Chapter 93: Dark

Chapter 93: Chapter 93: Dark

"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant." — Horace

The darkness did not simply block Riven’s vision.

It pressed against his skin, heavy and suffocating, as though the abyss itself were trying to smother him.

There was no distinction between day and night. No passing breeze. No warmth. Nothing to mark the passage of time except the slow decay of his supplies and the growing exhaustion in his body.

The only light came from sickly patches of bioluminescent rot clinging beneath jagged basalt ledges. Their faint glow cast twisted shadows across the cavern walls, making every crevice look like the mouth of something waiting to swallow him.

Each breath tasted of crushed slate, stagnant water, and cold mana that burned the back of his throat.

Riven crouched inside a narrow fissure forty feet above the cavern floor, his back pressed firmly against the stone. His dark coat was shredded along the hem, caked with dried mud and black monster bile. His right hand rested on the hilt of his sword, his knuckles raw from weeks of climbing, fighting, and dragging himself through the unforgiving terrain.

He barely remembered what clean clothes felt like.

Three weeks had passed since the spatial rift had severed him from the surface.

What had begun as a search for strength had become a relentless struggle to remain alive.

The first few days had been the worst. He had wasted mana trying to find a route back, searching for spatial distortions and testing every passage that seemed remotely promising. He had even attempted to use Disturb Magic on several strange formations embedded in the rock.

None had led anywhere.

Eventually, he had accepted the truth.

He was trapped.

The lower abyssal floor was crawling with creatures far more dangerous than anything he had encountered in the upper dungeons. These monsters had adapted to an environment where light was scarce, sound could betray a hunter, and even a careless pulse of mana could reveal the location of its prey.

The most common were the Gloom Stalkers.

Each stretched nearly twelve feet from head to tail, its segmented body covered in overlapping plates of dark chitin. They crawled across walls and ceilings with unnerving silence, their limbs bending at angles that made them seem less like animals and more like nightmares given flesh.

They had no visible eyes.

Instead, pale sensory pits covered their heads, surrounding enormous jaws lined with three concentric rows of translucent teeth. Their saliva carried a paralyzing enzyme that could leave a victim helpless before the creature began feeding.

Riven had watched one drag a struggling crawler into the darkness.

The creature had stopped moving less than a minute later.

He had not forgotten the sound.

Then there were the Abyssal Dredges.

Those things were worse.

They resembled enormous, asymmetrical masses of pale flesh reinforced by jagged plates of calcified bone. They hauled themselves from subterranean tar pits, leaving thick trails of black sludge behind them.

They had no eyes or ears, yet they could detect the smallest vibrations traveling through the stone. Even the faint electrical activity produced by an active mana core seemed enough to draw their attention.

Against a Gloom Stalker, Riven could hide.

Against a Dredge, even hiding had its limits.

He had learned that lesson after nearly losing his left boot to a mouth hidden beneath a tar covered ledge.

Since then, he had stopped trusting any surface that looked too smooth.

An excellent place to die, he thought bitterly.

His stomach cramped.

Riven pressed a hand against it and waited for the pain to subside.

His rations had run out days ago. For the past two weeks, he had survived on bitter rock moss and water collected from narrow streams trickling down the cavern walls. The moss tasted like iron and left an unpleasant numbness on his tongue, but it was edible, and that was enough.

He had no idea whether the stagnant water was safe.

He had simply decided that dying of thirst was worse than taking the risk.

His body had begun to show the consequences.

His muscles ached with a deep, constant fatigue. His skin had grown pale, and the shadows beneath his eyes had darkened. Every movement required more effort than it should have, and his thoughts sometimes wandered before he could force them back into focus.

Sleep was the greatest problem.

He could not afford to rest for long.

The creatures hunted constantly, and the slightest mistake could expose him to something he was not prepared to fight. He had resorted to brief naps, usually no longer than twenty minutes, wedged into crevices too narrow for the larger predators to reach.

Even then, he rarely slept peacefully.

A faint sound drifted up from the cavern floor.

Riven opened his eyes.

Screee!

A high, guttural screech echoed through the canyon, followed by a wet crunch.

He did not move.

His fingers tightened around his sword, but he kept his breathing slow and shallow. Moving too quickly could dislodge loose stones, and the resulting noise might attract whatever had made the sound.

He leaned toward the edge of the fissure and peered down.

Two Gloom Stalkers had gathered around the remains of a smaller subterranean crawler. Their segmented bodies coiled around the carcass while their scythe like forelimbs tore through its dense hide.

The creatures fed without fighting over the remains.

There was more than enough meat for both.

Riven watched them carefully, noting the way their sensory pits shifted whenever something moved in the darkness. Even while feeding, neither creature seemed entirely unaware of its surroundings.

They don’t let their guard down. Not even when eating.

He had learned to respect that instinct.

The Gloom Stalkers continued feeding for nearly twenty minutes before abandoning the remains and slipping between the rocks.

Riven waited long after their silhouettes disappeared.

Only when the cavern had returned to silence did he allow himself to relax.

His shoulders sagged against the wall.

He closed his eyes.

For a few precious seconds, he let himself stop thinking about mana, monsters, and escape routes.

Then the isolation crept in again.

That was the part he had not anticipated.

The fighting was exhausting, but at least combat gave him something to focus on. Every encounter demanded a decision. Every mistake had an immediate consequence.

The silence was different.

There was nothing to distract him from the thoughts he had spent years pushing aside.

When he closed his eyes, he heard the clinking of iron chains.

He remembered the mining camps, the cold floors, and the voices of overseers barking orders through the darkness. He remembered the constant fear of being noticed for the wrong reason, of making a mistake that would earn him another beating.

He would open his eyes, only to find himself alone in the abyss.

Other times, he heard Lyra.

Not clearly. Never clearly enough to mistake the sound for reality.

Just a distant echo of her voice, calling his name from somewhere beyond the darkness.

Those moments were the hardest.

He could fight a monster. He could conserve mana, study its movements, and search for an opening.

But there was no enemy to strike when his own memories turned against him.

Riven pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes.

Get a grip.

The thought came automatically, carrying the same harshness he had used on himself for years.

He lowered his hand.

That had always been his answer. Ignore the pain. Keep moving. Survive first and deal with everything else later.

It had worked in the mining camp.

It had worked in the badlands.

But here, alone beneath an endless stretch of stone, he was beginning to understand how easily survival could consume everything else.

He needed something to hold on to.

Something real.

Twenty one days since the rift had swallowed him.

Riven rested his forehead against the cold stone and closed his eyes.

For a moment, he imagined the royal archives, with their towering shelves and warm lamplight. He remembered the quiet garden where Lyra had challenged him to seek a real dungeon. He pictured her expression when he had teased her, the way her violet eyes narrowed whenever she suspected he was hiding an injury.

A faint, tired smile touched his lips.

You’d be furious if you could see me now.

The thought hurt more than he expected.

He could almost hear her demanding to know why he had gone alone, why he had ignored every sensible precaution, and why he had somehow managed to turn a routine contract into a disaster.

He would have welcomed the scolding.

He would have welcomed the sound of her voice, even if it meant listening to her lecture him for an entire afternoon.

His smile faded.

He missed the palace.

He missed the instructors, the familiar corridors, and even the tedious lessons he had complained about. He missed having someone nearby who could tell him when he was being reckless.

Most of all, he missed knowing that there was a world beyond the darkness.

Riven drew a slow breath.

He could not afford to dwell on what he had lost. Not yet.

He still needed food. Water. A safer place to sleep. Somewhere he could recover enough mana to begin searching for a route upward.

His core gave him power, but power alone would not save him here.

He had learned that lesson the hard way.

His gaze drifted to his sword.

The blade rested across his knees, its dark surface barely visible in the sickly glow of the moss. He ran his thumb along the leather wrapped hilt, remembering the man who had placed it in his hands.

Garreth had taught him that strength was not simply the ability to defeat an enemy.

It was the ability to make the right decision when every instinct urged him to do something else.

Sometimes, that meant fighting.

Sometimes, it meant running.

And sometimes, it meant sitting still long enough to admit that he was exhausted.

Riven let out a quiet breath and shifted farther into the fissure, finding a position that placed less pressure on his aching ribs.

He would rest for a few minutes.

Then he would move.

The abyss was vast, its darkness filled with things he could barely imagine. Somewhere beyond the cliffs and tar pits, there might be a route to another floor. There might be ancient ruins, abandoned settlements, or traces of the civilization that had built the spatial gate.

There might even be a way home.

He had no proof of any of it.

But he needed to believe that the possibility existed.

Riven closed his eyes, keeping one hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword.

Beneath his exhaustion, his Shadow Core continued to pulse.

Steady.

Stubborn.

Alive.

The abyss was trying to break him.

It had taken his supplies, his sleep, his sense of time, and almost every scrap of comfort he possessed.

But it had not taken his will.