Beyond the pillar, the Abyss changed.
There was no slow shift, no easing gradient of terrain. One step carried them over cracked stone and fungal mist — the next dropped them into an entirely different world.
The ground here was soft, yielding under Raen's boots with a texture like packed velvet. A faint, cloying warmth clung to the air, carrying scents he couldn't place: sweet sap, cold metal, Ember Vow's hair after a long fight. Each breath made his head buzz.
Light pooled in gentle lantern-glows overhead. They weren't lanterns, though. They were fruits — fat, translucent bulbs that hung in tangled webs from gnarled trees. Each tree's trunk was studded with small glassy eyes that blinked lazily as Raen and his companions passed.
Despair Maw paused, lifting its massive head, sniffing with slow interest. Hollowfang prowled a step closer to Raen than usual, ears twitching erratically.
[System Notice: Domain Effect Engaged — Orchard of Want]
[Passive Influence: Latent Desires Amplified, Hidden Aversions Muted]
[Trial Type: Temptation]
Ember Vow exhaled slowly. Her breath left her lips in a thin spiral, catching faint motes of light that danced away. "This realm is... sharper. It pricks at me in places I didn't know were still raw."
Raen nodded. His throat was tight, dry, though the air felt almost humid. "Stay close. Speak up if it presses too hard."
She offered him a faint, brittle smile. "If it sinks claws in me, I promise you'll be the first to know."
They pressed on. The trees grew denser, weaving their boughs overhead until only stray shafts of dusty gold pierced through. Those beams illuminated fragments of the ground: a dropped knife, rusted but still sharp; a child's doll with glass eyes missing, mouth stitched into a scream; scattered jewelry that gleamed with false promises.
And everywhere, the scent thickened. Raen found himself wanting to breathe deeper, to fill his lungs with it. Each inhalation sent a faint pleasure through his veins — like drinking too much wine, pleasantly slow, comfortably numb.
He shook his head sharply. Memoryweaver responded at once, a cool thread of resolve unspooling through his chest.
Ember Vow stumbled against him. Her hand clutched his arm hard, nails biting. "It's offering things," she whispered. Her pupils were blown wide, nearly swallowing the color. "I can almost hear it. Voices. Promising me places I could be safe. Where curses are gentle things, where I never learned how to hunger."
Raen caught her chin gently, forcing her to look at him. "That's not the world we build. That's a hollow orchard. Nothing rooted in truth grows here."
She shuddered once, then sagged slightly, her grip easing. A faint laugh slipped out — strained but real. "Even now, you talk like someone planning to plant something better."
"It's the only way I stay ahead of what this place wants to make of me."
They didn't walk much farther before the trees parted on their own, forming a wide clearing. In the center stood a structure that might have once been a shrine — low pillars ringed around a stone basin. The basin was shallow, filled with liquid as clear as molten crystal. Tiny lights moved through it, shapes that suggested stars, or eyes, or distant cities burning under strange skies.
Raen approached carefully. The System stayed silent — no warnings, no pop-ups to break the quiet dread. That somehow made it worse.
When he peered into the basin, it showed him a vision. Not memories. Possibilities.
He saw himself crowned in living flame, seated on a throne of fused Abyssal thrones stacked atop one another. Beasts knelt in rings around him — thousands, all bound by chains that glowed with his mark. Even Hollowfang, even Despair Maw, even Ember Vow herself. Their eyes shone with adoration, their heads bowed.
With a single breath he could feel the power that vision promised. Absolute. Untouchable. The Abyss bending under his will like wet clay.
Then the scene shifted. A hand slid into his. Ember Vow's, but softer somehow, her eyes vacant, mouth slack with docile reverence. She was still Ember — yet stripped of her fire, her stubborn barbs, her fierce independence. A puppet he could dress in devotion.
Raen recoiled.
The liquid stilled, then began to swirl again, as if disappointed.
[System Notice: Adaptive Temptation Engaged — Reshaping Desire Parameters]
New images bloomed: Raen leading Hollowfang and Despair Maw across mortal realms, kingdoms falling with no need for armies, because fear alone was enough. Nobles knelt in rivers of coin and blood, offering him daughters, sons, entire cities for a single boon. He took them all, an emperor of indulgence with no memory of hunger or loss.
His mouth went dry. Memoryweaver writhed in his chest, trying to anchor him to truths that suddenly felt threadbare. What harm was there, really, in taking what the Abyss so eagerly laid before him? Hadn't he earned that certainty, that trembling submission in every eye?
A soft breath cut through the whirlpool of seductive thoughts.
Ember Vow's hand slid around his. Not clutching — just there, her thumb brushing slowly across his knuckles. Her other hand rose, cradling the side of his face.
"I see it too," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, as if it cost her something to speak. "A place where you never needed me to be anything but decoration. Where I smile because you will it, not because you fought to deserve it."
Raen's vision blurred. The basin's liquid rippled again, trying to claw back his attention, but he fixed on Ember Vow's eyes. The slight tremor there, the unshed tears that weren't quite sorrow or fear — more like a quiet grief at how easily this place could offer them such poisoned beauty.
"I'd rather break the Abyss a hundred times over than see you reduced to that," he rasped.
Memoryweaver flared, not in threads this time but in a wide, consuming sweep. It poured into the basin, dulling its lights, cracking the stone around it with hairline fractures that spread like frost.
The vision collapsed. The liquid lost its glow, turning to sluggish tar that oozed over the rim. The air shivered with a faint, disappointed sigh.
Ember Vow pressed closer, resting her brow against his. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For choosing the hard road. For choosing us the hard way."
His answering smile was rough at the edges, fragile but real. "I couldn't bear a hollow orchard. Not when there's something real to fight for."
They turned from the shrine. Behind them, the trees began to wither, leaves curling inward to crumble into ash. The ground firmed under their feet, losing that velvet give, becoming once more honest, cold stone.
Hollowfang padded up, bumping Raen's hip with its broad head. Despair Maw circled them once, exhaling a long, deep sigh that made the air smell faintly of rain.
Together, they moved on, leaving the orchard of want behind — and with it, one more chain the Abyss had tried to slip around Raen's throat.
Whatever awaited them deeper in this sunless empire, he knew now that no throne, no promise of boundless dominion, would ever be worth the cost of losing the very things that made him walk forward in the first place.