Chapter 5 - The Abyss

Falling burned and froze. It stretched and crushed. It was all consuming and yet unbearably empty.

His bones shattered and reformed. That light, blinding in its radiance, stripped away layers of soul like flesh from a skeleton. Shredded to pieces. His lungs ached, but he could not scream.

The worst was the piercing pain in his back. He felt it as every single feather was ripped and torn away. He felt it as the bones warped and twisted and finally snapped.

He knew pain. He understood its sharp sting and its lingering ache. He remembered cracked damp stone, cool against aching wounds, his own wings seeming to glow in the darkness. He remembered the echo of shifting chains, dull metal bars, a warm substance trickling down his back.

“You’re crazy,” Julius had said.

He’d smiled and brushed it off, but even back then, a part of him had known that there was judgement beneath the concern.

He knew pain, but this was nothing like it. He couldn’t contain it within the recesses of his mind, nor could he relegate it to a passing background sensation. It remained at the forefront. It was everything.

He fell, further and further, past the glowing lights of Elysium, past the thick wilds of the third plane, past the labyrinth of cities of the second and the overcast wastelands of the first, down into the depths below.

Finally, when the pain became too unbearable and his vision blurred, he closed his eyes, the sight of scattered white feathers and Julius’s impassive face burned into his memory.

—

Lazar had never known his parents; he only knew about them. They’d been servants of the Andire household, they’d lost their lives when a third plane dragon had ascended up to Elysium and wreaked havoc before the guardians put it down. Lazar, they said, had been pulled out of his dead mother’s womb by Lord Andire himself, who was still serving as a guardian back then.

His earliest memories were of the Andire manor. It, like most buildings in Elysium, was constructed entirely of white marble that shone under the light streaming through its winding, open corridors.

It was a place that was easy to get lost in. Lord and Lady Andire preferred minimal decorations, and the space was kept perfectly clean. Lazar used to wander around the halls before his wings grew in, utterly dwarfed by the ceilings. He’d looked at those shining, pristine walls, and felt filthy by comparison.

“You owe this family your life. You are the child of servants, and here you’ve been blessed to walk the same halls as guardians.”

When Lord Andire first took him to meet his son, his heart had raced with equal parts excitement and, most of all, trepidation. Lord Andire didn’t so much as glance back as they walked through the halls, Lazar struggling to keep up behind him. He didn’t say anything: there was no need to. All the expectations, all the rules had already been drilled into his mind.

Lazar imagined what Lord Andire’s son would be like. Despite how often the man spoke of his duties, he’d never described what kind of person Julius was or even given an appearance to the name.

Lazar pictured him with light hair, like his parents, and imagined that he would have the same presence as his mother, the same gravity as his father. A little leader, born to future greatness.

And so, when he finally stepped into the great hall, Lazar frowned when he saw that Julius was none of those things.

(In the future, he would know better than to frown so openly. Back then he hadn’t had as much control over his expressions, something that would quickly be corrected.)

Standing beside Lady Andire, Julius was a small child, short for his age and shorter than Lazar. Dark hair contrasted against the white walls, but his eyes were the same sharp green as his mother’s.

His wings were small and patchy, and he stared at the ground as though expecting it to swallow him whole. Lazar noted the way the boy kept carefully within the wingspan of his mother, how when he did finally look up, he never met Lazar’s eyes directly.

He muttered a greeting, the words perfectly polite even as he continued to shrink in on himself.

Lazar bowed in a practiced motion, managing to keep it even and graceful despite the confusion settling in. Confusion, he realized, and maybe a little bit of relief, too.

—

When Lazar woke up, it was cold. The fiery burn had faded, leaving nothing but a stinging iciness in his limbs. He forced heavy eyelids open, aware that he was lying on something hard and rough. His entire body ached like a single wound, one where it was impossible to tell where the pain began and ended.

He grit his teeth and forced himself to roll over, wrenching his eyes open to take in his surroundings.

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It was immediately obvious that he was no longer in Elysium. Around him, jagged, jet black stones rose and curved upwards in crooked spires. The ground itself was barren and hard, rising up in the distance to form mountains and peaks enclosing the field. Cave entrances were scattered across the sheer cliff face, their insides dark and shrouded from view.

Beyond the stone, quivering mounds dotted the jagged landscape. They varied in size, some small as a pebble and others taller than a building. They pulsed and trembled like organs. A dark liquid dripped from the objects, pooling onto the ground in thick, viscous puddles.

Above, the sky bled crimson, roiling clouds undulating in massive waves that resembled a sea caught in a storm. Behind those rolling clouds, he could just barely make out a pillar of light. The realm gate.

This was the Abyss. Lazar had landed in the Abyss.

Memories flooded back. Julius’s hard gaze. His steady voice spelling out his fate. The guardians, the crushing weight of magic keeping him bound. The bright light. That distant, obscured figure watching from above. The pendant. The glow that flared so bright it hurt.

Lazar squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to inhale, in and out, until his heartbeat steadied.

Focus.

Grey eyes snapped open again, and he concentrated on the ache in his limbs to keep himself grounded. He was still wearing his armor, he realized, which suddenly felt much heavier than it ever had before. Carefully, Lazar raised a hand, testing it, and he found that he could barely move it without shaking.

Part of it was the pain, but he knew that wasn’t the only issue. His entire body felt weak with exhaustion. Heavy and sluggish.

In contrast to the rest of him, Lazar’s back was painfully light. There was no weight, no rustling of feathers—only a hollow emptiness that somehow hurt even more than falling had.

He tried to expand his perception, searching for familiar strands of essence, but that was gone too. Where once a constant warmth glowed in his soul, now it was faint, barely more than a few flickers and sparks.

Lazar pressed his hands into the cold ground, gritting his teeth as he forced himself up. His limbs shook and his breaths came in heavy pants, but he strained his muscles forward, not stopping until he was sitting.

He didn’t allow himself a break. If he stopped, he knew the pain, the memories, would become impossible to ignore, and he couldn’t afford that. Instead, he took a deep breath and carefully began to peel away his armor even as his muscles screamed with the action. The uniform had been such a constant in his life that he felt naked without it, but in his current state, he needed as much mobility as possible. The armor wouldn’t do much against the demons here, especially not when he was too weakened to move in it.

Once he managed to remove the last of the metal, he tied the ends of his long outer cloak to keep them from dragging. Only then did he dare raise his collar and peer down at his chest.

There, where once was plain skin, dark branching lines now crawled across in a thorny web. The mark of a fallen.

Lazar dropped his hand. He muttered a chant, already knowing nothing would happen, but the utter emptiness, his vision clear of any essence, was confirmation. His magic had been stripped away alongside the layers of his soul, and now he lay there, alone, in the realm of demons.

Fallen didn’t live long. Those who fell belonged to three categories: those whose souls were damaged—often by soul eating demons, those who committed acts heinous enough that their souls rotted on their own, and those who were sentenced by the guardians and, by extension, the Light to fall.

Many fell straight into the Void, where the Oblivion would tear the person apart, erasing every speck of them until that soul was forever vanished, never to return to the Cycle. Some, however, did not sustain enough damage to land in the Void immediately. For them, the cracks in their soul would slowly spread until they were finally dragged into the Void as well.

Falling was a worse fate than dying. To die was to return to the Cycle, where one could be assured that their soul would return one day to the land of the living. It meant a new chance at life.

Falling was a complete erasure. It was the total annihilation of a being.

And Julius had done that to him.

A stone fell. Lazar spun around in time to watch it roll down the cliffside, bouncing along the ground with a few clatters. His neck throbbed with the abrupt movement.

He was too exposed here. If something attacked him now, without his magic, mind still dizzy and body aching, he had no way to defend himself.

Instincts took over. His eyes scanned the barren field, past the stone structures and mounds. There.

A few feet away, his halberd rested on the ground, its metal blade gleaming in the dim light of the Abyss.

It was a gift, Julius had said. And when Lazar had told him that servants didn’t need presents, he’d claimed that he was gifting it as a friend.

Lazar shoved the memory down. That halberd was his only means of defense here. He was fortunate to have landed somewhere relatively isolated in the Abyss, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think that it would last long. Demons would soon find him, and they would happily devour even a damaged soul like his.

Wincing, Lazar planted his palms against the ground, avoiding the strange liquid puddles. He tried to stand, but he couldn’t get his legs to respond. He furrowed his brow, but every movement burned with pain. His body refused to listen to his commands.

If he couldn’t stand, then he’d have to pull himself over. Lazar braced himself, sucking in a deep breath to prepare himself for the pain, and slowly dragged his body across the rough stone.

More than once he felt himself nearly black out, but he kept going. He forced his mind into that cool, empty place where everything became sharp and distant. There was nothing but him and his objective. Nothing else mattered.

Finally, Lazar managed to yank himself up to his fallen halberd. He vaguely registered warm blood trickling down his palms.

It took some fumbling, but he managed to get a grip on the weapon. His fingers felt clumsy, but he held on firmly.

It was none too soon.

Just as he grabbed the shaft of the halberd, a low groan resounded across the barren space. Lazar’s head snapped around, eyes rapidly scanning the jagged stones and fleshy mounds, before they finally landed on a silhouette creeping in the distance.

It was a demon. The insect-like creature’s stomach pressed against the ground as it moved with long, razor sharp legs. A long tongue whipped out from a humanoid mouth, dripping drool everywhere, and its six eyes rotated in their sockets, roaming the surroundings for prey.

Lazar stayed perfectly still. His grip on the halberd tightened, and he felt more blood ooze out the cuts in his hands. He inhaled, watching with bated breath as the creature slowed in its steps. Its head swiveled around fully, lolling tongue brushing against the filthy ground.

And then, the head snapped into place and Lazar’s muscles tensed.

The demon stared directly at him.