There is an ancient saying in this land: If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back.
The phrase slithered through crumbling texts, its origins rotted by time. Was it a warning? A curse? Or worse—an invitation? For what lurked below was not mere darkness. It was something more, something whose purpose and creation remained shrouded in the unknown.
The abyss was no simple pit in the earth. It was the world's throat, a gash carved into reality since the dawn of time—a place where the laws of nature twisted like screaming roots. Ancient carvings spoke of a battle between gods (or things like gods) that had wounded the world itself, birthing this chasm. Within its depths, the air was thick, alive. Horrors slithered alongside wonders: beasts of gnashing teeth and nightmares, but also pockets of eerie beauty, glowing with bioluminescent life.
Yet the true terror was neither the stench nor the shadows.
It was the movement.
The abyss breathed.
In its bowels, life writhed and split into nightmares no god would claim. Some were mere hunger given form—coils of muscle and teeth. Others… learned.
Among them, he lurked.
Small and skeletal, his translucent skin stretched over jagged bones, eyes like oil pits swallowing every flicker of light. He had been born among siblings: a brood of identical, trembling things. But where they scurried by instinct, he… watched.
His first prey was a violet-shelled beetle. He devoured it ravenously, feeling his body rearrange—tendons sharpening, pupils dilating to drink deeper shadows. Each meal taught him.
"Days" (if time existed here) blurred into a vicious cycle: wake, hunt, hide, survive. But he did not merely survive. He prowled.
Then—something seized his attention.
Not the shrieks of beasts. Not the drip of abyssal fluids.
Voices.
And then… the crackle of fire.
Humans.
They walked on two legs—wrong, unnatural to his eyes. Their torchlight painted the cavern walls in jagged strokes as they moved. He followed, curiosity overriding instinct. These towering figures did not slither or scuttle; they marched, their metal boots ringing against stone. Five of them, clad in armor black enough to devour firelight. Their swords flashed, cleaving through a nest of abyssal spiders—including the mother, a bristling horror twice their size. She died shrieking, legs curled around her slaughtered young as the men laughed.
"First, you rip out the venom sacs," one grunted, peeling the spider's carapace like fruit.
The creature froze. These were not hunters. They were butchers.
He tried to flee, but as he retreated, a pile of bones clattered beneath him.
Torchlight swung toward him.
"Gods above… a Vraalmur whelp?"
The voice dripped greed. The creature did not understand the words, but the tone coiled around his ribs like a vise. He bolted, slipping through a fissure just as a gloved hand grabbed his tail.
"After it! That pelt's worth a fortune!"
He ran until his lungs burned, back to the hollow where his mother lay.
She was a shadow of what she had been—a winged terror now earthbound, one wing shattered, her obsidian scales dulled by age. At his frantic chitters, she jerked upright, hissing a command to her brood: «Hide. Now.»
Too late.
Torchlight flooded the den. The humans stood at the entrance, their leader's blade gleaming.
"Fantastic," he whispered. "A stratum-six Vraalmur, slumming it in the fourth stratum?"
The mother reared up, spreading her remaining wing. A warning. A last defense.
The leader grinned. "And in such… delicate condition."
They attacked like wolves. Blades sank between her ribs, sawed through her crippled wing. She fought, but weakness dragged at her—every snap of her jaws met air, every claw glanced off armor. The men knew their trade: a dagger to the eye, a spear through the throat.
Her screams shook the walls.
The creature crouched in a crevice, watching the life drain from his mother's eyes. One human knelt, sawing off her horns.
"The whelps must be close," another muttered, kicking a nest of bones.
A boot struck near the creature's hiding place. He held his breath.
The humans ransacked the nest.
They overturned stones, crushed skulls underfoot, and pried open cracks to find the brood—soft-scaled, mewling, still blind from hatching. One by one, they were opened.
The creature watched from the shadows as they peeled skin like parchment, crushed skulls under boots, and stuffed butchered remains into bloodstained sacks. Laughter echoed off the cavern walls, sharp as the daggers they wielded.
Something inside him shattered.
Heat flooded his veins—ancient, feral. Not fear. Not grief.
Rage.
He moved before thought could catch up: a black streak of teeth and claws. His jaws locked onto a human's exposed throat, tearing flesh like wet paper. Copper flooded his mouth; the man's scream was distant.
Then he ran, a strip of meat still dangling from his teeth.
Behind him, chaos erupted.
"Grab it—!"
"No, you idiot, staunch the bleeding first!" A hand yanked the wounded man back. "Not worth losing a tracker over that little demon. We'll hunt it later."
The creature didn't stop. He ran until torchlight vanished, until his lungs burned, until the ground vanished beneath him—
Then he was falling.
Icy water swallowed him whole. The current dragged him through an underground river, past eel-like creatures that brushed his wounds. He clawed onto a rocky ledge, collapsing into a crevice barely wider than his body.
Even with torn flesh in his mouth, fury and instinct made him eat.
There were tales that human flesh altered the beasts of the abyss. That it was the richest feast, searing human essence into their very bones.
And so it was.
His skull ached. Already, he had been different—curious where his kin were mindless. But consuming human flesh so young unlocked something.
Trembling, he curled tighter.
Questions cut into him like knives:
What were they?
Why did they do it?
Is Mother… dead?
For the first time, the creature gained something precious in the abyss:
Consciousness.