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⚫ The Emergence of Breath
It did not come with wind.
The Breath of the Abyss wasn't air or force. It was pressure made presence — like a heart beating behind the walls of reality. On the fourth cycle after the first Pillar emerged, that Breath exhaled across the land.
And everything screamed.
Flesh warped. Bones snapped outward. Creatures collapsed into black sludge or grew limbs without control. Entire nests of Ash-Eaters turned inside out. The land folded like a throat swallowing itself.
Only a few survived.
Fewer thrived.
They became known — not by name, but by survival. Creatures that adapted to the Breath didn't just endure. They evolved. Their forms crystallized into unnatural symmetry. Bones aligned. Voices sharpened. Some learned to mimic others. One creature even learned to lie.
This marked the Second Surge of Mutation. And something new was born:
Intention.
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⚫ Totem and Tower
The Pillar stood motionless in the center of the First Layer. Obsidian and veined, it pulsed only when death surrounded it. The creatures began circling it like insects, unable to explain their attraction.
Some began to pile corpses near its base. At first it was instinct — the Pillar drew rot. But after the fourth pile, something shifted. A pulse of energy flowed down the veins of the structure.
The rot pile turned into a totem.
Not carved, but shaped through decay. Bone twisted into arcs. Skulls pressed into the stone, forming screaming faces. A scent of ancient memory oozed from it.
And then it whispered.
> "Feed. Split. Rise."
A single horned crawler convulsed at the foot of the totem. It began to chant — not words, but gurgles arranged in rhythm. The air shimmered. A circle of black bile formed beneath it.
The First Ritual had begun.
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⚫ Birth of the Ritual Eater
The creature, once nothing more than a Tier 0 scavenger, began to transform. It ripped into itself, pulling organs out and feeding them into the growing bile circle. As it bled, it called others.
Ten creatures gathered — not by will, but by pull.
They did not resist. Their limbs twitched with surrender. They crawled into the circle willingly, trembling as if under hypnosis. The horned crawler devoured them, piece by piece. It chewed the bones into dust and smeared them over its skin. It drank their eyes.
The Pillar pulsed.
And the Ritual Eater awakened.
Its form defied logic: a body made of mouths, limbs that ended in tongues, a brain visible through translucent bone. It stood upright, swaying like a priest in prayer.
But its power... was real.
Tier 2 — not through natural evolution, but sacrificial transformation.
And it remembered the ritual. It could repeat it.
This was the origin of structured power in the Abyss.
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⚫ The Horned Host
Elsewhere, the Suku Tanduk Hitam — the Hornblack Tribe — observed with awe and horror.
Their champion, Krall, had grown large through pure combat. His hide was plated with horn-shards. His roar could rupture weaker skulls. Yet even he froze when the Ritual Eater passed through the mist.
The Eater ignored the tribe. It radiated wrongness. Wherever it walked, skin peeled. Krall approached, then retreated. Not out of cowardice — but out of instinctual reverence.
> "Not prey. Not kin. Not right," one muttered.
But Krall saw something else: power that could be copied.
He ordered his shamans — bone-lickers and marrow readers — to begin collecting corpses near a different fissure. A false totem was built, crude and stupid.
Their first ritual failed. Then the second.
But the third...
It summoned a thing.
Not a demon. Not a crawler. Just a scream with legs and a melting face. It consumed three of the shamans before it collapsed into a heap of stone and glass.
Krall ordered more.
The Hornblacks had found ambition.
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⚫ The Ash-Eaters' Defiance
Across the rotting ridge, the Ash-Eaters watched these rituals with disgust.
Their philosophy was different: they believed in consumption through flame. Their leaders bathed in ember pits. They burned fallen foes to steal strength from smoke, not blood.
Their elder, a creature known only as Sul, declared:
> "The Pillar corrupts. Fire purifies. We will burn it."
And so they marched.
It was the first organized assault in Abyss history. Sixty flame-bound creatures, some coated in glowing pitch, others dragging burning corpses, all charging toward the base of the Pillar.
They reached the edge.
They threw fire.
They screamed chants in fractured howls.
And the Pillar awoke.
It did not retaliate with flame or claw. It simply opened.
Dozens of tendrils — made of compressed gravity and fractured time — reached out from the veins. The fire turned inward. The screams became echoes. The air stopped moving.
Only silence remained.
A single Ash-Eater survived. Her name would later be given:
Nuhrr, the Ember Liar. Tier 2.
She had seen the inside of the Pillar — and survived. But she returned without a face, her memories sealed, her breath stolen.
She began to draw shapes in the ash.
The shapes would become runes.
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⚫ A Whisper of God
Far below, in the shifting depths, the Watcher Below smiled again. Or tried to.
The Rituals. The Totems. The war of flame and void. These were not chaos. They were language. The Abyss was learning how to grow, how to lie, how to dream.
The Demon God, who never walked nor ruled, planted another fragment of essence into a molten root. A new Pillar began to grow—deep in the west.
But this one did not bring Breath.
It brought Laughter.
And it would change everything.
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