Chapter 31: Abyss fragment.
I stood frozen, Anki's purple flames flickering uncertainly in my grip. The Mother of the Shadow lurkers loomed before me, its blood-red leaves rustling like a thousand tiny screams, its countless glowing eyes fixed on me with ancient curiosity.
Emily's faint, pained breathing echoed from somewhere deep inside its massive trunk, she was still alive, but barely. The resonance between us refused to fade, that dark mirror of my own abyss pulling at something buried inside my chest.
"Why do you fight me, child of the abyss?" the tree rumbled again, its voice a deep creaking that vibrated through the ground and into my bones. "Speak. Before I let my children finish what they started."
I spoke, voice steady despite the storm brewing between us.
"The villagers… they sent us here because your lurkers keep taking their people. Why? What turned a tree into a monster that hunts at night?"
A long, sigh rolled out of the trunk, like wind through hollow bones. The red eyes dimmed slightly, and for the first time the Mother of Shadows sounded… tired.
"Long ago, this ravine was paradise. My sap flowed clear and sweet, granting youth and healing to any who drank it. The first villagers came as starving refugees. They drank only a cup each full moon, just enough to survive the harsh winters and the plagues that once ravaged this land. I gave willingly. They called me Mother.
I watched their children grow strong and beautiful, and I was… content. For centuries it was enough."
Its branches curled inward, almost protective. "But humans are never satisfied. Their ancestors grew greedy. They wanted eternal youth without limit, without the old growing frail and dying. So they sought more. So they deceived a god."
The tree's voice cracked with old pain. "The God of Eternal Spring, gentle, kind, the one who had blessed my roots in the beginning. He descended when they prayed, believing their village suffered but there ancestors lied.
They kidnapped hundreds of innocent children from neighboring peaceful lands, orphans, the sick, the unwanted. They dressed them in white robes, painted their faces with my sap to make them glow like offerings of purity, and presented them to the god as 'willing sacrifices' from their own blood.
While the god wept with joy at their supposed devotion, the ancestors secretly carved ritual circles into my deepest roots and bound him with chains of my own corrupted sap. They drained his divine essence drop by drop, feeding it back into me to amplify the youth-giving power."
A low, heartbroken groan shook the clearing. Blood-red leaves fell like tears.
"The god realized too late. In his final moments, betrayed by the very people he had come to save, he cursed my land forever. My sap would never again grant true youth. Instead, every shadow cast by those who drank it would turn to the Shadow Lurkers, twisted remnants of the stolen children's souls mixed with my own corrupted essence.
At night they rise to hunt, abducting the young to drain their life force and bring it back to me so I may survive. By day they root into the earth, unconscious yet immortal, because the god's curse bound their lives to mine.
They cannot be killed while the sun shines. They are my children now… and my eternal punishment."
The story hung heavy in the air, tragic and vile. I could almost see it, the innocent faces painted with glowing sap, the god's kind eyes widening in horror as roots tightened around him, the ancestors laughing while they stole divinity for vanity. My grip on Anki tightened.
Anki's voice exploded in our bond. That doesn't explain why you carry a fragment of the Abyss inside you.
In a flash of silver light, Anki transformed.
The blade left my hand, twisting mid-air into a massive serpent of living steel and shadow, scales gleaming like polished obsidian blades, eyes glowing soft red, body coiling twenty meters long.
The serpent form hovered above me, magnificent and terrifying, power radiating like a storm about to break.
The Mother of Shadows recoiled. Every red eye widened in pure shock. Its massive trunk trembled violently, roots thrashing across the ground like panicked snakes. Leaves screamed as they tore free and fell. The entire tree shook as if struck by an earthquake.
"You… you are no ordinary ego weapon!" the tree gasped, voice cracking with fear. "That abyssal energy I sensed… it came from the blade all along. Not the boy. I… I mistook the vessel for the source."
The serpent-Anki stared down at the trembling Mother, voice calm but cold. "You felt the fragment of the Abyss inside me and assumed the boy carried it. How ignorant you have been, dear tree."
The Mother of Shadows turned its countless red eyes toward me then. For the first time, it truly saw.
What it saw made every branch freeze.
I stood there,pitch darkness in human form. An endless, hungry pit that pulled life and energy toward itself without mercy. The void inside my chest yawned wide, drawing in stray wisps of dark mist from the tree's own aura, devouring them hungrily. The abyss I carried wasn't a fragment. I was a black hole wearing a boy's skin.
The tree shuddered again, realization crashing over it like a wave. "You… you belong within the abyss. An abyss given flesh."
Anki's serpent head lowered, red eyes filled with quiet disappointment. "All this time you thought you faced a kindred spirit. You were wrong. My last advice to you, relapse that girl in your grasp."
The Mother of Shadows' branches whipped upward in defiance. Its voice roared across the clearing, filled with ancient pride and fury. "I will not yield! These lurkers are my children. This curse is my burden. Leave my domain or join the roots!"
Anki shook his massive serpent head slowly, almost sadly. In a swirl of abyssmist, the serpent coiled tightly and shrank back into blade form, landing perfectly in my waiting hand once more.
"So be it, dear tree," Anki's voice echoed from the steel, calm and final.
I stepped forward, purple flames roaring back to full life along my palms and across the blade. My Soul Anchor mark burned like a second heart.
From the ground, dozens of Shadow Lurkers erupted once more, claws extended, red eyes blazing with their Mother's rage. The tree's branches lashed down like living whips, roots bursting upward to impale and drag. The entire clearing came alive with nightmare fury.
I smiled, the same cold, devilish grin my clones had worn earlier.
"Let's devour it all," I whispered.
Anki and I moved as one, blade abyssal spirit and the bottomless pit, charging straight into the heart of the Mother of Shadows and her legion of children.
The battle for Emily, for this mission, and for whatever fragment of the Abyss this cursed tree held, begun.