The darkness was absolute.
Not the darkness of night, which holds the promise of dawn. Not the gloom of shadows, which run away from the tiniest flame. The sensation was something else entirely, a living, breathing presence that pressed against my skin, filled my lungs, and seeped into my very bones. It was the darkness of the Rift, ancient and hungry, and it wanted to consume me.
The descent had been terrifying from the first moment my boots left the solid ground of the surface. The ropes creaked under our weight, the torches flickered in the cold air, and the walls of the chasm rose on either side, jagged and black, veined with that sickly green light that pulsed like a heartbeat. The air grew colder with each passing moment, thicker, and harder to breathe. It smelled of iron and rot and something else, something ancient, something that had been waiting for a very long time.
