Volume 1: Rebirth Arc
Chapter 13: The Abyssal Fall
The sensation of falling was not a straight, clean drop.
It was a chaotic, violent tumble through a vertical labyrinth of crumbling stone, choking dust, and roaring gales of superheated air.
Shu wrapped his arms tightly around Kai’Sa’s small frame, pulling her head into his chest to shield her from the jagged edges of falling boulders and sharp outcroppings of rock.
Every impact against the sliding debris sent shockwaves of blinding pain through his ribs and limbs.
The air rushed past his ears in a deafening shriek, carrying with it the sickening, metallic reek of ozone and ancient decay.
They were plunging deep into the subterranean underbelly of Icathia—into the very heart of the emerging Void.
Crash!
Their descent was brutally halted when they slammed hard into a massive, sloping mound of soft, shifting gray sand deep within a subterranean cavern.
The momentum rolled them over several times before they came to a dead stop against a cold, damp wall of bedrock.
Shu groaned, coughing violently as a mouthful of bitter, alkaline dust filled his throat.
His entire body felt as though it had been beaten with iron bars.
Every breath came with a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest, signaling at least one cracked rib.
“K-Kaisa…” Shu rasped out, his voice shaking.
He forced his eyes open, squinting through the thick haze of dust.
Beneath him, Kai’Sa let out a weak, terrified whimper.
She was bruised and covered head-to-toe in fine gray dirt, but as she blinked rapidly and pushed herself up slightly, it was clear she was alive.
“Shu…
where…
where are we?” she sobbed quietly, her small fingers clutching desperately at his sleeve.
“It’s so dark…
I can’t see the sky.”
Shu looked up.
The opening through which they had fallen was now nothing more than a faint, distant speck of pale light, miles above them, quickly choked off by rolling clouds of dust and falling debris.
They were trapped beneath the earth, cut off entirely from the surface world.
And then, the cavern around them began to breathe.
It wasn’t wind.
It was the synchronized expansion and contraction of massive, rubbery walls of dark flesh that lined the lower tunnels.
The entire subterranean chamber pulsed with a sickly, rhythmic violet glow that emanated directly from the veins of the rock.
Click-clack.
Scritch-scratch.
From the pitch-black tunnels branching off into the deeper recesses of the abyss, the sounds began.
Countless multi-jointed legs clicking against stone.
Hungry, ravenous whispers echoing off the damp walls.
Shu forced himself to his feet, ignoring the agonizing protest of his bruised muscles.
He grabbed a sharp fragment of fallen granite from the ground, his small fingers tightening around the improvised weapon until his knuckles turned white.
They had fallen straight into the nightmare.
And survival in the dark was going to require far more than just breathing exercises and stubbornness.