THE FORGOTTEN ABYSS

LYDIA POV

The sensation of falling through pitch-black space was endless.

Wind roared in my ears, carrying the suffocating reek of ancient rot and damp stone. Above us, the blinding sunlight of Sunreach shrank into a tiny, distant square of gold before vanishing entirely as stone debris rained down after us.

"LYDIA!"

Strong, broad arms wrapped violently around my waist in the dark. Adrian pulled my body flush against his chest, twisting his own frame in mid-air so that his back would take the impact of whatever waited at the bottom of the abyss.

BRACING!

We slammed into a steep, subterranean slope of loose shale and damp soil, tumbling down a two-hundred-foot incline in a chaotic blur of sharp stone and flying dirt. Adrian kept his arms locked around my head and torso like an iron cage, taking every agonizing strike from the jagged rocks until we finally slid to a halt on a flat, freezing stone floor.

Silence dropped over the darkness like a heavy velvet shroud.

"Adrian..." I coughed, my voice a raspy whisper against the cold dirt. "Adrian, speak to me!"

My hands scrambled over his chest in the pitch black. His dark velvet tunic was torn to shreds, his skin slick with sweat and cold blood, his breathing heavy, shallow, and ragged.

I pushed a tiny, microscopic spark of White Light to my fingertips—just enough to illuminate our immediate surroundings without drawing attention to whatever lurked in the deep.

The pale golden glow revealed the horrifying sight. Adrian was lying beneath me, a sharp wooden beam from the plaza above piercing through the flesh of his thigh, his gray eyes half-lidded as he gritted his teeth against the excruciating pain.

"I've... got you..." he grunted, a strained, dark grin breaking through the blood on his jaw. "Told you... no one touches my Head Healer."

"You idiot," I whispered, tears of fierce affection stinging my eyes. "You dived into a pit of dark magic for me."

"I'd dive into hell for you, Lydia. You know that by now."

"Hold still." I laid my palm flat over the entry point of the wood splinter.

My White Light felt heavy and stiff down here—the subterranean air was dense with ancient, primordial shadow-spores that suppressed divine energy—but I forced the magic through anyway. The golden fire numbed his nerve endings, pushed the jagged wood back out of his flesh, and sealed the torn muscle fibers in a matter of seconds.

Adrian let out a long, shuddering breath, his body relaxing against the stone floor. He sat up, shaking the dirt from his dark hair, and immediately pulled out his broadsword, scanning the suffocating gloom around us.

"Where are we?" he asked, his Alpha instincts on high alert as his pupils dilated to catch the faint light from my palm.

I raised my glowing hand, casting our light across the vast underground chamber.

We were standing in a colossal subterranean ruin, built long before the founding of the Imperial Palace above. Massive granite pillars, thick enough to hold up the world, stretched into the vaulted darkness above us. The walls were lined with ancient, faded murals carved into solid basalt, but every carving was covered in thick, pulsating veins of dark, iridescent purple mold.

The air didn't just smell like rot—it vibrated with a low, unnatural hum that made the teeth in my jaw ache.

"This isn't a cave," I whispered, stepping closer to one of the ancient stone walls, my hand hovering an inch above the carvings. "These are the Original Vaults. Sunreach was built on top of an ancient holy temple."

Adrian stepped up beside me, his hand resting on the small of my back, his presence a warm, solid anchor in the terrifying gloom. "Look at the carvings, Lydia."

I wiped a layer of dark, iridescent mold off the basalt mural, revealing the carved figures beneath.

My breath caught in my throat.

The mural depicted a figure standing before a kneeling army of wolves. The figure wasn't an Alpha carrying a sword or a Sovereign holding a crown. It was a tall, plus-sized woman with short hair, holding a sphere of brilliant, radiant light in her hands.

"The First White Healer..." I rasped, my heart slamming against my ribs.

I wiped away more of the slime, following the sequential story carved into the stone wall.

In the second panel, the kings of the wolf territories stood beside the White Healer. But in the third panel, the story turned dark. The Alphas, terrified of her unyielding divine authority and her power over life and death, chained the First Healer in dark iron, dragging her down into this very pit to drain her blood into biological weapons.

In the final panel, the First Healer didn't die. She broke. Her light turned pitch-black, twisting her body into a terrifying, skeletal creature of shadow and ice—the original entity that would eventually be known as the Shadow King.

"It wasn't a monster from beyond the mountains..." I whispered, horror choking my breath as the truth settled into my soul. "The Shadow King... was created by the High Council. They betrayed the first White Healer, and her corrupted spirit became the rot that haunts this continent."

"Lydia..." Adrian’s voice dropped into an icy, dangerous tone. He pulled me behind his back, leveling his broadsword toward the far end of the cavern.

From the dark depths of the ancient vault, the low hum in the air grew into a deafening, vibrating roar.

The dark, pulsating veins of purple mold covering the walls suddenly ignited, glowing with an unholy, violet light that illuminated the entire subterranean hall. At the far end of the temple, sitting upon a throne carved from frozen black ice, was a colossal, shrouded figure.

It was thirty feet tall, its body woven from ancient, compacted shadow-vines, its hands resting on a sword made of shattered starlight.

The entity had been sleeping for a thousand years beneath the imperial capital—waiting for another White Healer to descend into the dark.

Two massive, crimson eyes opened in the center of its featureless shadow face.

The dark aura that erupted from the throne was so vast, so heavy, and so suffocating that the granite floor beneath our feet shattered into spiderwebs of cracks. My White Light flared defensively around us, but against the sheer, primordial weight of the First Healer's corrupted spirit, our shield buckled, flickering like a dying candle in a hurricane.

"Another... daughter... of light..." a voice echoed directly inside my mind, cold, hollow, and dripping with centuries of agonizing betrayal.

The ancient Shadow King slowly stood up from its throne of ice, raising its massive, starlight sword.

"They will use you..." the voice screeched, shaking the foundations of the underground world. "They will bow to you until they no longer need your medicine... and then they will chain you in the dark!"

Adrian stepped forward, his body blocking the creature's gaze, his eyes flashing with lethal defiance. "She is not yours to take!"

"RUN!" I screamed—but before we could move, the floor beneath the throne ruptured, and hundreds of thick, thorny black tendrils shot through the stone, wrapping around Adrian's torso and pulling him toward the shadow throne!