The air on Level 2 smelled of rusted iron and rotting flesh. Lucy sat up with a groan, the taste of blood filling her mouth. Her sword— Shadowmoon , forged barely a week ago from the black steel of the depths—still trembled in her hand, its thin, deadly edge glistening with the black stickiness of Alpha Skavrith. But victory was not sweet.
"If it had been my old sword, I'd be dead," she thought, remembering the dull blade she'd left behind in the workshop. Now, every inch of Shadowmoon seemed to sing to her as it sliced through the air, as if the Abyss itself were whispering in her ear.
"Vex!" He dragged himself toward his companion, whose trembling fingers tried to stem the entrails spilling from the tear in her belly. The girl gasped, her glassy eyes reflecting the torches that flickered like dying stars.
"No... it hurts more than I thought," Vex muttered, his laughter turning into a bloody cough.
Finn, pale beneath the crust of his own blood, tore off more strips of his cloak to make improvised bandages.
"We don't have any Kharis Essence Potions," he muttered. "We only have..."
"Shut up and squeeze," Renn interrupted, her calloused hands pressing Vex's belly with brutal tenderness.
Lucy looked around. The destroyed lab was just another corpse in the Abyss: broken flasks dripped golden liquids, and the bodies piled by the Alpha formed a grotesque spiral. But something about those patterns chilled her blood. It wasn't just violence. It was a message.
"The Alpha... spoke," Lucy said, wiping her sword on her thigh.
"Beasts don't talk," Renn growled.
" They're coming," Lucy repeated, pointing to the mark on the Alpha's chest: an inverted spiral, identical to Researcher Lina's reports.
A thick silence fell over them. Even the Abyss seemed to hold its breath.
Lucy carried Vex on her shoulders, each step an agony. Shadowmoon weighed like sin, its black edge stained with broken promises.
"Do you think the Alpha was... an anomaly?" Finn asked, limping.
"No," Lucy looked at the walls, where the Skavrith carvings were beginning to take shape. " It was a new shift from the abyss."
Renn cleared the way, her axe gleaming in the light from the bioluminescent fungi. But Level 2 wasn't the same anymore. The shadows twisted beyond nature, and the whispers among the rocks had an almost linguistic rhythm.
When they arrived at the camp, it wasn't a triumphant entrance like the one in the old legends Lucy had devoured as a child. It was sad, heavy, with the bitter taste of defeat on her lips.
The camp's chieftain, Vorin, rushed toward them, his Ghul-Teke-scarred face twisted with fury and concern.
"What the hell, Lucy? I didn't make you leader to be sent back in pieces!" he roared, but his hands were already lifting Vex, whose moans mingled with the creaking of the medical wing doors.
"Tell me what happened," Vorin demanded as the healers surrounded Vex. "I chose you because you had guts. What attacked them?"
Lucy swallowed. The image of Alpha Skavrith, his intelligent eyes, his knife-like smile, floated before her.
"Something new," he whispered. "A new mutation of the abyss."
Meanwhile, in the Upper City...
Lumis dangled her feet on the edge of the roof, watching the fake lights hanging from the towers. Her tail—normally tucked into her spine—wrapped around her ankle like a sleeping animal.
"Rheell," he said, his gaze never leaving the horizon. "Are humans always afraid of what they don't understand?"
Rheell, carving a piece of beast bone into a grotesque figure, let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a growl.
—Yes. That's why we're better.
But Lumis didn't smile. In her mind echoed the stolen memories of the humans she'd devoured, along with the word "Mom" whispered in the darkness.
"What if we 're afraid too?" he asked, touching his chest where the human heart beat with a borrowed rhythm.
Rheell set the bone aside. The wind carried the scent of bakers and the blood of slaughterhouses, remembering that at one point he'd smelled it too.
"So we pretend better than them," he replied.
Back on Level 2, Vex screamed as healers stitched her belly with Karnash sinew. Lucy, sitting in the corner, watched as the golden essence of a Kharis larva dripped into the wound, sealing it with a sickly glow.
"It's not enough," the healer murmured. "The corrosion of the Abyss is already in his blood."
Finn, bandaged and pale, squeezed Lucy's shoulder.
"Researcher Lina was right," she said. "The beasts are changing."
Lucy nodded, but her eyes were fixed on the wall, seeing figures she didn't recognize.
That night, while the camp slept, Lucy crept up to Alpha Skavrith's corpse, abandoned in the makeshift morgue. With Shadowmoon in hand, she cut the inverted spiral mark from his skin.
The black flesh sloughed away with a slimy sound. And then he saw it: beneath the mark, embedded in the bone, a pulsating red crystal.
"It's not natural," he whispered.
The glass vibrated, as if it had heard her.
At that moment, when I tried to reach him, he simply disappeared.
I was responding to his touch.
Now a mark was reflected on his arm.
The new mark on Lucy's arm burned like someone had driven an ice needle into her flesh. It wasn't a spiral, nor a beast symbol like the tattoos on her shoulders—traces of her early hunts. It was something organic , like a crystal root branching out beneath her skin, tracing patterns reminiscent of the cracks in a broken mirror. Or the veins in a heart.
"I shouldn't have touched that damn crystal ," she thought, rubbing her skin. But it was too late. The red substance of Alpha Skavrith had fused with her, and now pulsed in time with her own heartbeat.
That night, sleep swept her away like a whirlwind.
He dreamed of the camp between Levels 2 and 3, but everything was wrong . The torches burned with purple flames, and the air smelled of rotting flowers. The bodies of his comrades hung from the rafters, flayed, their faces turned into masks of silent horror. And in the center, Him .
The figure was a parody of a human: black, scaly skin like a Ghul-Teke's armor, but its face was perfectly human—ink-black hair, purple eyes that glowed with the depths of the Abyss. In its hands, it held a sword that distorted the air around it, as if its blade sliced through reality itself.
" They're coming," he whispered, lifting Vorin's corpse with one hand.
Lucy wanted to scream, but her voice didn't exist. She wanted to run, but her legs were made of lead. The figure turned toward her, and for a moment, she saw her own reflection in those purple eyes.
They weren't eyes. They were doors.
Then everything fell apart.
Lucy bolted upright, drenched in a cold sweat. The mark on her arm throbbed, emitting a faint reddish glow that faded within seconds. Outside, the camp resumed normal activity: hurried footsteps, the clashing of armor, the murmur of hunters drinking mushroom beer before dawn.
— "Lucy, come here. Vex just woke up," Renn's voice brought her out of her trance.
He dressed hastily, ignoring the pain in his arm.
The medical room smelled of bitter herbs and dried blood. Vex lay on a stretcher, his pale face illuminated by the golden light of a lamp. Seeing Lucy, he gave a weak smile.
" I thought I saw you die," Lucy said, crossing her arms to hide the shaking in her hands.
— "Die? From a gash in the gut? Not in your dreams." Vex coughed, but his tone was playful. "Though I'll admit it hurt more than I expected. Like when I fell off the inn roof when we went to the surface. Remember?"
Lucy couldn't help but smile. "Yeah. You broke your arm and cried like a baby . "
— "And you laughed! What a terrible friend!" —Vex tried to hit her with a pillow, but the movement drew a moan from her.
Lucy approached, suddenly serious. "What did you feel when the Alpha cut you? "
Vex frowned. "It wasn't... normal. Not just pain. It was like something cold spread through my veins. Like—" He broke off, looking at his bandage. "death had fallen upon me . "
Lucy gritted her teeth. She felt like last night wasn't just a dream.
While Lucy was dealing with her visions, in the Upper City, Lina was facing a different kind of battle.
"The rumors of miraculous cures aren't just hearsay, Agatha," he insisted, spreading documents on the table. "There are patterns. Children healed from fatal wounds, elderly people regained their sight... and all report seeing two figures with glowing eyes! "
Agatha, the Councilor, sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Lina, with all due respect, we have anomalies on Level 4, creatures ascending from forbidden levels, and a Noctis on the loose. Right now, those things are low priority . "
Lina was about to reply when the door opened.
A group of hooded figures entered, their robes embroidered with stylized lamp symbols. The Bearers of the Eternal Lamp , the oldest order of Abyss researchers.
"We bring gifts," the leader said, placing a scroll on the table with a thud.
The Abyss Codex.
Lina gasped as she opened it. The pages smelled of dust and deep-sea squid ink, but what caught her attention most was an appendix: a hundred-year-old report titled "The Abyss Lives . "
"What's this?" he asked, flipping through the pages with trembling fingers.
The Bearer smiled. "Truth. The Abyss isn't a place. It's an organism . And like all living things, it defends itself, adapts... and sometimes, creates . "
On the last pages, a drawing showed purple cracks in the rock, identical to those now growing beneath the Upper City.
The cracks weren't new. The inhabitants of the Upper City called them "Veins of the World ," and children played hopscotch on them. But now, something had changed.
Instead of darkness, the fissures exuded a purple glow, and from within them sprouted insects seen in the abyss: beetles with crystal wings, butterflies that left trails of luminescent dust. Beautiful. Harmless.
Too harmless.
Lina remembered the words of the Codex:
"When the Abyss breathes out life, it is because it is preparing to swallow ours . "