Kalem dreamed of falling—but not down. Up.
He drifted endlessly through inverted skies filled with mouths, each whispering in tongues that didn't know mercy. Through eyes, hollow and lidless, watching him with ancient hunger.
And then he was awake.
His body convulsed as breath returned with a rasp. He lay face-down, face smeared with dust and blood, sweatless and cold. His arms trembled as he tried to move—but they weren't his arms. Not exactly.
"It feels like… I am in another body," he rasped, voice dry, distorted. Even the sound of his voice didn't feel real. Kalem pushed himself up onto his elbows, dragging himself toward the broken gate. Every joint creaked unnaturally. His limbs moved with a weightless fluidity, like water obeying a new law.
He found the maul first, its haft charred but intact. He grabbed it like a crutch, using it to stagger upright.
The gate before him no longer pulsed with its defensive aura. It had broken open, its remnants flickering with raw, unstable light, like the final embers of a star gone nova.
"It is open," Kalem murmured, half to himself, half to the void. He limped toward the broken frame, bracing against the shattered stone.
The air inside was still. But heavy.
He stepped into the chamber. It was vast—cathedral-sized, hollowed by impossible hands. The walls curved like ribs, etched with looping mana-circuits that pulsed dimly, forming spirals that radiated outward from the center.
And in the center, it waited.
A colossal statue—kneeling.
It towered over him even in its bent posture, carved entirely from a mosaic of mineral veins. Iron, Osnium, Darum, and several stones Kalem couldn't name. Its surface glistened, alive with internal flow. Its head was bowed, hands resting on its thighs in penance or prayer. The thing hummed, softly, like a breath being held for centuries.
Kalem's breath caught in his throat. His instincts screamed—this wasn't a statue.
It was sleeping.
And the mana it radiated was not calm or sacred—it was violent. Tangled. Angry.
"This feels like rage," Kalem muttered, stepping back instinctively. His stupor cleared in a cold wave of realization. He looked around the chamber, eyes narrowing.
Mana circuits ran along the floor, connecting the statue to the walls. They weren't just decorative—they were functional. They siphoned from the titan, looped the power into seals layered into the stone itself. A feedback system.
Kalem followed the pattern with his eyes. And then the full weight of it landed on him.
"This entire place is a prison," he whispered.
It clicked, one memory at a time. The architecture of madness. The endless monsters. The distortions. The voices.
They weren't just symptoms of corruption.
They were containment protocols.
The Abyss wasn't an accident, or a cursed land. It was a lock.
Its horrors were teeth meant to devour anything that came near this room.
The seal wasn't just on the gate—it was on the world.
Kalem's thoughts sharpened with dread. "If there was something else here, I'd have felt it leave." He turned slowly. His eyes rose to the sleeping titan.
"This thing," he breathed.
He stepped forward. Not cautiously—deliberately. His boots scraped over the ancient floor. The mana didn't resist him. If anything, it welcomed him.
He stopped a few feet from the titan. The closer he got, the more intricate the composition became. He could see detailed striations in its limbs—layers of minerals spiraled like muscle. Veins of crimson ore pulsed faintly beneath plates of obsidian-colored stone. It was humanoid, yes, but its proportions were vast, designed for no world he had known.
Kalem set his maul down carefully, then looked over his shoulder.
Behind him lay the ruin circle he'd etched with his hands. The remnants of the Lance, twisted and scorched. His armor was gone—dissolved in the surge. All that remained were fragments of tools, weapons, and his broken fire-sword cooling on the stone.
He looked down at his own hands. Pale. Scarred. Scarless. Something else.
He wasn't the same man who had descended into the Abyss. Maybe not even the same species.
He glanced one final time at the statue. Its face was emotionless, but the rage—the pressure—still radiated in every heartbeat of mana.
Kalem took a breath, steadying himself.
He whispered, not as a threat, not as a prayer—but as a promise.
"Break and build."