"H-hey wait! I'm innocent, I swear!" He took a few steps backwards and waved his hands in the air, trying to plead his case.

"Quiet, Heretic." The Holy Crusader spoke with a tone of poorly concealed rage, he was a hulking figure completely covered in armor and cloth, then he made a show of drawing the large sword from his waist. The silver blade gleamed in the sunlight.

"P-please just listen." He only took one step back, his foot barely finding ground as raging winds rushed at his back, pushing and pulling him. He had no more room to retreat, he was at the Edge.

The Crusader lunged forward, the blade piercing his heart clean through until the hilt of the sword was halted by flesh.

The world froze as pain filled his body, but he couldn't feel it, his body had gone limp, like a puppet without any strings to hold him up. However, he was being held up by the Holy Crusader's sword, then when they released their hold on the handle of their steel blade, he fell backwards.

The light from the sun faded away as the darkness of the Abyss swallowed his corpse whole.


"May The Gods Guide Your Soul."

"May You Find Your Salvation."

"May You Ascend From Your Perdition, Jaune."


A singular blue eye, faded in coloration and clouded over, seemingly stared off into the vast darkness.

The squeaking of some rodents faintly echoed throughout the darkness, bouncing off the walls that had no end. The rats weren't alone, the buzzing of insects accompanied them and echoed incessantly in the dark.

A small rodent crawled near and started sniffing at the clouded blue eye, but it scurried off when the eyelid slowly blinked. The body that the blue eye was attached to twitched slightly, the movement scaring off more rodents away from the corpse, and disturbing the insects that had landed on it.

The faded blue eye blinked again, and the murky white dissipated, leaving only a bright blue eye.

The corpse moved, and his senses came rushing back in waves. He saw the endless darkness, he heard the rodents and insects, he smelled the putrid stench of death and decay, but fortunately he couldn't taste anything. Each sensation rammed into his awareness, overwhelming his mind, and he felt unbearable pain buzzing along every nerve.

The corpse jolted in discomfort as his mind began working in full, his consciousness having swam up from the confusion.

Where am I? What's happening?

A single memory came to his mind, he was standing at an Abyssal Edge, and he was killed by an armored man with a sword. Then he remembered something else, a voice, someone was speaking with a graceful voice and they had called him Jaune, or maybe he was confused.

No, the corpse was sure his name was Jaune. He still had questions, a lot of questions, but he wasn't going to get them answered just lying around. He sat up, or at least he had tried to, his body was stiff, numb, and there was something holding him down at his chest.

He kept trying to move, to get up, and after a while he realized that the sword that pierced his heart was still in him, that it was lodged in stone, which was pinning him in place. Even though he hadn't been able to change his position on the stone, by constantly moving his body, the stiffness and numbness faded from his flesh.

Slowly he tried raising a shaking arm, and once he was sure it was actually moving, he tried to grab the handle of the sword, but his right hand was still numb, so he couldn't even feel it. After fruitlessly bumping into the handle of the sword, he brought his hand to his face. He was trying to feel his fingers, to try and memorize how big his hand was. Instead of feeling a limp hand, two pointy bits poked his face.

No.

He poked himself again, then he brought the arm over his head, and dragged his limb across his face, it ended halfway from his elbow to where his wrist belonged. He was missing his right hand. Panic set in, but it didn't last long, it was a grim acceptance, but he had more pressing matters to deal with, he could deal with it later.

Jaune tried to move his left arm next, but it was unresponsive, he kept trying and eventually he could feel it jerk upward. It took a short while before he could truly move his arm, and a longer while before he could lift his arm. It turned out that it was trapped beneath something, but after pulling his arm out from under it, he was relieved to feel pain in his arm, because he also felt the pain up to his hand.

When the pain subsided, he gripped the handle of the sword, and pulled. It didn't budge. He tried again, but got the same result, and he tried again and again, still the result never changed. He pushed his right arm up with his left arm, but the sword didn't move. He kept trying, but no matter what, the sword never moved.

He only gave up when his body stopped moving.


Jaune awoke from a dreamless sleep - or maybe he had always been awake and had grown numb - when he felt multiple small and sharp feet digging into his skin. His body was being swarmed by rodents. He tried to shove them off of his form, but his body was stiff again, and he couldn't even twitch.

A small rodent had crawled on his face, he wanted it off of him immediately, it was sniffing all over him, the pointy nose roaming all over his face, poking and prodding him. The small creature had shoved its nose into his mouth through a wide gap in his cheek, and it pushed its small body through. It crawled around, poking its head down his throat, if he could taste, he was sure he would've vomited by now.

When the rodent poked its head out of his open mouth, with its paws gripping his teeth, he had reached his limit, and forced his stiff jaw shut, chomping on the small rodent. The creature squeaked and squirmed frantically, its small feet clawing at the inside of his mouth, still he continued to bite the rodent even after it went limp, he didn't stop until it was in two pieces.

After that, Jaune learned three things: One, he couldn't turn or shake his head. Two, he didn't have a tongue. And three, he could swallow half a small rodent whole and not vomit.

The commotion of the dying rodent had scared off the other ones, so his body was left unbothered as he tried to move and shake off the stiffness restraining him. Once he could move his arms again, he was tempted to try and pull the sword out again, but decided against it.

With his only hand, he explored his surroundings and himself.

The thing that had trapped his left arm was a body, a corpse, he wasn't surprised. If he remembered correctly, then the Abyss was filled with corpses, but he just couldn't see them in this darkness.

The rodents and insects were probably feeding off of them and nesting in the remains. All of the people thought lost to the endless void, were just food for animals and bugs, in a way it was no different than a normal grave. In the end corpses were always eaten away by the wild life.

The only real difference as a gravesite, was that normal graves were an honor and the Abyss was a punishment. The endless expanse supposedly didn't even allow souls to ascend to the heavens, and was worse than any hell. Only the truly damned were sentenced down here, in fact it was a mercy to kill them before their sentence.

Like he had been killed before he fell down here. The only difference between him and the corpses was that he was alive, but he wasn't sure about that. Living people bled, living people stayed dead after death, living people had beating hearts. Jaune brought his hand to his heart, he met steel, the sword that impaled him served as a reminder of his death, even if he couldn't remember his life.

His hand eventually traveled south, to his stomach, where he found his exposed guts. He felt his exposed ribs, they had been gnawed on, all of his small intestines were gone, eaten or decayed. He felt his spine, the end of his spine. He didn't have a waist or anything below that. He discovered he was on a slanted ledge, that the ground he was on ended just after his body ended.

Jaune felt his head and face, he was missing his left ear and eye, the back of his skull was shattered, exposing his brain. He didn't know what he was, he didn't know why he could move after he died, but that didn't matter right now.

Getting his mind back on track, he felt around his surroundings for anything useful. North of his head, he found a rock, barely the size of his fist, but too heavy for him to lift. He couldn't explore much to the right of him, but he did find a hole, after barely reaching it with his right arm, he deduced that whatever had eaten his hand and wrist had used that hole.

With nothing more to do, Jaune went back to pulling at the sword, the only change was that he pulled at a slight angle. He counted his attempts to pull the sword out, in an attempt to stay awake or aware of his actions.

He was on his sixtieth try, when a fire sparked inside him, it was burning inside his stomach but it only lasted for a moment. In all the muscles he could move, he felt them spasm and twitch uncontrollably, and when it stopped, he felt pain, but it wasn't new pain, no it would be more accurate to say he could feel his pain with more clarity.

He had gained more awareness in his body, he could move every finger independently, and he could hear the insects loudly buzzing around his face, but what really stole his attention was squirming in his wounds. From his arm to his face to his gut, he could feel squirming. It didn't take long for him to come to a conclusion as to why he felt that.

Maggots. There were maggots eating at him, they had infested his body, he couldn't feel them before because he had been numb all over. But now he could feel the endless swarm of flies that tickled his skin, previously it was just a constant buzzing that had been droned out. He felt them dig at his skin, depositing something slimy in his wounds.

Jaune had to resist the urge to grab the infected parts of his body and rip them out. He had to focus on something else, so he decided to ask himself why he felt more. The only thing he could think gave him a sudden burst of awareness was the fire that had came from his stomach right before.

And the only thing in his stomach was half of the small rodent he had swallowed. He hesitated a bit, before picking up the other half of the creature and swallowing it.

After that he decided to waste some time, he chose to try and lift the rock, it was a bit easier now. He was going to use this rock as a replacement weight, if he couldn't lift the sword, then he simply needed to get stronger. He didn't bother counting, he just mindlessly lifted the 'weight', and he only came back to his senses after his insides burned.

His body reacted the same as before, his pain has doubled, and he could feel more squirming take place inside him. And he felt like the putrid stench from the corpses grew more intense, but he believed his sense of smell had just gotten better. His teeth also felt sharper.

The sword was still too heavy to pull out, but Jaune decided to try something different. He brought his hand over his head and smashed the handle of the sword with his rock, he could feel a slight vibration travel through the steel in his chest.

This was the action he did until his body gave up.


Thanks for reading! I'm always open to feedback, so please leave a review, or reply in my forum, about what you liked or hated about this chapter or the whole story. If anyone wants to be a Beta Reader, then PM me and we'll talk details.