Kaelen tried to speak. His throat was full of darkness.
If you want me to write the next part—what Kaelen sees in the mirror, the “use” the abyss has for him, or a completely different version of the story (horror, epic fantasy, psychological thriller, cosmic weird fiction)—just let me know. I can also adjust the tone, length, or level of detail. Deepanalabyss
He stood on a platform of polished obsidian, no larger than a dinner table. Beyond its edge, the chasm opened into a cavern so vast that his lantern light didn’t even reach the walls. He might have been standing on a single grain of sand in the middle of an ocean of darkness. Kaelen tried to speak
By the fifth hour, the air had grown thick and warm, like breath. The staircase narrowed until his shoulders scraped the walls on either side. The green flame of his lantern cast shadows that moved independently of the light source—they scurried ahead of him, as if eager to reach the bottom first. I can also adjust the tone, length, or level of detail
Kaelen should have burned it. Instead, he packed a single bag: rope, rations, a knife, a lantern that burned oil rendered from the fat of deep-sea fish. He left his apartment in the coastal city of Vellenthrone at midnight, and by dawn he was riding a mule along the Serpent’s Spine, a trail that hugged cliffs so sheer that the ocean below looked like a sheet of beaten lead.
He was twenty-seven when the letter arrived. No postmark, no return address. Just a single sheet of heavy, fibrous paper, and on it, one word written in a hand so old the ink had turned to rust: Deepanalabyss The word pulsed when he touched it. Literally—a slow, subsonic thrum that he felt in his molars. He turned the paper over. On the back, in smaller script: “You have been expected since before your first breath. Come to the Sulfer Rift before the second moon bleeds. Or do not. The abyss does not care. But it does remember.”
At the twelfth hour, the staircase ended.