Chapter 46 – Frozen Abyss
[STEVE – FREE FALL, UNKNOWN DEPTH – 169 DAYS REMAINING]
Falling.
No word adequate to describe the sensation of stomach rising into throat while gravity tore him from reality, lungs compressing until they hurt, world spinning on an impossible axis where there was no up or down — only fall.
Plummeting — terminal velocity reached in four brutal seconds, air whistling past ears like the lament of a thousand tormented souls, ice walls flashing by in a blue-black blur that made eyes water and vision double, triple, lose all sense of depth.
Steve tried to scream — sound dying in his throat before it could be born, stolen by the wind that ripped breath from his lungs before he could use it.
Beside him, Keara was also falling — not parallel, but spinning uncontrollably, arms and legs flailing like a stringless doll thrown off a cliff, hair whipping so violently it seemed alive, mouth open in a silent scream that would never reach his ears.
And then Steve saw something that made his heart clench painfully:
Tears.
Not from physical pain — there was still no pain, only anticipated terror.
From pure, primitive, animal fear, the kind of fear that has existed since the first sentient creature looked into an abyss and understood death.
Flowing from the corners of her eyes in translucent trails, but not falling — freezing instantly upon leaving warm skin, crystallizing into perfect micro-spheres of ice that floated for a fraction of a second before being torn away by the wind and vanishing into the darkness below like dying stars.
She’s going to die.
Because of me.
She came to help me when I fell.
And now…
…now both of us will—
No.
Something inside him roared — not acceptance, but absolute rejection of this reality.
I don’t accept it.
I CANNOT ACCEPT IT.
I REFUSE.
---
Steve’s mind accelerated unnaturally — not conscious thought, but adrenaline transforming blinding panic into surgical clarity, the world seeming to slow even as they continued plummeting at lethal speeds.
What can I do?
Walls too smooth to grab.
No protrusions.
Nothing.
We’ll hit the bottom in…
He forced his eyes downward — every muscle in his neck protesting the movement during free fall.
Floor still invisible, but approaching, a visceral, instinctive, primal sensation of inevitable doom accelerating.
Thirty seconds?
Twenty?
Fifteen?
Doesn’t matter.
It’s not ENOUGH.
THINK!
THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING!
SOMETHING!
He looked at his own hands — trembling violently in the wind, fingers stretched trying to grasp air that slipped between them like water.
And then he remembered.
The scythe.
The power.
The voice that whispers when I sleep.
That THING inside me.
It worked before.
When the wolves attacked.
When I was desperate.
But…
But he also remembered the price he almost paid:
Indescribable pain — not physical, but existential, as if every atom of his body was being rewritten, replaced, consumed by something that was not him.
Loss of control — body moving on its own with lethal grace he had never possessed, killing without distinguishing friend from foe, feeling nothing but empty hunger.
Any almost dead — because he, not-he, the THING using his body couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop, only wanted to keep cutting, tearing, consuming.
If I use it again…
…I might lose control permanently.
I might not come back.
I might stop being Steve.
He looked at Keara again — spinning out of control, tears still freezing, eyes now closed as if accepting death.
But if I don’t use it…
…she dies for certain.
And so do I.
The choice was not a choice.
It was inevitability.
Then so be it.
---
He filled his lungs with Herculean effort — air cutting his throat like shards of glass, cold burning — and shouted with all the strength his exhausted body possessed:
— KEEAAARAAA!
His voice was lost in the wind.
But she heard — or felt, or saw the movement of his lips.
Her eyes opened — disoriented, pupils unfocused, world spinning too much.
— I HAVE A PLAN! — Steve shouted again, each word tearing at his throat.
She managed to turn her head toward him — a movement that made her body spin even more violently, but she focused:
— WHAT?! — her voice came out desperate, broken, small against the immensity of the void around them.
Steve took a deep breath — knowing the next words would not bring hope.
They would bring terror.
— I’M GOING TO USE THE SCYTHE! — pause to swallow air. — THE POWER INSIDE ME!
The effect was instantaneous and devastating.
Keara’s eyes didn’t just widen — they exploded into pure horror:
— WHAT?! NO! — her voice breaking into a sob. — DON’T DO THAT!
She inhaled with difficulty:
— HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN LAST TIME?! — fresh tears forming, freezing. — YOU ALMOST DIED! YOU ALMOST KILLED ANY! YOU—
— I KNOW! — Steve shouted back, words coming out hoarse, desperate. — I REMEMBER! EVERY SECOND! BUT LOOK!
With immense effort, he pointed downward — arm heavy as lead against the wind’s resistance.
Keara followed the gesture.
And saw what he had seen.
The floor was no longer distant and theoretical — details emerging from the darkness with growing clarity.
Jagged ice. Sharp rock formations like spears. And scattered among them — bodies, dozens of them, adventurers who had fallen before, some still with armor reflecting the faint light of the crystals.
Ten seconds maybe.
Maybe less.
We’re going to die.
No time to argue.
No choice.
There never was.
She looked back at Steve — who stared at her with an expression she had never seen on him before.
Not paralyzing fear.
Not self-destructive hesitation.
Absolute determination mixed with something that might have been… peace? As if he had already done the math, weighed the costs, and accepted the consequences.
— Trust me, Keara. — Not a question begging for validation. Not a request waiting for permission. A gentle but unshakable statement. — Trust me.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Keara processed it in a millisecond that felt like eternity — her whole life flashing by: the vague face of someone she loved and couldn’t fully remember, a promise she made and broke, guilt carried like a stone tied around her neck.
Then she nodded — a single, brusque, decisive, final motion.
If we’re going to die…
…at least we die trying.
Together.
Not alone in the darkness.
---
Steve closed his eyes — blocking out external stimuli.
He no longer heard the wind.
He no longer felt the cold.
He no longer saw the abyss.
Only internal silence where something ancient waited.
And he reached inward — not with physical hands, but with the part of him he rarely touched, the part that terrified him because he didn’t understand where it came from or what it really was, only knew it existed in the depths of his consciousness like a predator waiting in a dark cave.
I need you.
Not spoken words.
A feeling transmitted.
I know you’re there.
I know you watch me.
Always watching.
Waiting.
Please.
This time…
…save her.
I don’t care what happens to me.
But save HER.
The response came — not as sound heard by ears, but as a sensation that sliced through his entire consciousness like a blade through silk, the presence of something immense, ancient, hungry awakening in the depths and smiling with teeth he had never seen but knew existed.
“Ah…”
A voice that was not a voice — feminine, seductive, dangerous, carrying echoes of a thousand simultaneous whispers.
“Finally you ask for real.”
“Finally you BEG.”
“Not for yourself.”
“For HER.”
A pause that lasted an eternity:
“Interesting.”
“Very well, my bearer.”
“TAKE what I have offered from the beginning.”
“And learn the price of power.”
---
The power did not emerge gradually.
It EXPLODED.
Like a dam breaking, like a volcano erupting, like a star being born in incandescent violence.
Steve’s eyes opened — but the brown Keara knew had completely disappeared.
Incandescent — intense purple blended with nuclear hot-pink, light radiating from his pupils with such intensity that the surrounding darkness recoiled like a living creature fleeing fire, the glow so bright Keara had to look away or risk temporary blindness.
╔══════════════════════════════╗
║ USER: STEVE ║
║ ATTRIBUTE: CHAOS ║
║ PERCENTAGE: 10% ║
║ ║
║ ?? NESSIRA: FORCED ACTIVATION║
║ ?? CONTROL: MINIMAL ║
║ ?? SAFE DURATION: 90s ║
║ ?? EXCEED = PERMANENT LOSS ║
╚══════════════════════════════╝
Steve completely ignored the warning — he had no luxury of hesitation, no time to calculate risks.
He simply acted.
He extended both hands forward — palms open, fingers stretched and trembling, veins beneath the skin glowing in patterns of runes that had never been there before but now pulsed as if they had always existed, only waiting for the right moment to emerge.
And he conjured — not like a mage casting a studied spell, but like a force of nature imposing will upon reality.
---
Materialization began as a distortion in the air.
Space rippling like disturbed water, reality folding into geometrically impossible angles, purple particles condensing from nothing — not emerging from somewhere, but being created instantly, violating laws that should govern the universe.
Then it solidified in a sequence the eye could barely follow.
Handle appeared first — not ordinary wood, but something black polished to obsidian-like reflection, surface carved with runes that pulsed in perfect sync with Steve’s racing heartbeat, each pulse sending a visible wave of energy through the material.
Blade followed immediately — an impossible curve that defied Euclidean geometry, too sharp to exist naturally without collapsing under its own weight, gleaming in metallic-purple tones that hurt the eyes to look at directly.
Nessira’s Scythe.
Three meters in total length.
But it did not stop at a manageable size.
It grew.
Not slowly.
Explosively.
Five meters.
Ten — handle extending in both directions like a giant serpent uncoiling after millennial hibernation.
Fifteen — blade expanding proportionally, maintaining impossible proportions.
Twenty — wood creaking with the sound of breaking bones even though it did not break.
Twenty-five.
Thirty — reaching almost the full width of the abyss.
— KEARA! — Steve shouted, and his voice came out wrong — double timbre, as if two beings spoke simultaneously, one human and the other… something else. — SWIM TO ME! GRAB THE HANDLE! BOTH HANDS! NOW!
She reacted without thinking — swimming through the air with desperate strokes that seemed absurd but worked, body crossing the space between them in three seconds that felt like three hours, fingers closing around the handle just below where Steve’s hands gripped with force that turned his knuckles white.
The wood was hot under her palms — not burning but pulsing with energy that made her skin tingle as if a thousand tiny needles were pricking her simultaneously, an uncomfortable but tolerable sensation.
The scythe continued growing even with both of them holding on.
Thirty-five meters.
Forty — until—
---
THUNK.
Sound of metal piercing ice — but not ordinary metal, metal that existed differently.
The blade drove into the east wall of the abyss with force that made the entire chamber vibrate, penetrating not just three meters but five, anchoring with such solidity it seemed to have grown there, an integral part of the geological structure.
THUNK.
The opposite end of the handle struck the west wall — not piercing like the blade, but pressing with massive force that cracked the surface ice, creating phenomenal friction, distributing weight.
And then—
Resistance.
The fall that seemed unstoppable slowed.
Not instantaneous — that would have killed them both with G-forces, turned bones to powder, organs to paste.
But gradual — the scythe acting as an impossible giant brake, sliding against both walls but reducing speed meter by meter, second by second.
120 kilometers per hour.
100.
80.
Steve screamed — not from physical pain, though there was that too, but from effort beyond human limits, muscles literally tearing beneath skin as he tried to hold the weight of two bodies plus the momentum of free fall, tendons stretching beyond any biological limit they should have, bones grinding under pressure that should have shattered them but somehow did not.
╔══════════════════════════════╗
║ NESSIRA: 47 SECONDS ACTIVE ║
║ BODY: SEVERE DAMAGE ║
║ MUSCLES: TEARING ║
║ BONES: MICRO-FRACTURES ║
║ ?? CONTINUE = PERMANENT DEATH║
╚══════════════════════════════╝
He ignored it.
Keara was also screaming — her voice mingling with his in a chorus of agony, hands literally burning from the friction of the handle sliding between her palms even as she held on, skin tearing, blood running between fingers and freezing instantly into red crystals, but her fingers did not let go, could not let go, letting go meant death.
60 kilometers per hour.
40.
30.
20.
Floor fifteen meters away — they could see details now, every sharp rock, every frozen body waiting.
Ten meters.
Five.
Steve saw the exact moment he needed to release or the scythe would rip them in half when it stopped completely.
Three meters.
Two.
— RELEASE! — he shouted.
Both let go simultaneously — falling the last meter and a half remaining, bodies slamming into irregular ice, rolling uncontrollably like thrown dolls, crashing into rock formations that hurt but did not kill.
The scythe exploded above them in a mist of purple particles — not fading gradually but detonating like glass under pressure, fragments of energy dissipating into the air like dying stars.
---
THUD. CRACK. THUD.
Steve hit the ice on his back — air exploding from his lungs in a violent exhalation, ribs protesting with sharp pain suggesting fractures but not confirming, vision darkening at the edges like a closing curtain, world spinning even though he was still.
But alive.
Alive.
Impossible.
But alive.
Keara collapsed four meters ahead — sliding across polished ice until stopped by a rock formation that halted her with an impact that drew a groan, body completely still except for her chest rising and falling irregularly.
For five seconds that felt like five hours — only absolute silence except for the sound of gasping breaths echoing through the chamber, each inhalation hurting, each exhalation burning.
Then Steve moved — first just fingers, testing if his body still obeyed, then whole hand, arm, finally forcing his entire body to sit up even as every muscle protested, world spinning violently until his stomach churned.
╔══════════════════════════════╗
║ USER: STEVE ║
║ CHAOS: 10% (UNCHANGED) ║
║ ║
║ NESSIRA: DEACTIVATED ║
║ COST PAID: SEVERE ║
║ RECOVERY: 6+ HOURS ║
║ ║
║ BODY: DAMAGED ║
║ MOVEMENT: LIMITED ║
╚══════════════════════════════╝
He looked at his own hands — trembling violently, uncontrollably, covered in blood where skin had literally torn in strips, muscle visible in places, fingers swelling rapidly.
It worked.
Against all odds.
It worked.
We’re…
— Keara! — voice coming out hoarse, broken, barely recognizable.
He forced himself to his feet — legs nearly giving out immediately, having to support himself on a nearby rock formation, crossing the distance to her in a staggering, drunken walk, each step a victory against a body begging to collapse.
She was on her knees — breathing but motionless, staring at the ice in front of her without really seeing, still processing that she was alive when death had seemed absolute seconds ago.
— Keara… — Steve knelt beside her with difficulty, hand touching her shoulder. — Are you… are you okay?
She blinked slowly — a movement that required conscious effort.
Turned her head toward him — also slowly, as if she had forgotten how to move the muscles.
And then something inside her broke — not bone, not organ.
Contained emotion exploding.
She collapsed — not physically but emotionally, tears bursting from her eyes in a torrent she couldn’t control:
— We’re alive… — voice completely shattering into sobs. — How… how are we ALIVE?! We should be DEAD! I SAW THE FLOOR! IT WAS SO CLOSE! HOW—
Steve didn’t answer with words — he simply pulled her into an awkward, painful embrace for both of them but necessary.
She trembled against him — not from the cold that penetrated everything, but from relief mixed with the trauma of near-death, of accepting death followed by impossible salvation, body processing a massive adrenaline dump that now had nowhere to go.
For thirty long seconds — only silence except for her muffled sobs against his shoulder, the sound of humanity persisting against impossibilities.
Then they slowly separated.
---
Steve looked around for the first time since they landed.
And the breath that was already irregular caught completely.
Colossal chamber.
Not a natural cave sculpted by water and time over millennia.
Built — deliberately, intentionally, by a civilization that possessed architectural knowledge that should not exist and no longer existed, lost to ages.
Walls were not pure ice but an impossible hybrid — polished black stone like a mirror interleaved with veins of translucent blue ice that glowed with their own faint light, creating patterns that seemed almost organic, like veins carrying blood through a giant creature.
Massive columns — each easily ten meters in diameter at the base, tapering as they rose — rising from irregular floor to a ceiling that vanished into absolute darkness forty meters above, perhaps more, impossible to tell where they ended.
Lighting came from crystals embedded in the walls at regular intervals — not natural crystals, but formations that seemed deliberately planted, glowing in purple-gold that made Steve think involuntarily of…
…something inside me.
Same color.
Why?
But what made bile rise in his throat were the bodies.
Dozens of them.
No — hundreds.
Scattered across the chamber like macabre offerings on the altar of a forgotten god, arranged without apparent pattern but covering practically every visible square meter of floor.
Adventurers in armor that had once been bright but now was merely green-oxidized rusted iron collapsing under its own weight.
Mages in robes that had once been elegant but now were torn rags revealing yellowed bones.
Warriors with broken weapons still clutched in skeletal hands that had never released them even in death.
Some were recent — relatively, perhaps weeks or months — flesh still visible beneath a thin preservative layer of ice, expressions of absolute terror frozen eternally on faces that would never relax, empty eyes still open staring at a sky they could no longer see.
Others were ancient — decades, perhaps centuries — only skeletons, some so old that bones were no longer white but deep brown from oxidation and time, slowly disintegrating, returning to dust.
How many?
A hundred?
Two hundred?
All who had ever fallen here.
How long?
Years.
Decades.
Centuries of people being sent here to die.
Steve whispered — his voice echoing ghostlike through the chamber, multiplied and distorted until it no longer sounded like his own:
— These must be… all the people the village chief sent here. All the “brave adventurers” he deceived with lies about treasure and glory. Sent here to… to…
He couldn’t finish.
He didn’t need to.
Keara also looked around — processing carnage on a scale the human mind was not designed to process, each body a story interrupted, each skeleton a life wasted.
And something inside her that was already cracked broke completely.
— All of this is… — her voice started firm but broke quickly — …my fault.
Steve turned so sharply the world spun:
— What?
— Jelim was right from the beginning. — Keara looked at her own hands as if they were covered in invisible blood only she could see. — Monster is monster. It doesn’t matter if they have a community. It doesn’t matter if they protect their children. In the end… I trusted them. I defended those Yetis even when everyone warned me. And look where that brought us.
Tears returning:
— Because of me, you fell. Because of me, you almost died. Because of me—
— Stop. — Steve grabbed her shoulders with trembling but firm hands. — Stop right now and listen to me, Keara.
He forced her to look directly into his eyes:
— First — voice low but intense — this was NOT your fault. I lost control of my body. Something inside me reacted to something down here. I slipped because my body convulsed. Not you. Never you.
Pause to breathe:
— Second — and this is important — Jelim is wrong. Completely, fundamentally wrong. Yes, the Yetis attacked us. But do you know why? Really think about it.
Keara processed.
Steve continued:
— Because we were invading their territory. Because we were armed strangers entering a home where families live, where cubs play, where elders teach the young. The Yeti leader saw us as an existential threat. He did exactly what you would do — what any of us would do — if armed strangers invaded Thornvale and approached the people we love.
Voice becoming softer but no less intense:
— Jelim sees the world in absolute black and absolute white because it’s easier to live that way. Enemy is enemy. Kill without thinking, without questioning, without feeling. But you… you see all the colors between black and white. You see gray. And that is not weakness as she claims.
Significant pause:
— That is humanity. That is what separates us from true monsters.
He forced a tired half-smile:
— Because I’ll tell you something: if one day Jelim decides I’m the enemy — no matter the reason, maybe I just looked at her wrong or said the wrong word — she’ll say “Steve must die” without even asking why. Without investigating. Without giving a chance to explain. Because her world has no room for nuance. For context. For understanding.
Keara let out a broken laugh, half sob half genuine laugh:
— And if she decides she doesn’t like me either… she’d say “Keara must die because she must die.” No reason. Just… because.
— Exactly. — Steve laughed along, the sound strange and out of place in the frozen graveyard but necessary. — The world would be simpler if it worked that way. But it would also be… empty. Meaningless. Without the possibility of redemption or change.
For a moment — they simply laughed together, the sound echoing between ancient columns, surrounded by death but celebrating life, humanity persisting against darkness and despair.
When the laughter naturally died down, Steve rose with effort — every muscle protesting but obeying — extending his hand:
— Alright. Enough morbid philosophy. Let’s find a way out before something worse than the fall finds us here.
Keara took his hand, allowing herself to be pulled to her feet—
CRACK.
Sound of ice breaking.
But not the floor beneath their feet.
The bodies.
The nearest corpse — a warrior in green-oxidized armor with a broken sword still clutched in bony hand — moved.
Not the natural movement of a dead body being disturbed.
Mechanical spasm, unnatural, wrong on a fundamental level.
Frozen joint popping with the sound of a dry branch snapping.
Head turning with the grind of glass being scraped against stone.
Then it rose — movement that defied physics, a body that should no longer have functional muscles somehow moving, back arching at an angle that would break a living spine.
Then another body moved.
And another.
And another.
Twenty. Thirty. Fifty.
Scattered across the chamber, all the bodies recent enough to still have some flesh rising in a macabre chorus of unnatural resurrection.
But they were not simply undead.
They were something worse.
Ice Wraiths — manifestations born not of necromancy but of the impossible concentration of despair, hatred, pain, fear, every negative emotion of those who died here literally crystallizing through the ancient magic of the place that still persisted even though forgotten.
Forms that were once human but now were only suggestions of humanity — translucent bodies made of living ice that glowed with sickly ghostly blue, semi-solid, rippling slightly as if they existed partially in another dimension.
Blurred faces — human features still vaguely present but distorted, melted, only a suggestion of where eyes once were, mouths open in an eternal scream that never ceased since death, expressions of agony that transcended any physical pain.
And weapons — not held in hands, but fused to arms as if they had grown there, swords/axes/spears of pure razor-sharp ice, direct extensions of frozen rage.
Twenty-three in total.
Emerging slowly, inexorably from the scattered bodies.
And eyes — not real eyes, just empty sockets that should have been dark but instead glowed with hypnotic pale blue, focusing on Steve and Keara with an intensity that made skin crawl, not looking at them but through them.
Not hunger for flesh.
Hunger for life itself.
For the warmth they lost.
For the existence that was torn from them and never recovered but still coveted with envy that transcended death.
╔══════════════════════════════╗
║ ICE WRAITH ║
║ LEVEL: 26 ║
║ TYPE: UNDEAD ELEMENTAL ║
║ ║
║ WEAKNESSES: ║
║ ? INTENSE FIRE ║
║ ? DIVINE LIGHT ║
║ ? EXORCISM ║
║ ║
║ ABILITIES: ║
║ ? CHILLING TOUCH (-50 HP/touch)║
║ ? DRAIN VITAL HEAT ║
║ ? SLOW REGENERATION ║
║ ? PARTIAL INTANGIBILITY ║
╚══════════════════════════════╝
— Shit… — Steve whispered, and the word came out like a desperate prayer.
His hand moved instinctively to where his sword should have been — but the sword was not there, lost during the fall.
Then he reached inside — not for a physical weapon, but for the thing that had saved them both.
The scythe materialized in his hand — but smaller now, only two meters long, a weight he could barely hold with exhausted arms trembling violently.
╔══════════════════════════════╗
║ CHAOS: 10% (CRITICAL) ║
║ BODY: SEVERE EXHAUSTION ║
║ RECOVERY: INCOMPLETE ║
║ ║
║ ?? USING NESSIRA AGAIN ║
║ ?? DEATH PROBABILITY: 78% ║
╚══════════════════════════════╝
— Steve… — Keara took half a step back, voice carrying real terror. — If you use that power again… so soon after the last time… your body will collapse. The system is warning you. You could literally die.
— I know. — He cut her off, eyes never leaving the Wraiths that approached slowly, savoring the fear. — Do you trust me?
Significant pause.
He glanced at her briefly:
— And you have someone waiting for you. Don’t you?
Keara froze — not from cold but from fragmented memory surfacing.
Vague, hazy image, but present — small face, big eyes, a voice calling something she couldn’t quite hear but knew was important.
Someone.
Yes.
But… who exactly?
Why can’t I remember clearly?
What happened?
She had no answers.
But she felt the truth in his words like a knife in her chest.
She nodded — a trembling but decided motion:
— You’re… you’re right. I can’t die here. Not yet. Not before… before…
She couldn’t finish because she didn’t know what.
She only knew it was true.
Her staff materialized in her hands, ancient wood glowing with warm gold that clashed violently with the cold blue of the Wraiths.
Steve smiled — quick, exhausted, but genuine:
— Then we fight. Together. Like always.
He took a deep breath — air burning his lungs.
And advanced.
[To be continued in the next response due to character limit]
[TOP OF THE CHAMBER - DAGON VS YETI KING]
BOOM.
Sword collided with fist — explosion of energy cracking the floor in a radial pattern.
They separated — both bleeding from multiple wounds, both breathing heavily, both smiling with the satisfaction of warriors finding a worthy opponent.
Dagon with golden scales covering half his body, small horns emerging from his temples:
— You’re strong, old man. Very strong. It’s been a long time since I fought like this. Years.
The Yeti roared — not in rage or hatred, but pure joy of combat:
— “Kor’mal threx! Du’mar zel’kun!”
[Translation: “You too, dragon-son! Not all humans are as weak as I thought!”]
And they collided again — strength against strength, will against will, determination against determination.
A battle that would make the entire mountain tremble.
[DAYS REMAINING: 169]
[STEVE & KEARA: 23 WRAITHS]
[JELIM: DESCENDING]
[DAGON: FIGHTING]
[CHAOS: 10% CRITICAL]
[NEXT: DESPERATE COMBAT]
