The Fractured Abyss or ダンレツシンエン / ザ・フラクチャード・アビス

Chapter 1: An Off-Key Note

英語のまま掲載しています。残酷描写・暴力描写多数あり。苦手な方はご注意ください。

The Fractured Abyss stretched before them, a world of plated realms and stark contrasts. Floating continents drifted like broken dinner plates, each one a different biome: one bled molten gold, another was a frozen scream, a third crawled with neon circuitry. Between them, gravity twisted into knots and spat out storms.

Prince Valerian stood like a valiant knight, gold-trimmed armor gleaming, infinite blades orbiting his shoulders in lazy spirals.

Elara Voss, elven warrior from a forest realm that had seen its share of wars, nocked a storm arrow without thinking.

Kragthar the Unyielding loomed behind them, a mountain of green muscle, tusks glinting, knuckles already cracked.

Liora Synthet’s nanites swarmed in a silver halo, projecting holographic readouts only she could see.

Mira the Voidwalker simply wasn’t there until the shadows decided she was, her outline flickering like bad reception.

And then there was Jax Harlan.

He was on the ground, one arm draped over his eyes, cigarette dangling from his lips, unlit. The blue suit was wrinkled, tie half-undone, bowie knife tucked inside the jacket like a bad habit. He didn’t move until the disk beneath them shuddered. Then he sat up slowly, scratched his stubble, and looked around with the enthusiasm of a man who’d just been woken up for jury duty.

A projection snapped into existence above the plate: the Chaos Weaver. Too many angles, too many teeth, too many eyes that weren’t eyes. Looking at it made the air taste like copper.

“Greetings, mortals. Are you ready to die? I am the Chaos Weaver, far beyond your powers and abilities. I have summoned you here to partake in a game of survival. Pass my trials and my tests, and you shall be free from this torment. But I won’t make it easy.”

The hologram flickered, amused.

Jax finally lit his cigarette off a spark that jumped from Elara’s arrow. He exhaled toward the sky.

“What a toilet.”

Prince Valerian turned, armor clanking. “We are given glorious purpose and you call this place a privy?”

“Privy, toilet, bog, outhouse—pick your poison, princess. This place is a shithole.”

Jax stepped forward, testing the obsidian plate with the toe of his shoe. It rang hollow. “Smells like one too.”

He leaned over the edge.

Below, a lower plate drifted by: an ocean of writhing human forms fused into a single, screaming carpet. Their mouths opened and closed in perfect unison, singing a note that made the teeth ache.

Valerian sneered. “You mock? This entity has given us a chance. But you won’t last five minutes here. You are far too weak.”

Jax flicked ash into the void. “Five minutes is generous. Go forth and seek your tombs. I know you want to.”

He smiled, all teeth and boredom.

Elara stepped forward, bow still half-drawn.

“You have a rather bad demeanor, human. Weakness and the ability to be rude notwithstanding, your stats are no doubt—”

“Status,” she snapped.

A clean, sky-blue panel bloomed in front of her:

ELARA VOSS STR: 42 AGI: 78 END: 55 MANA: 9,800 LCK: 60 GIFT: STORM DOMINION

She flicked it away with a fingertip. “See?”

Jax rolled his eyes so hard it looked painful.

“Status,” he muttered.

A flickering, sickly-green panel stuttered into existence, letters glitching like a busted neon sign:

JAX HARLAN STR: 5 AGI: 12 END: 3 MANA: 0 LCK: –2 GIFT: ASSASSINATION SKILLS, STAT TEMPERING

The numbers blinked twice, then dimmed as if embarrassed.

Kragthar snorted.

Valerian’s blades spun in mocking applause.

Liora’s nanites rearranged into a tiny, spinning “LOL.”

Jax took a long drag, exhaled a perfect ring of smoke, and flicked the dead cigarette into the void.

He already had another lit between his fingers before the first one vanished.

“What a joke,” he said, voice flat as the obsidian beneath his boots.

“System’s got a sense of humor. Too bad it’s not funny.”

He turned his back on the panel, on the heroes, on the screaming sea below, and started walking toward the edge of the plate where the first Tree of Woe was already beginning to sing.

“However… down there seems more interesting, though.”

Jax tilted his head toward the edge of the plate.

A staircase spiraled into being (stone steps laced with femurs, vertebrae for handrails, still twitching). It descended into the screaming carpet of fused bodies below, each stair exhaling a wet, human sigh.

Valerian’s blades slowed, his golden face paling beneath the visor.

“Monstrous. A decent person would be sickened. But not you. How are you calm?”

Jax took the first step. The bone rail was warm, pulsing.

“Eh? You think this is horrible? Ever seen a Colombian necktie?”

He dragged a thumb across his throat, mimed the cut.

“You probably don’t know what that is. Bet in your world, violence is the last thing on someone’s mind.”

Another step. The staircase groaned like it was chewing.

Liora’s nanites buzzed, forming a private comm-link with Elara:

“STRANGE PERSON HE IS. WATCH OUT—HIS HANDS ARE MARRED.”

A zoomed holo flashed between them: Jax’s knuckles scarred, calloused, old cigarette burns, a tattoo of a switchblade on the web between thumb and forefinger

Elara’s storm-eyes narrowed.

“He’s a killer,” she whispered. “Not a warrior. A killer.”

Jax kept descending, cigarette glowing like a fuse.

Halfway down, the fused bodies noticed him. A thousand mouths opened in unison, trying to scream through stitched throats. The sound came out as a wet gurgle.

He paused on a step made of a child’s ribcage.

“Quiet down there. Some of us are trying to think.”

He flicked ash onto the mass below. Where it landed, the flesh sizzled and parted, revealing a tunnel of writhing tongues that led deeper straight into the heart of the lower plate

Valerian shouted from the top: “You’ll be devoured, fool!”

Jax didn’t look back.

“Nah. They’re already full.”

He stepped off the staircase entirely, boots sinking ankle-deep into the living carpet. The bodies tried to close around his legs; he carved a circle with the bowie knife, severing tendons like cables. A thin ribbon of Aura (stolen from the mass) slithered up the blade and into a fresh cut on his palm.

His panel flickered in the corner of his vision:

STR: 5 → 7 AGI: 12 → 15 END: 3 → 4

He smirked.

“That’s the stuff.”

Behind him, the staircase began to dissolve, bone crumbling to dust. The other five were left stranded on the upper plate, watching the tunnel of tongues swallow Jax whole.

Liora’s nanites recorded one final transmission before the signal cut:

“HE JUST WALKED INTO HELL SMOKING A CIGARETTE.”

Somewhere far below, a new song started off-key, ragged, and entirely human.

Veyra’s choir had its first soloist.

“Go find the others. I’ll… handle this one.”

Jax didn’t look back.

His voice drifted up the crumbling bone-stair like smoke, flat and bored.

From the writhing carpet of fused bodies, a voice answered (wet, metallic, amused).

“Oh? Has the Chaos Weaver sent me another soprano… or alto?”

The laugh came out like brass horns dropped down a stairwell, clanging against the screams.

One of the faces (half-melted into its neighbor) peeled open wider, revealing a mouth full of teeth that weren’t teeth.

Shnick.

Jax’s bowie knife flashed.

The smiling mouth split vertically, a sour, off-key note squealing out before the whole face slumped, deflating like a punctured lung.

“Interesting indeed,” the voice purred, now from everywhere.

The fused mass rippled, knitting the wound shut with wet pops.

Above, the others had already moved.

Valerian’s armor clanked down a staircase of gold and screaming cherubs.

Elara’s storm-arrows lit a path of lightning toward a plate of endless forest-fire.

Kragthar roared and leapt, cratering a bridge of dragon spines.

Liora’s nanites carved a glowing ladder into a neon grid-world.

Mira simply wasn’t on the upper plate anymore.

Jax was alone.

He exhaled smoke, crouched, and pressed two fingers to the twitching corpse-sea.

A thin ribbon of pale light slithered up his arm like a leech.

His panel flickered in the corner of his eye:

STR: 7 → 9 AGI: 15 → 18 END: 4 → 6 AURA: 0 → 47

“Keep singing, bitch,” he muttered.

“I’m tuning the orchestra.”

The mass convulsed.

A new face rose (female, eyeless, smiling too wide).

“You steal from the choir? Bold. Most beg.”

Jax flicked his cigarette into the hole where her nose should’ve been.

It hissed, burrowed, and detonated in a gout of green flame.

The face screamed in B-flat.

“I don’t beg,” he said, already walking deeper into the tunnel of tongues.

“I repossess.”

Behind him, the staircase collapsed into dust.

Ahead, the Tree of Woe began to hum, branches of flayed arms reaching down like a conductor preparing the downbeat.

Jax rolled his shoulders.

“First movement’s mine.”

He stepped into the dark, knife dripping, stats ticking upward with every stolen scream.