Darkness was not absence here.
It breathed.
It moved like water beneath the earth, heavy with memory and grief. Kael felt it slide across his skin as he fell through it, every breath a war. His body was no longer entirely flesh—half shadow, half blood, bound by threads of gold that sparked and vanished as he spiraled deeper.
He tried to speak her name, but the sound dissolved before it left his throat.
Lyria.
She was gone from his senses. No scent. No heartbeat. Just the faint echo of her soul, humming like a dying star far above him.
The fall ended abruptly. Kael slammed onto a surface made of black glass, shattering it beneath him. The impact tore through his ribs, his vision bleeding red. When he pushed himself up, he saw the sky—or what passed for one.
It was pale and vast, lit by a hollow moon that cast no warmth.
The Underrealm.
He had heard whispers of it in the oldest myths—where gods buried the sins they couldn't destroy.
