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Whispers from the Abyss

Across the dark, churning river of Nyxithral, the Abyss beckoned—a vast, yawning wound in reality itself. From his vantage on Mount Draemir, the Waking Peak, Castalien felt its whispers tear at his very soul, each anguished murmur reverberating through his bones like the tremors of a distant cataclysm. His obsidian-hued eyes, faintly glowing with the tortured souls of ten thousand forgotten lives, brimmed with a single tear of pitch-black ichor, sliding down his cheek like the last breath of a dying god. He gritted his teeth against the wave of shadowed memories assaulting him, the leather of his gloves creaking as his trembling hand tightened on the cursed scabbard of Valak’Thar, the Nightbringer.

This was no ordinary blade. Forged in the molten heart of Nyxithral itself, quenched in the blood of fallen gods, and bound with curses woven from the dying screams of lost souls, Valak’Thar pulsed beneath his touch, its ancient thirst eager to drink from the veins of any who dared to look upon it. Castalien could almost hear it humming softly, a dark lullaby that pulled him toward the Abyss, the chthonic rip in the earth where light went to die.

He forced himself to look away from the Abyss, knowing that to stare too long would be to surrender his very essence to the shadowed depths. He knew the fate of those known as the Starers—souls who had gazed upon the Abyss and returned only as husks, their eyes milk-white and frozen in a stare of silent, eternal horror. They stood even now upon the distant ridge, their jaws slack in a silent scream, mouths wired shut by shadow, draped in tattered rags that whispered as they moved, an endless chorus of despair drifting upon the wind.

Castalien leapt down from the promontory, landing with feline grace as his dark cloak billowed behind him, a shroud of night clinging to his form. He could feel the weight of destiny pressing upon him, a burden only the bravest would bear. His path was clear: he must descend to the steps of Nethra, the Umbral Church from which the Shadowed Way began—a winding, spectral road that passed through the ruins of Othrymn and led to the ancient maw of the Abyss itself.

Othrymn. The name tasted like ash in his mouth. He had fled the city over a decade ago, before the Ashfall had silenced its streets, coating every stone and soul in endless gray, until only the dead remained to keep silent vigil. Castalien’s heart ached with a searing, ancient pain at the memory, a wound that even the Abyss could not hope to heal.

Hesitation gripped him, tightening like a vice around his insides. Surely it would be simpler to descend by the way he had come, to retreat to the inn at Ruanthis at the foot of Mount Draemir, to let the warmth of firelight soothe his bones. He could be at the coast by dawn, standing on familiar shores with the salt breeze in his face.

But the demon’s laughter echoed in his skull, rough and brutal, mocking him for even daring to consider escape. The demon fed on his hesitation, each lingering second a temptation to abandon his fate, to let himself fall back into the comforts of ordinary life. To do so would be to let the demon win—and to bring all he knew to ruin.

No. Castalien knew he must go on. He set his jaw, wiping the black ichor from his cheek, and took the first step toward the Shadowed Way, toward the ruins of Othrymn, toward the Abyss that awaited to claim his soul. He was bound to the path, a solitary figure wreathed in sorrow, walking toward a future as dark as the memory that haunted him.

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