Where Light is a Memory and Hunger is a Law
The Abyss had no sunrise.
No sunset.
No measure of time except the slow rot of sanity and the heartbeat of desperation.
Simon did not know how long he had been down here. Hours? Days? Weeks? The concept slipped away, dissolved by the constant grind of survival. When he first fell into the depths, he counted heartbeats, breaths, kills. Now all he counted was movement.
Move or die.
Sometimes he wondered if he was still human. Humans needed rest. Safety. Warmth. Hope.
But hope did not exist here.
What existed was blood. Stone. Darkness. And beasts.
Always beasts.
He sat against a jagged wall of the cavern, Amujamu resting across his knees. His breath fogged faintly—there was no warmth here. If not for the faint glow of demon fungus scattered across the cavern, he would've been blind.
His clothes hung in tatters. His body bore scratches, bite marks, deep gashes that had healed and reopened countless times. His muscles felt carved out of exhaustion rather than strength.
He waited in silence.
He listened to the soft growls echoing through the tunnels, the scratch of claws against stone. They hunted him. He hunted them.
A circle of survival where the only prize was another day of torment.
He lifted a torn chunk of flesh—dark, rubbery demon meat—and forced himself to chew. The taste was foul. Acidic. Wrong. But his body devoured it with desperate hunger.
He didn't want to know what it was doing to him. Whether demon flesh corrupted the eater. Whether it made his blood blacker, his veins darker.
He didn't care. Hunger was honest. Hunger didn't lie. He swallowed and wiped the blood off his mouth with the back of his hand.
The cavern trembled.
A low growl echoed. Simon did not sigh. Did not curse.
He simply picked up his sword and stood. Another routine. Another kill.
---
They lunged at him from all directions.
Four-legged horrors with black shells and jaws that split open like peeling metal. Their eyes glowed faint green, dripping with hunger and mindless bloodlust.
Simon stepped aside, slashing one open from throat to chest. Acidic blood hissed as it splattered the ground. The wound closed almost instantly—regeneration kicking in.
He attacked again—Amujamu cutting deeper this time. The cursed blade pulsed, slowing the beast's healing, but not enough to kill outright.
The creature screamed and charged again.
His thoughts were mechanical. Cold.
Angle. Counter. Tendon first. Spine second. Kill third.
He pivoted, sliced the tendon behind its foreleg, then drove his blade through the base of its skull. The shriek died. The beast fell still.
Another one leapt.
Simon ducked, rolled, came up with the sword thrusting upward. The creature impaled itself, thrashing violently. He pressed harder until it went still.
Two more came. Then three.
He fought without speaking. Without emotion. His breaths came heavy, but his eyes stayed steady. Blood—his and theirs—mixed on the stone.
When the last one fell, Simon stood still, chest rising and falling.
His hand trembled slightly.
Not fear.
Not pain.
Just exhaustion.
He dragged one carcass toward a stone shelf. He used a piece of sharpened bone to carve meat off. Strung it over a faint patch of glowing blue fungus that produced heat instead of light.
Fire didn't exist here. No spark. No wood. No warmth.
Just fungus that mimicked flame without ever being flame.
He sat, chewing slowly again.
"Another day," he murmured.
His voice sounded strange to him. Dry. Hollow. Rusted, like it forgot how to be used.
He looked up toward the distant ceiling—so impossibly far above that it felt unreal.
Somewhere up there, Orba watched. Waited. Judged. Simon didn't know whether the demon wanted him to survive or wanted to see his sanity collapse.
Either way, Simon would not give him the satisfaction. He wiped his sword.
He stood again. Hunger dulled. Muscles aching.
There was no rest here. Only movement.
---
At some point—minutes, hours, days—Simon began climbing.
He searched every slope, every formation of stone, every narrow passage. The tunnels branched endlessly, a cruel labyrinth of hunger and death. He found steep ledges, high shelves, narrow chimneys that scratched his skin raw as he forced himself upward.
Only to find
Dead ends.
Collapsed tunnels.
Walls too steep, too slick, too cursed.
Once, he climbed so high he could almost smell open air…
Only to reach a ceiling coated in a flesh-like membrane. Pulsing. Living. Warm with demonic life.
It moved when he touched it—like breathing skin.
He stabbed it. The whole cavern roared, a furious scream vibrating through bone and blood. Something huge stirred beyond the wall. Something ancient. Hungry. Sleeping.
Not a passage.
A womb.
A nightmare.
He retreated.
Not in fear. In logic.
He would not win against whatever made that sound. He continued searching.
Another passage.
Another dead end.
Another long walk where time felt like an enemy that refused to show its face.
Once, he heard the flutter of wings—light, graceful.
Not beast wings.
A demon. Higher intelligence.
"Someone," Simon whispered, voice cracking.
Hope flickered for a moment—and it was worse than despair.
He followed the sound.
It led him to a chasm lit by sickly purple crystals. At the far end, perched like a gargoyle, was a winged demon devouring a beast carcass. Elegant, monstrous, dripping crimson.
It noticed him instantly.
Its smile stretched unnaturally.
"Food," it hissed.
No rescue. No help. Just another predator.
Simon fought.
He bled. He killed. Then he carved its meat and ate it like all the others.
Sometimes Simon spoke aloud just to hear a voice. Not because he needed company. But because silence felt like drowning.
"This place," he muttered once, scraping blood off his sword on a stone edge, "isn't a prison."
He stared into the dark tunnel ahead, where more eyes glimmered.
"It's a mirror."
The Abyss didn't break him by force. It revealed what was already inside. He fought again. He ate again.
He slept leaning against stone, waking only when claws scraped too close.
He drank water from dripping stalactites, bitter and metallic. Once, he drank blood when no water appeared.
He didn't gag. Didn't hesitate.
Human boundaries died long ago. He was something new.
Not demon. Not human.
A thing shaped by hunger, sharpened by pain, cooled by emptiness.
A blade.
---
One day—if day still had meaning—Simon stood at the base of a narrow vertical shaft. Light trickled faintly from above.
Not sunlight.
But something brighter than fungus glow.
A way up.
A way out?
He readied his body, focused on his back. Pain rippled through him as bone forced itself out again. Flesh tore. The wing erupted—larger now, thicker, veins glowing faint red like dying embers.
Still only one.
Still wrong.
But stronger.
It flapped once, stirring dust. He lowered himself, bent his knees—And jumped.
The sole wing beat hard, giving him lift. He ascended halfway… then dropped as muscles screamed and mana drained from him.
He hit the ground. Hard.
He gasped. Rolled. Stood again.
Tried again. Fell again. Again. Again. Again.
On the seventh attempt, he held himself halfway to the top, chest burning, vision shaking—
Then something grabbed his ankle.
A beast had climbed after him, leaping from wall to wall like a spider. It yanked him down, jaws opening wide.
Simon didn't scream.
He simply swung Amujamu downward, severing the creature's head midair as they both fell.
His back slammed stone.
He lay there, breath ripping from his lungs, staring at the faint light above.
Almost.
He almost made it.
He did not feel despair.
Only calculation.
Next time. He slept.
Not from tiredness—he had long passed the point where exhaustion mattered.
His body shut down temporarily, forced by survival instinct.
In the dream—or something like it—he stood in a void.
A voice echoed, neither male nor female, deep as the pit itself.
"You consume the flesh of demons."
"You drown in our dark."
"You wield our power."
"Yet you deny us."
Simon didn't answer.
The voice thundered.
"You do not hate enough."
"You do not crave enough."
"You do not despair enough."
"You are empty."
Silence stretched like a blade across the throat of existence.
Then..
"Is that your strength…
or your tragedy?"
Simon opened his eyes. He didn't have answers. He only had breath. And steel.
He stood.
He stretched his tired muscles.
He flexed the single wing—dark, twitching, struggling to obey.
He didn't look up with hope. He looked up with certainty. This pit would not keep him forever.
He would climb.
He would fall.
He would climb again. He would never stop. Because hope dies. Despair breaks.
But stubbornness?
Stubbornness survives everything. He whispered to the cavern, voice steady.
"You are not my grave."
He tightened his grip on Amujamu.
Then he moved forward, deeper into the hell that tried to swallow him.
Because one truth had rooted itself in him stronger than hunger, pain, or fear:
If the Abyss wanted to consume him…
it should've done it before he learned to enjoy biting back.