A long silence stretched between them.
The distant, guttural clicking faded into the ever-present hum of the Abyss. Bruno—he decided on that name just moments ago—stood alongside the survivor, their bodies tense, listening for anything unnatural in the air. The only certainty was uncertainty itself.
He turned slightly, glancing at the stranger beside him. They had a wary, sharp gaze, shifting between him and the surroundings, as if weighing their options. Trust didn't come easy here.
"We need to move," Bruno muttered, voice lower now.
The survivor hesitated before nodding. "Yeah… but where?"
Bruno scanned the broken horizon. The blackened earth stretched endlessly in every direction, jagged ruins stabbing upward like remnants of a civilization that had been swallowed whole. The sky above churned—clouds swirling in slow, unnatural spirals, never quite settling.
"I was hoping you had some answers," Bruno admitted.
The survivor let out a short, humorless laugh. "And I was hoping you did."
They started walking.
It wasn't direction that mattered—it was movement. Stagnation felt like an invitation for the Abyss to take notice.
Bruno's boots pressed into the brittle, glass-like surface beneath him. Some parts of the ground were cracked, But it wasn't warmth that came from below—it was something colder, something… wrong.
They moved in silence for a while, their footfalls blending with the ever-present whisper of the wind.
Bruno finally broke it.
"I can't keep calling you 'hey you.'"
The survivor scoffed but didn't look at him. "Not like I have a name to give."
"You don't remember?"
"No. Woke up here just like you. Just… was alone longer."
Bruno mulled it over before glancing at them. "Then pick one."
They stopped walking.
The survivor stared at him as if he'd said something insane. "Just… pick one?"
"Yeah. Why not? If we don't have names, we make them."
A pause. Then—
"…Raine." The survivor spoke the name slowly, as if testing how it felt. Their gaze flickered, unreadable.
"Bruno," he offered in return.
Raine raised an eyebrow. "You just… thought of that?"
"Yeah. Felt right."
"Huh." They started walking again.
It wasn't much, but it was something. A small defiance against the void that had taken everything from them.
They walked for what felt like hours. Time didn't move properly here—Bruno noticed that now. The sky never changed, the horizon never shifted, and the air was always the same temperature—cold enough to remind him he was alive but never enough to truly bite.
Raine had been quiet for a while. Too quiet.
Bruno glanced at them. "You okay?"
"…No."
He waited. Eventually, they sighed.
"This place," Raine said, voice strained. "It messes with you. Doesn't it?"
Bruno frowned. "What do you mean?"
Raine gestured vaguely to the air. "The silence. The way things move when you're not looking at them. The way you feel like something's watching."
Bruno hadn't wanted to acknowledge it, but they were right. Something had been bothering him ever since he stepped outside. Not just the unnatural landscape, not just the emptiness. Something deeper.
The way shadows seemed darker than they should be. The way his own footprints looked… off, like they weren't quite in the right place when he looked back at them. The way the wind carried sounds that felt too close, yet distant at the same time.
"I've been running," Raine muttered. "Since I woke up here. Not just from those things. From something else. Something I can't explain."
Bruno didn't respond immediately. He understood now.
This place wasn't just deadly.
It was aware.
Watching.
Waiting.
Raine swallowed hard. "You feel it too, don't you?"
Bruno exhaled slowly. "Yeah."
Neither of them spoke after that.
After a while, Raine finally asked, "So… what's your plan?"
Bruno glanced at them. "Plan?"
"Yeah. You have one, right?"
"…Survive."
Raine gave him a flat look. "Wow. Genius strategy."
Bruno huffed. "You got something better?"
Raine didn't answer immediately. Instead, she reached into the folds of her cloak and pulled something out.
A small, jagged fragment of blue crystal.
It pulsed faintly, as if breathing.
Bruno's stomach turned. "…What is that?"
Raine studied it. "I found it inside one of those things."
Bruno's pulse quickened. The shard looked eerily similar to the one he had absorbed earlier.
Raine continued, turning the fragment over in her fingers. "I don't know what it is. But when I hold it, I don't feel as… hollow." They clenched their fist around it. "I think these things are tied to this place. Maybe they're pieces of it."
Bruno hesitated. "And?"
Raine exhaled. "And if we're going to survive, we need to understand them."
Bruno's grip tightened at his sides. He still remembered the sensation when he absorbed his own shard—the way it slithered into him, the way something inside him changed.
Raine wasn't wrong. But they weren't right, either.
Playing with the Abyss felt like playing with fire.
Or worse—playing into its hands.
Bruno stared at the pulsing crystal in Raine's palm. He had the same choice. To embrace whatever this place was offering… or to resist it.
Either way, the Abyss wasn't going to let them leave unchanged.