Falling was not the chaotic rush Caspian expected. Because of the Tongue of the Silent King lodged in his throat, gravity felt less like a force and more like a predatory intent.
The Governor's manor was a shrinking spark of fire above him. Below, the Cloud-Barrier rushed up—a churning sea of toxic yellow and bruised purple vapors. Any normal human would have their lungs liquefied within seconds of hitting the barrier.
Caspian closed his eyes. He didn't reach for an oxygen mask. He reached for the Vellum of Souls.
'I am the shadow that remains when the candle dies,' he thought, echoing the Lament of the Unseen.
As he plunged into the clouds, his body didn't burn. The indigo blood in his veins turned ice-cold, slowing his heart to a single thrum per minute. His skin took on a grey, leathery texture—the first sign of the Grave-Walker transformation. He wasn't breathing the toxins; he was simply ignoring the need to breathe at all.
[ACTING PROGRESS: 45% — You are becoming the silence you once observed.]
CRASH.
He didn't hit water. He hit the shattered remains of Oakhaven's Lower Docks, which had been sheared off by the island's collapse. He smashed through a wooden roof, tumbled through a stack of empty soul-coal crates, and slammed into a metal catwalk.
Silence followed. Not the magical silence of his bomb, but the eerie, suffocating silence of the Abyss.
Caspian groaned, coughing up a mouthful of golden fluid—remnants of the Tongue's preservative. He looked around. He was in a graveyard of iron. Massive chunks of the island lay scattered across a plateau of solid, black rock that seemed to pulse like a living lung.
"Kael?" he rasped. His voice was a discordant harmony.
There was no answer. Only the sound of something heavy dragging itself across the metal wreckage nearby. Scrape. Thud. Scrape. Thud.
Caspian pulled himself up. His surgical coat was in tatters, revealing the faint, glowing runes beginning to etch themselves into his collarbones. He looked at his hands; they were pale, almost translucent.
He was no longer in the world of the living, but he wasn't yet in the world of the dead. He was in the Grey Buffer.
From behind a collapsed steam-pipe, a figure emerged. It was Kael—or what remained of him. The boy's eyes were gone, replaced by thick, crystalline growths. His skin was translucent, showing the black ichor pumping through his veins.
"Doc..." the creature hissed. It wasn't Kael's voice. It was the sound of wind through a flute made of bone. "So... much... air... down... here..."
It was a Hollowed. The transformation that happened when a soul was bleached by the Abyss.
Caspian felt a pang of genuine grief—the first requirement of a Mourner. He had failed the boy. He had brought him into this world of monsters, and the world had eaten him.
[Requirement Met: Witness a death that no one else remembers.] [Sequence 8: Grave-Walker — Digestion 100%.]
A sudden surge of cold power erupted from Caspian's spine. His vision shifted. The darkness of the Abyss became as clear as twilight. He could see the "Spirit-Lights" of the creatures lurking in the wreckage—they looked like flickering candles in the wind.
He looked at the Hollowed that used to be Kael.
"Rest now, Kael," Caspian said. He didn't use a blade. He simply reached out and touched the boy's forehead.
The power of the Grave-Walker allowed him to "command the transition." He didn't kill the creature; he simply accelerated its journey to the end. The crystalline growths on Kael's face shattered into dust, and the black ichor stilled. The boy's body collapsed, finally at peace.
"I will find the heart of the Lung," Caspian whispered, standing up among the ruins. "And I will make it scream for what it did to you."
He looked up. Through the swirling toxins, he saw it. The Cathedral of the Iron Lung hadn't been destroyed in the fall. It had landed upright, its massive pistons still twitching like the legs of a dying insect. It sat at the edge of the plateau, overlooking a massive, glowing rift in the earth.
The Great Rift. The entrance to the "Old World."
As Caspian began to walk, the shadows at his feet elongated, forming the shape of a tattered funeral shroud that trailed behind him. He wasn't just a doctor anymore. He was the Grave-Walker, and he was walking into the mouth of God.