Echoes of the Abyssal Blade: Path to Free Will-Chapter 105: Cruelty

Raerin didn’t need to look back to know his people were fraying at the edges. He could feel it, like a taut string ready to snap. Every shallow breath, every clink of a boot against stone, every muffled sob from a child huddled against their mother’s side clawed at the fragile calm they’d built in the hours since leaving the surface. But they had to keep moving. To stop was to die. Worse than that, to be forgotten.

The thick, metallic fog clung to their bodies, seeping into skin, hair, and breath. Even their weapons gleamed red, slick with dew that was not water. Somewhere above, the world of trees and stars and firelight had ceased to exist, replaced by this forsaken wound in the earth. Raerin pressed onward.

"Light ahead," called one of the scouts, his voice a ragged whisper.

Raerin’s brow furrowed. There shouldn’t be light. Not here. Not unless it came from something alive.

He motioned for silence, raising a fist, and the line behind him halted. Jonan moved to Ayaka’s side instinctively, his hand brushing her elbow, seeking reassurance neither would voice. Ayaka’s fingers curled tighter around her dagger, the faint gleam of its edge visible even through the mist.

Ahead, a soft green glow shimmered through the fog, like the slow, steady breathing of some unseen creature. It pulsed in rhythm with the faint tremors beneath their feet. The air grew warmer.

"Scout it," Raerin ordered, his voice barely audible. One of the older warriors, Marrik, stepped forward, his spear angled low, and vanished into the mist.

The group waited. The moments stretched into a tense, unending silence. Even the constant drip of unseen water seemed to still.

Then—

A scream. Brief. Cut off too quickly.

Raerin swore and signaled the others to tighten formation. He didn’t need to give orders now; years of hardship and countless battles had forged these people into something more than mere survivors. They knew what to do.

Jonan’s heart pounded in his chest. He swallowed, tasting blood and iron.

"Stay behind me," he whispered to Ayaka.

"I can fight," she hissed back.

"I know."

And she could. He’d seen her slit a dusk-feeder’s throat without hesitation hours ago. But this wasn’t about skill. It was about proximity, about which body would fall first if something came.

They pressed forward, moving as one. The mist parted by degrees as they entered a wider chamber. The source of the light became clear.

A field of bioluminescent fungi carpeted the cavern floor in thick patches, their stalks thin and wiry, each ending in a bulbous head that pulsed with soft, unsteady light. The glow made the mist shimmer like liquid glass.

And there, sprawled near the edge of the fungal growth, lay Marrik’s body.

His chest was caved in, bones protruding like jagged branches. The weapon he’d carried was nowhere in sight.

Raerin crouched beside him, checking for any sign of life. None. He rose slowly, his expression unreadable.

"Watch the ground," he murmured. "Something moves beneath it."

As if in response, the earth gave a subtle, undulating ripple.

Jonan’s mouth went dry. The mist was playing tricks, surely—but then he saw it too. A faint shift in the fungal field, as though something massive and unseen stirred just beneath the surface.

"Go around," Raerin ordered.

They moved along the perimeter, skirting the edge of the fungal patch, weapons raised. Every step felt like it might be their last. More than one pair of eyes flickered to the body left behind.

But none spoke of bringing it.

It wasn’t cruelty. It was survival.

\*\*

An hour later, they found a narrow passage leading deeper. The mist thinned here, though the air grew heavier, carrying a cloying scent of rot. Walls narrowed until they were forced to pass single-file.

The oppressive closeness gnawed at them. The sound of their breathing seemed deafening in the tight space. Scrapes of cloth against stone. The occasional muffled cough.

Jonan’s thoughts wandered, unbidden, to the stories old men told by firelight—of those who ventured too deep and vanished, of things with too many limbs and voices like dying men. He’d thought them foolish tales meant to keep children from wandering. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He glanced at Ayaka. Her face was pale but resolute. The flickering torchlight turned her hair to threads of fire.

"Almost there," she said softly.

Jonan forced a smile, though it felt brittle.

By what might have been the ninth hour since their descent, the path opened into a cavern of impossible size. The mist thinned to a low-lying haze. Great pillars of stone rose from the ground and vanished into unseen heights, some broken and tilting like ancient monuments to forgotten gods.

At the cavern’s center, a vast sinkhole yawned. A rough-hewn path spiraled down along its edge.

Raerin halted them with a raised hand.

"This is it," he said.

The others gathered, exhausted, hollow-eyed. Some slumped where they stood.

"The descent to the Fourth Layer begins here. We’ll rest first."

No one argued.

Small fires were built. Food was rationed: thin strips of dried meat, shriveled mushrooms, and bitter water. The injured were tended. Those with wounds too severe to continue were given a choice.

A silent nod. A blade drawn across the throat. It was mercy.

Jonan couldn’t watch. He sat with Ayaka near the edge of the sinkhole, staring into its depths. Faint tendrils of mist rose from below, tinged a darker red than any they’d yet seen.

"They say it was a god’s wound," Ayaka murmured.

Jonan turned to her.

"The Bleeding Cavern. That it was made when something ancient and dying fell from the sky and burrowed into the earth."

He swallowed. "You believe it?"

"I don’t know. But the ground bleeds."

Neither spoke for a long time.

They set out again what might have been dawn or dusk—time had long since lost meaning. The descent was treacherous. Loose stones, slick with condensation, threatened to send them tumbling into the abyss with each step.

As they descended, the mist thickened once more, clinging in sluggish, oily tendrils. A dull, constant pressure built in Jonan’s head. The others felt it too; children whimpered, elders winced. A low thrumming sound reverberated through the stone, a heartbeat not their own.

Jonan lost track of how long they walked. His world shrank to the next step, the next breath. The feel of Ayaka’s shoulder against his. The rasp of Raerin’s voice, issuing terse commands.

Then—movement.

Something skittered along the far wall. A pale shape, too quick to catch in detail. It vanished as swiftly as it came.

"Keep moving," Raerin ordered, his voice rough.

They obeyed.

The deeper they went, the stranger the world became. The walls wept a thick, red ichor. The mist grew heavier, resisting their passage like a physical force. Faint shapes moved in its depths, never close enough to see, but always near.

Jonan’s legs trembled with exhaustion. He wasn’t alone.

Ayaka stumbled, catching herself against him. Her face was pale as bone.

"Just a little more," she gasped.

He didn’t reply. Couldn’t.

The path leveled at last.

A wide cavern spread before them, its ceiling lost in shadow. Pillars of bone rose like petrified trees, draped in rotted flesh. The ground was soft underfoot—too soft.

Jonan knelt and touched it.

Flesh.

He recoiled.

The mist parted as Raerin approached a massive, half-buried door at the cavern’s far end. Ancient, covered in symbols no one recognized, its surface pitted and scarred.

"This is it," Raerin said.

The Fifth Layer.

And whatever waited within.

Jonan stared at the door, his throat dry.

"We make camp," Raerin ordered. "Prepare yourselves. At first light—or whatever passes for it here—we enter."

No one cheered. No one spoke.

But in that moment, huddled together at the bleeding earth’s heart, they were alive.

And for now, that was enough.

The further they pressed, the more the world seemed to forget the notion of time.

No one spoke of hours anymore. The mist made it meaningless. It was as though the crimson fog swallowed the very concept of passing moments, leaving them stranded in an eternal present filled with damp air, distant sounds, and the constant, gnawing ache of fear.

At times, the mist parted just enough to reveal carvings half-swallowed by centuries of mineral buildup. Faint images — twisted faces, serpentine figures, crude shapes of men kneeling before something massive and formless. No one lingered long to decipher them. The air itself seemed to pulse heavier near those walls, as though the earth disapproved of their gaze.

Raerin led them through a narrow gap where the stone walls pressed so tight they had to turn sideways, their packs scraping harshly against the rock. A child began to sob, her face streaked with mist-slick tears, but a sharp glare from one of the elders stilled her. Even the smallest sound here felt wrong, as if it might rouse things the dark preferred left sleeping.

Jonan felt his muscles burn, his throat raw. Every breath was an effort, pulling in the iron-laced mist that coated his tongue and filled his lungs. He stole glances at Ayaka, whose expression remained hard, but her shoulders trembled. Still, she pressed on.