The Abyss was changing. That was obvious as soon as Rieren fell through the little rent Batcat had created. Her very first glance at the world around her convinced Rieren that this Abyss she had entered—no, more pulled into—was different from the one she had encountered all that time ago in the dungeon underneath Lionshard mountain.

Some things were the same as before, of course. Rieren’s landing from higher up was softened by the boundless bed of bone-white sand stretching from horizon to horizon. Groaning, she rose to her feet to notice that, as ever, the environment consisted of the little colourful spheres that made up the Abyss’s conglomerate of worlds. Even the mist was present.

But while the baseline was familiar, the actual entities themselves were… not the same.

All the colourful orbs were flitting this way and that like agitated bugs fleeing some invisible predator. Their hues flashed wildly too. It was too disorienting to look at, too distracting when Rieren tried to pay attention to other things.

Then there was the sand. It was alive. That was all Rieren could think of, watching how it swirled in enormous eddies here, spouted in towering geysers that reached for the mist-shrouded skies there. Dunes rose and fell as fast as the zipping orbs. Her footing was being constantly threatened on the treacherous grains.

“Do you know what is going on here, cat?” Rieren asked as Batcat floated down next to her.

The little Spirit Beast certainly didn’t land on the shifting ground, and neither did it reclaim its normal perch atop her head. Maybe she was still covered too much by the Dreadflood’s muck.

Though, strangely, it didn’t feel as weird as she would have expected. After all, it was an S-Grade Abyssal. She was quite literally wearing a portion of its body. That it was no different from the times she had spilled the blood of other Abyssals upon herself was a strange realization.

The Dreadflood was made of the blood of its own kind.

Unsettling as the information was, it wasn’t exactly useful. Though, it did make Rieren wonder if Elder Olg knew about it.

She grimaced, looking up. Elder Olg. Seeing him become the very monster that was threatening to annihilate the Shatterlands shouldn’t have been surprising. After all, he had succumbed to the corruption of the Abyss-Aspected Essence while still in her presence. While they had been travelling together for a while.

The only saving grace was that he had retained all of his consciousness and memories and everything else that made him Eleder Olg. He still recognized good and evil. In fact, he had saved the Shatterlands by becoming the Dreadflood.

Well, it was closer to possessing, if Rieren was being honest.

Regardless, he had told her that he was now redirecting the Dreadflood towards Vanharron instead. Rieren had initially supported the idea. Anything that went against the gods’ stranglehold upon the capital of the Elderlands was a solid positive development in her books.

But Elder Olg had also thrown Rieren into the Abyss in an attempt to save her. Now that wasn’t something she could look so kindly upon.

Of course, they’d been fighting against the Banishedborn. Even after all the growth Rieren had undergone, even after how powerful she could get with the help of Batcat’s Call of the Past, she couldn’t stand up to one of the gods’ chosen followers.

He’d had good reason to think she’d be safer away from the battlefield, sent somewhere the Banishedborn couldn’t follow easily.

Could they follow her here? Rieren might have been concerned about it, but the general state of the Abyss recalled her attention to her current circumstances. Besides, the cursed kitten who’d created the Abyss Rent that had led her here in the first place hadn’t said a thing. It was just hovering placidly.

“Thank you for the explanatory answer, kitten,” Rieren said.

Batcat meowed softly at her.

“You need to take me out of here,” she went on. “Create another Abyss Rent that leads outside of the Abyss. One I can take to—”

She stopped herself. Where would she go after the Abyss? Supposing that Elder Olg had succeeded in driving off the Banishedborn and stopping the rain of meteors, Rieren needed to figure out where her next target would be. After all, having more or less murdered Lord Mercion in the Shatterlands, she couldn’t very well return there to reclaim what fragile place she’d found.

Besides, she was done with the Enlightened realm. All she needed now was another chance at some tribulation of sorts, and then she could reach the Exalted realm.

That was going to require a very different process for advancing. Rieren felt a deeper cold seeping into her. The Exalted realm was so named because it required one to quite literally become exalted in order to advance through its ranks. Something that would have been much easier if Rieren could return to the Shatterlands.

After all, she had made somewhat of a name for herself there. She could have built upon that base and raised her fame enough to progress through the Exalted realm.

That didn’t seem like a strong possibility any longer.

Rieren had known she was gutting her chances in the Shatterlands, of course. Circumstances had forced her hand to prioritize the survival of the region and that required a certain sacrifice. She didn’t regret it. All it meant was that Rieren would have to find a different way to progress through the Exalted realm. Nothing she hadn’t done before.

Her roiling thoughts were cut short when the mists in the sky parted. Like the sands and the orbs, the mists that were normally placid and kept everything hidden had been twisting and turning as well. Slowly but surely, they were revealing the rest of the Abyss. It was why Rieren could see the horizons now, though that revealed nothing more than sand and sand.

But now, as the mist overhead dissipated, all she saw was a rain of meteors.

The shower of golden bolts were streaking downwards with vicious speed and deadly intent. Rieren could feel her mouth stretching into a grin just as unforgiving.

So that was Elder Olg’s plan. The Dreadflood itself might not be able to stop the shattering meteors descending from the depths of the Aether. But it didn’t have to. What need was there for when he could simply open an enormous Abyss Rent and have all the meteors come down to the Abyss where it would hurt no one. No one save Rieren, that was.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

At least she didn’t have to worry too much about trying to safeguard herself against the meteoric downpour. One of the gold-wreathed meteorites came crashing down ahead of the others not too far from where Rieren was standing.

She had pulled out her Receptor sword, intent on using Earthfall Blade to ward off any dangerous impacts, but the threat came from a different direction.

While Rieren was able to block the shockwave from the meteor’s impact with the sandy ground, she couldn’t protect herself against the resulting chasm that opened up. Of course, she recalled the sand was simply resting atop a buried city. When the meteor crashed through the sandy barrier, throwing up an enormous cloud of dust, Rieren was pulled right into the sinkhole.

“Don’t struggle!” she yelled as she grabbed Batcat.

The kitten was smart enough not to take too much offence at the way she snatched it out of the air and held it close just as they began to fall. Rieren’s scream was lost in the chaos. Her world turned to one of constant falling, drowning white sand, and the roar of a thousand meters impacting the land above.

It was best to not suffocate. The tumbling descent wasn’t going to let Rieren protect herself with her sword since she couldn’t even open her eyes in the sandstorm. So, curling herself into a ball around Batcat and holding her breath, Rieren waited until the motion ceased.

She was proven right to not worry too much. When Rieren finally settled down, she found that she had fallen into a hill-sized dune.

Coughing and spitting out all the sand that had gotten into her mouth, Rieren got back to her feet. She might have closed her eyes in time, but she still had to rub out a lot of the grains from her face. Batcat squeezed out of her grasp. As she caught its movement, she realized where they had fallen to.

The city buried beneath the endless desert. The enormous, strange settlement that looked human yet was built in an architectural style Rieren couldn’t recognize. She’d been here before. Most recently, in a vision during her ascension through the Enlightened realm.

But unlike last time, there was one key difference. This time, the city was populated with citizens.

None of the ghosts whisking this way and that as though borne on invisible winds was familiar to her. Nor did she recognize anything of what they wore.

Their garments were billowing tunics with heavy, metallic circlets keeping them trapped around their necks. Many had metal bands on their temples, shoulders, wrists, and ankles. These bands were often decorated with fetishes like feathers, bones, and other trinkets.

A different civilization. People from the past or perhaps… perhaps not even from the Mortal Realm. Not her Mortal Realm, at least. For all Rieren knew, there were other worlds besides hers, going by the way the Aetherians could target different locations in the cosmos they inhabited.

Batcat finally settled on her head again, letting out a contented purr. It made Rieren’s head vibrate.

“You are right, kitten,” she said. “We ought to get going.”

Rieren climbed down to the closest street. None of the ghosts seemed to be concerned that their city was under attack by gigantic columns of sand pouring down from their sky. Not that it was any of her concern. She just needed to find herself a way out.

“Honestly, kitten,” she said. “Things would be so much easier if you could open an Abyss Rent anytime now.”

In response, Batcat went to sleep.

Well, Rieren was a little wrong in asking it to use its powers so soon after it had done moments ago. Though, time was difficult in the Abyss. Mismatched, when compared to the stream that existed in the Mortal Realm.

A strange sight made Rieren freeze. That… that was—

That was a god.

Rieren’s very first impression was to find a location to hide. All the paranoia she had been battling against since reverting the timeline, all the impulses that told her to beware her true enemies, came roaring back to life. She had to run. Hide. Prevent herself from being eradicated, for if she couldn’t grow strong enough to confront her enemies, no one could.

But her struggle with the impulse rooted her to her spot. More than that, it revealed a strangeness she should have surmised by now.

The god had no inkling that she was there.

She recognized him, of course. Medzedol’s grave, square face was easy to pick out. Every bit of him was like something sculpted out of stone, except the sculptor had little experience in smoothing. All sharp angles and straight lines.

The stranger thing was his presentation. Rieren had known the god in his formal attire of green armour, always carrying a large glaive. His hair had been long in the Celestial Realm, braided with glimmering beads.

Here, in this buried city in the Abyss, Medzedol had almost no hair to speak of—it had all been cropped close to his flat head—and he wore the same billowing tunic as the other ghosts.

In fact, the god was no more than a ghost as well.

Curiosity got the better of Rieren. She could only get so close, of course, without her body rebelling against her. But as she walked closer with all her hair standing on end, she heard snatches of strange conversation that did their best to distract her.

“How long are we going to be falling?” a woman was asking. Her voice was dreamy, as though she was in some sort of trance, not really speaking to anyone.

Nevertheless, she still got a reply from a bald man whose tunic was dirtier than most of the others. “The end is coming, and soon.”

“They are twisting things too much.”

“The balance will be torn apart.”

“These would-be gods…”

Rieren jerked her head around. The woman wasn’t familiar at all. Her voice had grown distant as she travelled farther down the street.

Cursing, Rieren was forced into a terrible decision. Deciding to forget about Medzedol, who seemed to be wandering around aimlessly without any interesting morsels of information, Rieren followed in the footsteps of the other woman.

She hurried as fast as she could. It didn’t take long before the woman’s words floated into Rieren’s ears again.

“…really think they would stem the Beast Tides? Foolish upstarts changing the very laws of the world? Such hubris. Such arrogance. It is no wonder we are now all suffering for their decisions.”

Rieren licked her lips. She had heard this before, knew what the woman was talking about.

The gods had invented the need for the System by bringing about the presence of the Abyssals and the Aetherians. For all intents and purposes, they had created the monsters that relentlessly tried to conquer the Mortal Realm and rid it of mortals. And then they had gone on to sell their own solution—a System of new powers that only they could grant to their chosen ones.

Rieren followed the woman as she kept moving away. Her feet were getting lost in the growing sand. A quick look upwards revealed how more of the distant ceiling had broken to throw down more pillars of bone-white grains.

This whole city was going to turn into a desert soon enough.

As she travelled, snatches of conversation pilfered into Rieren’s ears, unbidden, but not unwelcome. They were all illuminating in different ways.

“One of the Limbthieves stole my aunt’s legs.”

“The king looked at me before his ascension. Looked at me. Do you have any idea…”

“…beloved Koro. Where did you go? Where…”

“I was looking at a shooting star the other day but there were a lot more than usual, and they looked like they were growing much bigger…”

“I was praying to Crescent Moon and…”

That last one made Rieren’s head turn away from the woman, who had gone silent. She halted. That was Akohr. Rieren would recognize that sharp chin anywhere, though his pointed beard was much shorter than as a god.

He was talking about the Crescent Moon, when he himself was supposed the very god. That made… Rieren shook her head. She didn’t know the exact history of every god in existence, didn’t know fully when they had risen to become deities and taken their place in the Celestial Realm. Didn’t know who they’d usurped to get to their current positions.

Besides, time was strange in the Abyss. As proven by the fact that when Akohr and the woman met, they passed right through each other, oblivious to the other’s presence. Neither existed in the same stream of time.

This, of course, made sense. After all, the woman had been speaking about gods taking actions as gods while they were still all around her as mortals.

Rieren decided not to think too hard about it. Her head would explode otherwise.

She was about to catch up to the woman when Batcat suddenly roused itself atop her head. It meowed loudly before she could ask anything. A call full of warning.

One moment later, the distant ceiling shattered apart. The meteors from before crashed through, heading straight for the buried city.