Volume 1: Awakening – [Awakening Arc]
Chapter 10: A Devil in a human's body
(Note: Here, Caelus appears exactly as he did in the first chapter, at the same age, and he does not remember anything that happened to him; he only has memories up to age 13 as this nightmare unfolds at age 13.)
Caelus, looking at the scenery, felt refreshed and happy. Just then, he heard a soft rustle, and the familiar voice of his mother called out gently, "Cael."
"Yes, Mother," he replied after a brief pause with his soft child voice.
"Come here," she called again, her tone lilting like a forgotten lullaby, barely stirring the air around him.
"I'm coming," Caelus replied as he stepped out from the shadow of the twisted tree he had been under.
He ran toward the garden's center with eerie grace.
There stood his parents, waiting inside a perfectly formed ring of red spider lilies. Seven paths stretched toward them from all directions, their alignment almost ritualistic.
He dashed toward them. His mother extended her arms in welcome as he reached her; her embrace enveloped him with warmth that contrasted with the lifeless air.
Her face, strikingly beautiful, was framed by smooth, jet-black hair cascading over her shoulders. Her black eyes shimmered like polished obsidian, deep and endless.
Beside her stood his father, tall and silent. His equally dark hair swept back, and from beneath his brows burned eyes of crimson red, glowing faintly like embers restrained under ash.
Together, they stood like anchors in the eerie stillness, holding Caelus in a moment that felt too serene to trust.
As the hug ended, his expression twisted in horror as he looked at his parents.
He saw both his father and mother turning into grotesque vessels of decay and horror. His mother's right eye socket was hollow, an optic nerve dangling limply, and from within crawled a slick obsidian-black caterpillar, squirming with eerie grace. Its surface shimmered with etched crimson runes, and tendrils curled from its sides, probing the air. Her body began to sag, flesh pocked with holes. From every orifice, like ears, nose, and mouth, even from torn folds of skin, the caterpillars poured. Her arms were frozen mid-scratch, fingers clawing at her own skin in futile agony.
His father's skull had split, the brain exposed and glistening as dozens of caterpillars devoured it and the creatures writhed through folds of grey matter, oozing fluids, until the skull emptied. With a sickening CRACK, his spine shattered, limbs contorting backward. His chest caved in, ribs snapped, and muscles were torn, quivering with the passage of the grotesque horde.
Pupae formed within their hollowed remains, sacs pulsing with cursed life. And when they ruptured, the butterflies emerged: black wings veined in red, flickering like blades of shadow and grief. From filth came beauty, and Caelus stood frozen, bearing witness to the desecration of those he once called Mother and Father.
Caelus vomited hundreds... no, thousands... of black-red caterpillars burst from his throat. Oily, wet, and slick with rot, as if hell itself had delivered them. They landed in a quivering mass, and without pause, they turned toward him in perfect unison.
His mind screamed at him to run, to escape this nightmare, but his instincts whispered otherwise and told him to stay rooted, to endure. Confusion gripped him like shackles, his thoughts torn between survival and surrender.
His legs trembled violently. He tried to rise, to escape the horror crawling closer, but they refused to move as though the ground had claimed them. He strained every fiber of his being to break free, but it was no use. His body had betrayed him.
The caterpillars crept closer inch by inch until they reached him.
In a matter of seconds, they surged up his limbs. Their tendrils latched onto his skin with grotesque precision, piercing and anchoring like hooks.
He screamed, clawing at them, but more poured over him. They slithered beneath his clothes, worming into his sleeves, collar, and down his spine. Some burrowed beneath his skin, tiny heads poking up before vanishing inside, leaving trails of bloated black under translucent flesh.
His body jerked in spasms of pain. He fell backward, eyes wide in horror, as the caterpillars consumed him alive from within. His veins bulged as his mouth foamed and his cries fractured into gasps and gurgles.
And then, the pain peaked. Memories flashed of something he had forgotten about; he saw Uriel's corpse and her death. Seeing there is no point in living a life without her, he accepted his fate of getting eaten, even though it is painful as hell.
Piece by piece, he was eaten mind, soul, and body until all that remained was silence.
...
In the crimson waters, a thousand-faced beast on each of its body parts screamed. The shrieking voices collided in a horrifying symphony. The sounds pierced Caelus' ears, shaking him violently.
His eyes were shut tight, but those screams seeped into his bones, awakening something inside. Slowly, his eyes opened, his eyes lifeless and dim, not with resolve to live but with the will to surrender. As if whatever he once was had vanished, leaving only the empty husk of a boy.
He looked at the monster and said, "Kill me."
His voice wasn't desperate; it was final, like the toll of a cracked bell. He didn't care how he died. If it meant oblivion, he welcomed it.
The cries did not stop. Instead, they grew sharper, like serrated metal scraping glass. Caelus clutched his head as the water around him trembled and even submerged, the noise that was deafening.
Then, something shifted, which caused the screams to begin to distort, twisting and folding inward. A pulse rippled through the air, and the sound began to morph.
The screams transformed into language, which whispered at first and then was layered with meaning, creeping into his mind like rot into old wood.
"Murderer." "You killed my child." "You killed my mother." "You brought death upon us." "You must suffer until the end of time."
The sounds echoed like knives dragged slowly across bone. Caelus staggered beneath the weight of the accusations; their words were not just striking his ears but piercing straight through to his soul.
"What the..."
"What the hell are you even saying? I never killed anyone! I was just living my life quietly at home."
"I don't even know who you people are!"
The faces howled louder, shrieking with hatred. Their eyes burned through him, their mouths gaping wide with judgment. The realization crashed down on him like a wave of ice.
The fragmented voices wove themselves into a single damning truth: "You killed us. You slaughtered us... Here... In this park."
His breath caught in his throat. "No... I didn't... I almost died in that massacre... I was a victim too..."
But the voices didn't stop as they surged again, wailing, screaming, and accusing until even denial felt like a lie in his mouth.
Just then the water began shifting as an image started showing up.
Those images revealed a scene soaked in grotesque horror. Laughter once echoed throughout the park, where families played, children screamed with joy, and the Mirror World towered at the center, a tall, glass-like structure shimmering under the fading light.
At the top floor of that tower, a 13-year-old boy stood alone. Beneath him, two corpses lay slumped on the ground, a man and a woman, both unmistakably resembling Caelus' parents. Their bodies twisted, eyes wide open in frozen horror as blood pooled around them, which was like a river of grief.
Caelus held one heart in each hand. The organs throbbed slowly with each beat, slick and glistening with fresh blood. His fingers, caked in crimson, trembled.
As the sky shifted, the sun was devoured by the incoming night as the air itself choked. Clouds gathered violently, swirling with supernatural speed, revealing a monstrous red moon that glared down like a bloodshot eye. A low rumble cracked through the air as the next image was shown. Caelus lifted both hearts to his lips and, without hesitation, bit into the flesh, chewing slowly, savoring it. Blood streamed down his chin, painting his pale face like war paint.
With nothing but his bare hands, Caelus tore through the park. People screamed and begged, but their pleas were silenced one after another. Arms ripped from sockets, heads caved in, torsos punched clean through, and over ten thousand people torn apart like paper in a storm. Some tried to fight, but their limbs failed them as if fear of death made them paralyzed; they couldn't scream loud enough. They couldn't move fast enough, nor could they fight back. It was as if time itself bowed to the boy, and he just kept going.
He tore out the hearts and devoured them mid-kill. Veins trailing from his teeth, the taste of life spilling down his throat. The park was drowned in blood and entrails, making the air thick with the scent of death.
Even the rain, which had gathered in the sky, was frozen. Droplets hung midair, motionless, like glass beads suspended by terror. The entire park had turned into a graveyard.
The boy, once Caelus, now a monster, stood grinning amid the carnage, painted in red and looking like a devil in a human's body.
Caelus, who saw all this, felt intense emotions flood his chest; fear, guilt, and disbelief all warred within. "No way... no... no... I didn't do all that...!"
"You are the one who did this. Accept it and suffer for eternity by getting eaten by us."
A monstrous hand surged forward, an abomination of fused flesh and faces, each one screaming, wailing, and snarling a chorus of agony wrapped in one terrifying appendage. It gripped Caelus with a force that bent the air around him, claws biting into his shoulders.
He thrashed, cried out, and struggled, but it was like fighting fate itself. The hand hauled him back, dragging him through the blood-soaked air. As he was reeled in, the nightmarish visage of the thousand-faced monster emerged from the dark, mouth wide, teeth shifting and reforming like screaming tombstones.
And then it flung him straight into that gaping maw, the many mouths laughing, cursing, and crying out all at once as Caelus disappeared into the endless, hungering void.
[End of Chapter 10]
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