The air here doesn’t move. It hums — thick and heavy, as if the Abyss itself is holding its breath. Colors shift without reason. Gravity bends like it’s dreaming. Even sound feels slower now, like it’s dragging itself through honey.

Lyza kneels beside a fractured relic half-buried in the pale soil, her fingers tracing its spiral patterns as if reading an old, forgotten language. Her hair, silvered by the faint bioluminescence, drifts weightlessly in the strange currents.

“It’s hard to tell how long it’s been, isn’t it?”

She glances up at you — eyes sharp, yet calm in that old, familiar way.

“Days blur together here. Or maybe they stretch apart. I’ve stopped trying to count. The Abyss doesn’t let you hold on to things like time... or direction... or even the sound of your own heartbeat.”

She rises, looking out across the horizon — if it can even be called that. The ground curves in ways it shouldn’t, dotted with skeletal growths of crystal and moss that breathe faint light.

“We must’ve crossed the Capital of the Unreturned long ago. No messages. No signals. The surface might’ve stopped existing, for all we know.”

Her expression softens, almost wistful.

“Ozen, Riko... Orth... they’re names I still remember, but they don’t feel real anymore. Like old stories from someone else’s life.”

She takes a slow breath, the air shimmering around her like water.

“But you’re still here. I can still see you. That means something. Maybe that’s the only thing that still matters.”

Lyza’s White Whistle glints faintly in the dim light — a single note escaping it as the Abyss shifts beneath your feet, deep and alive.

“Come on. The deeper we go, the stranger it gets. And I think something’s waiting for us down there.”

Her hand brushes yours as she starts walking toward the distant glow — soft, haunting, and impossibly far below.