With a sigh that echoed a finality, Citlali extended the lavender flower. "Get your son, and get out of my sight."
Orion and Frieda exchanged a single, desperate glance—a final tether before the plunge.
The moment their hands met the soft petals, the world didn't vanish.
It shattered like a glass pane.
The walls, the floor, the very air itself fragmented into a million pieces of black and white, leaving them suspended in a universe of pure shadow.
They stood on a surface that was nothing and everything at once, a boundless stillness that ate all light.
They couldn't see their own hands or faces, their existence reduced to a feeling, a mutual presence in the void.
From Citlali's POV
In an instant, the brilliant purple of the flower and the figures holding it simply winked out.
The space where they stood was now a blank canvas, as if they had never been.
"They've made it to the Abyss," Yandelf's voice cut through the silence, a slow, pleased smile on his face.
Citlali stifled a yawn. "Give them a few minutes. Time is a gentle river here, but down there, it's a maelstrom."
"They were consumed by the Abyss, their return won't be gentle," Yandelf murmured, a hum of satisfaction in his tone.
Inside the Abyss
Orion's hand tightened around Frieda's, an anchor in the boundless dark. "Don't pull away," he whispered, his voice a fragile thread against the silence.
"Don't ever let go. Our hands are the only things left in this darkness, the only proof we exist."
With each step, the sound of their feet echoed strangely, as if swallowed and returned by the void itself, a hollow mimicry of reality. Yet they saw nothing.
"Didn't Citlali say there would be light from the flowers?" Orion muttered, his voice tight with unease.
"Yeah," Frieda said, her brow furrowed. "But only when monsters come out. We need to find the flowers before they wake… if we want to be safe."
A faint glow bloomed in the distance.
The flowers responded.
For the first time, the Abyss revealed itself—not fully, but enough.
The sky above was a bruised smear of cosmic purples and bruised blues, nebulae twisting like storms across a silent, starless expanse. Light itself had been torn from its source, leaving the heavens weeping a violet aurora that shimmered with sorrow.
Beneath them, the ground was a graveyard of jagged crystalline spires that clawed upward like frozen screams, the shattered bones of some titanic, dead world. Each spike gleamed with a cruel sharpness, as if the land itself were aware of their trespass.
It was less a landscape than the interior of a fractured mind—a place where beautiful and horrifying thoughts had taken shape.
And there, in the distance, a field of lavender flowers glimmered faintly, trembling like frightened spirits. Their pale glow carved grotesque shadows across the jagged terrain.
"This… this is the Abyss," Orion breathed, and without hesitation, he scooped Frieda into his arms and ran toward the flowers.
"We need to move fast," Frieda warned, her voice tight with urgency. "Monsters… they're coming."
From the darkness behind, hands began to emerge.
Hands from the darkness stretched out, translucent and malformed, as if carved from the nightmares of a thousand forgotten minds. They twitched and writhed in the void, sliding over the jagged ground like ink in water, searching for something to grasp.
Orion tightened his hold on Frieda, feeling the pulse of her fear through his arms. Each heartbeat was a drum of defiance against the crushing silence.
"They're coming faster…" Frieda whispered, her voice barely carrying over the sound of their own steps in the endless black.
The lavender flowers ahead pulsed faintly, trembling in the void, as if they themselves were afraid of the reaching hands. Their glow flickered like candlelight in a hurricane, casting grotesque shadows that twisted and stretched into forms too horrific to name.
Orion's eyes darted around, but the Abyss refused to let him see more than a fraction of its horrors at a time. Shapes lurked in the corners of perception—faces without features, claws that ended in jagged shards of crystal, and whispers that seemed to crawl along the spine rather than through the ears.
"Don't let go," he breathed into Frieda's ear, his voice trembling but firm. "If we lose this—"
A hand shot out from the darkness, nearly grazing her arm. A scream of static ran through the void, a sound without source or echo, and they both staggered forward.
The flowers were close now, their glow bathing the couple in faint lavender light, but the hands multiplied, rising like a tide of black smoke with intent.
Orion's grip tightened. "Almost there… just a few more steps. We survive this… together."
---------------------------------------------------------
Ash sat on the edge of the glowing lavender flowers, their faint light trembling across his face.
"Will that… monster that looks like my father come again?" he asked with a quiet sigh.
"Ash, you're thirteen now," Ashlyn said, hugging him from behind. "You should know better than to trust everything you see here. They don't want what's best for you."
"Don't be so soft," she added sharply, though her voice carried a shadow of worry.
Ash shook his head. "You don't understand, Ashlyn… I think it's telling the truth. These flowers… they belong to the Abyss. The Abyss doesn't want us dead. And the monsters… the monsters do. They said that if we leave, we'll bring destruction."
Ashlyn exhaled slowly. "I've never seen anyone leave here. If the Abyss wants us alive… why doesn't it just let us go?"
Ash frowned. "Maybe it can't."
A sudden shift.
The air thickened, the glow of the lavender dimmed for a heartbeat, and a presence slid into the field like smoke over glass.
Ashlyn yanked Ash back, deeper into the cluster of glowing flowers.
"Something's coming…" she whispered, her eyes narrowing, tracing the movement in the void beyond the petals.
Ash tilted his head, confused. "Of course the monsters are coming. Didn't you see the flowers light up?"
"No," Ashlyn said, her voice low and deadly calm. "These aren't monsters. Not the ones we've seen before. Survivors… newcomers. And they're coming fast."
The glow from the lavender flowers pulsed once, twice, as if sensing the presence, trembling like a heart about to burst.
Orion broke from the void like a man reborn, lungs straining, arms bound tight around Frieda. Every step through the Abyss was desperation given flesh, carrying him toward the lavender glow.
Ash stiffened, his voice barely a whisper.
"It's that monster…"
But Orion's words struck through the silence, jagged with breath.
"There are people—" He paused, gaze fixed, heart lurching. "That's… our child. I can feel it."
Frieda's eyes burned, not with doubt but with certainty sharpened by absence.
"A child we never named. A life torn from us before breath. That's him. I know it."
They crossed the threshold of light, and the flowers awakened fully, spilling fractured violet radiance that painted every scar, every tear, every hope.
Ash stood frozen, his world collapsing into a single impossible image—these strangers stepping from the dark, speaking of him as though his life belonged to them.
Ashlyn moved first. The knife slid from her heel, small but gleaming like conviction. She yanked Ash behind her, her voice unflinching.
"Stay back."
Ash tugged at her wrist, panic fluttering in his chest.
"Ashlyn… they're not monsters…"
Her stare didn't waver, though her words cut low and cold.
"I know. That's your father. But fathers fail. And mistakes devour. I won't let him take you."
Then came Frieda—she leapt from Orion's hold, no hesitation, no breath wasted. A streak of feral longing.
Ashlyn braced, blade raised, her body a wall between the boy and the woman.
But Frieda did not fight like a stranger—she fought like blood reclaiming what was stolen. She dropped low, sweeping Ashlyn's stance apart with a ruthless kick, then exploded upward, arms outstretched not in defense but in hunger.
Her hands seized Ash, clutching him with a grip so fierce it blurred the line between embrace and capture. Her tears fell hot against his face as she pressed him close, whispering a wordless sob, a mother's claim without a name.
Ash stood rigid, caught between the warmth of her body and the terror of her strength. He didn't know whether he was being held… or claimed.
The lavender field blazed brighter, every bloom alight as though the Abyss itself leaned closer to watch—the reunion of a child who had never been named, and the mother who refused to let him slip away again.