Chapter 87
- Kaysi -
For a few long seconds, all I could hear was the soft pulsing of the red light veins in the cavern walls, like a heartbeat—sickly, wrong. It was like the place itself breathed, and we were just parasites trapped inside its ribcage.
I rubbed my head, my hands shaking slightly. "That scar—it was fresh when I last saw it. I swear. You were in the school. Then you vanished."
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What I remembered didn't add up, but it felt… far away. Distant. Like a story someone once told me about a life I borrowed.
"I didn't vanish," Evan whispered. I moved on to high school, but we have made up since then.
I squinted at Evan. "You're not making any sense."
"Neither is this place in any way."
I didn't argue with that.
We sat silently for a while, letting the weight of everything settle over us like thick dust in the air. It was too quiet, too still. It didn't feel like a normal silence; it felt calculated. I could tell he was thinking heavy thoughts.
I scanned the chamber again. The walls breathed—not literally—but they swelled, contracting slightly, as though shifting in sync with some hidden rhythm. The ground beneath us pulsed like something massive, deep underground, was sleeping restlessly.
"I hate this," I muttered. "I hate that this feels familiar."
Evan looked over, a flicker of pain—or guilt—in his expression. "You have been here before, but I don't think you remembered."
The Abyss warps everything. Time, memories, even your emotions. I think that's why I remembered everything when I came to this place. Also, why Earth feels so… faded now."
"Wait," Evan said. "What do you mean, Earth feels faded?"
I hugged my knees. "Like I left a dream, and now I'm back in the waking world. Only this world is a nightmare pretending to be real. And my time as a Waymaker? That whole life? It's like trying to remember someone else's story. I know the facts, but can't feel them the same way anymore. The more I remember who I was before the Council—before Becky and Micah—the harder it is to remember who I became."
He was quiet for a moment. "But you remember me."
My eyes flicked to him. "Unfortunately," I teased weakly. But my voice cracked. "You were my first everything, Evan. And my first heartbreak."
He looked away. "That wasn't fair of me, back then."
"It doesn't matter now," I said, even though it still did to some degree in my mind.
Another pulse rippled through the ground beneath us, this one stronger—like a slow tremor from something moving far below. We both went still.
Evan reached instinctively for his ear. I saw the twitch of paranoia in his muscles. We'd been in too many tunnels like this before—too many demon warrens and cursed places. This place might be worse than any of them.
Evan looked around slowly, still leaning on the wall, eyes squinting against the dim red glow.
"Where's my sword?" he asked suddenly.
I blinked, then looked down. My blade—my blade—was still strapped across my back. Somehow, it had come through with us, just like before. I reached over and slid it halfway from its sheath. It shimmered faintly with an eerie blue glow, resisting the pulsing red of the Abyss.
"You always manage to keep that thing," Evan muttered.
"What does your sword look like?"
"In its concealed form, it's my earring."
"Check your left side," I said. It was somehow caught on his shirt.
"Where? I don't see it?"
I grabbed his earring and handed it to him. When I did it glowed and turned back to my sword form.
"What? That's strange, only the Waymaker appointed to the charm can call their own weapon?"
Although cracked along the hilt. He let out a low whistle. "Well, that's something, at least."
"Yeah... We're not totally helpless."
"Not yet."
"We need to find out where we are, exactly," Evan said. "And we need to figure out if Josh is really here. Because if he is…"
Evan cut in, voice hoarse, "Then I have to find him. He's my brother."
"And if he's not himself anymore?"
"He became good and went on to help all of us, even you, a couple of times."
"Wait, he's a Waymaker?"
"Yes."
"I know my time on earth is all a blur now, but the pain he caused me feels like it just happened. I can't just overlook things."
He didn't try to press more.
I stood up, brushing the dust off my pants and scanning for any visible exit. My hand drifted to the hilt of my sword strapped to my back. It was comforting to feel it there, even if I wasn't sure if they worked the same way down here.
"Look," I said, pointing at a break in the cave wall up ahead—barely visible, a narrow crack with a faint draft seeping through. "There might be a way out. Or deeper in. Either way, we can't stay here."
Evan pushed himself to his feet, still limping slightly. "Are you sure you're good to lead?"
"No," I admitted. "But I'll do it anyway."
We stepped forward into the dim corridor, the walls pulsing with those faint red veins. Behind us, the chamber seemed to exhale one last time before fading into darkness.
We crept down the narrow passage, each step swallowed by the breathing hush of the cavern. The deeper we moved, the tighter the walls became. The pulsing red light grew stronger here, brighter—and hungrier.
"I swear," Evan whispered behind me, "this place wasn't carved. It was grown, maybe by my father."
"Wait? What the hell did your father make the abyss?"
"Oh yeah, that must be something else you forgot. My father experiments on humans with demons, trying to create an unstoppable monster. He will not stop at any lengths to accomplish his goals, including using his son Josh. But he used the DNA of a Cherub instead of a demon, so once Josh overpowered the demon, you could say he was reborn.
I didn't respond. I was too focused on the scent drifting in—metallic, sweet, rotting. The kind of smell that made your stomach twist before your brain could name it.
We turned a sharp corner, and the corridor widened into a strange chamber. I froze. Evan ran into my back and stopped, his hand immediately going to the hilt of his sword.
We weren't alone.
On the far side of the chamber, under a nest of blackened roots, a massive demon hunched over something limp. Wet sounds echoed—chewing, slurping, cracking. Something that wasn't just eating.
It was a feasting.