Abyss Descension: I Perform Rituals to Evolve In The Apocalyps-Chapter 56: Found it

"No Revenants," Arlen said. "They left because something else called them."

"Called?" Kev turned. "What does that mean?"

Arlen pointed to the sky.

It was clear.

For now.

But faintly, at the horizon, flickering like heatwaves, a circle of light pulsed in the clouds. Not natural. Too perfect.

"They’re going to where the new doors open."

"Doors?"

"Places where the Spire breathes into the world."

They moved faster after that.

Kev drove them like a man possessed. At one point, Lena tried to argue—they were exhausted, barely had enough food—but Kev shut her down with a look she hadn’t seen since the early days of the Burrow.

The look of someone who knew time was no longer on their side.

Not days.

Not even hours.

The *world* was changing too fast.

---

By the seventh night, they reached a small bunker hidden beneath a collapsed hospital on the outskirts of what once had been a suburban sprawl.

It was intact.

Not powered. But sealed. Reinforced.

They broke through the hatch with effort, descending into stale air and dust. But the moment they turned on their lanterns, Bell stopped in his tracks.

"Kev..."

"What?"

"This isn’t just a bunker. Look."

Kev shone his light around.

Cages.

Monitors.

Blood-freezing surgical instruments.

And tanks.

Five of them.

Three shattered. One cracked. One still intact.

And inside that last one—

A child.

Floated in a pale-blue gel.

Eyes open.

Watching.

Just like Arlen.

And Arlen? 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

He walked right up to the tank and placed his palm on the glass.

The boy inside mirrored the gesture.

"I know

him," Arlen said softly. "He’s like me. He remembers the Before."

Kev looked around at the wreckage of the facility.

And finally understood.

They hadn’t just found survivors.

They’d found the *source.*

The bunker was a tomb, but not just for the dead.

It was a tomb for the past.

For everything that the old world had tried to hold on to but lost.

Kev stood at the edge of the room, letting the light from his battered lantern fall over the walls that were scarred with years of dust and neglect. The smell was thick, sour, and bitter—like metal left to rust beneath a flood of old blood and lost hope. It clung to everything, seeping into the cracks in the floor, twisting around the corroded machinery like ivy strangling a tree.

The tanks were the centerpiece, five of them arranged like silent sentinels guarding secrets nobody wanted unearthed. Four were shattered or cracked—glass splintered like broken dreams. But one remained whole, glowing faintly with a sickly blue light that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat of its own.

Inside floated a child, eyes wide open, eerily calm.

A ghost suspended in a coffin of liquid.

Arlen stepped forward without hesitation, as if drawn by some invisible thread. His hand rose slowly, trembling just slightly, and pressed against the cool glass.

The child inside did the same.

Kev’s breath caught.

"You know him?" he asked.

Arlen didn’t answer right away. His voice was soft, almost reverent. "He’s me... before."

Before what? Kev wanted to ask. Before what had changed him so completely?

But Arlen was already moving back, the weight of memories pulling at his eyes like tides.

Bell shuffled closer, adjusting his cracked glasses as he examined the machines. "This isn’t just a bunker or a hospital. This is a lab. A research facility."

Kev nodded grimly. "From the old world."

"But what were they researching?" Agatha asked, her voice echoing in the cold chamber.

Doctor Bell’s face twisted into a bitter smile. "Survival. Evolution. Control."

"And control of what?" Sidhu added, crossing his arms.

"Of the Spire," Bell said. "Of the infection. Of what the Spire was doing to the world."

The word hung in the stale air, heavier than the dust that blanketed the floors.

Kev paced slowly around the tanks, the lantern’s beam sweeping over faded charts pinned to rusted walls, yellowed pages listing chemical compounds, genetic sequences, notes scrawled in hurried handwriting. None of it made sense at first glance—too many acronyms, too many unfamiliar symbols—but one thing was clear: this was where humanity had tried to fight back, and lost.

Lena stepped beside Kev, her eyes narrowing. "So this... this place was trying to reverse what the Spire did? Or at least understand it?"

Bell nodded. "Exactly. They were experimenting. Trying to isolate the core—like the one you have, Kev—the nucleus that powers the Revenants. Trying to figure out if it could be stopped, controlled, or even reversed."

Kev’s fingers curled around the small glowing crystal safely tucked in his pouch. The blue light pulsed faintly, as if alive.

"And yet," Bell continued, "something went horribly wrong. That’s why the facility was abandoned, and why the city fell."

Parvi’s voice trembled. "But what happened to the people here? The scientists, the survivors?"

Agatha’s gaze drifted to the shattered tanks. "The ones in those tanks... were they victims or experiments?"

Doctor Bell swallowed hard. "Both."

The silence stretched for a moment, broken only by the faint hum of failing electronics and the slow drip of water somewhere in the shadows.

Then, Arlen whispered, "I remember."

Kev looked at him sharply. "What do you remember?"

Arlen’s eyes darkened with a pain beyond his years. "The lab. The Spire’s breath on my skin. The cold hands pulling me apart and putting me back together. The endless waiting in the blue water, the voices calling from nowhere, the shapes in the dark."

Sidhu took a slow breath, eyes flicking between Arlen and the suspended child. "You were part of those experiments?"

"Not exactly," Arlen said. "I was chosen. Because I could resist."

"Resist what?" Lena pressed.

Arlen looked up, his gaze piercing. "The Spire wants to remake the world in its image. To turn everything human into something... other. But I am the fault in its design."

Kev’s heart hammered.

Because if Arlen was the fault—then what did that make.them.

The survivors.

The broken remnants.

Those who fought their way out of the Abyssal Burrow.

Those who clung to the surface like shadows clinging to the edges of light.

"Then we’re not just running," Kev said quietly. "We’re fighting."