Chapter 726: Descending the rift

He had been so accustomed to the system handling his advancements that he hadn’t stopped to consider what might escape his control during the process.

In hindsight, hovering above an unknown abyss was perhaps not the best place to discover that oversight.

A sheepish chuckle escaped him.

"Sorry. That wasn’t supposed to happen."

"What did you think was going to happen?"

"I was hoping for something a little quieter."

Althea stared at him, struggling to decide whether he was taking the matter seriously. Beside her, Kali looked considerably more amused, though her gaze lingered upon Elion for a moment before moving toward the darkness below.

"Perhaps we should save the argument until we know whether anything noticed," she said.

Althea fell silent with an angry huff.

Elion did the same, sharpening his gaze as he looked beyond the slowly settling mana. Several tense moments passed.

Nothing emerged from the darkness. The rising mana resumed its slow passage around them, and the only nearby sounds were the measured movement of his wings and the occasional trickle of loose stone falling from the walls.

Elion let out a quiet breath.

Fortunately, it seemed nothing had happened.

When he glanced toward Althea again, however, her expression made it quite clear that she intended to remember this.

The rift only grew wider as they descended.

Elion assumed that the darkness was making the walls appear farther apart than they truly were. Yet the farther they traveled, the more obvious the change became.

The opposite wall disappeared entirely, while the one they had been following curved away beneath a succession of immense, overhanging shelves.

He frowned, adjusting the angle of his wings as he glanced upward. There was no longer any sign of the opening through which they had entered.

Even the pale curtain of mana had become difficult to distinguish from the darkness, its scattered streams winding upward around them before vanishing overhead.

"Was it this wide when we came in?" Althea asked.

"No," Elion replied. "It wasn’t."

Kali slowed slightly ahead of them, her gaze moving across the distant stone. Althea remained suspended beside her, supported by the strands of silk secured around her armor.

"Keep close," Kali said before continuing downward.

Their descent continued for hours.

The air grew warmer, and the moisture clinging to the walls gradually disappeared. Below them, the darkness occasionally stirred with faint glimmers of color, though they were too distant to make out properly.

Elion kept expecting to find the bottom around the next projecting shelf, only for another expanse of emptiness to unfold beneath it.

Occasionally, a low rumble traveled through the stone. He could feel it in the air against his wings, a deep vibration that lingered long after the sound itself had faded.

Little by little, the darkness below began to redden.

At first, it was merely a faint stain beneath the drifting mana, so distant that Elion wondered whether his eyes were deceiving him.

As they descended farther, however, that dim glow broadened into a vast, smoldering radiance.

It illuminated the undersides of the surrounding rocks, revealing their jagged contours in shades of copper and blood.

A warm current rose against his face.

Elion slowed as the wall beside them ended. Beyond its final, broken edge, an impossible sight opened before their eyes, stunning all three into silence.

Far beneath the lands they had spent weeks exploring lay what appeared to be another world entirely.

An immeasurable expanse stretched beneath a vault of suspended earth, its distant reaches obscured by a crimson haze.

Mountains rose from that burning landscape in serrated ranks, their immense peaks splitting the ruddy gloom like the shattered crowns of buried giants.

Fire glimmered within their wounds.

Molten magma seeped from fissures along the mountainsides, gathering in incandescent channels before pouring down the slopes.

Some flowed in sluggish, ponderous streams, their darkening surfaces breaking apart to reveal the brilliant gold beneath. Others plunged over sheer precipices in magnificent cataracts, scattering showers of sparks as they struck the rocks below.

The valleys were threaded with rivers of fire.

They wound between blackened ridges in broad, luminous courses, dividing and rejoining around islands of fractured stone.

Countless smaller streams branched away from them, filling narrow gullies and tracing every hollow with a fierce orange glow.

From above, the entire landscape resembled a vast network of burning veins.

Elion’s wings spread almost involuntarily, holding him within the rising air as he stared. The scale was difficult to comprehend.

What he had initially mistaken for a narrow stream was wide enough to swallow a street, while the larger rivers flowed between mountains whose summits still lay far beneath his feet.

Heat rose from them in wavering sheets, bending the distant scenery until the peaks appeared to tremble.

Across the farther plains, enormous basins of molten rock glowed beneath thin, moving crusts.

Occasionally, one of those dark surfaces split, and a fountain of liquid fire surged upward, illuminating the haze before collapsing into itself with a distant, thunderous roar.

So this was where at least some of those sounds had been coming from. But even that infernal splendor paled beside what hung above it.

Chains.

Gargantuan chains ascended from the burning depths, stretching upward through the colossal space between the lower world and the floating land above.

Elion followed the nearest with his eyes, his lips parting slightly. Each link was monstrous.

He could scarcely judge its dimensions from where he hovered, but entire buildings could have stood within the hollow of a single ring.

Their surfaces were dark and lustrous, catching the volcanic light along immense curved edges worn with marks too regular to have formed naturally.

The chain rose steeply from somewhere among the mountains. Link after impossible link disappeared into the heights, passing through layers of drifting vapor before vanishing within the fractured landmass overhead.

Elion looked up.

What had seemed like the wall of the rift was only part of that suspended immensity.

The earth above spread across their vision like a broken firmament, its underside bristling with colossal stone spurs.

Vast roots of rock descended from it, some tapering into points, others ending in fractured masses from which loose debris occasionally fell.

Between those hanging formations, other chains emerged from the gloom.

Some stretched nearly vertically. Others crossed the immense gulf at slanting angles, their distant lengths fading into the crimson murk.

A few caught enough light to gleam like somber constellations suspended beneath that cavernous ceiling.

The land above seemed to hang upon them, or perhaps they were holding it down. The thought made Elion shiver despite the smoldering heat.

"What is this place?"

Althea’s voice sounded unusually small.

She had stopped looking downward and was now staring along the nearest chain. The red illumination washed across her armor, turning its polished edges the color of heated steel.

Elion had no answer.

He had expected a deep chasm, perhaps a cavern containing a treasure or some powerful creature. Even after hours of descending, he had still imagined that they would eventually reach an ordinary floor.

Instead, they had found mountains, valleys, and a horizon lost beneath the glow of an underground inferno.

Beside Althea, Kali remained motionless. Her gaze moved slowly from the blazing terrain to the enormous chains above it. She looked just as astonished as they were.

Elion turned back toward the landscape, feeling another warm surge of mana brush across his body. Down here, its rising streams caught the furnace glow, unfurling between the chains in long, luminous veils.

It was beautiful in a way that made him reluctant to move closer.

Far below, a river of magma tumbled into a cleft between two mountains, filling the depths with a ceaseless golden blaze. Beyond it, the nearest chain descended through the haze, its lower end hidden somewhere within that terrible splendor.

Elion’s eyes narrowed as he tried to follow it.

Someone had made those chains, and whatever they were meant to hold, he was no longer certain he wanted to find it.