Fallen Angel's Harem in the Abyss
Chapter 39: There is no Calm in the abyss - 3

Chapter 39: There is no Calm in the abyss - 3

Azareel didn’t answer, his form still, too still.

Then—a faint whisper, hoarse and fragile.

"...Sorry." His voice trembled, barely audible over the settling dust. "Didn’t mean to squish you."

Nyxsha stared, her heart pounding so loud it drowned out the crumbling world, her claws digging into the stone beside him.

"Idiot," she choked, her voice thick with fear and fury, tears pricking at her eyes despite herself. "You—"

Sylvara dashed forward, her vines whipping out to wrap the debris, pulling it off him with a groan of straining roots, her amber eyes wide with shock.

Virelya reappeared in a swirl of mist, her golden eyes uncharacteristically wide, reaching down with trembling hands.

Azareel’s ribs were caved in, a gruesome indentation across his chest, his back twisted unnaturally, blood pooling beneath him in a silver-pink stain that glowed faintly.

His breathing was shallow, ragged gasps that bubbled with effort, his silver-gray eyes fluttering as pain etched lines into his pale face.

And yet... he smiled.

Soft, innocent, still smiling through the agony, his voice a whisper.

"I’m okay," he murmured, blinking slowly, his hand twitching toward Nyxsha’s.

"YOU’RE NOT—!" Nyxsha screamed, gripping his hand tightly, her claws careful not to pierce his skin, her golden eyes blazing with raw emotion.

His fingers twitched around hers, weak but present.

"It’s alright," he said gently, his smile unwavering. "I’m immortal, remember?"

She trembled, her massive form shaking, her claws digging into the earth beside his hand as tears streaked her fur.

"That doesn’t mean you’re unbreakable, you dumb suicidal angel," she snarled, her voice breaking, fear lacing her words like poison.

"I didn’t want you to die," he whispered, his silver eyes dimming slightly, but his grip holding. "That’s all."

Virelya looked like a ghost, her porcelain mask pale, her coils slack as she hovered, speechless.

Sylvara clutched her chest, her bark-skin peeling with stress, petals falling like tears.

"...He threw himself under stone," Sylvara whispered, her voice trembling. "For a monster."

"For me," Nyxsha corrected, her voice low, fierce, her golden eyes locked on Azareel. "He did it for me."

Silence fell again, not just from shock but from something deeper, a reverence amid the chaos.

The Abyss still shifted around them, louder now, more tears in the fabric of reality, light and shadow colliding in violent bursts.

But in that broken chamber, none of them moved—Azareel, broken, bleeding, still smiling.

"I’m okay," he repeated, his voice a fragile thread.

And somehow, in that moment, they believed him.

_________

The Abyss was still moving—not like an earthquake, not that simple, but a living convulsion, breathing, collapsing, ripping itself apart and reforming in spasms of creation and decay.

The sky above had become a torn veil of shifting textures: sometimes molten red, swirling like blood in water.

Sometimes churning black mist that whispered forgotten curses; and once, for a breathless second, an eye—massive, slit-pupiled—blinked open in the clouds, its gaze cold and indifferent, before vanishing into the void.

Then it was gone, leaving only the afterimage burned into their minds.

Nyxsha grunted as she heaved Azareel higher on her back, his light weight—too light, like hollow bones wrapped in paper skin—pressing against her bristling fur.

His breath warmed her nape in weak, irregular intervals, his silver-white hair matted with blood and dust, his torn robe clinging damply to her side.

"Stay awake," she muttered, her voice a low growl that cut through the rumbling chaos. "No dying on me."

"I told you," he mumbled, his words slurred with pain, his silver-gray eyes fluttering half-closed.

"Immortal..."

"You’re still leaking, angel," she snapped, her golden eyes scanning the fracturing landscape ahead, her massive paws pounding the unstable ground. "Immortal or not, I’ll kick your dick if you pass out."

She darted beneath the torn remains of a cathedral bridge just as the stone snapped like brittle bone, tumbling behind her in a cascade of debris.

Shards of boneglass rained down like white daggers, slicing through the air with whistling shrieks. Her black fur bristled, singed at the edges by the falling shards, but she pressed on, her muscles burning under the strain.

The Abyss was devouring its own skeleton, the ground convulsing as if rejecting the structures it had birthed, walls crumbling into voids that hungered for more.

Behind her, Sylvara moved like a living breeze, her crimson-leafed body darting between vines that erupted and withered in seconds, her amber eyes wide with a mix of rage and fear, petals shedding from her hair like tears in the wind.

Virelya slithered along the walls like a liquid shadow, her porcelain mask cracked further, hissing curses in languages no longer spoken, her golden, slit-pupiled eyes scanning for threats.

This wasn’t a storm—it was a reconfiguration, a ritual of pain, the Abyss reshaping itself to ensure no foothold lasted, no sanctuary endured.

It didn’t want survivors; it wanted strangers, lost ones, separated and adrift in its endless hunger.

The ground beneath them cracked open again, a jagged fissure splitting the earth with a deafening roar, swallowing boulders and twisted roots into its glowing maw.

"Jump!" Virelya shouted, her coils whipping forward to form a makeshift bridge.

Nyxsha launched, her powerful legs propelling her across the widening chasm, Azareel groaning softly as the impact jarred his broken body.

The ledge behind her collapsed, dragging shards of the cathedral into the abyss below, the sides alive with flesh-pink tendrils spiraling like roots in a throat, grasping hungrily at the falling debris.

Azareel’s blood dampened her shoulder, warm and sticky, his faint breaths a reminder of his fragility.

Her own heart thundered like a war drum, echoing in her ears amid the chaos.

"I should’ve dropped you into that thing," she muttered under her breath, her voice laced with forced gruffness to mask the fear clawing at her chest.

"...thank you for not," he whispered faintly, his voice weak but sincere.

"Shut up," she barked, her golden eyes flashing ahead, scanning for the next threat.

They pressed on, the landscape twisting around them—jagged bridges appearing mid-leap, forged from bone and void, only to crumble behind; tunnels of petrified vines snaking through the earth, their walls pulsing like veins.

One false step could mean death, or worse—trapped in the Abyss’s endless reconfiguration.