Awakening the Abyss

The morning after his return from Rift Hollow was still and grey.

Shin rose early, as he always did, and stood by the small window of his rented room. Mist clung to the eaves and rolled thick over the rooftops like a slow river of smoke caught in the folds of the town. Below, the potter’s apprentice was already sweeping the street, humming a quiet tune lost to the morning hush.

The sky was an endless expanse of ash, a soft veil that muted the colours of the world beneath it. The usual clatter of the morning market was absent, as if the town itself was holding its breath. He didn’t feel tired. But he didn’t feel rested either. The weight of the ruin’s silence settled heavily on his shoulders, pressing at the edges of his mind like unseen hands. The tome from the ruin sat on his desk, closed, quiet. Its presence filled the room like a second heartbeat-not loud, but there. Constant. Watchful. Almost expectant, as if it waited for him to act, to make the first move in some ancient dance.

He strapped on his sword-not because he needed it today, but because it was habit. Comfort. The cold steel resting against his back grounded him, tethering him to a reality he could understand. Then he gathered the journal, the tome, and a small pouch of chalk, and left without a word.

The clearing waited for him like a patient guardian. The moss-stone was slick with dew, the droplets clinging to the pale green like scattered pearls. The air was thick with the scent of pine and damp earth, sharp and raw. The soft rustling of leaves whispered secrets he could almost hear-a language older than words.

The trees stood tall and still, their branches heavy with moisture, casting long, tangled shadows on the ground despite the muted light. He laid the tome open on the stone. Pages fluttered in the gentle morning breeze until they stilled on one marked with a dark sigil-a spiral burned at the edges as if it had once been set aflame and never cooled. “First Channelling: Karyū no Honō – Root the Flame. Accept, do not force.” The words echoed faintly in his mind, the foreign tongue curling like smoke: Karyū no Honō – Flame of the Burning Dragon, He sank down cross-legged before it, the chill of the stone seeping through his clothes. He closed his eyes, shutting out the damp cold and the world beyond. And began.

The first attempt ended in failure.

He followed the breathing patterns, the vein-root tracing￾visualizing the flame as a molten current flowing through his veins, winding like liquid fire beneath his skin, as the diagrams described-but nothing stirred. No warmth. No flicker. Only silence. His hands clenched into fists.

He tried again.

A flicker. Then pain.

A sharp, sudden burning inside his chest-like a red-hot blade twisting beneath the ribs. The heat spread fast, cruel and jagged. He gasped, staggering back, coughing into his sleeve. His vision blurred-not from faintness, but from something deeper￾a presence pressing just behind his eyes, like shadowy fingers probing his thoughts.

> “You reach with fear,” the book had warned. “It must be acceptance. Or it will become hunger.” His breath came ragged. He wiped sweat and blood from his lips and sat back up, trembling.

But he didn’t stop.

The sun climbed higher. Hours passed, marked only by the slow arc of light and shadow through the forest. He drew chalk circles on the stone floor, their edges cracked and worn but still faintly glowing with residual magic. He copied the focus sigils in careful, precise lines, lips moving in silent repetition of the ancient incantation.

His voice sounded foreign, older. Each syllable felt like a key, unlocking a door in his mind. He whispered the next incantation softly, “Reikō no Kaze” – breath of the Spirit Wind, designed to center his soul, steady his heartbeat, and prepare the channel for the flame.

The flame came again-but it was not a spark. Not yet. 

It was a shift in the air-denser, cooler. The birds fell silent. The trees ceased their rustling. And something inside him… opened.

Not violently. Not painfully,

Like a curtain drawn back slowly in the deepest chamber of his chest. 

He inhaled deeply-slow, full breaths as if his lungs reached farther, drawing air from some unseen well. And then-in the center of his palm-a light.

Not bright.

Dark.

A small coil of shadowed flame, flickering not red, not orange-but deep indigo and black, like a star turned inside out.

It hovered just above his skin.

Didn’t burn.

Didn’t bite. It pulsed. Like a heartbeat.

Shin stared.

His body didn’t feel aflame. He didn’t feel pain.

Just heavy. Rooted.

As though something ancient had finally acknowledged him. When he blinked, the flame vanished-not extinguished, simply retracted, slipping back into the hollow of his flesh.

Waiting.

He lay back on the moss-stone, the dampness seeping into his clothes, and stared up at the canopy.

The wind whispered again, gentle and warm. Birds sang hesitantly, as if testing the air. He could still feel it-the Abyss Flame-coiled deep inside him. No longer buried beneath shadow, but watching. Awake.

Not raging. Not hungry.

Not yet.

The days that followed bled into one another. Each morning, Shin returned to the forest. He practiced breath, channeling, sigil alignment. Some days the flame would come easily-others, it would resist, and the pain would return. Every session, the flame grew less distant. Less like something external he was reaching for, and more like something within him, something that had always been there,

waiting.

There were moments when the temperature of the air would change without his intent-when the ground beneath him would tremble faintly, as if the earth itself reacted to the presence of the Abyss. The forest seemed to respond too- trees swaying in unnatural synchrony, birds taking flight as if guided by a silent command. A ripple in the air, as if time itself was briefly unsettled. He wondered if the flame was learning to bend the world around it, or if it had always done so, unnoticed. 

As he sat in meditation, concentrating on aligning his breath with the sigils in the grimoire, the sensation of the flame changed again. The air grew frigid.

The forest seemed to respond. Branches bent toward him, leaves rustled though no wind blew, shadows shifted in subtle, unnatural ways. One evening, the temperature around him rose, yet there was no fire. The air shimmered faintly, like heat haze on a sun scorched road.

He whispered the incantation “Kage no Enbu” – Dance of the shadows, focusing on controlling the flame’s dark edge, coaxing it to flow without burning him. He felt the flame pulse in the rhythm with his breath-now a tentative partner, not an enemy.

One afternoon, as he sat meditating beneath the ancient pines, something flickered inside his mind.

Not a thought.

Not a voice.

A memory-fragmented and sudden. A battlefield.

Swords burning black as coals.

A king, weeping with eyes alight like molten gold.

A city crumbling beneath waves of fire and sea. He saw it all in a heartbeat-too vivid, too real. And then it vanished.

He collapsed, gasping, clutching his chest as his heart hammered like a war drum. It took hours to steady.

But he rose. Always.

Because each time, he learned more.

The Abyss Flame was not a tool-not yet.

But it could be.

One night, as he returned to Nevernight after weeks of training, the guild clerk caught sight of him.

“You’ve been active,” she asked. “A lot of completed quests lately.”

He nodded silently.

“Word is you’re heading further. People say they’ve seen strange fires on hills.”

He said nothing.

She tilted her head.

“Whatever it is you’re chasing… it hasn’t swallowed you. Yet.”

“No,” he murmured. “Not yet.”

That night, beneath flickering candlelight, he placed both tomes before him. He traced with a finger along the worn page edges. And wrote in his notebook:

It is memory.

It is waiting.

It must be earned, or it consumes.

But today, it listened to me.

Tomorrow, I’ll speak back.

He closed his eyes and recalled the cold flame coiling in his palm.

Its pulse.

Its hunger.

Its promise.

And for the first time in many nights, Shin allowed himself to believe.

That maybe-just maybe-he could master it.

Not to wield it. But to understand.

To protect.

To remember.