Darkness pressed against Ashen like a second skin.
Not the empty kind, not the silent kind—no.
This darkness breathed.
He didn't notice it at first.
But as he staggered across the cracked, colorless ground, bare feet scraping stone, a faint pulse traveled upward through his bones. Slow. Wet. Rhythmic.
Almost…alive.
Ashen froze.
"…Great," he muttered. "The ground has a heartbeat. Of course it does."
The air tasted metallic, the sort of taste he imagined old blood would have if you left it out for a century. Thick. Unsettling. His throat tightened with every inhale, but breathing was a requirement—unfortunately.
He forced himself to walk.
One step.
Another.
And the darkness parted just enough for him to see the terrain.
Cracks ran through the pale stone like a spiderweb, each one deep and jagged. But the cracks weren't empty.
Inside them, something moved.
A black vein—thick as a finger—pulsed beneath the stone. Not fluid… but not solid either. A tube of writhing, smoky substance that twitched every few seconds, pushing tiny pulses of darkness through itself.
Ashen swallowed hard.
"Okay… don't panic. It's just the floor. Having… veins. That move. And breathe."
He blinked. "Yeah. Bullshit."
He crouched, carefully peering closer without touching anything. The vein swelled suddenly, ballooning upward against the stone as if something inside it was racing by. The ground beneath him vibrated. A faint gurgling sound rose from below.
Ashen stumbled back instinctively, heart hammering.
"What the hell was that…?"
The vein stilled.
The ground quieted.
But he felt eyes on him—even though nothing was there.
A thin layer of dust drifted across the ground, swirling around his feet in spirals that didn't follow any wind. There was no wind. Yet the dust moved, reacting to his presence like disturbed organisms.
Ashen gritted his teeth.
"This place hates me."
He pressed forward, step after cautious step.
The Breathing Ground
The pulses beneath the stone grew more pronounced as he walked. Slow at first. Then occasional sharp spikes that made the ground twitch under his toes. The entire landscape felt sick, like he was walking atop a dying creature or a decayed organ stretched flat.
In the distance, pillars rose from the earth—monolithic spines of bone and stone fused together. They loomed impossibly tall, like the ribs of some ancient giant corpse. Their surfaces were scarred with long slashes, and faint vibrations rippled across them.
Ashen narrowed his eyes.
Were they bones?
Or something made to resemble bones?
He wasn't sure which option was worse.
Something caught the corner of his vision—a faint glow.
Very faint.
Too faint.
He approached slowly.
A crack in the stone leaked luminous droplets of deep violet liquid. They clung to the edges like condensed sweat, then fell silently into the fissure below.
The glow reflected on Ashen's pale pupils.
"Huh… that's new."
He knelt, and the strange sensation returned—a tingle behind his eyes, like cold pressure. The closer he leaned, the stronger it grew, radiating outward through his skull.
His body reacted before his mind did. He jerked back, heart spiking.
"What the hell…?"
The tingling faded instantly.
He frowned, leaning forward again, slower this time.
…there it was. A pressure. An instinctual warning. A feeling that the substance was important—and dangerous.
Not a voice. Not words.
But something uncomfortably similar to intuition, sharpened beyond human limits.
Ashen scowled.
He could feel it, something strange perhaps a seed
But it wasn't located in his body, or atleast he felt so
"Is this… because of the seed? Or am I just losing it?"
He didn't touch the sap.
Not yet.
He moved on, deeper into the Expanse. The ground became uneven, dotted with small white protrusions. At first, Ashen thought they were stones—but when he stepped near one, it vibrated.
A droning hum rolled through the air like the faint sound of insects trapped under skin.
Ashen froze.
He crouched beside one.
A thin, jagged shard of bone rose from the ground, no taller than his palm. It looked brittle, but when he brushed a finger near it—never touching—the shard vibrated so hard it hummed like a tuning fork.
His instincts clenched.
The seed stirred faintly in his chest, a cold coil.
Ashen pulled his hand back immediately.
"Yeah. No. Not touching that."
He stepped around them carefully, noticing that the sprouts always hummed louder when he neared cracks with active veins. Almost like they were… sensing something moving below.
He didn't want to find out what.
A patch of dark red growth stretched across a cluster of stones ahead.
The lichen moved.
It expanded slightly, rising like a slow breath.
In…
Out…
In…
Ashen's skin crawled.
"Breathing moss. Sure. Why not?"
But when he stepped close, the air warmed—not a lot, but enough to contrast with the surrounding cold. Warmth in the Abyss felt wrong. Wrong enough to freeze his muscles.
But he also couldn't deny that warmth meant possible survival.
Heat.
Energy.
Maybe even food…
Just not food he was stupid enough to touch unprepared.
He extended a hand—
The seed pulsed.
A cold jolt ran up his arm, sharp and sudden like a warning shock.
Ashen snapped his hand back, cursing loudly.
"Seriously!? Can't touch anything here!?"
The warmth from the lichen faded from his skin almost instantly.
The Pillars Shift
A deep tremor rolled through the Expanse.
Ashen straightened quickly, scanning the darkness.
The nearest bone pillar shook.
Dust cascaded down its sides.
A low groan vibrated through the air like a giant exhaling.
Then—
CRACK.
The top of the pillar split open, peeling back like the petals of a rotting flower. Far above, something scuttled inside the hollow interior walls—fast, scraping, many-limbed.
Ashen's blood ran cold.
"…Nope. Absolutely not."
He backed away into a shallow depression in the terrain, crouching low. The subtle instincts in his mind screamed at him to hide, hide now.
The scrabbling grew louder.
Then something emerged.
A silhouette, spindly and hunched, climbed onto the outer edge of the pillar, its limbs clinging to the bone as easily as a spider to silk. The darkness didn't show its features clearly, but the shape alone was enough to twist Ashen's stomach.
Another followed.
And another.
Their presence pressed against him like a suffocating weight. He dared not breathe.
The creatures scanned the area with slow, twitching movements. Even from this distance, Ashen could feel their attention sweeping across the Expanse like cold fingers.
His heart pounded so hard it hurt.
Don't look here… don't look here…
Footsteps.
Scraping.
Chattering.
Then—
The creatures leapt from the pillar, disappearing into the deeper darkness beyond.
Silence returned.
Slowly.
Ashen exhaled shakily. His entire body trembled with delayed terror.
"…I am going to die here," he whispered. "I am actually going to die."
But he didn't move.
Not yet.
Not until the instinct—whatever the seed had awakened—released its grip on him.
Only when his senses loosened did he rise and continue deeper.
A Sense He Didn't Ask For
As he walked, the world shifted subtly.
Not physically—perceptually.
He noticed things faster.
Shadows seemed sharper.
The pulsing below the ground was easier to detect.
And whenever he approached a hazard—lichen, sap, sprouts—his mind flickered with faint warnings.
Not thoughts.
Not whispers.
Just… a pressure.
A tightening feeling behind his ribs, under his sternum.
Right where the seed had entered.
Ashen rubbed the spot, scowling.
"What are you doing to me…?"
No answer.
Of course not.
Hours—minutes—he couldn't tell—passed as he wandered in the living wasteland. Then he felt it:
A cold breeze brushing against his neck.
He froze.
There was no wind here.
Not a single air current since he'd woken.
The breeze grew stronger, swirling around him like invisible fingers.
Not wind.
Something else.
A warning.
A sign.
Ashen's instincts screamed—
Danger.
He ducked low, sliding behind a jagged slab of stone.
A moment later, a guttural whining sound rose in the distance. Soft. Unearthly. Too smooth for any natural creature.
Ashen held his breath.
From behind the pillar's shadow, shapes slithered across the horizon.
Not close enough to see clearly…
But close enough to feel.
That dead-eyed wrongness radiated outward like cold waves.
Ashen swallowed hard.
"Just… keep moving. Quietly. Slowly. Don't die."
The Expanse Breathes Again
As he crept forward, the veins beneath the stone began throbbing faster.
Stronger.
Almost frantic.
It felt like the ground was warning him.
Or reacting to something approaching.
He didn't wait to find out which.
He changed direction, veering away from the loudest pulses.
His breathing turned rough, sharp. Every sound he made echoed strangely, bouncing off bone pillars in distorted, elongated reverberations. It made it impossible to tell how far away anything was.
Or if something was following.
He risked a whisper.
"…If I make it through this hell, I swear I'm never complaining about anything again."
A distant crack—another pillar shifting—cut him off.
He ran.
Not wildly, not foolishly—cautiously, silently, with every instinct flaring to life.
And for the first time since he arrived…
Ashen felt something unfamiliar.
Not safety.
Not hope.
Direction.
The Expanse was killing him—
But some part of him felt where he needed to go.
Toward a place where the pulses were quieter…
Where the ground breathed less violently…
Where a faint trail of pressure in his chest urged him on.
The seed wasn't guiding him.
Not directly.
But it reacted.
It warned.
It resisted.
It pushed back when danger lurked too close.
Ashen wiped cold sweat from his brow.
"…Fine," he muttered.
"If you're going to keep doing that… I'll listen."
Heartbeats under my feet, glowing sap, bone sprouting from stone... fine.
ill call you the Flesh-Vein Expanse
He stepped deeper into the Flesh-Vein Expanse,
into the pulsing, breathing dark,
into whatever waited for him beyond the next swell of veins.
And the Abyss watched silently.