Abyss Descension: I Perform Rituals to Evolve In The Apocalyps-Chapter 67: Quick fight

The first test, as explained by a lean, hawk-eyed examiner clad in a cloak dyed in the faction’s forest-green insignia, was deceptively simple: Retrieve the Ember Shard from the ruins of a toppled cathedral swarmed with Revenants—elemental ones, no less. The faction had long used this challenge as a measure of raw survival instinct, power control, and mental resolve. Candidates were permitted to work solo or in teams, but passing alone granted far greater prestige.

Kev, ever the one to forge his path with blistered hands and clenched fists, chose to go alone.

They stood at the edge of the fog-choked woodland where the cathedral ruins loomed in the distance like the skeletal ribcage of some long-dead god. Shadows flickered unnaturally between the shattered towers, and from within came the echo of guttural moans and low, thrumming howls that barely sounded human.

"You’ll have an hour," the examiner said. "Fail to retrieve the shard, or die trying. Your decision, your risk."

Kev gave no reply. His shadow peeled off the earth beneath him like living ink, stretching behind him like the mantle of a stalking predator. He stepped forward.

Branches cracked beneath his boots. Cold wind slithered over his skin. He passed through dead thickets where ancient bark bore blackened burns and claw marks, remnants of older battles between the Verdant Pact and the infected.

The cathedral’s silhouette emerged slowly, framed by the distorted light that filtered through the fog. Its walls were half-eaten by time, vine-wrapped and grave-like, and large holes punctured the dome above, creating sun shafts that streamed down like golden spears.

Kev’s breath misted as he passed the arched threshold, the momentary peace vanishing as a scent hit him—charred flesh and stagnant blood. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Revenants lurked.

The first ones he encountered were twitchers—former humans turned husks, half-melted and half-possessed by elemental essence. One had seeping magma veins instead of arms, dripping with slow lava. Another’s body rippled with acidic boils that hissed with every step.

Kev dropped into a low stance. His shadow responded, splitting into three tendrils that lunged forward. The magma Revenant swung, its arm bursting in a torrent of searing heat, but Kev’s tendrils wrapped around its leg, yanking it down.

With a practiced motion, he summoned a serrated blade of void-shadow, then rammed it directly into the Revenant’s back. The blade slid through its ribcage until it struck the nucleus—a glowing orange shard embedded in what was once a lung.

The Revenant screamed, then collapsed, its magma dissolving into ash.

The acid-born was next, gurgling in fury. It vomited a stream of bubbling sludge, but Kev blurred to the left, his movement amplified by a pulse of shadow beneath his feet.

He pivoted. One hand flung a bolt of concentrated shade—a projectile like frozen smoke that punched into the creature’s side. The nucleus, glowing a faint green inside the body, pulsed defensively.

Kev didn’t give it time to regenerate. A wall of shadow erupted behind the creature, slamming into its back and pinning it forward. His tendrils surged like snakes, two wrapping around its limbs, while a third stabbed through its chest and twisted until it crushed the core.

Two down. Many more to go.

He pressed deeper into the cathedral, past crumbling pews and shattered stained glass. The further in he went, the colder it became. The Revenants changed, too. They weren’t just husks—they were watchers.

A group of four patrolled near the altar, each possessed by a different element: frost, lightning, stone, and wind.

Kev exhaled slowly. This would take more than brute force.

He cloaked himself in a shell of dancing shadow, vanishing from view.

He stalked forward, sticking to the broken columns and debris. When he was within twenty feet, he dropped the cloak and hurled a mass of swirling shadow high into the air.

It exploded in a thunderclap of black light, drawing their attention.

The lightning Revenant reacted first, dashing forward in a blur. Kev countered with a trap—his shadow splintered into spikes just as the Revenant stepped over a marked sigil. The spikes impaled it from beneath, but it didn’t die.

Kev grimaced. Its core was near the spine.

He shadow-stepped behind it, raised his hand, and drove a blade of darkness straight through the neck. A wet snap echoed. The Revenant gurgled, collapsing in a seizure of arcs.

The others were on him now. Wind howled through the ruins, slashing like invisible blades, while the frost Revenant exhaled a blizzard so cold it made his skin blister.

Kev summoned his power in full.

His shadow bled outward like oil on water, flooding the cathedral floor. From it, tendrils rose, splitting into dozens—dozens more. They writhed, weaving a dome of protective blackness around him.

The wind blades bounced off. The frost was absorbed.

Then he struck back.

He pointed to the wind Revenant. The shadows obeyed, wrapping it midair, spinning it violently, and crushing it mid-gale. Its nucleus shattered mid-whirl.

The frost Revenant screamed. Kev summoned a javelin of compact darkness and hurled it, nailing the creature to a wall. Then he pressed his palm to the ground, and his entire shadow surged up the wall like a tidal wave.

The Revenant vanished beneath it, disintegrated from existence.

Only the stone Revenant remained.

It charged, weight shaking the ground. Its skin was like granite armor, and its eyes burned like coals.

Kev raised his hand, fingers splayed. His shadow climbed the walls and ceiling, forming six massive arms. They reached down, grasped the Revenant, and lifted it into the air.

Kev walked forward, calm.

He peered up at the flailing creature. Through the cracks in its armor, he saw the nucleus—deep inside the chest.

He pointed.

One of the massive arms sharpened, then thrust through the torso with terrifying speed. The Revenant didn’t even have time to scream. Its core was obliterated.

Kev dropped it.

Silence returned to the cathedral.

He advanced to the altar, where the Ember Shard sat—floating above a broken pedestal, surrounded by decayed symbols of some forgotten faith.

He reached out. The shard pulsed with living fire, reacting to his presence. His shadow shifted uneasily.

With a steady hand, he seized the shard.

A flare of heat erupted, but he held firm. Shadow and flame danced over his skin, and something ancient whispered beneath the flames, testing his resolve.

But Kev’s will didn’t break.

The fire faded. The shard accepted him.

He turned back toward the entrance.

Outside, the examiner stood, a faint smile betraying surprise.

"You live. That alone earns you merit. But the shard? You retrieved it alone."

Kev nodded, tossing the shard up and catching it casually.

"You’ll go far," the examiner said. "But the next tests won’t be so... straightforward."

Kev’s shadow twisted beneath his feet, like it too understood what was coming.

And it welcomed the challenge.

The second test was not one of combat or endurance, but of control.

Where the first had demanded Kev unleash his shadow powers with surgical ruthlessness against elemental Revenants, the second sought to measure the opposite: restraint, precision, and understanding.

He was led to the Verdant Pact’s inner proving grounds—an arena not of stone, but of living roots and moving vines. At the center of a clearing surrounded by whispering trees stood a circle of ten spirit-beasts, each ethereal and bound in glowing runes.

They were creatures of old magic, summoned from the land’s memory: a horned deer with leaves for antlers, a sapphire-eyed fox whose tail shimmered like moonlight, and others stranger still—one shaped like a cloud of mist with glowing eyes, another composed entirely of floating petals.

An old woman waited by the center of the ring, her back hunched, her hands wrapped in green and gold bindings. Her voice was raspy, but clear.

"Your second trial, shadow-bearer, is to bring balance between your power and their existence. You are to enter the circle and touch each spirit-beast. Harm one, and the test fails. Use too much power, and they vanish. Use too little, and they reject you."

Kev said nothing.

But inside, something twisted.

Precision was never his strength. Shadow was made for violence, for domination. This was like asking a fire to warm without burning.

Still, he stepped forward.

The circle accepted him. The ground pulsed with life as vines uncurled at his approach. The first spirit-beast—a fox of ice and moonlight—watched him warily.

He dropped to a knee. From his palm, he conjured the faintest wisp of shadow, a tendril no thicker than thread, and extended it like an offering.

The fox sniffed it, tail flicking.

The wisp danced, harmless.

Then, the fox stepped forward and allowed his hand to press gently against its head. A ring of pale light swirled where they made contact.

One down.

The next was harder—a creature of storm-clouds and memory. It shied from him, its body shifting like vapor. He exhaled slowly, adjusting the resonance of his shadow.

Instead of approaching directly, he let his shadow spread in a soft pulse beneath the earth. The mist-beast drifted over it curiously.

He waited.

When it hovered close, he raised his palm and let it brush the surface of the vapor with a shadow-wrapped fingertip.

It pulsed with color—violet and gold.

Two.

The third and fourth followed, each unique. One required silence, the other music. Kev whistled a tune his mother once hummed, barely remembering it, and the spirit-beast of drifting petals spun in a slow dance before letting him touch it.

But the fifth was different.

A beast of ash and bone. Its eyes were hollow. Its aura—hostile.

Kev’s shadow recoiled instinctively.

The old woman’s voice floated across the circle. "Some beasts carry pain. You must show them yours."

Kev stood still for a long moment.

Then he let the shadow on his back split apart, forming images. Not memories, but impressions—of the Revenants in the abyss, of Lena screaming, of the countless corpses in tunnels.

The ash-beast stiffened.

Kev stepped forward.

He offered his pain—not as a weapon, but as truth.

The beast looked into his shadow.

Then it nodded.

Five.

One by one, he worked through them all, sweat slicking his brow not from exertion, but from the unbearable tension of holding back so much power.

The final beast, a serpent made of rivers and reeds, tested him last. It coiled around him slowly, pressing close to his chest.

Kev didn’t react.

It closed its eyes.

He raised his hand and gently laid it upon the flow of water and vine.

It accepted him.

The circle pulsed. The runes vanished.

The old woman bowed her head.

"Few pass the test of balance. Fewer do so with a shadow forged from pain. You have passed, Kev of the surface."

He bowed back stiffly, his heart still pounding.

Two tests survived.

Two left to face.