Zen stared at them.
Who were these people*?
Zen groaned as a dull throb pulsed behind his eyes, like a heartbeat echoing through a cavern. He raised a hand to his temple but froze instantly. Something was wrong.
It wasn't pain. It was something alien.
His fingertips brushed against a hard, jagged surface where skin should have been. He blinked, adjusting to the dim torchlight flickering in the cell, then slowly turned his hand in front of his face.
Three fingers. What?
They were armored, elongated, not covered in flesh but encased in a living obsidian shell veined with glowing blue energy.
His heart should have been pounding, but there was no heartbeat at all. No pulse. Only a low hum vibrating from somewhere deep within him, like a cursed crystal set inside the hollow of a machine.
"What…" Zen gasped, his voice distorted, metallic, like steel scraping stone.
He looked down at his body. His chest was broad and sharp, sculpted like a blade and etched with glowing runes pulsing in a sickening rhythm. He was no longer flesh. The light spilling from his core burned like emerald fire trapped behind a prison of bone and steel.
His legs ended in clawed feet that clicked against the stone floor, and a faint spectral shimmer surrounded his form. Behind him, an unfamiliar tail whipped with curved spikes.
He was something else now, a beast, a demon, a construct, or something beyond all of those.
"This is not me," he whispered, panic rising like a dark tide.
What the hell is happening?
"Is this a trial by the Tower? Was the experiment successful?" he wondered. He had heard stories about souls tested in illusionary realms, warped by impossible transformations, but none had ever felt this real.
"But I died," he told himself. "I remember it clearly."
So how was he here? Was he summoned? Reincarnated? Resurrected? Or was this really the trial?
He thought back to the strange voice from his last moments.
What was that? The Tower? He did not know.
"Hey," a gentle voice came from close by, snapping him back to reality.
Zen's head snapped up.
Standing before him was Elli. Her soft features glowed faintly in the low light. Despite her prison clothes and the dirt that stained her pale skin, there was warmth in her moss-colored eyes. One of her antlers had a chip. Her hands were stained with dried blood and dirt, but they were steady.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Zen stared at her, his breath catching, or what passed for breath in this shell. For a moment, he couldn't speak or move.
Elli tilted her head slightly, her voice soft and gentle. "It's a lot. I know. Waking up like that. But you're not alone anymore." Her words were simple, yet carried a warmth that made him feel he might trust her.
He didn't know how to speak their language, but somehow, he understood what they were saying.
Zen's voice cracked as he tried to sit up, his eyes wide with confusion. "Where... where am I? Who am I? Why am I here?" he spoke in his own tongue. He wasn't sure if it worked, if this was the trial. Maybe it did.
There was a pause. He thought he had failed.
Then Ceaser muttered, "What? He can speak. I thought Soul Devourers don't speak. I know they don't communicate. Is he really a Soul Devourer or something else?"
"Maybe he is special, like a mutant. That's why he can speak," Izora said quietly.
Elli offered a gentle smile. "Don't worry, you're just in shock. Don't stress it." She glanced around briefly, then added, "You're in a dungeon called the Iron Maw, in the Vespara Domain."
Dungeon. Iron Maw. Vespara.
The names felt carved out of shadow, heavy with meaning he couldn't quite grasp. They stirred nothing in his memory, yet his gut twisted as if some part of him understood just how bad that was.
Zen's voice was shaky. "Why... are we here?"
He needed to know everything. If this was a trial, then there had to be a path, a task, something to complete. Without answers, he couldn't move forward. He had to assess the situation, understand it fully, before deciding what to do next.
The air grew tense. Even the flicker of torchlight on the damp stone seemed to pause, waiting.
Elli hesitated. "We..." she began, but before the words could leave her mouth, the heavy cell door creaked open with a slow, metallic groan.
"That's our cue," Ceaser muttered, already on his feet.
Elli gave Zen a soft glance. "It will be better to see for yourself. Follow us." Zen followed them.
As the cell door creaked open with a groan that sounded too much like something in pain, Zen followed the others Ceaser, Elli, Emith, Izora, into the corridor beyond.
He wasn't the only one.
All around, other cell doors clanked open in sequence, like a ritual long repeated. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of prisoners stepped out of their cells in eerie synchrony, forming a slow-moving line that stretched through the cold metallic bowels of the dungeon. None spoke. None resisted. Their footsteps echoed like a dirge.
Zen looked around.
A creature with glassy eyes and a sunken face shuffled beside him, its arms limp like they'd forgotten how to lift. A man with bark-like skin stared ahead blankly, lips cracked and bleeding, whispering something no one heard. A three-eyed woman walked with her head lowered, fingers trembling, her third eye closed as if it too had given up.
Their bodies varied in size and shape. Their races too. None of them looked familiar to him. It was as if they came from a different plane entirely, one far from the world he remembered. But despite their differences, their expressions were all the same. They were devoid of hope, drained of soul, like empty husks waiting for something that would never come.
It was as if the Iron Maw had eaten more than just their freedom.
The corridor was massive, ribbed with black iron supports that resembled a beast's open jaws. The walls wept rust. Chains clinked lazily from above, swaying with no wind. Every sound felt distant, muted, as though the dungeon itself swallowed anything that tried to break its silence.
Zen wanted to ask where they were going, but he didn't. The air felt like it was crushing his lungs.
Looking at the faces around him, the words caught in his throat and faded.
There was no hope here.
He could feel it, as if the air itself had been stripped of the concept. This place didn't just lack hope.
It consumed it.
Yet the line kept moving.