range stabbed at the star-dusted sky, looming closer now, watchful and immense like ancient, sleeping titans.
A small fire crackled energetically between them, spitting embers that vanished into the consuming darkness beyond its flickering halo. The firelight threw dancing, distorted shadows across the worn stone walls etched by millennia of wind and weather, conjuring phantoms in the edges of vision. The sharp, clean scent of burning pine mingled with the biting cold air pressing down from the high mountain slopes.
Here, away from immediate pursuit and the judging eyes of settlements, Kallum finally allowed a fraction of the tension to bleed from his shoulders, though true relaxation felt like a forgotten memory.
He carefully unwrapped the stained cloth from his forearm. In the fire's restless light, the intricate scar tissue seemed almost to writhe. The crimson spirals pulsed with a faint, unhealthy glow – like dying coals fanned by a poisoned wind – the patterns shifting subtly, disturbingly alive. Its presence was a constant, grinding ache beneath his skin, a phantom limb of agony grafted onto his soul.
Elyria watched him silently from across the fire, her pale gaze unnervingly steady, reflecting the flames like chips of ice. After a moment, her quiet voice finally sliced through the near-silence.
"Does it still hurt?"
Kallum traced a finger lightly along the raised, inflamed pattern, feeling an ache that resonated far deeper than nerve endings. "Always," he admitted, his voice low, rough-edged. "But I've grown accustomed to the pain, if not the... presence humming beneath it." He looked up, meeting her gaze, driven by a need that momentarily eclipsed his caution. "You seem to understand these marks, yet carry none yourself. You never explained how."
Elyria's habitual guardedness seemed to soften, just a fraction. She chose her words with deliberate precision. "Not all who hear the Abyss choose to bind its songs, Kallum. Some of us learn to listen differently. To navigate the currents without being swept away. To exist alongside the melody without letting it devour our will."
He shook his head, the notion struggling against his own harsh experience. "How? How do you resist that pull? I've felt it, the whispers... they're insidious, relentless once you've truly heard them."
She leaned forward slightly, the firelight catching the silver sweep of her hair, illuminating the profound sorrow etched deep within her eyes. "It isn't easy," she conceded softly. "The Abyss is alive, Kallum – a vast consciousness woven from echoes and devoured will – and it sings ceaselessly. But the Chorus, the voices you hear, the powers Delvers covet and bind... they aren't just sound or memory. They are remnants. Fragments of will belonging to beings the Abyss consumed millennia ago: fallen heroes, forgotten gods, primeval beasts, shattered worlds. Their power echoes eternally, coalescing into resonant frequencies... patterns that desperate souls grasp onto. Patterns Delvers call Dirges."
She paused, letting the weight of that term settle into the cold night air. "These fragments become tools – instruments of incredible power, seductive... and ultimately treacherous."
Kallum nodded grimly. He knew the seduction all too well, the raw, intoxicating power offered at a soul-crushing price. Hearing her articulate it gave the formless horror a chilling name and structure.
"There are five major frequencies," Elyria continued, her voice regaining its near-reverent, cautionary tone, her eyes distant, as if viewing a grim tapestry woven from suffering. "Five primary Dirges that resonate most strongly, named for the fundamental aspect of the Abyss they embody: Grief, Hunger, Silence, Ruin, and Reverie."
The names struck Kallum like shards of ice. He felt a jolt, a sickening lurch of recognition at the first.
"Grief..." Elyria began, her gaze resting pointedly on his scarred arm, "amplifies pain, raw loss, sheer suffering – transforming that anguish into devastating physical force or assaults against the mind itself. Every wound becomes fuel, every agony a weapon."
So that's its name... Kallum thought, the bitterness rising like bile. Grief. An obscenely fitting label for this constant, gnawing agony. This brand of everything I lost. He stared at his scar, the crimson seeming to pulse hotly. "But it feeds on the bearer," he stated, the words scraped raw from his own marrow. "Consumes them. Burns them out from the inside."
"Exactly," she agreed, her voice solemn. "Grief users suffer immensely, their power inextricably linked to their own accelerating destruction. They burn like volatile stars – fiercely, often briefly – before their minds or bodies inevitably shatter beneath the weight of unending anguish."
Kallum listened, a cold knot tightening in his stomach as she moved on.
"Hunger Dirges," Elyria said, her eyes sharp and intense in the firelight, "grant predatory instinct, an unnatural, insatiable craving. Their bearers can consume... energies. Ambient magic, intrinsic knowledge, even the life force or singular abilities of others by devouring their very essence." A predatory void... Kallum thought, the horrors he'd witnessed in the Order's hidden labs flashing behind his eyes. That ravenous hunger... was that what they were trying to harness? "Hunger users," Elyria finished, her voice low, "often become bottomless pits, a vortex endlessly craving more power, more consumption, until nothing recognizable remains of who they once were."
"Silence," she continued, her voice dropping, softening almost imperceptibly, "grants stealth, erasure, the ability to slip unnoticed through the world, almost... ceasing to exist to mundane senses. They become whispers in the dark, unseen, unheard ghosts."
Kallum felt a chill unrelated to the night air. "Is there any controlling that?" he interjected, unable to hold back the question, the bleakness of these paths overwhelming him. "Any way to wield these without being utterly destroyed or lost?"
Elyria's head snapped up, her pale eyes fixing him with a sudden, sharp intensity that cut through her usual calm. "Survival lies in knowledge, Kallum, not just impulsive reaction," she retorted, her voice crisp, authoritative. "You cannot navigate the storm by only looking at the waves threatening to swamp your boat. Understand the whole abyss first. Now listen."
Kallum fell silent, chastened by the unexpected sharpness but recognizing the harsh truth in her words. He gave a curt nod.
Elyria held his gaze a second longer, then continued, the slight edge fading from her voice, though not entirely. "As I said, Silence users become ghosts. But," she added, her tone softening again with a touch of remembered sorrow, "many eventually fade too completely. Forgotten first by others, then by themselves... until they simply wink out of existence entirely."
She paused, her gaze drifting back to the dancing flames, a fleeting shadow of deep pain crossing her features before being quickly masked. "Ruin Dirges," she resumed, her voice steady once more, "embody entropy, decay made manifest. Bearers corrode matter, unravel complex enchantments, rot flesh and stone alike with but a touch. A potent tool for destruction," she acknowledged dryly, "but profoundly corrosive. Eventually, the decay turns inward, consuming the user as thoroughly and mercilessly as it consumes their targets." Decay, Kallum thought grimly. Eating itself. Another dead end.
"And finally, Reverie," Elyria sighed, a strange, almost wistful note entering her voice. "It alters perception – of self, others, even the fabric of reality. It can bend probability, conjure illusions or tangible constructs from dreams, even loop brief moments in subjective time. But," she cautioned, "the lines blur catastrophically. Users often lose the distinction between the real and the imagined, becoming lost in their own phantasms until they are trapped entirely within self-made illusions." Illusions compounding madness. Kallum shook his head inwardly. There's no escape, is there? Just different flavors of destruction.
He felt the weight of each named horror settle onto his soul, a terrifyingly clear map of the potential hells encoded in his own flesh. He looked again at Elyria, serene and unmarked across the fire. "Yet you resist," he murmured, the question returning, imbued now with the chilling context she had provided. "How?"
Elyria hesitated, looking away from the fire to meet his gaze fully. The mask of serene control cracked, revealing a profound, ancient pain beneath. "I resist because I must," she whispered, her voice tight with suppressed emotion. "I learned caution, Kallum. Learned it in the crucible of loss. I watched... I watched someone bind a Dirge. Someone... precious to me."
Her composure fractured for a heartbeat, her pale eyes glittering with unshed tears before she ruthlessly regained control. The vulnerability vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving only a bedrock of sorrow.
"He chose Silence," she continued, her voice barely a breath above the crackling flames. "And he vanished. Slowly. Piece by agonizing piece. First from the memory of others... then, eventually, from mine... finally, from existence itself. Watching him fade away... knowing I couldn't hold onto even the memory of him..." She trailed off, the silence thick with a grief that felt tangible in the cold air.
Loss... Kallum looked down, a reluctant empathy stirring beneath his ingrained suspicion. He recognized the shape of grief, the hollow ache left by absence, even if the specifics were alien. So she carries her own ghosts. Different from mine, perhaps, but just as heavy. It didn't erase his caution, didn't magically forge trust, but it painted her actions, her guardedness, in a different light. It doesn't mean I trust her... but I understand.
"Yet you still risk everything," he said quietly, breaking the charged silence gently, "journeying towards the Abyss again?"
"Because the alternative is worse," Elyria answered immediately, her quiet conviction absolute, sorrow overlaid with steel. "If the Threnody – the master song of the Abyss, the one from which these Dirges are but broken, discordant echoes – is completed, it won't matter who binds what, who resists, who falls. The world itself will sing its grief, its hunger, its ruin. Everything will unravel into that final, empty chorus."
They fell silent again, the vastness of that potential ending pressing down on them, heavier than the mountains looming overhead. The only sounds were the fire's hungry consumption and the lonely sigh of the wind through the unseen peaks.
After a long moment, Kallum spoke again, his voice rough. "Can they be unbound? Once chosen?"
Elyria shook her head, a slow, definitive negation. "No. Once bound, the Dirge becomes part of you, woven deep into your soul, your very essence. The longer you bear it, the more its nature shapes yours, like water carving stone. Bind too deeply, rely on it too often..." She met his gaze, her expression grim. "...and you will merge entirely. Become another nameless voice lost forever in the Abyss's endless, mindless Chorus."
Kallum's jaw tightened, the finality a physical blow. Merge. The word conjured images of screaming, dissolving faces in the rift, identity erased, absorbed into eternal, suffering song. He clenched his fist, the scar pulsing hotly beneath the wrap, a parasite feeding on his life. "Then our only hope is to silence the song itself," he grated out. "Or break it further."
She nodded quietly. "Fracture it. Scatter the Vestiges – the core fragments, the primary notes of the Threnody – so they cannot reunite. Ensure the song remains incomplete. That is why they matter so much."
He regarded her thoughtfully across the flickering flames. Her explanation, her revealed grief, hadn't erased his suspicion, but it had reshaped it into something more complex – a grim, shared understanding. She was as trapped by this as he was, driven by loss, armed with knowledge he desperately needed.
"Will we be strong enough?" he asked, the question stark in the cold night air, hanging precariously between them.
Elyria's eyes softened fractionally, resolute but gentle. "Together, perhaps. Alone... never." She held his gaze, a silent challenge, or perhaps an invitation. "That's why the Order fears you, Kallum. And me. Because together, carrying the knowledge and the burden we do... we might actually alter the song."
Kallum felt her words sink deep, intertwining with the aching thrum of the Grief Dirge within him. The Abyss had claimed part of him, branded him with its sorrow, set him on this cursed path. But perhaps fighting it, trying to contain it even as it consumed him, was a battle worth waging. Especially against the alternative she painted – the universal silence of total consumption.
"Then we continue," he murmured finally, the weariness in his voice underscored by a renewed, colder determination born of shared, horrifying knowledge. "Towards the Silent Peaks. Towards this shattered throne and hollow crown. We find the next fragment before anyone else does."
Elyria offered a faint, weary smile, the briefest flicker of something like hope in her sorrowful eyes. "Yes. Before others awaken the full song."
Above them, stars glittered like chips of diamond flung across black velvet, indifferent witnesses to their fragile, necessary pact. Beneath their skin, within the shard resting near the fire, the Abyss sang softly, endlessly, patiently waiting for its Threnody to finally be made whole.