The ground was flesh. The rocks bled. The trees—when they appeared—seemed made of bones, their branches snapping like spines being broken.
Kael and Marcus ran.
They had long lost track of time. Hours? Days? Time was just a prolonged torture here.
The screams were harrowing.
Children.
Women.
Elders.
Everything screamed... Everything begged for help.
And periodically, they came—creatures of exposed flesh, too many eyes or too few, mouths that gaped down to their chests, ribs turned outward.
Lesser demons, perhaps. Weak. But relentless. Tireless.
Marcus slashed, stabbed, struck with hatred.
Kael was precise. His movements were like a cruel dance—swift, elegant, silent.
Hardly a word was spoken between them.
Marcus seemed calmer... but his eyes still screamed.
Every now and then, he trembled. His eyes widened.
Tears streamed down without him noticing.
"Zuphia…?" he murmured. "No… not again…"
The illusions came.
He closed his eyes to avoid watching.
Zuphia burning alive.
Lira with her throat torn open.
Both staring at him with hatred.
"You killed us."
"You always kill those you love."
"Monster. Weak. Coward."
He blinked hard, trying to push them away, but their faces lingered, even if just for a second.
Kael said nothing.
His breathing was steady. As if he weren't in hell. As if he were merely… walking on a rainy afternoon.
At a distance, Lorn watched.
Perched on a broken rock, like a crow with ruby eyes, he smiled unsettlingly, his gaze fixed on Kael.
"Hmm… strange…" he murmured.
"It doesn't work on him."
His eyes narrowed.
"Whether he's alive or dead… it should still work…"
A pause.
A twisted smile, almost fascinated.
"Unless…"
"…this mad bastard didn't actually do that…"
The smile widened, grotesquely.
"But if he had that kind of courage… he's dangerous. Very dangerous."
Back to the flesh, the blood, the sound of feet running over dried entrails.
Marcus, breathing heavily, glanced sideways at Kael as they ran.
"This all seems easy for you."
Kael didn't respond.
Marcus huffed, with anger and exhaustion.
"How did you end up here, anyway? I doubt some bastard dragged you here too."
Silence.
Marcus stopped running abruptly. His eyes were red, not just from exertion. He stared at Kael now, a mix of frustration, uncertainty, and despair.
"What do you see…?"
Kael slowed his pace, took a deep breath.
He turned slowly, a calm smile forming, far too cold for this hell.
"I don't see anything," he said, his voice low, almost a whisper.
Kael took another deep breath, scanning his surroundings as if searching for a sign—but everything was the same.
Entrails, dried blood, twisted bones, the stench of sulfur.
"I think running aimlessly won't help us much…" he said calmly. "Not that it's possible to find your bearings here."
Marcus also took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling with exhaustion. The silence between them lasted a few seconds.
Until Kael, still staring into the void ahead, spoke again:
"A demon attacked the village where I grew up a few days after we parted ways."
Marcus turned his head, curious, but didn't interrupt.
"But… no one was killed," Kael continued. "It took us. All of us. Like a game. Each one was thrown into a different part of hell."
Kael's voice was neutral but strangely heavy.
"At first… I saw everything.
My mother screaming.
My sister begging.
My father trying to reach me with a broken arm.
Every night… every damned night… I saw them dying in every possible way."
He lowered his gaze, and for the first time, his voice faltered for a fraction of a second.
"How don't I see…?" A distorted smile crept onto his face.
"I was on the brink of madness, Marcus. I clawed my face with my nails. I smashed myself against the rocks. Nothing stopped it."
"Until one day…" he brought his fingers to his eyes, "I poured liters of this blood…" he pointed to the scarlet ground, "into my eyes."
The smile still lingering on his face slowly faded.
Marcus took half a step back.
"But your eyes are—"
"Normal?" Kael cut in, his tone unchanged.
"Maybe. Days. Years. Maybe more than that. That day, I screamed and writhed in pain, but…"
Kael looked up slowly.
"At some point, they stopped burning. But by then… I couldn't see anymore."
His voice was so neutral it sounded like someone describing the weather.
Marcus was in shock. His stomach churned. There were no words to respond to that.
Silence. Long.
"I know what you must be thinking," Kael said, turning his face slightly toward him.
Marcus hesitated. Then, slowly:
"Then how… how did you recognize me? I didn't even say a word."
Kael gave a small smile. Sad. Empty.
"I just… know."
Marcus seemed to want to say something. But he swallowed hard and looked away.
He didn't dare ask anything more.
The hell enveloped them like a suffocating veil.
They started running again, now with a new weight between them.
A different silence—not of strangeness anymore, but of something shared.
From afar, Lorn's eyes gleamed, watching them with heightened attention.
As they ran, Kael broke the silence:
"And you? How did you end up here? And with Jin, of all people?"
Marcus hesitated for a moment, his gaze lost in the chaotic horizon of hell. Memories came back like shards, cutting from within.
"After we parted ways in the capital… Jin left Kaellia's group."
"Kaellia, huh…" Kael murmured, the name sounding like a distant memory. "How long has it been…?"
"Why did he leave?"
Marcus shook his head, sighing.
"He never said. Not even to me.
He just… disappeared."
Kael turned his face toward Marcus but said nothing. Marcus continued:
"Some time later… he reached out to me. We started working together… behind the scenes."
"Secret missions, fragments, forbidden books, lost grimoires… we were after everything."
Marcus's voice grew tenser with each word, as if reliving it sank him into a fog of confusion and guilt.
"Zuphia is Jin's grandmother… my wife."
Kael froze, stopping mid-run. His face slowly twisted into an expression of terror.
"We wanted to find a way to bring her back, and with her, Jin's parents." Marcus's face gradually morphed into sorrow.
"We found an ancient legend… If we could gather all 15 fragments, we could bring them back with dark magic."
"But after a mission with his new group…"
"Jin changed."
"Slowly… he grew stronger. Much stronger. Not just in raw power… he seemed to know things no one else did."
"As if… as if he saw something we couldn't see. But in turn… he became colder, more distant."
Kael didn't respond immediately.
For a moment, something flashed through his mind—a glimpse amid Marcus's words:
He saw himself entering a room, Jin curled up on a small bed, his body trembling in silence. His face turned to the wall, his shoulders shaking with muffled sobs. The room was shrouded in shadows.
Kael remembered sitting on the floor beside his bed that night, saying nothing. Just staying there, sharing bits of his own story until the sobs turned to sleep.
He blinked slowly, returning to the present.
"He became stronger," he said finally, with a faint smile.
It was small, subtle… but it carried genuine pride. A pride he might not even fully understand himself.
Marcus glanced at him, surprised by the softness in his tone. Kael merely looked ahead, offering no explanation.
Kael seemed to think for a moment and said,
"He was slowly opening up to us."
Marcus smiled and said,
"After years, I saw him smile… just once, but it was enough."
Kael smiled as if he, too, had seen the scene.
"We gathered five fragments in total…" Marcus clenched his fists. "We returned to the capital; several fragment missions popped up around here…"
He stopped running for a moment.
"It didn't last long."
"Lorn appeared."
"And brought us here."
A heavy silence fell over them. Only the muffled sound of distant flames and the rustle of dry, hot wind filled the air.
Kael looked at the ground for a brief moment.
"Nothing was said before that? He just chose you?"
"Seems like it," Marcus replied, bitter.
"And Jin…?" Kael asked. "How was he, before all this?"
Marcus hesitated. The Jin he'd known and the one he'd seen just before they fell into hell seemed like two different people.
"Determined.
Focused on something he wouldn't explain.
But… tired. With eyes… dulled."
Kael started running slowly again.
"Then his mind is still there."
Before he could finish, Marcus frowned.
"No. He's still standing.
But I wouldn't say broken… I… I think his emotions are slipping further away."
Kael nodded slightly, as if that confirmation fit into a larger puzzle in his mind.
Lorn's shadow, in the distance, remained watching, motionless, like a cat before pouncing.
But his gaze now showed he truly wanted to leap.
While the hell celebrated Kael and Marcus's reunion, deep in a dark cave where even hell dared not look, Jin knelt.
His hand was covered in blood—perhaps his own. His eyes were fixed on something that wasn't there.
His skin was marked with deep cuts, his clothes in tatters, and around him, the silence was absolute, as if even his thoughts couldn't reach that place.
Except for one sound—a faint, irregular breathing.
And a whisper, almost inaudible, escaping through his cracked lips:
"Why… do I keep coming back…?"
He looked ahead—but there was nothing. No enemy. No walls. No exit. An endless tunnel.
Yet his eyes were wide. As if they saw a monster. As if they saw… himself.
"I… am I still here?"
The shadows around him trembled.
And then, he smiled.
A broken smile. Without joy. Without soul.
Like someone who finally realized they had lost… everything.