Kalem didn't know how far he had gone—distance was meaningless here.
The ground twisted beneath his boots. At times it felt soft, like flesh. Other times it cracked like old bone. He kept moving through the ever-shifting landscape of the Abyss, one weapon always in hand, every muscle ready for ambush.
He didn't sweat anymore. Not even when running.
And he did run. Fast. Faster than he should be able to.
His body would blur past once-lethal obstacles, react before his mind had even processed the danger. Reflex had become instinct. Instinct had become something else.
It was happening gradually, and then all at once.
He'd noticed the first change after his third blackout. No hunger. No thirst. Days had passed—he had no idea how many—but he hadn't eaten. No stomach growl. No weakness.
Just… this cold, electric energy under his skin.
"I should be dead," Kalem muttered as he stopped near a jagged outcropping of black glass, dragging Icefang, his frost-etched rapier, behind him. The blade hissed against the stone, leaving trails of frozen vapor.
In front of him: more corpses.
A knot of twisted nightmares. Aberrant shapes half-fused to the walls, some still twitching. Kalem didn't remember killing them.
Another blackout.
He slumped down between two bodies. His armor was slick with something dark, viscous, and reeking of copper. But it wasn't his.
His hands were unshaken. No wounds. No burns. No broken bones.
His skin was pale now—not just pale, but drained, almost translucent in places. Veins traced glowing blue lines along his arms, just under the surface.
He examined one scar running across his palm. The one he had inflicted days ago.
Still faintly there. But faded, healed far too quickly. Too clean.
And the bloodlust?
That was new.
His breathing had changed ever since the last blackout. Every time he smelled blood, his heart kicked harder. His breath shortened. His fingers twitched. It wasn't fear.
It was desire.
He looked down at Icefang. Its blade shimmered coldly, hunger laced into its mana. It was a killing weapon, through and through.
And right now, it was the only thing that felt honest.
Kalem leaned his head back against the stone and exhaled slowly. "I feel like an animal," he whispered.
The corpses beside him didn't move. But the voices did.
"You are changing."
"Less of man. More of what belongs here."
"This is the price."
"This is the gift."
"Is that what I am now?" Kalem asked aloud. "A thing that belongs to the Abyss?"
He shut his eyes and felt it again—his pulse quickening at the scent of blood, his limbs tense, ready to spring.
He wasn't afraid of the change. That's what unsettled him.
He felt good. Efficient. Sharp. Alive.
Even if he could barely recognize himself.
The armor clung to him like a carapace now. His fire sword had cracked slightly during the last blackout. The Lynthian crystal embedded in his chestplate was dimmer, occasionally sparking with wild flares of unfiltered mana.
His body felt like a forge, pressurized and tempered with every battle.
The Abyss hadn't killed him. It had reforged him.
He rose slowly, stepping over the corpses. Not out of reverence—he didn't feel any left—but caution. They were still warm. Some were humanoid. Some were not. One had runes scorched into what passed for a skull.
Kalem crouched and examined it. Branded. Some sort of mark of ownership. Maybe they were part of a controlled expedition. Maybe not.
Slaves to something deeper? Or… initiates?
He shook the thought away and kept moving. The walls around him twisted again—spires folding inward, corridors curling like tendrils, reshaping paths. Kalem didn't stop. The maze couldn't mislead him anymore. He had already begun to see through it.
Not just visually. Not just mentally.
But intuitively.
Like something in his blood remembered how this place was meant to be walked.
More signs of change.
Kalem climbed a ridge made of glassbone and earthrot, eyes scanning for familiar sigils. He'd memorized the runic trails that led back to the gate. He'd taken to carving his own—sigils etched with fire and frost into the stone, primitive markers to keep himself oriented when everything else bent.
And yet… he hadn't needed them for hours.
His internal compass adjusted to the distortions without conscious effort.
Kalem came to a halt near a fissure in the ground. Heat poured from it, along with a flicker of deep-blue mana—the ancient flow he'd started recognizing beneath the newer patterns.
"Still two horizons," he murmured. "Two layers… but they're bleeding together."
The gate was no longer the only place radiating that ancient mana. The rot was spreading.
Maybe because I'm still alive.
Maybe because I touched it.
He dropped down into the next corridor, landing without a sound, Icefang in hand. He could hear something growling in the distance.
Something large.
Kalem sniffed the air, even before realizing he was doing it.
Iron.
Not fear.
Not death.
Blood.
He smiled bitterly. "There it is again."
The part of him that remembered Arcathis, remembered structure and equations and lectures about sacred geometry—it wanted to analyze this.
But the part of him that had killed without memory, survived without food, and walked through a maze of recursive horror?
That part just wanted to hunt.
He tightened his grip on the rapier.
"Let's see how far I've fallen."