I stood over the edge of rocks mired by time and fear. The blue-black mix of patterns betrayed a primordial evil that threatened to leak into our world in all directions. From the abyss endless crags of sharp, igneous structures trailed off in the distance eventually becoming mountains of sharp spires challenging the clouds for dominance. The wind was warm compared to the freezing stillness besides. It was as if all the life and energy was being sucked from the air here. It forced it from my lungs at every exhalation.

There was much debate about the nature and purpose of this colossus ravine. Scholars thought it could be the earth giving up an evil it had imprisoned for billions of years. The knights order thought it was some kind of moat which guarded a castle off behind the stalagmite mountains. There were naturalists who thought it was a normal geological entity. But no one believed them this time. This was something else.

I had been here the year prior when the weather allowed. It was of my own curiosity...and stupidity, I admit. I dropped my spare torch down into it to gauge the bottom of this beast. The fire had grown smaller and smaller until it was suddenly engulfed in a gaseous blackness. There was no bottom. After I relayed my story to the townsfolk, everyone agreed. This edge I was standing on was the very edge of our world.

But I was here for a different reason now. A few moons ago, there had been a raid on our little town. It came without a shred of warning. We ran around and got inside, but they weren't interested in us. They stole everything they could get their hands on. Not a soul in that town could make out a face on any of the assailants. They shifted across walls like human shadows and ran away just as quickly like puddles of water on the ground. No one was even hurt. But we weren't the only town hit. We were just the most fortunate.

The regional duke had lost his newborn son in the chaos. There were bounty notices all over our town hall for anyone brave enough to follow the shadows of the night and get his son back. The reward was fifty thousand worths. My family's rent is twenty-four worths a month. I had to do this. That's a big man's money. I took the bounty and left before my family could talk me out of it. I alone knew where they took the duke's boy. It had to be here. But now I waited. Staring.

I wasn't smart enough to bring climbing equipment, not that we could afford any whatever the case. On my last visit, I hadn't paid the utmost attention to the interior walls of this godless cavern. I just assumed, now, that there would be a way to get down and back up. There would be some graduating slope or a series of ledges. But no. This endless drop-off was almost perfectly vertical. The inner walls were smooth as obsidian glass to the touch. Even if you did manage to dig out a place to grip your hands on the wall, you would cut your fingers off actually grabbing a material like this.

So, I sat and stared into the abyss. I wondered if I stared long enough, my eyes would adjust, and I could make out some detail. But as I stared into the hour and then the second hour of my being here, I realized that details were a thing of our world of light. This place knew no such thing. I was soon to give up this venture and accept the shame of going back home empty handed. But then my vision started to mess with me. I tried to focus in on it, but it was moving. Something in those dark clouds was moving.

The whole abyss seemed to wink at me as the clouds themselves violently condensed, squeezing each other together. That gaseous black stormed and shifted into deliberate forms. It took my eyes all their power to make out the lines it was forming. And then when I blinked and opened my eyes again, I noticed it. The abyss was forming a word amongst its clouds. It was trying to communicate. The word finished itself in definite, unmistakable language and my blood ran cold and threatened to freeze me solid with fear. The word the gaseous black has made was...

"JUMP"