Chapter 219: Chapter 219 – Beneath the Skin of the Abyss
The plunge was not a fall in any sense the human body could understand. There was no air screaming past, no impact waiting at the bottom. Instead, Lin and Min-joon were drawn, like threads pulled through the eye of a needle, slipping between the fractures of the marrow world until light itself gave up trying to follow.
When the pull stopped, they were standing.
Not on stone. Not on metal.
On flesh.
The ground beneath them quivered faintly, as though with the slow pulse of a vein running deep under skin. It wasn’t wet, but neither was it dry—it had the texture of something alive, something that could, if it chose, twitch them off balance. The air was thick, clotted, as if each breath had to fight to push through layers of invisible resistance.
Lin staggered forward, chains dragging noiselessly behind him. Each link glowed faintly, threads of resonance running like veins of silver fire. He could feel them humming, half in greeting, half in warning. This place recognized him. Or worse—welcomed him.
Min-joon was at his side instantly, his hand gripping Lin’s wrist so hard it bordered on pain. "Don’t listen," he said, voice low, almost a whisper, though nothing echoed in this space. "No matter what it shows you, no matter what it says—don’t answer."
Lin swallowed, throat dry. "I didn’t say anything."
"You almost did."
And it was true. Some part of him—deeper than bone, deeper than marrow—had already tried to respond.
Shapes began to coalesce in the darkness around them. At first Lin thought they were stalagmites, towering spines rising from the flesh-ground. But then they shifted, legs detaching, heads turning. They were people. Or, at least, what had once been people.
Men and women in tattered remnants of clothes shuffled aimlessly in circles. Their faces were blank, like wax melted flat, yet each carried something familiar: a gesture, a stance, the echo of memory. One stumbled close, brushing Lin’s shoulder with an arm that trembled like it hadn’t been used in centuries.
The resonance chains leapt toward it instinctively, vibrating in recognition.
Lin choked back bile. "Who are they?"
"The lost," Min-joon muttered. His jaw was tight, sweat trickling down his temple. "Fragments of those who gave in."
The faceless ones turned at that word—gave in—and a soundless murmur rippled through them. Not voices, not breath, but resonance. A chorus of surrender vibrating against Lin’s ribs.
The chains inside him shivered in delight.
The abyss was not silent. It was breathing. Each second stretched, and with it came a long, slow inhale, followed by a rumbling exhale. And beneath it all, a voice threaded through the pulse, carried not by air but by Lin’s own marrow.
You are home.
Lin doubled over, clutching his head. The voice wasn’t thunderous. It was intimate, a whisper behind his ear, a parent crooning to a lost child.
Min-joon yanked him upright, forcing Lin to meet his eyes. "Stay with me. That’s not your voice."
But Lin wasn’t so sure. Because the chains inside him weren’t resisting. They were answering. They quivered, stretched, singing notes of recognition that twisted his stomach into knots.
We have always waited.
The faceless figures began to kneel, one after another, until hundreds surrounded them, bent in supplication. Not to Min-joon. Not to themselves.
To Lin.
Above, far beyond this depth, Keller clawed free of rubble. Dust coated his lungs, every breath scraping raw. Hwan dragged him upright with a curse, her own face streaked with blood. The marrow station was gone, collapsed into a yawning fracture that pulsed faint light.
"They’re gone," Keller rasped.
"Not gone." Hwan’s eyes were locked on the fracture. "Dragged under."
He spat blood. "We jump in after them, we don’t come back."
"Then we find a way," Hwan snapped. She shoved him back against a half-fallen girder. "You think Lin can survive down there without us? Without you?"
The bitterness in her tone stung. Keller looked away, jaw tight. "Then we need a tether point. If we move blind, we’re finished."
Her silence was agreement, but her eyes never left the fracture.
Below, Lin’s knees buckled. He couldn’t breathe. Each inhale drew more of the abyss inside him.
Min-joon grabbed his face with both hands, forcing Lin’s gaze away from the kneeling shades, away from the pulsing ground. "Look at me." His voice cracked with strain. "You’re Lin. You’re not theirs."
The abyss did not take kindly to interference.
The ground convulsed, bucking them apart. Min-joon slammed into the flesh-floor, his body arching as phantom wounds carved across his skin—slashes that opened and closed with no blade in sight. Resonance burns spread like brands over his arms.
Lin screamed, rushing toward him. The chains surged forward to shield Min-joon, but half of them refused, lashing instead toward the faceless figures, embracing the abyss’s call. His body trembled violently, split between obedience and rebellion.
He couldn’t control it. Half of him wanted to drag Min-joon closer. The other half wanted to tear him apart.
"Stop it!" Lin’s voice cracked, raw. He seized the chains, pulling with everything he had, his hands bleeding as the links tore his flesh. "You listen to me—!"
The abyss laughed.
You cannot divide yourself. You are already ours.
Min-joon crawled to his knees, his chest heaving, blood running down his chin. His eyes burned—not with power, not with resonance, but with fury.
"Listen to me, Lin," he rasped, voice shredded by pain. "I don’t care how loud it gets. I don’t care if it tears me to pieces. You’re not going anywhere without me. You understand?"
The abyss struck at him again, phantom claws raking across his back, but he didn’t flinch. He staggered forward, clutching Lin’s wrist, forcing their foreheads together. "You hear me?"
Lin’s vision blurred. The chains shrieked, splitting his skull with sound. The faceless ones bowed lower. The ground quivered in anticipation.
And still Min-joon clung to him. "If you go, I go. If you drown, I drown. So choose. Right now. Choose what I mean to you."
The abyss did not like choices it hadn’t authored.
The faceless surged to their feet, mouths tearing open for the first time, emitting soundless screams that rattled Lin’s teeth. The flesh-floor cracked, widening to reveal a chasm beneath. Not empty, but filled with a lightless ocean, black waves writhing as if alive.
The abyss’s voice thundered now, no longer whispering.
Choose us—or lose him.
Lin’s breath caught. The chains coiled around Min-joon’s neck on their own, tightening. He clawed at them desperately, eyes wide.
"No!" Lin roared, but his own arms betrayed him, pulling the links tighter.
And then something snapped.
Not in Lin.
In the abyss.
For just a heartbeat, the resonance faltered—because Min-joon laughed, ragged and defiant, choking even as the chains cut his skin.
"Pathetic," he spat, blood flecking his lips. "You think he’s yours? You think you can take him from me with tricks like this? You’ve already lost."
The abyss shrieked, the sound fracturing the very ground. The faceless fell screaming into the chasm, their blank faces twisting as they were devoured by the black ocean below.
Lin’s chains snapped back like whips, releasing Min-joon. Lin collapsed forward, catching him in his arms, shaking violently.
The abyss’s fury reverberated through every link of his body.
Then descend, it roared. See what defiance costs.
The flesh-ground split completely, and Lin and Min-joon plunged together into the ocean of darkness below.
They sank. Not in water, but in resonance made liquid. Black waves surged around them, pressing into lungs, marrow, thought. Lin felt his identity peeling away layer by layer. Min-joon’s grip was the only thing keeping him from dissolving entirely.
As the ocean swallowed them, the abyss spoke one last time:
At the bottom, you will see the truth.