Part 2 · Chapters
Into the Fireless Abyss
An unexpected encounter opens a door. Climbing out is still up to you.
When the fall ended, the first thing Xiao Jin heard was his own breathing. Faint and broken, it sounded strangely clear in the Fireless Abyss, as though the darkness were asking him over and over: do you still want to live?
When Xiao Jin woke, he thought he was dead.
There was no light, nor the low furnace hum that had always filled Flame City. Silence pressed against his eardrums, as if the whole world lay buried beneath deep earth.
He tried to sit up. Tearing pain shot through his right arm. It was broken, and at least two ribs were cracked. Worse still was the black fire in his shoulder and back. It did not burn his clothes. Inch by inch, it ate toward his heart.
Xiao Jin lit a flame with his left hand.
The light lasted less than a breath before black fire surged toward it like insects scenting blood. He could only extinguish it and tear strips from his clothes in the dark to bind his broken arm.
Sharp black rocks littered the abyss floor. He had been lucky enough to land on a thick bed of ash-gray sand, and had still nearly died. Looking up, he could not see the cliff's edge, only a darkness deeper than night.
“Xiao Hui…”
No answer came.
Feeling along the rock wall, he found an upward fissure. His left hand gripped a ledge, his feet pressed into hollows, but after only a few steps the pain in his ribs drained his strength.
The first time he fell, he landed back in the gray sand.
The second time, he climbed a little higher, only for the stone to crumble beneath his palm.
The third time, just getting to his feet took nearly an hour.
Hunger and cold soon stole his sense of time. The abyss had neither day nor night, only a body growing steadily weaker. Now and then, scraping sounds came from the darkness. Something was following his body heat.
Xiao Jin hid in a narrow crevice and covered himself with coal ash to lower his temperature. A stone-armored monster crawled past outside, white vapor billowing from its nostrils. Its claws came within a handspan of his cheek.
He dared not breathe.
Aboveground, Xiao Hui returned to Flame City three days later.
He placed the black emblem on the council's long table. He told them about the figure's fire and ice, the hanging bridge, and Xiao Jin's last words. The councilors passed the emblem around. Finally, one pushed it back.
“The old battlefield is full of scrap. Children turn their fears into monsters.”
“This isn't scrap!” Xiao Hui slapped the table, his voice louder than he had ever heard it. “Xiao Jin paid for this with his life!”
Lie Ang took the emblem. When the flame in his palm drew near, black mist did indeed seep from its five cracks.
That night, he described the emblem and its reaction to fire in a confidential report. After returning the emblem to Xiao Hui, he delivered the report to the council himself.
Three days later, it was sent back.
The seal was unbroken. A single line had been added outside: Insufficient evidence. Do not undermine military morale.
Lie Ang stood in the empty corridor. For the first time, he did not know whether he was protecting order or a door that refused to open.
He sent out a search party, but the blizzard had erased every trail. Guards found scorched cloth beside the broken bridge. No one had ever returned alive from the Fireless Abyss.
Snowstorms blocked the northern supply route, leaving Flame City's main army in camps outside the walls. Its advance force, however, had already reached the border. Clashes between the two nations increased each day.
On the seventh day, Flame City declared Xiao Jin dead.
The notice contained only two lines: A boy from the Ash District trespassed in forbidden territory and fell from a cliff. His unsupported accusations do not affect the military assessment of the Frost Kingdom.
Xiao Hui tore down the notice.
In the abyss, Xiao Jin huddled shivering in a crevice. A sentence returned to him, clearer than the darkness around him.
Courage without strength will only get you and those beside you killed.
He remembered Xiao Hui's face at the cliff's edge. If Xiao Hui had not followed him, no one would have hunted him. Perhaps Lie Ang was right. Perhaps the instructor was right. Perhaps every time he stepped forward, he was only dragging others into his own foolish dream.
The little light in his palm wavered.
“So… I really can't do anything.”
The flame shrank to a red pinprick, almost gone.
Though the fire in his palm was no bigger than a needle's tip, he still cupped his hand against his chest to shelter it. He looked less like a fighter than someone shielding the last seed from rain in a storm.