A sharp pain stabbed through Henry's temple, yanking him back into consciousness.
His body lay prone on a ragged surface that felt like a heap of debris—splintered wood and brittle twigs.
His eyes flung open, and the pain surged through deeper.
A sharp, blinding throb pulsed through his skull, forcing a strained groan from his lips. For a moment, everything spun—the world tilting, warping—before slowly settling into a dim, unfamiliar blur.
He tried to move.
Regret hit immediately as every muscle in his body screamed in protest, as though he had been crushed, dragged, and discarded like broken cargo. His fingers twitched weakly against the rough surface beneath him, confirming what he feared—this wasn't ground. It was some sort of wreckage.
"W-what… the hell?" he rasped, his voice dry and barely his own.
"Hey… are you okay?" a strained voice called out.
Henry flinched a light touched nudged his shoulder, and he whipped around instinctively.
It was Darius—barely recognizable, his face coated in a thick layer of white dust, his features dulled and ghostlike.
"Take it easy, will you?" Darius said, raising a hand in a calming gesture.
Henry's breathing was uneven as he tried to steady himself.
"How long have I been out?" he asked.
"Maybe hours," Darius replied. "Not sure… I just woke up too."
Henry moved his hand instinctively to his temple.
The moment his fingers made contact, they came away slick.
He froze.
Slowly, he lifted his hand into view.
Blood coated his fingertips—dark, fresh, smeared across his skin.
Darius stepped closer, eyes narrowing. "That's… a lot of blood."
"It's… nothing," Henry muttered, though his voice came out weaker than he intended.
He forced himself to stand, planting his hand against the uneven wreckage for support, but the moment he put weight on his legs, they gave out beneath him. His body pitched forward, and he slipped headfirst to the ground with a dull, jarring impact.
A sharp gasp tore from his throat as his vision steadied just enough for him to see what lay inches from his face.
A skull.
Its hollow eyes sockets stared straight into him, empty and lifeless, yet hauntingly present. The bone was stained and cracked with age, fragments of dirt clinging to its surface as though it had been buried and unearthed countless times.
Henry recoiled violently, scrambling backwards with frantic urgency. Adrenaline surged through him, drowning out the pain as he forced himself upright again, this time managing to steady his stance despite the tremor in his legs.
As he straightened fully, his eyes lifted—and then widened in sheer horror.
It wasn't just one.
The ground beneath them was not debris.
It was bones — an endless heap of them.
Skulls, rib cages, shattered limbs, and jagged fragments stretched as far as his eyes could reach, forming a grotesque landscape that rose and dipped like waves frozen in time. The pale remains overlapped and intertwined, creating a sickening crunch beneath the slightest movement.
Henry turned slowly, his breath hitching with every step of his gaze as the realization settled deep into his chest.
This was more than just a graveyard; it was as though every dead body had somehow been collected here.
"You should've seen my face when I woke up and found this… gorgeous view," Darius said coolly, a faint note of amusement lingering in his voice as he gestured lazily at the sea of bones around them.
Henry turned to him in disbelief.
For a moment, he simply stared, his expression twisting as though he had just heard something completely absurd. His mouth parted slightly, but no words came out. The contrast between the horror surrounding them and Darius's casual tone made it feel unreal—like the man had completely lost his mind.
"Gorgeous?" Henry repeated at last, his voice rising, edged with incredulity. "We're literally standing on thousands — even more dead bodies!"
He let out a short, disbelieving breath, shaking his head as he glanced back at the endless heap of skeletal remains before returning his gaze to Darius, as if expecting him to suddenly admit it was a joke.
But Darius only shrugged, unfazed. "I mean, we managed to survive the fall, unlike these guys," he said, gesturing to the bones around them.
"Whoever they were."
"Survive the fall..." Henry breathed.
As the words left his mouth, the memory of what had happened came rushing back to him—the creature that had struck him and sent him tumbling into this pit.
He quickly looked up, but there was no hole they could have fallen through—only a thick, grey, cloudlike mist. At its centre, it formed something like a motionless whirlpool.
"So, any idea how we get out of here?" Darius asked. "I haven't tried going too far from here, and that didn't sound like a very good idea to me either."
"Remember when you asked me if I had any idea what that creature was that we faced up there earlier?" Henry said calmly, though there was something distant and unsettling in his tone as he looked at Darius.
"Yeah… and you said you hadn't a clue!"
"Not anymore, I'm afraid," Henry replied.
He swallowed hard first, his throat tightening as his head tilted upwards towards the ghostly cloud above them.
"I saw a Vomek up there," he said quietly. "I've only ever read about them once… creatures that dwell near the Circles. Sometimes they're considered its guardians."
He continued, his voice growing heavier with certainty. "I think we've just fallen into an Abyssal Ring, a doorway into a high-dimensional realm."
For a moment, Darius said nothing.
He simply stared at Henry as though trying to decide whether he had just spoken sense or lost what little sanity he had left after the fall.
He, too, glanced up at the ghostly, clouded sky above them, then back down at the endless sea of bones beneath their feet.
"…You're telling me," Darius said at last, his tone carefully controlled, "that we didn't just wake up in some cursed pit of death…"
He gestured vaguely around them.
"…but we've actually fallen into... some other world?"
"Not quite," Henry answered, "but I can't tell the difference either. Let's just say it's a higher plane of existence that coexists with our world."
"I've got no idea what that means," Darius said, glancing around. His voice was tight. "But we need to leave. Because whatever you're describing doesn't sound like somewhere we should be."
Henry's gaze, which had been fixed on the shifting cloud above them, slowly lowered.
"I'm not sure it'd be as simple," he said.
Darius exhaled sharply, running a hand over his dust-covered face.
"So we're trapped in the high dimensional bone yard," he raised his voice echoing at the distance. "Why can't you cast a spell to fly us out of here — back the prison, huh? Better die by an axe than down here, forgotten like the rest of these mages."
"Even if we could fly up there, I don't think we'd find the prison," Henry said. "The Abyssal Rings don't lead from one fixed place to another. They're more like scattered entrances—wherever they appear—but they all collapse into the same destination."
"But you can fly?" Darius pressed.
"I can cast a spell, but it'll likely be absorbed or neutralised—or so I think," Henry said. "Magic doesn't work down here. We might as well start planning our funeral."
A soft yellowish glow shone from behind him. He swung his head to find Darius with flames on his hand.
"That... That should've been impossible!" He stammered, perplexed at what he was seeing.
"You're a dumb warlock," said Darius. "How can a simple spellcaster conjure fire as simple as this, you didn't even wonder."
"A Karnie," said Henry, unsurprised. "I should've known," he added.
A karnie was no warlock or mage, but human gifted with the ability to tap into elemental forces and control them at will.
"I guess I'm better off than you," Darius chuckled, lifting both hands as flames ignited across his palms.
His grin faded almost instantly.
"Duck!" he shouted.
"Huh—"
There was no time for Henry to react. Darius thrust his hands forward, and a violent jet of fire erupted outward, tearing through the air with a roaring hiss.
Henry threw himself to the side on instinct, hitting the ground hard just as a wave of heat surged past him. He only heard the blast—an explosive roar followed by something inhuman screeching in agony.
When he raised his head, his breath caught.
The white chalk-like creature was now engulfed in flames, writhing violently across the sea of bones. Its shriek tore through the boneyard, echoing endlessly as it twisted and collapsed among the skeletal remains.
But the sound did not fade.
It multiplied.
Henry's eyes widened.
Across the vast expanse of the boneyard, more whitish figures were rising; tall, slender, red eyes flickering devilishly at them.
Dozens… no—hundreds of them.
The ground itself seemed to shift as more of them began to emerge from beneath the bones, as if the boneyard had only just started waking up.
Henry glanced at Darius briefly.
"Guess this is the part where we stop worrying who still has magic—and run!"