I STUMBLED BLINDLY forward, hands probing the dark ahead. The meager light emitted by the wound in my chest was no comfort here. I stumbled over the bones strewn across the ground and went down hard on my knees with a curse and a cry. I’d made only two steps before falling to the hard stone floor.

Frustrated, I seized one of the bones and made to throw it, cursing myself bitterly, for who else held the blame for this bitter solitude? For my decrepit shame, cast down and forgotten here? But before I loosed the bone, I paused, thinking. I could not see the walls…if there even were walls. But perhaps I could hear them.

I threw the bone now with purpose, listening for the crash. It clattered away into the dark, bounced once or twice, and then—nothing. I waited, with only my ragged, desperate breath as a companion. What had happened? And then I heard it: a distant, echoing crash. That could be only one thing.

Crawling now, inching like a sightless maggot on my belly, I felt my way across the floor, pushing dry bones and the debris of so many nameless tragedies aside. I would never think about those faded souls again. No one would. The aching, icy void within me throbbed at that, threatening to consume me. I bit my cheek, feeling the pain, bringing myself back, and worming forward until I found that which I sought: the edge.

The floor gave way suddenly, dropping into an abyss that knew only night. My hand found rock, and I dropped it over the side, this time with purpose. It plummeted in silence, and then clattered off a wall or floor far, far below. A sheer drop of hundreds of feet, no doubt.

I am not ashamed to admit that some part of me, the guttering spark of my fading pride, considered casting myself off the edge. Embracing the darkness, the swift, silent drop. I wrestled with it for longer than I could count. Damned as I was, abandoned to this foul place, I was already near enough to fading. One more might end the pain forever. Perhaps it was even the braver thing to do, I reasoned. If I was here, that could mean only one thing: that I deserved it. I scowled, biting back hot tears of shame, and anger, for I could not remember what crime had cost me the starlight.

“No,” I said, remembering the silver chain in the surf. Remembering the eager waves drinking of my blood. No, damned or not, even if my soul was a threadbare, half-lost thing, I had purpose yet.

I began to work my way along the precipice of the abyss, feeling carefully. I knew not whether I was headed anywhere, but movement was better than stillness. I was finding, the more I awakened, that stillness burned like ice. I had to move, to keep the little blood I had yet flowing.

I’d gone maybe twenty lengths when a hot, sour wind swept up out of the depths. I shuddered, repulsed by the reeking gale. It smelled of infection, of rot. Deep in the heart of the abyss, I glimpsed something else: a glittering mote of distant, twinkling lights. I watched, but my fascination quickly curdled to terror as I heard their voices rushing up at me, even faster than the wind.

A thousand depraved voices, cackling at some vast but unknowable joke. The humor of the insane, ravening up into… I did not know. Or I could not remember. The two were much the same, I thought distantly, drawing back from the abyss.

The first of the lights shot past, and I caught only the briefest glimpse of a long, blazing light grasped by a crooked, dark thing. Then more swept past, dozens and hundreds of them with all the fury of a mad stampede. Leathery wings beat at the air, and scaled limps glimmered in their torchlight. They sprouted horns and pustules, and gleaming black eyes where none belonged. Each was a flashing picture of horror, a mockery of beauty and symmetry and life itself. Upward they rushed, swirling up into the vaulting dark above me like baleful, loathsome stars.

I bit my fist to hold back a scream, yet a little moan leaked out. It was not only these terrors I glimpsed: but the wretches held in their claws. Limp forms much like my own, gray-skinned corpses. A few of them were leaking light from hideous slashes along their sides and limbs, like myself, but most were dormant, cold and lightless. The true death.

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Not so glorious, I thought, watching them flash by. Here and gone again, yet burned into my memory. I would not end up like one of those poor bastards, I thought. No.

The winged procession was slowing, now. Nearly dissipated. But Hell is a luckless place.

I was noticed. I do not know if it was the light leaking from my chest that gave me away, or the stink of my desperation; who can know the mind of a demon? I held my breath, shrinking back, retreating toward two large rocks I’d seen illuminated by their flashing torchlight. I was nearly there when one of the fliers unfurled its wings, stalling. It hung there for a moment, head raised, wet nostrils scenting the abyssal air. And then it turned its head to me.

“Sangkva,” the thing hissed, drawing its black lips back to bare a mouth full of fangs. Its great wings beat, pushing it into a headlong dive. Its torch hissed as it dropped toward me.

I screamed and ran, fleeing over the ground blindly. Its gurgling, insane laughter boiled up behind me. I could hear it cutting through the air, flapping those vast wings. I could almost feel the fangs in my back and neck.

It bowled me over and skidded to a halt. The bones tripped it up for a moment. The torchlight made my eyes water and ache, but it was something to see by. I caught only a glimpse of its strange body, dark and almost human, but with long proportions, as if it had been stretched somehow, with almost arachnid arms and legs. The sight of it made my stomach rebel.

“Sangkva,” it hissed again, finding its balance. It drew a long iron sword from a sheathe on its belt. It was almost as long as I was tall, I marked, and broad at the base. A headsman’s sword, and well cared for. It thrust the torch out at me trying to drive me back. Back into the abyss. I had no choice. I took several scrambling steps back, waiting to feel nothing but the void beneath my heels, of the sudden tumble.

It was not the death I wanted, after all.

When it swept the torch at me again, I dove under its great, lithe arm. Bones scattered everywhere. I kicked and lurched and rolled away, relying on its torchlight to show me the way. I could only pray—a laughable thought, here in this lightless realm—that the ledge I’d awakened on was not just a ledge.

Please, I thought, by the shining and immortal gods! Please have a door!

And there it was. An iron door, fixed in a square frame. Ugly, angular runes cascaded down either frame, and an ancient, hateful face was graven on the rust-pocked surface. I knew that face; what child didn’t, glimpsing what his mother and father couldn’t by the dark of night? The Liar, the Old Devil. The King of Hell. His face seemed to twist by the winged thing’s light, from scorn to mockery as I scrambled toward the door.

I heard a scream of outrage like a mountain cat behind me, and heard it closing. Its segmented limbs were longer. Its flesh was not stiff and wooden, hardly alive. It caught me only a few strides from the door, and I felt the lick of its iron sword across my back, laying me open. I gasped and hit the ground, sliding to a stop right at the foot of the door.

But I wasn’t dead yet. I rolled, letting instincts from another life carry me. The thing’s foot came down hard on the stone, missing me by only a moment’s breath. It raged, swiping at me with the torch. I kicked, catching its wrist with my heel and an old, familiar curse:

“To hell with you!”

Perhaps the words were useless here, but my foot knocked the torch free of its grasp. The firelight guttered, but I got my hands on it as the iron sword rose up for a killing blow—and struck the ceiling above in a shower of sparks. The thing brought the sword down, and I rolled again, diving to the other side of the door, and drove the torch into its knee. Black flesh sizzled and fat popped.

It screamed and flapped its wings once, putting distance between us. Yet, when it landed, it sagged to the side. It couldn’t stand properly. The iron sword rose and fell at its waist as it glared at me. But it knew it had me. I was weak, starving, and had only the torch. I saw its resolve harden and fled for the door, grasping at the handle even as leathery wings beat swiftly toward me.

I got through the door and slammed it shut behind me. The thing smashed into it, but the door held firmly. I clutched the handle, unsure if I could even hold it fast. But I didn’t have to.

A long, rasping sound came from the door, like nails being dragged across stone. And through the door, I heard a hateful whisper: “That which wakes can suffer. That which lives has blood.”

Then it was gone.