"One!" Ran screamed, watching the miles of eternity between them and the abyss close in.
"Two!" Erisa yelled back in response, knowing what he was thinking.
They couldn't fall farther than this. They didn't need to fall directly into the Abyss to be consumed. Just from the heat coming out of it alone, their whole body would turn to particles just a few kilometers away from it.
"Three!" He called, finally and grabbed on to Kigana while Erisa pulled Haru into an embrace.
The two of them gave in to the pull of the currents and let the kin of the air pull them away, levitating them, and their friends within their grip, out of the pit.
The pressure and gravity fought hard against them but they pushed harder against it, gradually increasing their ascent.
Their motion changed and slowly they started ascending out.
But there was no out. In this realm there was only the void and the Abyss. What were they going to do now?
"Oh my god, you can fly," Kigana said, sounding a bit hysterical.
Ran chuckled. He felt it was inappropriate to be amused in this situation but he could not help it. The nature of an immortal, he guessed.
"I told you I had wings," he said.
"I didn't see any," she responded even though she had her eyes closed as she hugged him like her life depended on it.
"Well, it's not what I'm using. And my wings won't be out until the glamour—"
"Will you both please just stop the lovely destressing conversation until we are out of this place?" Haru said, sounding annoyed. "And, Ran? Why in a Shinigami's stinking ass didn't you tell us that the fixed destination was the hell blazing Abyss, you goddamn idiot."
"Ah, I never actually thought it would be." They all looked at him like he had taken leave of his senses. Even Kigana opened her eyes to glare at him. "Look, I thought it was symbolically referring to the abyss. Like the way the sky is called heaven but actually isn't, you understand?"
"You can both argue over misinterpretations later but we need to find a way out of here," Erisa said. "Except we both possess infinite Kin and stamina there's no way we can continue levitating for long."
"I don't think there actually is a way out," Ran said looking around.
Erisa sighed. "There should be. You can't tell me this place is just abyss, void, and whatever that thing that makes a lava look like ice cream is?"
"That's the dragon wraith," Kigana said. At the surprised sounds about two of them made, she expanded. "I read a lot of books. One of them explained that during the Great Fall, a lot of dragons were slain and thrown into the Abyss, their wraiths were forever chained there. All wraiths carry the essence of existence, for exams humans make powerful spirits. Dragon wraiths carry their blazing essence which was exactly described as "the dragon wraiths of HIM, deep within the abyss, in unity to be as the heart of the sun' word for word."
Ran chanced a glance down and shivered. He had a feeling he'd just discovered another that, for him, was worse than death.
"Well, now I really feel that we need to get out of here," Haru said.
Ran floated a few meters north with Kigana, moving his head from side to side to see if there was even a safe place to land in this cosmic ocean of dragon wraith.
He was several heartbeats into his search when he paused and cocked his head to the left.
Squinting as he caught something off in the horizon, he peered deeply. It looked like a shadow. No, it was solid but blacker than sin. It was jutting right out of the Abyss like a ridge.
"Guys, I think I can see a mountain."
"What?" Erisa asked, moving closer to join him.
"Where?" Kigana asked, in his arms.
He pointed and they or turned to look, or did as much of that as they could in the case of Kigana and Haru who were being carried.
"Is that a mountain?" Erisa asked.
"Shape, size, shadow and mass would suggest that it is, but we can't be certain until we get closer," Kigana said. "It might as well be a sleeping Kaiju for all we know."
Haru sighed and muttered some curses that made Ran stifle a shocked laughter.
"Did you have to share that speculation with the rest of us?" The Acolyte asked.
Kigana scoffed. "I felt we just had to have a clear idea of what to expect. I've never been to Naraku but I know caution is the word for survival here not S.O.S."
"I hope I'm not going to be the mother of this kinhood?" Erisa said, sighing. "Please, enough with the jibes and retorts. Let's figure out if we are going to approach or not."
Ran shrugged, making Kigana gasp in his hold and glare at him. He gave her an apologetic look and faced Erisa. "I don't think we have any other option. You can't keep carrying Haru forever."
She frowned at him then narrowed her brows in concentration. This time he felt her presence in his mind, gave her a few seconds before nudging her out.
She smiled at him innocently. "So you could actually use power to brute force this and carry Kigana forever?"
He shrugged again, making his cousin exclaim in panic.
"I could probably carry all of you, except that I don't have the stamina for that. Still if things get really bad I could just turn into a Lagarakei and have you all sit on my back. Though I don't very much like the idea of ever doing that."
Erisa gave him a sympathetic nod. "Noted. So who's against us approaching the could-be-a-mountain-could-not thing?"
Haru just grunted. "Let's just get going. I'm really not comfortable like this."
Erisa huffed. "Such great words of thanks." But she started moving and a chuckling Ran followed behind her, thankful for how much liveliness there was in travelling hell with friends.
A few kilometers away from the mountainous structure that pierced the sulfurous skies like a shard of darkness, they truly came to see how its sheer scale defied comprehension.
Stretching across the horizon, it rivaled the size of entire continents, a monolith of black rock that seemed to absorb the faint light emanating from the Lake of Hell that was the Abyss. Thousands of cliffs, jagged and unforgiving, jutted out from its flanks like the teeth of some ancient, malevolent beast.
The air around the ridge seemed to ripple and distort, as if reality itself was warped by its presence. The Abyss's surface, a churning ocean of fire and brimstone, seemed to recoil from the mountain's base, as if afraid to touch its dark, unforgiving stone.
The ridge loomed like an ominous sentinel guarding the depths of the underworld.
Its presence seemed to draw the very life force from the air, leaving only an oppressive sense of foreboding.
The darkness emanating from it was palpable, a living, breathing entity that seemed to watch and wait.
Gazing upon the ridge, the young kinhood couldn't help but feel the weight of their own mortality, and the terrible power that lay beyond the veil of the living.
And there was this persistent familiar pulse to it. To Ran it felt like the heartbeat of an eldritch nightmare and it was too strikingly familiar, recall of it just hovering in the borders of his mind.
The memory slowly came into focus as they reached one of the cliffs and he noticed heavy particles in the air—obsidian dust, the whole plain was fogged over by it, almost hindering visibility.
Settling Kigana down on her trembling feet he looked up and saw that the peak of the mountain ridge pierced the void above, creating a split that looked like a bruised sky.
There was a heavy silence that was only broken by the incessant pulsing of the ridge. It felt crushing, enclosing around him, overwhelming his senses.
It was a bone chilling silence, it was familiar.
Staring into the horizon he got a bad feeling and slowly floated back up. Midair, he took off at great speed, ignoring the calls of his friends.
He had to see, he had to confirm.
Miles away he still hadn't crossed over the ridge. He could make out something in the horizon, something rising high like one of the mountains upon the ridge, tall but slender.
He continued his approach, his heart growing fainter the closer he got and the clearer it came into focus.
It was a tower. A tower of immaterial yet strong and obscured walls that gave off the feeling of despair and pain.
An impossible tower which had a spire that spiraled down instead of up. Its walls released smog that cloaked half of it in obscurity.
And upon its gates was a familiar constellation of runes.
Ran felt a familiar pull as he neared the outer ledge of the tower, like gravity it drew him closer, warping his senses.
He came to his senses when got within a close distance of the sealed entrance.
An entrance that was not sealed.
The memory came into focus with a heart stopping shock and he stared at the gates, mouth agape.
All the runes had been broken. The gate was unsealed—Dragonhearth was unsealed.