Abyss Descension: I Perform Rituals to Evolve In The Apocalyps-Chapter 52: Journey

"We rest here," Kev said. "Two-hour rotations. Doctor, check Sidhu again. Agatha, take first watch with Parvi."

No one complained.

The night was long. The silence deeper.

They heard noises around 3 a.m. A distant crunch of feet on gravel. A skittering sound. But nothing came close.

Morning broke slowly, the clouds stained copper and grey. As they resumed their journey, Kev noticed something strange—nature itself seemed reluctant to grow here. Most of the trees had withered roots, and even the grass was sparse. The sky carried the faintest red tint near the horizon, like dried blood smeared over the clouds.

Then they found them.

Survivors.

A small group—maybe ten—camped in the ruins of a collapsed church. The steeple had fallen sideways, the bell half-buried in the dirt. Makeshift tents made from tarp and signs surrounded the building. When Kev’s group approached, guns were immediately drawn.

"Stop!" a young woman shouted, rifle pointed squarely at Kev’s chest. "Hands where I can see them!"

"We’re not infected," Kev said, raising his arms slowly.

"Prove it."

"Check our eyes. No glow. No tremors. No nucleus mutations."

A tense silence followed. Then an older man stepped forward—scarred, gaunt, but still sharp-eyed.

"He’s telling the truth," he said. "Let them in, Eliza."

Weapons lowered, cautiously.

Inside the camp, the survivors looked like they hadn’t seen civilization in months. One woman was missing an arm. A child stared wide-eyed from behind a makeshift barrier of metal sheets. A man in a wheelchair had rigged a flamethrower to the side of his chair using old car parts.

"How long have you all been on the surface?" Kev asked.

The scarred man, who introduced himself as Ruel, grimaced.

"Since the day the ground cracked and the cities fell. We never made it underground. No space. No warning. The old governments sealed themselves in bunkers and left the rest of us to rot."

Parvi frowned. "The cities are gone?"

Ruel nodded solemnly. "Ashes now. Firestorms swept through the northeast corridor. Some sort of aerial bombardment... maybe from drones. Or satellites. We stopped asking who was doing it a long time ago."

"And the Revenants?"

"They’re worse up here. Some aren’t even human anymore—twisted by radiation or whatever black bile is in those cores. You’ve seen the standard kind, right? Glowing nuclei, rotten flesh? Up here, some have spines that split open into wings. Others... they just scream. Don’t even move. Just scream until your ears bleed."

Lena shivered.

"They swarm at night," Ruel continued. "Travel in packs during the full moon. We’ve seen nests—massive ones—half-buried in factories. And if you ever find a core bigger than your fist?" He leaned in. "Run."

Kev looked around at the ragged camp. "What are you all hoping to do? Just survive?"

"For now. There are rumors. Whispered over shortwave, in broken Morse. Something about a convoy moving west. Safe zone somewhere near the mountains. Haven or Halcyon, they call it. We don’t know if it’s real."

Doctor Bell spoke up. "A convoy? There’s still organized effort somewhere?"

"Or someone wants people to think there is," Ruel said. "Some follow the signal. Others stay put. Most die either way."

Kev turned to his group. "We need to find out if it’s real. If there’s even a chance—"

"You’ll have to go through Black Hollow," Ruel interrupted. "A dead city. Blown apart in the first wave. It’s between us and whatever’s left of the west. That place... it’s cursed. Revenants don’t just live there. They’re born there."

No one spoke for a while.

Later that evening, the survivors shared dry food, strange mushroom paste, and irradiated water filtered through scavenged tech. Kev’s group listened to stories of betrayal—bands of desperate humans selling others to infected swarms in exchange for days of safety. Of underground warlords using old military A.I. cores to enslave towns. Of child scavengers who ran messages between ruins, faster than dogs and harder to catch.

It was a new world.

Not lawless—laws had simply changed.

Strength was law now. Cunning was a language. Compassion was currency—and usually overpriced.

Kev watched the flickering firelight dance across the faces of his team. Sidhu, asleep against a broken pew. Lena, sharpening her blade. Parvi, sketching the shape of a new crossbow trap on a dirty notepad. Doctor Bell, eyes sunken as he scrolled through readings on a barely functional bioscanner. Wang Yuxin, still holding that damn wrench.

They had survived the Abyssal Burrow.

But the surface?

It was a different kind of hell.

Tomorrow, they would move again.

Toward the city of ghosts.

Toward Black Hollow.

Toward whatever remained of the human dream.

____

They left before dawn.

Black Hollow lay a week’s journey to the west, through forests that no longer whispered with wind, through towns where the dead still walked, and across bridges that creaked with the weight of old sins. Ruel had warned them: stick to the high ground when you can, avoid standing water, and never walk past a child crying alone.

"They’re traps," he had said, eyes like stone. "Some Revenants have learned to mimic."

Kev didn’t question it. Not after what they’d already seen.

The first three days passed in grim, determined silence. They stuck to the remnants of an old rail line, which cut through overgrown wilderness and passed beneath shattered overpasses. The land was not as lifeless as it first appeared—birds still flitted from tree to tree, though they looked wrong. Bloated eyes. Discolored feathers. And too quiet. They didn’t chirp. They watched.

Sidhu’s limp worsened on the second day, and Doctor Bell had to cut into the wound again. The infection was unlike anything Bell had seen before. Not viral. Not bacterial. Something... *resonating.*

"They don’t just infect the body," Bell muttered under his breath as he treated it. "It’s like they sing to the cells. Change them."

Kev didn’t ask what he meant. He didn’t want to know.

They passed through the ruins of a shopping complex on day four. The glass windows were long shattered, and vines had swallowed the concrete in thick coils. A mutated deer stood at the entrance of what used to be a supermarket, staring with glowing blue eyes and antlers cracked like stone. It didn’t flee. It didn’t move. Just stood, watching, even as they passed within meters of it.

Lena turned to Kev. "That thing’s not natural."

"Nothing is anymore," Kev said.

By the fifth day, the rail line dipped into a canyon. The tunnel ahead gaped open, black as a Revenant’s throat. Kev didn’t like it.

"We go around," he said immediately. "I don’t care if it adds another day."

But they didn’t get far before the skies turned.

It started with a distant rumble. Not thunder. A growl. Like the earth was warning them.

Then the red rain began to fall.

Thick, syrupy drops that stung on contact. Parvi cried out first—one drop had landed on her neck and sizzled her skin like acid. Doctor Bell quickly yelled for everyone to cover up. They scrambled, dragging a tarp over the wreck of an old train car and hiding beneath it. The rain hammered down with unnatural rhythm, each drop hissing as it hit the ground, dissolving bits of soil and bone.

Kev lay under the tarp beside Lena, watching as a red droplet burned a hole into the metal above them.

"What the hell happened to the sky?" Lena whispered.

"Same thing that happened to everything else," Kev replied. "It broke."

The rain stopped after three hours.

By then, half the forest had melted into toxic sludge, and the deer was gone.

They moved forward again—exhausted, cold, soaked in sweat despite the chill.

On the sixth night, they found a town.

It wasn’t marked on any map, not even the digital fragments Bell had stitched together from old satellites. Just a quiet place built into the slope of a hill—mostly intact, though unnervingly clean.

No signs of scavenging.

No blood.

No decay.

Too perfect.

Kev didn’t want to enter.

But Sidhu was pale and trembling, barely conscious. They needed shelter. Real shelter. So they entered. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

The town was called Brighthollow, according to the peeling metal sign that arched over its main gate. The homes were all identical—two stories, same paint, same porch swing. No animals. No bodies. Just silence.

Kev chose the center-most house. It smelled of lemon oil and dust. A radio hummed quietly on the kitchen counter—still powered.

Too powered.

Wang Yuxin pointed at it, eyes narrowing. "Something’s generating power nearby."

"Should we investigate?" Parvi asked.

Kev shook his head. "No. We rest. No wandering."

That night, Kev dreamed.

He stood in a corridor of mirrors. Each one reflected not himself, but someone else. Agatha. Bell. Lena. Sidhu. All of them staring back, expressionless. Behind their reflections stood Revenants. Close. Closer than they should’ve been.

He tried to scream.

Then woke.

Everyone had dreamed the same thing.

Every single one of them.

"I don’t like this place," Agatha muttered. "It’s not just haunted. It’s *remembering* us."

Kev made the call immediately. "We leave now."

But the road out of Brighthollow was gone.

Not blocked.

Gone.