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I turn to Kryach, meet his eyes, black as Nether-moths prophesying my destruction, my eradication, mysuicide. His shades curl around the gown tresses, an echo of the past, but they do not seduce my skin as before. I dare to wander closer to the God of Death until our breaths mingle, until the lower gods snarl behind us, and even Morrygna tenses.
Defiant hands on my hips, I list the instructions in an outright mock, “Cross a boundless oubliette of a canyon, walk where no mortal can, and fetch a rose no god may pluck.”
“If you fail, the lower gods will claim all your soul.”
Turning to the lower gods, I embrace the roiling heat of their marks on my flesh and the one in my belly, thrust out my contemptuous chest, and proclaim, “Challenge accepted!”
Their grins are what I see last before Aryahn Kryach’s shades pitch my body straight over the edge of the canyon. Their jeering laughter fades to my scream as I plunge miles in seconds. Through those layers of fog, I slam my eyes shut.
And wait for my bones to shatter on the black rocks below.
* * *
Thousands of shades cushion me inches from the ground. My breath rasps, quakes as they settle me until soil greets my fingers. Cold soil and black crystals humming with Nether-energy. My spinal mark hearkens to such energy. Fog spirals around me, fingering my gown edges, longing for my skin, my flesh, my blood, my bones, my...heart.
When I rise to nothing but an endless curtain of fog and hear the whispering voices inside it, I understand in the deepest fabric of my being, the forgotten soulsarethis fog. A squall of screams, wails, cries, and howls plunges into my ears. They plead for me to join them, to unite with them. Instead, I bullet into a run, my feet pounding across the black sands with crystal smithereens slicing my skin. My blood scent permeates the air which only drives the spirits to knit around me, to create more fog, and restrict my vision. Tears blister my eyes. I keep running.
“We are theNothing, little bride. We are theForgotten,” their collective voices chant inside my ears, deafening them. “Forget with us. Forget everything until you are Nothing. In Nothing, there is peace.”
I keep running, huffing deliberate and desperate gasps, wincing with every step. More blood sheds from my slashed feet. The fog clears too late for me to see the jagged rock about half my body’s size. Crashing against it at running speed, it knocks the wind out of me. I shriek from the bruising my ribs have taken. I struggle for breath. Nearby, I hear a bubbling, peer over the edge of the rock, and clench my teeth around a shrill scream. The rock broke my fall but saved me from something worse. On the other side is a deep hole. No bigger than my body, but what isinsidethe hole causes my knees to give out. Tremors rack my body. I lean into the fog.
Liquid hellfire gurgles from the pit, prepared to swallow anything so unfortunate to cross its path. It singes my gown. Its heat cloys my face. Fathoms below the heat echo the voices of the damned, of the worst of humanity writhing and screaming from an infinity of punishment.
This isn’t any canyon. It’s the entrance to hell itself!
All I want is to turn around and climb out of this Void canyon. I’ll beg and plead for Kryach’s shades to return me to the land of the living. But with the fog shrouding me, with the god runes humming ice and flames all across my skin, with this endless chasm of Nothingness?dark and strange and somber and starless?I can’t conjure an image or a thought of the living. Only the dead.
Windblown tatters of fog whirl into my mouth. They rush down my airway. They impregnate my lungs to transform my very breath.
IbreatheNothing.
I cannot run Not with the hellfire pits ready to swallow me. So, I haul myself to my feet and walk, grateful for the splintering pain, for the blood dripping from them. Am I even going in the right direction? How long have I been here? Minutes, seconds, and hours purl in an infinity cycle until I am certain time is meaningless.
The Nether-fog disrupts my ears with their aged chants. The cold dives into my canals, infecting my eardrums. “Listen to the Nothing. Hear the Nothing. No pain. No pleasure. No purpose. Be Nothing.”
IhearNothing.
Sight and touch and smell. Blood and heartbeat and mind and soul. With waterfalls of tears upon my cheeks and blood sluicing from my feet, I preach those truths to myself and claw at the fog. But the more I breathe the Nothing into my lungs, the more it suffocates everything until I am alone with my thoughts. I want to stumble and fall, curl myself into the lonely Void ground, and simply...be. My breath is strained, weak.
But I remember climbing the Isle Gates. Glance down at the puckered flesh of my palm. Pressing my determined lips into a tight grimace, I fortify all my muscles and break into a run, careless of the hellfire pits. I must get out of this canyon. Hellfire heat curls toward me. My bare foot strikes the edge of a hole, but I leap over it. Hellfire tickles my soles, burns the blood, but I land on the other side. More crystals split my skin. I wail, certain the bottoms of my feet are mere strips of flesh.
Like gauzy curtains, like bridal veils, the Nether-fog eclipses my vision until nothing exists but white blindness. White because darkness would be a gift. Darkness is velvet night, filled with secrets and lust and whispers. White is absent and hollow.
IseeNothing.
Smell and touch. Blood and bone. Heart and mind.
Don’t stop. Never stop.The fog will use my weakness as a sword to draw my blood and pierce my heart. Wear my skin as armor. Kindle fire in my veins. Forge a rib cage of iron to protect my weakest and ficklest of muscles.
The Nether-fog caresses my back, hunting my spinal cord, injecting into my nerves, numbing them.
“No,” I whimper when the pain of my feet dims, when it vanishes, when I touch myself but stroke, caress, thumb, pinch, squeeze, grip, perceive...nothing.
Because IfeelNothing.
My legs give out. I cannot walk. So, I crawl—or what I only conceive is crawling, knowing the black crystals must be shredding my palms, my knees.
Still, the Nether-fog doesn’t stop hunting. It leaches into my skin to feed on my blood, on my veins, on my essence.
