Abyssal Guide Novels & Stories

His cold eyes remained, yet his lips slowly curved into a devilish smirk. Let's see if you can still say those words at our next meeting, Vestian. "Whoever fights with monster should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you," Celestin stated a quote out of the blue. "Remember my favorite quote I used to tell you, father?" "What the heck are you talking about, you futile child?"

Above, the white light vanished, replaced by a haunting, violet aurora that stretched across the hemisphere. Lyra was gone. The Salt and the Steel Three hundred miles to the west, the salt spray of the Atlantic bit at Jax’s face. He and Elara stood on the rusted precipice of the "Abyssal Gate"—a pre-Collapse research station anchored to the continental shelf. It was a jagged needle of titanium and moss, leaning precariously over a churning, charcoal-colored sea. "The pulse hit," Jax said, his voice sounding hollow. He clutched his head, his fingers digging into his scalp. "I can’t feel her anymore. The connection... it’s flat."

“I have the weight.” ​We had been in the slipstream for six hours, covering distance that would have taken weeks by traditional sail. But the deeper we went toward the South, the more the environment outside changed. The emerald light began to be streaked with veins of purple, the signature of the Abyssal Tide. ​“They are following us,” Ambassador Elara said, her voice tight. “Look at the sensors. We have multiple high mass signatures tracking our wake. They are moving within the slipstream itself.”

"Come and get me, you metal bastards." Two thousand feet below her, in a completely different world of absolute, crushing silence, the Titan deep-sea submersible drifted down into the black void of the Horizon Abyss. Inside the pressurized hull, the only light came from the blue digital sonar grid projecting the layout of the trench. Caleb stood behind the pilot's chair, his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the depth gauge as the numbers rapidly ticked downward: 4,000 meters... 4,500 meters... 5,000 meters.

"It’s going to be a disaster. And I can’t wait to see it." The last thing he felt was the cool breeze of the real night drifting down into the wreckage, smelling not of ozone, but of damp concrete and possibility. The Abyss had tried to consume them, but the Abyss had no heart, and that—Anji decided just before sleep claimed him—was its one and only flaw.

POV RUBY The silence of the abyss was no longer empty. It was pressurized, heavy with the presence of the thing tailing us through the subterranean currents. On the sonar screen, the signature was a pulsing, ethereal violet—a mirror image of the light that lived in my own veins. The Cónclave hadn't just built a hunter; they had engineered a bloodhound that could track a soul through four hundred meters of rock and freezing water.

While she washed, I packed the last few things she’d forgotten, charger, lip balm, the little silk sleep mask she liked. Downstairs, Alexander waited in the foyer with another guard who nodded once when he saw me. “Car’s ready, sir. The route's locked. Two decoy vehicles running parallel. No press. No surprises.” I clapped his shoulder. “Thank you.” Isabelle came down then, her hair in a loose braid, wearing the soft gray hoodie I loved, leggings, sneakers. A small suitcase in one hand, a travel mug in the other. The diamond star necklace glinted at her throat.

The carcass of the Abyssal Leviathan disappeared into the pitch-black freezing waters above, taking the madness of the trench with it. At the bottom of the world, bathed in the soft, ancient luminescence of the flawless white jade gates, Caleb Blackwood stood motionless. The timer in his HUD was a relentless executioner: 69:40:12.

He was guarding something. "We have to keep moving," Sebastian whispered. "Before they flood the place." [The Abyss] They crawled until the vent opened into a massive vertical maintenance shaft. They looked down. It was dizzying. The shaft went down into the heart of the mountain. Maybe 500 meters deep. At the very bottom, a purple light pulsed.Thump... Thump... The heartbeat sound was louder here. It vibrated in their teeth. "Zero," Sebastian tapped his comms. "Do you read?"

a flawless gravity-vacuum sphere encompassed the ship, rendering it untouchable. Descending past thirty thousand feet, a sickly, purplish-black luminescence pierced the darkness ahead. It was a staggeringly massive corruption node, pulsating like a diseased tumor. Countless thick, black tentacles were buried deep into the oceanic crust, greedily draining the planet's lifeblood. Coiled around the node were dozens of Abyssal Leviathans—monsters exceeding three hundred feet in length. They had been entirely corrupted by the Devourer’s energy, transformed into biological war machines guarding this cosmic "water pump."