The door closed behind him with no sound.
Silas stood in the center of a vast chamber. The walls were made of obsidian stone and pulsed faintly with light from within. Strange glyphs floated in the air like drifting leaves, constantly rearranging themselves before fading out of sight. At the far end of the chamber stood a pedestal made of white marble. Upon it rested a single orb, smooth and pulsing softly with golden light.
The orb watched him.
He did not know how he knew this. It had no eyes. No mouth. No shape to express thought. Yet Silas felt its attention resting on him like the weight of a crown he did not ask for.
He stepped forward.
The air thickened with each stride. Not like fog or smoke, but with presence. The chamber was alive. Not in the way a beast breathes or a tree grows. It was aware of him in the way a mirror is aware of a face.
The orb spoke without words.
Silas Vane.
He froze.
You have been chosen.
"Chosen for what?" he asked aloud.
To return what was taken.
He narrowed his eyes. "I don't understand."
You do not need to. Not yet.
The light from the orb grew brighter. It floated from the pedestal and hovered before him. Slowly, it drifted toward his chest. Silas tried to move but found his body rooted in place. Not paralyzed. Anchored. As if the world itself had decided he would not run.
The orb touched his skin.
And the pain began.
Not burning. Not tearing. It was a deeper pain, like something ancient inside him being pulled open. He screamed without sound as light poured into him. His vision fractured. His thoughts expanded. He saw a thousand stars explode in reverse. He saw shadows made of cities. He saw beings that sang galaxies into place. And then he saw himself, floating in the void, arms outstretched, eyes closed.
Then it all vanished.
He collapsed to the floor.
The orb was gone.
The chamber was gone.
He lay in a new place now. A field of bone-colored sand beneath a sky split by veins of crimson lightning. In the distance, black spires pierced the clouds like needles through skin. The air was thick with the scent of stone and ash.
He sat up, gasping.
His robe had changed. It now bore a second line of light, curling across his sleeve in the shape of a spiral. He could feel something moving beneath his skin. Not worms or insects. Energy. Coiled and quiet. Waiting.
A soft crunch of footsteps echoed nearby.
Silas stood quickly.
A man approached from the dunes. Tall and lean, wrapped in gray cloth with a spear slung across his back. His eyes glowed faintly, like embers trapped in ice.
"You do not belong here," the man said.
Silas tensed. "Neither do you, I think."
The man chuckled. "I was born in this place. You were brought. There is a difference."
"Where am I?"
The man gestured to the sky. "A shard of the inner world. One of many. You fell through the gate, which means you were chosen."
Silas frowned. "I did not choose anything."
"You were not meant to. The Abyss chooses."
Silas stepped closer. "What is the Abyss?"
The man paused, studying him. Then he spoke slowly.
"It is not a place. It is not a being. It is the memory of all things lost. And it is alive."
Silas looked at his hands. Faint gold lines flickered across his skin for a moment before fading.
"What does it want from me?"
"Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. Those it marks either rise or are consumed by what they become."
"And what am I becoming?"
The man turned to leave.
"Find the city. Learn its name. If you survive, we will speak again."
Then he was gone.
The sand swallowed his footsteps.
Silas stood alone again.
The sky cracked once more above him. The red lightning did not flash randomly. It formed patterns. He could almost see letters in the way it branched. Languages too ancient to pronounce. Symbols that shifted whenever he tried to focus on them.
Something was building.
Not in the sky. In him.
He began to walk.
Not because he knew the way.
But because the world itself seemed to open beneath his steps.
And somewhere far beyond, hidden in the folds of dimensions, something stirred.
It had felt the orb awaken.
And it remembered a name that had not been spoken in a thousand realities.
Vane.