The descent swallowed him.One moment Eldrin was standing upon shattered earth, the ruins of battle smoking around him. The next, the ground had opened beneath his boots, and the abyss claimed him whole. There was no falling in the usual sense no rush of wind, no weightlessness. It was as though the world itself exhaled, and he was pulled down into lungs of blackness.The air grew heavy. He reached for breath and found only ash. Shadows licked at his arms, stretching, twisting, coiling like serpents drunk on his fear. His blade the steel that had been his anchor quivered in his grip before vanishing into the dark, swallowed like a spark into the ocean."Eldrin," a voice whispered.He froze.The sound wasn’t distant, wasn’t thundered from above or crawled from below. It was inside him, brushing his thoughts with icy fingers. He staggered forward, boots finding ground that shouldn’t exist. A floor of stone stretched beneath him, slick as glass, but when he glanced down he saw only an en

Isolde’s scream tore from her throat but was swallowed almost immediately by the suffocating dark. There was no wind, no sensation of speed only the crushing sense of being drawn deeper, pulled down into a pit with no bottom. Her stomach lurched, and for a terrifying instant she wondered if she had already died.Then the shadows parted.She slammed against something solid, the impact rattling her bones. The ground beneath her was not earth or stone but something slick and pulsing, as though she stood on the flesh of a vast creature. The air reeked of ash and sulfur, and her breath came short and sharp.She pushed herself up, eyes straining to adjust. The abyss was not absence but a world of its own. The walls pulsed faintly with veins of red light, and shapes shifted in the distance figures that melted into smoke when she tried to focus on them. Whispers slithered all around, indistinct and endless, scraping at her mind like claws.Isolde pressed a trembling hand against her temple. “

The abyss was endless.No sky, no groundjust a vast, pulsing void that breathed like a living thing. The air was thick, cloying, charged with whispers that slithered into the mind, promising power, demanding surrender. Shadows stretched into grotesque forms, twisting into half-seen faces that mocked and beckoned.Eldrin hung suspended within it, bound by chains forged of pure darkness. They coiled around his limbs, digging deep into his flesh, their links searing with a black fire that bled into his veins. Every beat of his heart echoed like a drum, hollow and heavy, feeding the abyss itself.Isolde clung to him desperately, her arms wrapped around his trembling body as though her grip alone could anchor him. Her voice shook with determination even as tears streaked her face.“Eldrin, fight it. Look at me, not them!”But his head sagged, his eyes dimming beneath the assault of a thousand voices. Each chain that writhed around him whispered in a different tongue, yet all carried the sa

Dawn came bruised and thin, a pale promise through the smoke. The camp moved like a wounded thing, men and women stirring from scattered sleep, patching armor, chewing stale bread, checking knots and teeth of swords. Where the scar of the abyss still smoked, soldiers kept their distance, as if the ground itself might remember and reach up to take them.Eldrin and Isolde came back slowly, leaning on each other as much as two broken people could. Their arrival quieted the ragged murmurs for a moment. Eyes followed them, curiosity and dread braided together. Some faces showed awe. Others were hard and small, the look of people weighing whether a man returned whole or cursed.Kael met them near the old stones that had served as their council ring. His jaw was a line of old scars. He studied Eldrin for a long, flat breath. “You returned the commander,” he said. “That alone keeps more men in line than any speech.”Eldrin nodded, though the effort showed on his face. He had wanted to be back

The horns split the morning air like knives.Dawn had barely broken, and the mist still clung to the ground, but already the earth trembled with the rhythm of war. Lines of weary men adjusted their grips on spears and shields, the scent of oil and iron heavy in their nostrils. Some whispered prayers, others bit down hard to keep their teeth from chattering. The plain stretched out before them, bleak and barren, as though the land itself had been stripped bare in anticipation of the slaughter to come.General Kael sat astride his scarred warhorse, his battered armor newly polished, though no shine could erase the years etched into his face. He rode down the line slowly, speaking in a voice that carried like a hammer striking an anvil.“Stand your ground. Do not falter. Do not break. You’ve seen the abyss itself and lived. Today you fight not only for your king, not only for your lands but for the chance that tomorrow still exists.”The soldiers raised their weapons, some with convictio