The first time the earth opened, it was quiet.

  No tremors. No screaming. Just a sudden, impossible hole in the middle of a northern province farm—perfectly circular, so deep it swallowed every ray of light. Within hours, it grew wider, wider, until the land around it crumbled like wet paper. The people called it The Abyssfall.

  They said it went down forever.

  Wren had only seen it once, from a hilltop far away. He’d never forget the feeling. It wasn’t awe. It was fear. Like something ancient had just woken up, and the world hadn’t caught up yet.

  A month passed. The Empire’s military arrived. Scientists too. Then came the adventurers.

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  And finally… Wren.

  Now seventeen, he walked through the crowded outskirts of the Abyssfall excavation zone, his twin daggers strapped across his back and a weathered cloak pulled tight against the cold wind. Around him, noise ruled—merchants yelling over each other, explorers laughing nervously, mercenaries sharpening blades that had already taken too many lives.

  But Wren moved through it like a ghost.

  He hadn’t come to be part of the noise.

  He came because he needed to know why the Abyssfall wouldn’t leave his thoughts.

  Ever since he first saw it, dreams haunted him. A black void. A voice that wasn’t a voice. A feeling in his bones that something down there was waiting—for him.

  He shook the thought off as he reached a supply booth. The seller barely looked up.

  “Starter kit or custom?”

  “Custom,” Wren replied.

  He grabbed a compact rations pack, a crystal light, an emergency flare, and a tightly wound coil of rope. His coin pouch was lighter afterward, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going in to come back with riches. He was going in for answers.

  The announcement bell rang out across the encampment. “New recruits for Gate Team One, report to the southern platform. Descent begins at dawn.”

  Wren looked up.

  This was it.

  He turned toward the dark line of the crater’s rim in the distance. The sun was setting behind it, turning the black hole into a silhouette against a burning sky. He didn’t blink.

  Somewhere in that darkness, he knew… his story was waiting to begin.