It was a new man - tempered in the heat of a desperate struggle for survival, feral madness, unimaginable loss, and rebirth - that emerged from the deepest layers of the Abyss. And I was greeted with the single most precious resource: Light.

My heart jumped for joy the moment my eyes caught a glimpse of the twinkling lights in the distance. I hastened through the darkness, bumping against rocks and stumbling over who knows what, just trying to reach it as fast as I could.

It was neither sun nor stars, of course, but plants growing on the walls and ceiling of a giant cave, easily big enough to fit Ravenrock multiple times. The plants emitted a cold light, tinged with a pale green, but it was enough for me to cry in joy and relief. The darkness was gone for now. Or it was the small, happy trickling of water that I saw running down the wall. That could explain the tears too.

“I will survive!” I whispered excitedly and collected all the water I could in my waterskins, after literally licking the wall for several minutes. I had problems filling the skins, but I took every second I needed to fill them up completely.

I was not thirsty anymore. The feeling was strange, like a hole in my body had been filled, I had not been even completely aware of. I was still in the Abyss, the dangers here would be manifold. But water wouldn’t be a problem for a few days.

Once my thirst was quenched, I started to explore a bit. I never would have expected an ecosystem so rich so far below the surface of the earth. But there were fungi and soil, a myriad of insects and creatures feasting on the plants and mushrooms.

I Even saw the body of a bigger creature in the distance, with many smaller critters swarming over it, so I could not get a good look. In the closed space of the cave, I appreciated the simplicity of the circle of life here. And swore to not be a part of it this time around.

I decided to investigate the remains of the bigger creature, just to be sure on what kind of predators I could expect in this cave. I made my way over, cloaked in the shadows, and peeked around a giant colony of mushrooms.

The corpse was maggot-ridden, but here and there scaly, black hide shimmered through like you would expect from snakes or lizards. It was not much larger than one of those big dogs we used to hunt bears in the mountain ranges with. But this creature seemed to be all claws, spikes, and teeth. This imbalance was obviously influenced by the absence of flesh around those body parts because they were already eaten away, but I nonetheless decided to be extra careful up here.

I would keep to the shadows and the walls for now. These beasts did not seem like a target to grind Essence on. At this point, I was fairly confident. I had adapted to the deeps and my surroundings. I could move unseen and silently, and I could see in the dark.

I now felt, yes…it felt as if the Abyss, as if all these dangers in front of me were nothing more than a hurdle on my rise to the surface. I had molded my very soul with Essence to ensure my survival and I would not squander my chance.

Oh, I had heard about the hidden horrors of the Abyss. Every winter around the fireplaces of Ravenrock such tales would be spun. Of creatures and imprisoned evil beyond mortal understanding.

But I had endured my personal hells and I did not plan to unearth anything down here, much less evil creatures I knew nothing about. Stick to the plan and go out of your way to avoid trouble. It was a mantra I repeated many a time I heard muffled or strange noises in the distance.

The foliage swallowed me and a few hours I saw nothing but plants and the wall, which I always kept on my right, always in sight. I was slow and took my time placing my steps carefully, making barely a sound.

My eyes darted around. And the sounds around me were strange and ominous. Something whispered in the stuffy air, creatures roared in the distance, living things died and screamed.

It was not a quiet place. It was an arena of death, survival of the fittest in a constricted space. And there was something else out there. I just could feel it.

And that was the moment all my careful plans and resolutions went out of the window. Because I found a piece of home in the most unexpected place.

It was a skeleton. A body of a man in old, rusty armor. And the symbol etched into the upper corner of the breastplate was well known to me.

A lay brother soldier of the esteemed knightly order of the Ravenguard. More specifically the 7th Cohort of the Ravenguard, formerly known as The Avalanche. But that was knowledge you could only learn in the dusty tomes of the chapel library.

Because it was banned and forbidden. Stricken from history by word and law. The 7th Cohort, cursed even the number to this day, was better known as the Kingslayers, after their commander or as he was referred to until recently: The Betrayer or even the Regicide.

The remains of the soldier in front of me shocked me to the core. It just could not be. It kind of made a lick of sense, for all of them, including the Regicide himself, had been sentenced to death after their betrayal more than a hundred years ago.

They had killed the last king born in Ravenrock. Since then, a Margrave of Ravenrock had never again been chosen for the next King. There were rules and reasons for that, political and hereditary, that I never had the leisure to try to understand. Ambition had never been a goal of mine, in the peaceful days long gone.

And because the 7th Cohort was sentenced to death in Ravenrock, they were punished in the way of the mountains. They were thrown into the very Abyss, I had jumped into.

But this lay brother should not be here. As I should not be here, were it not for literal divine intervention. He should have died at the drop, not wander around finding strange passageways to this cave.

I went closer to the skeleton, not thinking very clearly. The front of his skull was smashed in and severed from his spine, obviously from a brute force attack.

How long I stared at this thing, I could not tell. And it was not the impossibility of its existence or even the unlikely odds of me finding it. It was the soul-crushing longing and pain I felt as I was reminded of home.

Even the armor of an infamous traitor and murderer made my heart heavy to almost bursting for the homesickness and regret that filled me up. In the need of survival, I had built a wall around me, a dam to hold my feelings at bay, to forget my loss. But a single piece of my own history had torn this wall down like paper. I sat down hard. And my thoughts spiraled down dark paths to even darker places.

“Stop.”

My voice was rough and coarse, I had not spoken in a long time with my body and not in my mind. But saying it out loud helped to stop the spiral. Just stopped it. It did not fix any problems. I just focussed on what was necessary for the now.

Breaking me out of the dark thoughts. It sounded weak, even to me, but I decided to investigate. I knew that I just could not let it go. I had to know more, to know what had happened. I took the sword of the man before me, even rusty and old it was more than the club of steel I took out of my backpack and threw on the ground.

It had carried me through a legion of centipedes and spiders and one very angry worm, but it was done. I bound my new sword to my hip, but let the rusty armor and rotting leather bits behind, not because I wouldn’t touch the cursed insignia of the 7th cohort, but because the armor was too far gone to justify bogging me down and restricting my movements.

I took a careful look around but did not find any signs of what could have killed this thing, so I made a plan and searched the wider area.

To call what I found a battlefield was maybe a bit of an overstatement, but it was a small opening and there had been battle.

I stood upon a small formation of rocks, looking down on dozens of skeletons, similarly armed and armored like the one I had seen before.

Their bodies, bones, and skulls were smashed to pieces, scattered around an open piece of rock near the side of the cave wall. Two things were upsetting to me: The fresh-looking corpses of some many-legged insectoid creatures here and there, clearly killed by slashes and punctures like a sword would do. One of them even had a rusty old sword stuck in its head, lodged into the stone below.

The second thing was a dark and ominously gloomy entrance right behind them. I mean, a cave entrance was bad enough, but the sickly green light emanating from the cave gave the situation the extra eeriness I needed to be kind of concerned.

I was not an Idiot. I had heard my fair share of stories, and I might have dismissed them as fairytales, but I wasn’t about to ignore glaringly obvious evidence.

The dead were walking these caverns. And I was a child no longer. I had taken actual lives. Putting the walking dead back down again didn’t sound horrific to me. It sounded tedious and disgusting. And the level of disgusting I could stomach had risen sharply over the last weeks.

The true horror of the walking dead lies in the fact that people you know, friends and family, might rise against you. And that your end is inevitable, as slow as it might come and as long as you might hold out. But this? Putting down betrayers and murderers who dare to walk around longer than the good people of Ravenrock? That was no horror - that was sport.

For the first time in a long time, I felt the souls of my people arise in anger around me, whispering angrily at the farthest edge of my hearing. [A Flock of Souls] began to resonate with the feelings of the souls, making me able to feel what they felt.

Contempt. Disdain. Anger.

My lust for vengeance awoke as they woke out of their slumber. I heard cawing and impatient flapping of hundreds of wings. Even the shadows around me grew restless as the murder of ghostly crows grew agitated to a cacophonic rhythm of rage. I gripped the handle of my new sword hard and started walking. Today was a sword day.

I met my mettle just a few steps after I dove into the green light of the cave entrance. A few steps behind the opening stood two of the abominations in a mock form of guarding a gate, in front of a smaller opening, leading further in.

I could make out rotten and falling pieces of wood behind them, which once could have been a gate or a barricade. There was no noise in the air, only the soft rustling of bone and steel, and my own breath. They stood motionless, only small ghostly flames in their eye sockets flickered now and again. I had a plan.

The thin vertebrae of the neck were the obvious weakness, as it was not covered by steel, and the only way I could imagine ending the unlife of these things. All of the skeletons outside had smashed or severed heads. So my plan was simple: Keep calm, slap their sword away, and strike the neck as precise and hard as I could.

But I had to test them first. So I picked up a rock and hurled it at the thing on the right, and with a hollow ringing sound, it hit it square on the breastplate. Despite my preparation, I held my breath.

The flames in the eye sockets roared to angry life and they moved, oh dead gods they moved so fucking fast. I stumbled backwards, but they were upon me in seconds, blades flashing, bones rattling.

I barely ducked beneath a swing, quick as a snake, caught the other on my sword, and kicked one of them back, before its follow-up attack could reach me.

But I understood immediately. They weighed nothing. My simple kick in desperation sent him back stumbling a few steps, giving me enough time to find a rhythm against the remaining skeleton.

He was fast, yes, but there was not much strength behind the attacks. Before the other could join in again, I managed to catch a hit on my sword guard, pushing it aside while I turned into a forceful step forwards, body checking the betrayer with my shoulder and [Improved Strength]. He basically flew back against the wall, cracking and denting all over, then tumbling to the floor in a mess.

Now I had time.

They were weak, comparatively, so I adjusted the strength of my parries. It was easier now to counter their speed, but they still were faster than me, even if I just barely had to touch their swords to change their trajectory.

I missed the first strike, which opened a small cut in my arm, barely slapped away the second and I jumped back before he could swing again. I was no master swordsman by any stretch, but I was formally trained in swordsmanship from a young age. Margraves of Ravenrock defended the borders of the Empire of the Sun, and fighting was a daily occurrence. And my sword arm had been tempered in a real war and in real battle, as short as it might have been.

These skeletons were all explosive attack with unnatural speed. No finesse. My mind raced, making plans, considering stances, moves, and maneuvers, but none applied. The skeletons were all offense, no pain, no fear of death. They wouldn’t parry ever, thus halving my chances to lure them into an opening with a clever feint. They were all open already, I would just have to pay the price for victory. Or did I?

I took a breath and went in. I got in close. I parried at the last second and grabbed his arm with my free hand. He had nothing to fight against my [Improved Strength] and I smashed his skull with the pommel of my sword once, twice, thrice…then I had to shove him back into the path of his partner who had made his way back to us.

They went down almost comically in a heap of bones. This was it. Overpowering them up close. Before they could get up again, I was upon them. I just tackled them both and down we went. I got bitten through the leather of my vest and scratched, but it was a good, long beatdown with the pommel of my sword after that. I stopped when I hit stone a second time. Faint blue cubes -Essence Shards – were floating above them.

[Betrayer Skeleton defeated! Reward: 5 EP]

[Betrayer Skeleton defeated! Reward: 5 EP]

[Good Job, Hannibal! I knew you could do it. But please stop bleeding? – Lily]

I snorted. So, every defeated betrayer would give me a Shard of Essence on top of the 5 Essence points? That seemed good. Oh, these bastards would not know what had hit them.

I swapped swords because one of them was less rusty and chipped. I invoked [Walk the Night Unseen] and cloaked myself in the shadows, slipping into the glowing green hallway the skeletons had stood in front of.

It was quickly apparent that I had set foot into a labyrinth again, and the mind-boggling aspect of it was the construction, which, however long ago, had been built with tools and skill.

I was about to leave the chaotic dark wilderness of the Abyss and enter the strange and unexplainable. Who had built this? My mind wandered to questions of reason, of probabilities. Was there a plan or a mastermind behind my journey?

The coincidences were stacking up, but I just didn’t know a damn thing about fate, forgotten and mad gods, or alien minds. If I wanted to survive, I had to be in the present and sharp on top of that.

And I had a gifted horse here, a labyrinth of hated betrayers with a questionable fighting style, I already had a counter to, which also gave me Essence and Shards. I would get revenge for my [Flock of Souls] in this labyrinth of improbability, and I would emerge much stronger. Advance. Never look back.

I had not learned much about the intelligence of my foes. They had seemed to be inactive before I had hit them with the rock, and the fight had been too hectic. Were they stupid automatons, kept alive by circumstance of their surrounding?

Or was there a will controlling them? But either way, to outsmart them, I had to know what I had to work with. I started to explore while slipping by the passages I could see skeletons in.

Twice I stumbled upon roaming pairs of them and both times I managed to hide around a corner, letting them pass under the guise of my Skill, and finally hammered them to death from behind with one or two vicious blows to the back of their heads.

The second I grabbed from behind. Smashing its heads against the wall proved way more effective than trying my luck with the rusted sword.

I had a solid understanding of the layout of the passageways around the entrance, but orientation still proved difficult. It was just nonsensical. The hallways all looked the same, snaked around and were interwoven with no apparent rhyme or reason.

There were doors and rooms too, which didn’t seem to serve any purpose I could discern by the short looks I spared them, but I did not enter any. That would be phase two. But I wanted to clean my escape routes first.

I looked at it this way: There was a chaos of hallways and rooms past the entrance, which on three occasions led to rooms which were held by a group of skeletons.

These three rooms led, as far as I could trust my sense of orientation, to the very center of the labyrinth, while I was skirting around the outer rings of it. In these outskirts, skeletons only seemed to roam in pairs, not counting any rooms I had not searched yet.

To reach the center, I needed to keep my back clear from the roaming patrols.

I went hunting.