The Voice Beyond Sleep

The candle on Shin’s desk guttered low, its flame bending in a draft he couldn’t feel. He had fallen asleep with his notebook open, head tilted against the crook of his arm. A smear of ink had dried along the side of his hand, black smudges ghosting his skin like faint burn marks. When he stirred, the faintest pulse shivered through him—like something inside was still awake, still watching.

Not his own heartbeat.

The Abyss flame had not left with sleep. Shin straightened slowly, rubbing at his temples. Dawn was just beginning to bleed into Nevernight, the first weak light softening the city’s sharp rooftops. Outside, the sound of cart wheels clattered over cobblestones and vendors called half-heartedly to one another as they prepared for the morning rush. Normal life went on, but Shin felt separated from it, as though he’d woken into a world still veiled by shadow. He flexed his hand, and for the briefest moment, his palm felt hot. The memory of the black fire’s pulse lingered there. He strapped on his sword. Today, he would not waste time with E-rank errands.

The guild was already crowded when Shin arrived. Adventurers crowded the quest boards, their voices loud with bravado and bargaining. The smell of pipe smoke and roasted bread clung to the rafters and drifted between the wooden beams like a lazy ghost. 

The clerk at the desk raised a brow when she saw him. “Back again already?”

“Something harder this time,” Shin said simply.

She studied him—still pale from lack of sleep, dark rings under his eyes—but slid a different parchment across the counter. “A D-rank. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The paper described an abandoned ruin just beyond the northern tree line. Monsters had begun nesting inside, the latest report noting “twisted slimes and an armored beast.” The reward was decent. The danger higher. Shin signed without hesitation. The clerk frowned faintly. “Bring back the cores this time. Last batch was useless without them.” He didn’t answer.

By midmorning, Shin stood before the crumbled remains of what must once have been a fortress. Its outer walls sagged inward, covered in moss and half-devoured by creeping roots. The air smelled faintly of rot and stagnant water, heavy with the damp chill of places forgotten by the sun. A faint breeze slid through the broken archways and stirred the dead leaves in lazy spirals, as though something hidden in the darkness exhaled in his direction.

Inside, shadows clung unnaturally thick, pooling in corners even where shafts of daylight cut through broken stone. His boots left faint prints in the mossy dust, and the silence pressed on his ears like deep water. The first creatures appeared almost instantly. Slimes oozed from the cracks in the floor, their gelatinous bodies glistening faintly with a greenish sheen. Normal adventurers hated them more for the mess than the threat. But these slimes weren’t normal—their centers pulsed faintly, as though something alive beat within them…almost like a heartbeat.

Shin drew his sword.

“Karyū no Honō… Muken no Ha.” Flame of the Burning Dragon… Edge without end.

Black fire surged along the blade, coiling around the steel without consuming it. He swung. The first slime split neatly in two. Instead of dissolving into harmless goo, its body shriveled instantly, collapsing in on itself like a husk drained of water. A sharp hiss escaped as it disintegrated. Shin paused. The Abyss hadn’t merely cut it down. It had devoured it.

More slimes slithered from the shadows, clustering like flies around a carcass, the pulsing in their cores growing faster—as though answering him. Shin set his jaw and moved forward. Strike after strike tore through them, his blade leaving trails of flame that burned without heat. Every creature withered the same way, consumed from within. The air grew thick with the acrid stench of something deeper than fire, something ancient and hungry. By the time the last slime fell, the ruin stank like burnt marrow. And the flame in his hand pulsed harder, steadier—like it had fed. Deeper inside, he heard the scrape of claws against stone—slow at first, cautious, then building into a steady rhythm.

The demon emerged from the far archway, its body shaped like a wolf but grotesquely distorted. Its hide shimmered with plated ridges of bone, joints twisted at unnatural angles. Its eyes glowed with feral hunger. When it bared its teeth, steam hissed from between them, each breath a furnace. Shin lifted his sword. The beast lunged.

“Kurayami no Tate!” Shield of Darkness… stand with me.

The black barrier flared to life just as the demon’s body slammed against it. The impact rang like steel on steel, the shield rippling like liquid glass. Shin braced, teeth clenched, as cracks spiderwebbed outward. For a moment the animal pressed against it with its full weight, testing the boundary with claws and fangs. He dropped the shield before it shattered completely, rolling aside as the beast lunged again. Its claws raked the stone where he had stood, carving gouges deep enough to split rock. Shin swung upward, blade cloaked in Abyss flame. The steel connected with the creature’s plated hide—sparks flared, but the bone armor held. It snarled and lunged again.

Shin tightened his grip. The flame climbed higher, curling like smoke along the length of the blade. His vision blurred, the edges of the world darkening. He felt the Abyss tugging at him, urging him to give more. A little more, just one more heartbeat…

“Fine,” he hissed. “Take it.”

He stepped into the next swing—faster, harder. The sword cleaved through hide and bone alike, the black fire howling as it split the demon from chest to throat. For a heartbeat, the creature’s body convulsed, caught in a silent scream. Its legs buckled, bone plates cracking like dry bark. Then it collapsed, its body seared black. Shin staggered back, chest heaving. The flame guttered, then died. He looked down. Where the demon had fallen, there was no core. No glowing shard. Only a blackened husk, already crumbling to ash. The Abyss had eaten it.

Shin dropped to one knee, sweat dripping into the dirt. His limbs felt heavy, as though the battle had drained more than stamina. Something inside him felt thinner, stretched tight—threadbare. He touched his chest. The pulse of the Abyss flame answered faintly, like a second heartbeat lodged beneath his ribs. He wasn’t in control. He was the conduit.

By the time he returned to Nevernight, the sun was dipping low, staining the streets with amber light. Vendors hawked roasted meats, children laughed in the alleys, and lanterns flickered to life in doorways. The world was so normal it almost hurt. The guild clerk glanced at the sack he dropped on the counter—horns, scraps of hide, a fragment of broken claw. She frowned. “No cores?” 

Shin shook his head.

Her lips thinned. “Then the pay is halved. You can’t keep destroying them, rookie. This guild runs on trade, not corpses.” He offered no excuse, only took the coin pouch and left. The weight of the Abyss pulsed inside him, stronger than before. That night, Shin lay in his small rented room, candlelight trembling against the walls. He was too exhausted to write, too drained to move. The flame inside him pulsed, steady and slow, like it had always been there. He drifted between sleep and waking, the line blurred by exhaustion. Shadows thickened along the corners of the room. Then a voice came. Soft. Intimate. Close enough that he felt breath against his ear:

“You will be mine… no matter the path.”

His eyes snapped open. He bolted upright, chest heaving. The candle sputtered but did not go out. The room was empty. The voice lingered in his skull like a brand. He didn’t know if the voice came from the Abyss… or from something else. But far beyond Shin’s awareness, another presence had indeed stirred. He pressed a trembling hand against his chest.

The flame pulsed once, hard, in answer. And for the first time, Shin wondered if mastery was ever an option at all. 

Maybe it wasn’t about bending the Abyss to his will.

Maybe it was about surviving long enough before it claimed him completely.