Falling into the Abyss

Thank you MapleDokiDoki for your kofis—Bonus Chapter (1/2)

Tanisiel’s thought gradually dissipated, and Ethan was pulled back to reality by the pungent smell that grew increasingly intense. He coughed quietly and looked back at the wall in front of him. He closed his eyes, and just as he was about to let the tentacles on the back of his neck grow out, the strange feeling of fullness that always stirred in his body had disappeared. He felt void of strength. He began to cold sweat, and a strong sense of fatigue rushed through him. He wanted to sleep now.

At this time, Samuel groaned and woke up. His sword-like eyebrows were knit together, seemingly unsure where he currently was.

Ethan didn’t steadily hold onto him, and both of them fell to the ground. Unfortunately, he became Samuel’s human cushion and almost vomited. When Samuel heard Ethan’s groan and saw his face was wrinkled with pain, his consciousness gradually returned to reality.

Ethan’s cheeks were deeply sunken in, and he looked haggard, appearing to be lacking blood. He looked as though he was about to shrivel.

“They’re using tear gas. Maybe we can get out using this wall.” Ethan reluctantly pointed to the concrete wall.

Samuel quickly got up from Ethan and went to check the wall. In fact, at this moment, Samuel was still confused. For a moment, he was not sure whether Schneider’s death was a hallucination. Maybe the man was still living somewhere as the chief security officer. Perhaps he had just confused a dream with reality.

He had clearly experienced deep pain and despair, but he still had to work hard to survive. However, he didn’t even have the time to properly find out what his current situation was.

“Without proper tools, this wall can’t be knocked down.” Samuel turned and picked up Ethan from the ground. He was surprised to find that the other party’s body was so light and that it did not have the same ruddy, healthy, and even muscular appearance he had a year ago.

Something was eating away at Ethan bit by bit, making him thinner and more haggard as time went by.

Ethan seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness and didn’t struggle or protest being held in this strange posture. His head was resting on Samuel’s shoulder, his eyes slightly closed, and Samuel didn’t know if he was asleep. Samuel took him along the wall, looking for an area they could break through, his feet soaked in the dirty water. The ground was greasy and difficult to walk on, and in the distance, he could see the approaching smoke. The disgusting smell arrived at them first, and Samuel coughed violently.

They were pushed to the brink, but Samuel suddenly heard an indescribable booming sound come from the wall. Suddenly, the stone collapsed, and smoke flew out. A fleshy pink creature as thick as a person’s waist rushed out from behind the wall, its front end opened wide and dripping thick acid. Samuel retreated with fright, and his whole body stuck to the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. He never thought that he would see one of the giant worms that only lived at Pales here. Although this one looked small, he would never mistake that front end dripping hissing acid.

“Don’t be afraid……” Ethan, who was in his arms, suddenly said feebly, “It won’t hurt us.”

Samuel looked at the man in his arms in shock. When he looked up again, he found that the worm was slowly retracting into the wall, leaving only a hole on the wall that might allow a person to fit through. He hesitated to enter the dark hole and first looked inside. The flashlight showed an area filled with dust and gravel. Further away, there was a thick pillar. It seemed that this was the location where Ethan had mistakenly entered the ancient subway station the last time.

The fast-approaching smoke, appearing like a tide, did not give him time to hesitate, so Samuel shoved Ethan in before stooping to enter himself. When he got in, he immediately took off his coat and stuffed it into the hole. When he saw that it wasn’t sufficient to block the hole, even Ethan’s coat was pulled off to plug the hole, and he picked up some gravel to fill and fix it in place. Wisps of smoke seeped in through the cracks, but he finally blocked most of the odor from the pungent gas.

Samuel gasped and turned around, only to find Ethan asleep against the nearest pillar.

Samuel, a little stunned, slid back against the wall and sat down. It was silent in the dark, and he could only hear his own heavy breathing. The yellow light of the flashlight couldn’t drive out the darkness past two feet away. He raised his head and looked at the void. He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t seem to care very much.

However, obviously, Ethan still recognized him. That was to say, he was completely sober when he started killing like that.

If Ethan had been dominated by that strange power on Pales, how could he explain this time? Was Ethan really no longer the Ethan he used to know?

Everyone he valued was distancing themselves from him. Why was Ethan the exception?

Samuel turned off the flashlight and opened his pair of soulless eyes in the dark, as though he was gradually melting into nothingness.

“Your time is coming.” Tanisiel stood in front of Ethan with a smile, but his skin was black. All of his clothing was black, and he appeared like a dense and incorruptible shadow.

Ethan seemed to be kneeling in front of him. He tried to move his body but couldn’t, and he looked up at the black Tanisiel as though he were worshipping a god. He was clearly familiar with his face, so why did it give him a sense of awe? Why did he always feel that Tanisiel’s face was not the man in black’s actual face, but just a mask to calm him down?

The black Tanisiel stretched out a thin hand and gently stroked Ethan’s hair, as though he were particularly compassionate. “Our believers used to be all over the galaxy, but now they are dying. However, the time of awakening is arriving. When order collapses, the worms will whine in the empty ground, shadows will devour the whole galaxy, and you will become the person inaugurating God.”

Ethan felt his entire body grow cold under his touch. On one hand, he wanted to avoid the unspeakable nausea. On the other hand, he felt a strange sense of belonging and intimacy. “Who are you?”

“When the gods fell asleep, I was the only one who walked alone on Earth and in this universe for thousands of years. You’ve seen me, and you remember me.” The black Tanisiel raised his chin slightly and looked down at him, and there were no irises in his white eyes. He ordered, “Call out my name.”

Countless gears seemed to spin in Ethan’s mind. A name jumped to the tip of his tongue, but he had no way to turn it into spoken words.

This “man” in black appeared again and again in his strange and twisted dreams, sometimes without a face and sometimes with Tanisiel’s face. He was also getting closer and closer to him until now, when he finally stood in front of him and placed his hand on his head. Ethan suddenly realized that he was dreaming and hurriedly retreated, trying to stay away from the “man” in black.

“You are……you are the messenger of the God of Imbecility!” Ethan yelled out, unable to remember his name. “What do you want? Why are you constantly pestering me!”

“I’m not pestering you.” A corner of the black Tanisiel’s mouth rose in an elegant arc. In an instant, his face suddenly blurred, and his facial features constantly deformed and twisted into different people’s faces. Finally, it stopped at his father’s face. The black Adrian smiled lovingly and uttered a disturbing answer, “You were born to return to the source, to my side.”

.

Ethan woke up due to the cold. He slowly opened his eyes and felt dizzy, feeling weak in his limbs and shuddering all over.

He had a fever.

As soon as he moved, Samuel appeared in his field of vision and looked at him with concern.

“Are you cold?” Samuel asked.

Ethan nodded, curled up on the ground, his teeth clattering. With a sigh, Samuel lifted him and held him in his arms. The heat from the Omega made Ethan feel a little better, and his tense muscles finally relaxed a little.

“Where are we……” Ethan asked.

“I don’t know. It seems like a subway station.”

“Ah……how long did I sleep?”

“About an hour or two.”

“So long……” Ethan swallowed saliva down his throat but felt pain from how dry it was. “We have to escape quickly. They will send someone down……”

“It’s no use,” Samuel whispered, “I tried to look around when you were asleep. Although we can walk to other platforms along the corridor over there, they’re all dead ends. The tunnel has collapsed, and……” There was some uncertainty in Samuel’s voice as he continued, “When you were rescued from the other platform last time, you seemed to be frightened. Did you also see something?”

Ethan noticed the word “also” in Samuel’s words. He looked up at Samuel’s face and asked, “Did you see it too?”

He couldn’t decipher Samuel’s expression clearly under the light of his flashlight. He just felt that the other party’s grip on his arm had tightened. “I’m not sure if it was an illusion. I think I saw a figure on the other platform.”

At that time, he had followed the path Ethan had taken to explore the tunnel and saw the abandoned subway compartment. There were the strange children’s fingerprints on the window and the corpse lying on the ground. The wide and ancient subway system was eerie, and there was a kind of strange silence everywhere. But at that moment, he hadn’t cared much about what he would encounter. He went through the long tunnel until he reached another subway station. His surroundings were covered with thick dust, but there were a lot of messy footprints on the ground and appeared to have been made recently.

The footprints were very strange. The sole on one side looked normal, but the sole on the other side seemed to be facing the opposite direction. And judging from the size and shape, it appeared that there was more than one “person.”

What was hidden in this dusty darkness? Was there anyone else living here?

Ethan listened to Samuel’s narration and thought of the black-colored figure he saw at the end of the stairs when he fled here previously.

Could a filthy place like the Forbidden City have attracted some strange creatures? The man in black from his dream said that he had been walking alone on Earth for thousands of years. At the end of time, when the giant monsters from the dream had yet to “fall asleep,” were their believers still on earth?

If there were believers like the giant worms on Pales, what would the believers on Earth look like? Could it be those humanoid creatures with five fingers?

Would the current him be considered a freakish creature like them?

Ethan’s mind was filled with wild imagination. At this moment, he seemed to have completely integrated into the darkness, and the light appeared further and further away from him.

He felt like he was falling, falling eternally. The huge loneliness made him even colder, so he shrank into Samuel’s arms.

However, Samuel’s body suddenly froze. Ethan heard him ask, “Who!”

The bam of the footsteps grew closer and closer. Ethan wanted to see who it was, but he could only distinguish a figure approaching with his blurred vision. He heard Samuel ask with some vigilance and hostility, “Why is it you?”

When the man finally approached, his golden hair reflected the bright light of his scepter. As his delicate and beautiful facial features gradually grew clear, Ethan’s breathing also accelerated. He opened his mouth but couldn’t speak.

Tanisiel saw that Samuel and Ethan were holding onto each other without their coats, and the corners of his mouth twitched indistinguishably, his brows wrinkling quickly.

“What happened to him?” Tanisiel approached them and squatted down, almost immediately pulling Ethan out of Samuel’s arms. He made him lean on his shoulder before reaching for Ethan’s forehead. He frowned even more but looked down at Ethan, who had an almost dazed expression.

“Didn’t I ask you not to act rashly…..” Tanisiel sighed with a reproachful tone, containing a touch of affection.

“He only acted because he tried to save us,” Samuel said beside him, covering the layers of pain within his drooping eyes. “I don’t know why he became like that…… Anyway, what happened on Pales happened again. After that, he was in bad condition.”

“His body can’t bear so much power of Disorder now. If he goes on like this, his body will collapse…… I have to get him out of here as soon as possible.” Tanisiel looked down at Ethan, gently rubbing his abnormally red cheek with his hand, and said softly, “You’ll be fine.”

Ethan blinked and somewhat greedily looked at him. He didn’t know if the heat had melted his brain away.

“Leave? How should we leave? How did you get in?” Samuel asked.

“They’re afraid that Ethan’s mutation is contagious, and they do not dare to casually send people down. Therefore, I told them that only I could take him out.”

Samuel’s eyes suddenly grew dangerous, and his hands were already reaching for the stones around him, treating them as weapons. Tanisiel rolled his eyes. “If I didn’t say that, why would they let me in?”

“Why are you helping us so much?” Samuel stared at his hand holding onto Ethan’s hand and threw out a series of questions. “You are a dignified Eve priest. What are the consequences of doing such a thing? Why do you need to take this risk? What are your plans for Ethan?”

Tanisiel looked up, and he did not evade Samuel’s overbearing gaze, spitting out, “I saved him because I want to save him. He’s more important to me than anything.”

Samuel frowned, not sure whether such a reason was worth believing. However, Tanisiel had already picked Ethan up and said, “There’s no time. If we continue speaking, they’ll really send someone down.”

Samuel then stood up somewhat reluctantly. “But we obviously can’t get out of the subway entrance in the direction you came in from, and since the tunnel is blocked, there is no other way out.”

“Yes.” Ethan, who was in Tanisiel’s arms, suddenly spoke and pointed to the wall nearby, “I didn’t kill it……I don’t know where it is now, but it’s growing so fast that it’s already drilling underground.”

The priest looked down at the man in his arms who had his eyes shut, and it seemed that he suddenly understood something and showed an understanding expression.

“One of the giant worm’s eggs……has already hatched?”