The Abyss was not a pit; it was a museum of failures.
As Caspian—now the Grave-Walker—traversed the jagged plateau, he saw the skeletal remains of islands that had fallen centuries ago. They were piled like discarded toys, held together by the same rusted "God-Chains" that had failed them. The air was a thick, violet soup of toxic Aether, but to Caspian's altered lungs, it felt like cool, stagnant water.
He didn't walk like a man anymore. His boots barely touched the ground, and his silhouette seemed to blur at the edges, as if the darkness around him was trying to claim him as one of its own.
[Sequence 8: Grave-Walker — Current Ability: 'Spectral Transit'.] [Status: Spirit-Hunger (Moderate). Requirement: Observe a lingering spirit.]
His indigo eyes, now permanently ringed with the golden clockwork gears of the Tongue, caught a flickering light inside a collapsed clock tower. It wasn't the white-fire of the Church or the orange glow of soul-coal. It was a sickly, pale green—the light of a "Residual Memory."
Caspian adjusted his bird-mask. He could feel the Tongue of the Silent King twitching in his throat, tasting the air for traces of divinity.
"Help... me..."
The voice was a whisper that echoed not in the air, but in Caspian's marrow.
He stepped through the shattered stones of the tower. Sitting among the gears of a gargantuan, broken clock was a woman. She wore the tattered remnants of a Navigator's uniform, her skin looking like cracked parchment. But she wasn't a Hollowed. She was something rarer: an Echo-Wight.
"You're late for the shift," she whispered, her milky eyes staring at a point three feet to Caspian's left.
"The shift is over," Caspian said, his voice a low, resonant hum. "The island has fallen."
The woman laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering on stone. "Fallen? No, no. We're just descending to the 'Foundation.' The Governor said the Sun is waiting for us at the bottom."
Caspian knelt beside her. He could see her "Spirit-Thread"—it was frayed, held together by nothing but her own denial. This was a classic trap of the Abyss; the mind created a loop to survive the trauma of the fall, turning the victim into a permanent battery for the void-beasts.
"There is no sun here," Caspian said firmly. He reached out with his translucent hand, touching the woman's shoulder.
The moment contact was made, a flood of memories hit him. He saw the island of Oakhaven from three hundred years ago. He saw this woman, Navigator Sarah, watching the chains snap one by one. He felt her terror as the Great Pump died and the air turned to poison.
[Requirement Met: Observe a lingering spirit.] [Digestion Progress: 15% — New Ability Unlocked: 'Grave-Sight'.]
The green light flared. Sarah's eyes cleared for a brief second. She looked at Caspian—at the porcelain mask and the writhing tentacles beneath it.
"Oh," she whispered. "You're the Mourner."
"I am," Caspian replied.
"Then... tell them," she said, her form beginning to dissolve into emerald sparks. "Tell the people in the sky. The Heart didn't stop because it broke. It stopped because it woke up."
She vanished. In her place sat a small, crystalline gear. It was a Memory Fragment, a high-level ingredient for the next sequence. Caspian tucked it into his tattered coat.
The Cathedral of the Iron Lung
Caspian reached the edge of the plateau. Before him stood the Cathedral of the Iron Lung.
Up close, it was even more terrifying. The building was a fusion of gothic masonry and biological horror. Massive iron pipes, thick as redwood trees, pulsed with a rhythmic, oily sludge. The stained-glass windows didn't depict saints; they depicted the anatomy of the stars.
The massive bronze doors were hanging off their hinges. Standing in the entrance was a figure Caspian recognized.
It was Lady Elara (Marble).
But she was no longer the elegant noblewoman. Her silk gown was stained with black ichor, and the cracks on her neck had spread to her face, looking like veins of white marble. In her hand, she held a jagged piece of the First Dawn Prism.
"Caspian?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Is that... you under the mask?"
Caspian didn't drop his guard. His Grave-Sight revealed that her Spirit-Thread was being pulled toward the center of the Cathedral, toward the Great Pump.
"Marble, what are you doing here? You should have stayed with the evacuation ships."
"There were no ships, Curator," she said, a tear of white, crystalline fluid rolling down her cheek. "The Governor... he used us. The Masquerade was a 'Salt-Ritual.' He sacrificed the nobility of Oakhaven to fuel the descent. He's inside. He's trying to merge with the Heart."
A massive, mechanical roar erupted from deep within the Cathedral. The ground shook so violently that the rusted chains of the Abyss hummed in terror.
"He can't merge with it," Caspian said, the Tongue of the Silent King vibrating in his throat. "The Heart isn't a machine. It's an organ of the First Creator."
"He knows," Elara whispered. "That's why he's not using a potion. He's using a Soul-Suture."
Caspian felt a cold dread settle in his chest. A Soul-Suture was a forbidden technique of the Surgeon of Fate pathway. It allowed a person to stitch their own soul directly onto a living God. If the Governor succeeded, he wouldn't just be the ruler of an island—he would be the island. And Oakhaven would become a living, breathing predator in the sky.
"Stay here," Caspian commanded.
"No," Elara said, her eyes flashing with a marble-like hardness. "I am a Weaver now. I can see the threads he's using. You can't navigate the Heart without me."
Caspian looked at her. She was dying, her body turning to stone as her pathway corrupted her. But she was right.
"Then we walk into the beast together," Caspian said.
As they stepped into the Cathedral, the doors slammed shut behind them. The sound wasn't the clang of bronze, but the wet thud of a closing eyelid.
The walls began to breathe.