The Broken Halo

Chapter 991 - 990: The Abyss [GT Bonus - ]

After leaving the battlefield and the ruins of Velmora, Simon, Sonya, and Akaza followed Lord Enigma toward The Abyss. Virella and Ammor came with them, carrying their share of the things salvaged from the dead.

Their journey ended in a volcanic wasteland far from the Demon Realm’s main and known roads.

Enigma brought them above an open crater. Lava boiled below, lifting black crusts that cracked and sank again. Something long enough to encircle a fortress rolled beneath the surface, exposing a row of glowing fins before disappearing.

Simon steadied the wind carrying Akaza, Virella, and Ammor. Beside him, Sonya turned her head toward the movement beneath the lava.

Virella looked down, then back at Enigma.

”Please tell me we’re going around it.”

”The entrance is underneath,” Enigma replied.

Simon examined the crater. The heat carried enough demonic energy to blister an ordinary demon before they reached the rim. Even the air beneath them was difficult to read, and bursts of power tore through it whenever another bubble broke.

A silver film spread from Enigma, enclosing all six of them. The heat receded.

”Stay close. And don’t try to absorb anything until we’re through.”

They descended.

Red swallowed the view. Molten rock pressed against the barrier, and the creature Simon had seen above passed close enough for its fins to scrape along it. Enigma kept descending without looking at it.

Deep beneath the surface, a circle of darkness appeared.

It hung flat in the lava, open like a well. Nothing spilled inside. Simon felt the space around its edge and realised that it led somewhere far beyond the mountain.

Enigma pressed two fingers against the rim. Marks lit beneath his hand, and the darkness opened wider.

They passed through, and their feet touched solid ground.

Simon’s next breath caught halfway into his lungs.

Demonic energy flooded toward his heart. He restrained his absorption at once, feeling the strain building as more power entered than he had intended to take in.

Akaza coughed beside him. Ammor gripped Virella’s arm to steady himself.

”Slowly,” Enigma warned. ”You’ll need time to adjust.”

Simon barely heard him.

They stood upon a broad black slope. Ahead, enormous ridges curved away on either side, enclosing a darkness so wide that Simon couldn’t see across it.

He looked up. There were no moons.

The sky resembled the burnt shell of an enormous world. Great dark plates covered it, with jagged gaps between them. Fire poured through those gaps in long, shifting curtains. Some thinned into showers of embers, and others fell as rivers of molten rock.

One struck a distant ridge and burst apart. Burning liquid spread across the height, collected in channels, and spilled over the edge into the darkness below.

Simon waited for the light to reveal a bottom, but it kept falling until he could no longer see it.

”How deep is that?” Akaza asked.

”I don’t know,” Enigma answered.

Akaza looked at him. ”But you live here.”

”And I intend to keep living here. Don’t go down there.”

Simon activated Sky Eye.

Details sharpened along the ridge to his left. What he had taken for cracks repeated too regularly. Broad plates overlapped, each with a raised edge and a dark groove beneath it.

He realized what they were...

Scales.

He followed them toward the pale mountain rising beyond the slope. It curved backwards over an enormous skull. Beneath it, an empty eye socket faced the sky.

Simon’s mouth parted in surprise as he realized what he was looking at.

A dragon.

They were standing on a dragon.

Its corpse curled into an immense ring, its jaws locked around the end of its own tail. The long curve of its back enclosed the bottomless dark in front of them and beneath them. Torn wings hung from its sides, their exposed bones disappearing beneath the body.

There was no land supporting it. Beyond its outer edge, the same darkness stretched away without a shore.

Across the dragon’s back stood cities.

One cluster occupied a single scale, its tallest buildings barely reaching the height of the next plate. Roads crossed the grooves between them. Farther away, towers had been built into the creature’s broken spines, with windows glowing along structures Simon had mistaken for bare bone.

Its skull carried the largest settlement. Walls climbed between shattered horns, and red lights filled the sockets where its eyes had been. Simon had to focus before he could distinguish the streets inside the nearer socket. The little sparks moving along them were lamps carried by residents.

”What the fuck...” Akaza whispered.

Virella stared at everything with the same wide eyes that everybody had.

Simon looked toward the tail beneath their feet. He had seen enormous beasts in both his lives. None had made an entire city seem like something caught beneath a loose piece of its hide.

”A Daemon?” he asked.

”Yes,” Enigma said. ”It has been dead long before we settled here.”

Simon’s eyes returned to the sky.

”And that fire?”

”Hasn’t stopped falling in all the time I’ve known this place.”

Another curtain descended through a break overhead. This one fell toward an inhabited stretch of the back. A dark barrier appeared above the buildings, dividing the molten rain and sending it down either side.

The people beneath continued along their streets.

Sonya crouched and pressed her palm against the scale.

”Why do I feel like there’s something beneath us?”

Simon had felt it too.

Below the corpse, beyond the falling fire, something drew a response from deep inside him. He couldn’t tell whether it was his bloodlines or something else had stirred first. The sensation reached beneath his ribs, it was faint but persistent, urging him to look farther down.

He sent his perception after it.

The darkness swallowed his senses so abruptly that he nearly unfurled his wings.

Simon pulled back.

”I wouldn’t do that again,” Enigma said. His amusement had gone. ”There are places here where searching is enough to attract unwanted attention.”

”What was I sensing?”

”From here? It could be any number of things.” Enigma looked toward the drop. ”Leave it alone for now.”

Simon studied him, then withdrew from the edge.

”This is a separate dimension,” he said.

Enigma nodded.

”The volcano contains one of our entrances. We left the Demon Realm when we crossed it.”

That explained the difference in the space surrounding them. Simon could feel its thickness whenever he reached for it. Opening a passage here would take more from him compared to when he closed the rift outside.

The demonic energy was different too. It constantly pressed against his skin, and it was rich enough that drawing it into his heart required restraint rather than effort.

His blood welcomed it though.

That disturbed him almost as much as the corpse.

Enigma led them down the slope toward a row of buildings.

An avenue wide enough for an army led between buildings whose lowest windows stood far above their heads. Smaller houses filled the shelter beneath the doorways. Entire streets beyond them were empty, their windows sealed.

Simon looked at a staircase with steps taller than Akaza. Whoever had built that house had not expected ordinary demons to visit.

They passed two demons carrying baskets of pale fruit. Both bowed to Enigma and hurried aside. Above them, a tall figure stood in a doorway, its face hidden beneath layers of translucent skin. Its shadow stretched uphill against the firelight.

Simon looked at it once and continued walking.

He made no attempt to probe its cultivation despite not being threatened by it. The figure in the doorway had already turned toward him.

”Your companions can stay with you while I speak to the elders,” Enigma told him. ”Rest first. We’ll discuss your admission afterward.”

”Can we look around?” Simon asked curiously.

”I’ll send someone to show you around,” Enigma replied. ”Until then, don’t leave this district.”

———

Later, Simon lay on his side on a bed wide enough to accommodate him comfortably, his wings had been retracted into his body.

The room contained a table, two chairs, a wardrobe, and a washing room. The sheets were clean. A covered meal waited beside a jug of water. There was nothing lavish about it, but nobody had locked him in.

Sonya, Akaza, Virella, and Ammor had rooms along the same passage. He could sense them nearby.

Outside his window, fire continued falling into the Abyss.

Even now, he could feel that faint pull from somewhere below. Distance and walls hadn’t removed it. He had checked the room’s formations before lying down, but his attention kept returning to whatever had triggered the feeling in his body.

Simon turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

Lilith had helped him reach the origins of his bloodlines. She knew far more about Daemons than she had ever explained.

Before he let the elders question him, he wanted a few answers of his own.

”Lilith,” Simon said. ”We need to talk.”