Kalem stood before the gate like a man on the edge of prophecy—neither savior nor destroyer, but something else.
His skin had gone pale-white, a canvas of white scars and old blood. His body was stronger than ever, faster, more resilient… but colder too. Hollowed. His heartbeat barely noticeable. His breath slow. He hadn't eaten in days. He hadn't needed to.
He flexed his fingers around the lance, feeling the way it pulsed with residual heat. It wasn't just a weapon. It was a monument to his will—his rage, his desperation, his madness.
He looked up at the towering seal embedded in the chasm wall. Symbols glimmered faintly in spirals across its face, pulsing with a rhythm too ancient for language.
And the voices—they returned in force.
A cacophony of pain and desperation. They screamed in overlapping waves, a thousand dialects and intonations, voices of men, women, beasts, gods, and things that never had tongues.
"NO—"
"STOP—"
"YOU WILL DIE—"
"WE CAN OFFER—"
"HE'S NOT READY—"
"THE SEAL ISN'T JUST LOCKED—IT'S BURIED—"
"NOT THE LANCE—NOT THAT—"
"YOU WILL WAKE IT—"
"IT WILL WAKE YOU—"
Kalem's grip tightened on the lance. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. But he stood still.
He whispered, almost kindly, "Let's see what the end tastes like."
And then, with every ounce of his altered strength, Kalem lunged forward—and struck the gate.
The impact rang like a bell made of bone and glass.
A crack spread from the point of contact, spiderwebbing out across the sigils in jagged symmetry. The runes flared, struggled, resisted.
Kalem dug his heels into the ground and struck again.
This time, the seal shattered—its outer layer breaking like a sheet of crystal under pressure. The explosion that followed was instant and cosmic.
Mana—compressed for millennia—erupted.
A shockwave thundered outwards from the impact site, tearing the walls of the chasm apart in waves of red and violet light. It poured like liquid fire into the Abyss and surged upward, escaping the great wound in the earth.
Dark-red and deep-violet auroras ripped through the sky.
Far above, on the surface world, the fortress-cities of Gehenna—strongholds built into the mountain ranges around the Abyss—saw it.
People screamed as the skies split with impossible light. Watchtowers crumbled. Airships trembled in their docks. Glass shattered in high towers and low dens alike. At the edges of the abyss, miles from Kalem's lance, entire legions and fortified outposts were flung into the void as the ground buckled and broke.
"It's the end!!"
"Run!!"
"Save your life!!"
At the edge of the southern range, near the great anvil-stronghold of Brastik, a young soldier sprinted across the courtyard. "Garron! Garron!"
Garron, commander of the Sixth Skyward Legion, stopped cold, his eyes wide with horror as he saw the glowing beam stretch from the depths to the very heavens.
He turned and ran, faster than he had since his days in training, shouting one name. "Briar!!"
In the heart of the forge-town, deep within the western smithy, Briar—an Ilvaar blacksmith with ash on her shoulders and fear in her bones—was already gathering her tools. Her long, scaled tail was twitching, coiling around her ankle in distress.
"Briar, did you see that?!" Garron gasped as he slammed into her workshop door.
"Yes, I know!" Briar barked, not even looking up as she jammed her hammers into her tool pouch. "I felt it. I heard it. It's him, isn't it?! Kalem—he opened something!"
"Or broke it," Garron whispered.
Back in the Abyss, Kalem stood at the epicenter of catastrophe.
He could barely stay upright. The very air was molten with mana. His armor—once bolstered by enchantments and the strength of the Lynthian Crystal—was now peeling away, flaking off in fragments that dissolved before hitting the ground.
He staggered.
The Lynthian shard embedded in his chestplate cracked—then exploded. Shards of it shot outward, but instead of embedding into him, they dissolved into light and sank into his skin.
Kalem blinked. "What…?"
His body spasmed as the influx of raw, unfiltered mana surged through his veins. It didn't burn. It changed.
His knees buckled. He dropped the lance—its glow dimming as it hit the ground—and fell to his side, breath caught in his throat.
The voices were silent.
No whispers. No taunts. No threats.
Only the sound of his own shallow breathing and the faint, distant hum of the gate stirring.
Kalem tried to speak—but no words came.
He tried to think—but the exhaustion was too deep.
The lance, still hot and pulsing, lay beside him like a relic from a forgotten war.
The shattered gate, its core exposed, no longer glowed—but it breathed. A faint pull. A sucking void.
And Kalem—warrior, weapon, survivor—fainted.
For the first time since he fell into the Abyss, the void gave him rest.