Abyss Descension: I Perform Rituals to Evolve In The Apocalyps-Chapter 53: Journey 2

Everything changed. Leaving them feeling greatly shocked. The sight they were witnessing made no sense.

Where there had been cracked pavement the night before, now there was only endless forest. Trees where there should’ve been street signs. Roots punching through where tires had once left tracks.

"It’s shifting," Doctor Bell whispered. "This place—it’s not bound by normal laws."

"Then what are we standing in?" Wang Yuxin asked, slowly gripping his wrench again.

"An echo," Bell said. "Maybe even a trap. Designed for wanderers like us. Designed to keep people... *fed to it.*"

Suddenly, a scream tore through the air.

It came from a nearby house. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Lena was already moving before Kev could stop her. "That was a child," she shouted.

"It could be a mimic!" Kev warned.

But she didn’t stop.

They reached the porch of the house, Lena kicking in the door.

Inside was a child.

Human.

Or... appeared to be.

Curled in a corner, eyes wide and dark, skin pale. No glow. No black veins. No visible core.

Kev approached cautiously. "Hey. What’s your name?"

The child didn’t speak. Just stared.

Agatha stepped closer. "That’s not a kid."

Then it smiled.

Its jaw cracked open at an impossible angle, stretching wider and wider, revealing rows of barbed teeth. From its throat, a scream erupted—not in fear, but in *recognition.*

The walls of the house pulsed. Warped. Furniture liquified into fleshy tendrils. The floor became sticky.

"Out!" Kev yelled. "Get out, now!"

They ran.

As they bolted down the steps, more screams followed. Not from one house.

From *every house.*

The entire town was waking up.

Windows burst outward as tendrils shot through glass, latching onto the air like roots searching for prey. Lights in street lamps turned into eyes, tracking them as they sprinted.

"Run downhill!" Kev barked. "Get to the base!"

The terrain had changed again. The forest now sloped downward in a sharp descent. They didn’t question it. They ran.

Behind them, the town of Brighthollow twisted into something no longer resembling houses. Organic. Mechanical. Twitching. Pulsing. Like the town itself had always been alive and they had simply awakened it.

They ran until their lungs screamed and their legs buckled.

They didn’t stop until they reached a clearing—wide and barren, with the skeletal remains of an old stadium at the center.

Collapsed seats. A cracked field. A stage overtaken by moss and rust.

But safe.

For now.

They collapsed behind the remains of an old concessions stand.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

Then Doctor Bell exhaled. "We just walked through a pocket dimension. A parasite, imitating civilization to lure survivors in."

"Is that what’s waiting for us out there?" Lena asked. "Traps? Ghost towns with teeth?"

Kev stood, staring westward at the road that had reappeared—visible now, extending from the edge of the stadium like it had always been there.

"Yes," he said. "And worse."

---

On the eighth day, they saw Black Hollow in the distance.

A city half-submerged in smoke and mist, its skyscrapers leaning like tired giants. The horizon shimmered around it—heat, maybe, or something less natural. The buildings pulsed faintly in rhythm with something—breathing. Waiting.

And above it all, in the sky, hovered a shape.

A black triangle.

Silent. Watching.

Not a drone. Not a ship.

Something...

else.

Kev said nothing.

Just motioned them forward.

They were almost there.

Almost at the end of the beginning.

Of this new reality.

Of what the world had become.

They reached the outskirts of Black Hollow by mid-morning on the ninth day.

A breathless silence hung over the ruined city like a shroud. The smell hit first—burnt ozone, copper, and something worse. Rotting memory. Lena pulled her scarf higher, her eyes narrowed as she scanned the horizon.

No birds.

No trees.

Only ash swirling in lazy spirals between the shattered bones of once-proud towers.

A faded billboard greeted them at the edge of the freeway:

**BLACK HOLLOW – CITY OF PROMISE**

Someone had painted a red ’X’ over the word *promise*, and beneath it, in black smeared paint:

**IT BREATHES BENEATH**

Kev stared at the message, then glanced at Bell.

"I don’t like that," Kev muttered.

Bell shook his head. "Neither do I."

The road ahead was half-collapsed. Sidhu coughed as they stepped over a broken guardrail and into the urban ruins. His wound was worse. Bell had done everything short of amputation, but the infection was resisting every treatment. Still, the old soldier said nothing, only grimaced and pressed forward.

The streets were wide and empty, but not clean.

Remains of people were everywhere.

Some were just bones. Others had clearly died more recently—bodies curled in corners, hands clutched to faces as if they’d been weeping. A few had no obvious wounds. Their eyes were just... empty. Mouths still open. Dead from despair, maybe. Or something worse.

Wang Yuxin squatted beside a collapsed barricade where rusted weapons and uniforms told a story of the city’s last defenders.

"This was a military line," he muttered. "They made a stand here."

"And lost," Parvi added softly.

Black Hollow had been one of the last functioning city-states before the Fall. Autonomous. Armored. Rumors said they had experimental tech. Defensive measures no other stronghold had. But all that was gone now.

The further they walked in, the heavier the air became.

Not from heat. But pressure.

A growing sense that the city was aware.

Watching.

Waiting.

They passed through a narrow alley where something had scraped the walls from end to end—claw marks etched deep into brick and concrete, almost twelve feet high.

Agatha ran a hand along one of the gouges. "That wasn’t a Revenant. Too big. Too precise."

"Another variant?" Lena asked.

"Or something Revenants run from."

By the tenth hour of searching, they found a group of survivors.

The building was a half-collapsed museum, its stone archway blackened by fire. Kev only noticed the signs of life because he caught movement—a sliver of shadow darting behind a barricaded window. He raised a hand to halt the others.

"Not alone."