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Generations ago, a doomed voyage uncovered a powerful, terrible artifact. When the survivors of this voyage returned home, they knew they could not allow such an object to remain unguarded, so they sealed it away. Locked in the forgotten heart of the Steam Tower, protection of this seal and the artifact it contained was passed on through the generations to the descendants of those survivors.
Jack and Servais had spent their lives burdened with this duty, and worse, with the knowledge of the cursed artifact itself.
And when the city began to grow colder, the tower’s warmth steadily fading…
…for one of them, the burden became too much to bear.
The Abyss was set loose.
In that old tower, looking out over the city they called home, the world was crumbling around them.
The others had gone ahead, to try to minimize the damage. They couldn’t stop what had been unleashed, but they could try and evacuate people out of the city. Kurt had lingered, reluctant to leave given the circumstances, but Servais had urged him on, promising to catch up. It was hard to miss the flicker of worry and doubt swimming in the inventor’s eye, but he’d gone on without further argument. They both knew Servais’s work in the tower wasn’t yet complete.
There was one last thing to settle here.
He could hear the bitter laugh gurgling before he turned to see him.
Jack lay battered and half-propped up against the rubble of the collapsed wall, his burning eyes fixed on Servais. Icy winds buffeted in through the hole in the outer wall as Jack spoke.
“It’s over,” he sneered. Through the break in his mask, Servais could see bloodied teeth as his melted lips twisted into a snarl. “You lose.”
Servais was tired. Beyond tired. Bruised ribs protested as he shouted above the winds.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” he said, voice hoarse. He’d said it countless times already. He said it again, as if it would make a difference. As if it would ever have made a difference.
A thunderous crack, like the sky itself had split open, ripped through the air, and Servais stumbled forth to look out through the destroyed wall. From this height, he could see all of Steam City, its streets run through with Abyssal Fissures, warping the roads and buildings where they’d torn through their world. Inky tendrils emerged from the fissures, their every flick and thrash seeming to unweave reality itself.
The world was dying.
“This is your fault,” he heard to his left. The words dripped with venom and Jack laughed wetly. “You did this.”
Jack sat precariously close to the crumbling edge, staring at Servais, his gaze never once drifting out to the city below. He looked half-mad.
Servais’s eyes fell to the wine-dark stain that slowly spidered out through the fabric of Jack’s vest, then to the broken glass of the empty chamber embedded in his chest.
He lingered there, staring at the chamber where Jack had kept the Eye.
Servais had had his own brushes with the Abyss. He knew the way it could bleed into you, body and mind, whispering promises of infinity and oblivion. He’d felt its call, a constant, ever-present weight at the back of his mind: a desire to possess the power of the Evil Eye. It was a corrupting call, that he’d only allowed himself to entertain in illusions and dreams.
He knew Jack had felt that same pull.
They’d made a promise, once. When they were both much younger men. When they were first told of the Eye, and of their duty to keep it sealed away. They had looked upon it: the cursed artifact of a doomed voyage — and had sealed their fates without even knowing it.
They had promised to keep their city safe.
And they tried.
They’d kept the Eye locked away in a secret room in the Steam Tower. They’d investigated and stitched shut every Abyssal Fissure that seeped into their world. They’d felt the burden of the lying Eye’s promises like a dark smudge across their minds, and they’d learned to confide in one another about its temptations.
They had tried, so very hard, to keep their promise.
But Jack had broken the seal. He took the Eye, and in doing so, had torn a hole in the veil between their reality and the all-consuming hunger of the Abyss. He had ruined their world.
And yet, Servais knew what had led Jack to this point. He knew he was tired of their frozen city’s diminishing state. That he was tired of tracking down and sealing away each Abyssal Fissure, only for a new one to appear within days. He knew that the Eye had promised him an end to all of it.
And now, here he was: lying bleeding in the frigid winds, in the ruins of what they’d sworn to protect, all by Servais’s own hand. His breathing was ragged and shallow, and Servais could see the way ink-dark ichor crept up the veins in his neck and along his jaw: a telltale sign of abyssal corruption from his contact with the Eye. Even his desperation was spent. He was hollow, and bitter, and he was dying.
Not quickly, though. With help, he could be saved.
Servais stepped toward him.
“Don’t touch me,” Jack spat as Servais knelt beside him. Servais’s hands paused, but he continued to assess the injuries, brow furrowed, the light catching on the cracked lens of his monocle.
He wanted to save him.
He wanted to wrap his hands around his neck and finish him off himself.
He wanted to apologize.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted, he wanted, he wanted….
He wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore, so he sat there, silently, taking stock of the twisted, broken body of the friend who had betrayed him.
He was jolted out of his stupor by a sudden tug on his lapel. Jack yanked him downward with a surprising strength, craning his neck up toward Servais’s face.
“Always so noble,” he spat. The words curled with mockery.
They’d confided in each other about the Eye’s temptations. It was only a matter of who fell first.
“It won’t make a difference,” Jack hissed as Servais’s hand hovered over the wound in his chest. What was left of his lips twisted into a sick smile. “Whether I live or die here, no one is surviving this.”
The screams from the city below sounded distant, like the memory of some terrible dream.
Servais’s eyes fell once more to the broken glass of the empty chamber where Jack’s heart should be.
He’d had a heart once, hadn’t he?
There had been love there, once. Love, as if it would have made a difference. As if it would ever have made a difference.
And now, it was a festering wound for all the world to see.
Love, left to rot.
Jack’s eyes gleamed as he watched Servais’s face. He pulled him closer, still, melted lips to his ear.
“You will never be rid of me.”