The cavern held no light, only breath—wet, sour, shallow breath—and silence that pulsed like a heartbeat behind the ears. Lucien stood still, one hand braced against the wall of slick stone, the other clenched into a trembling fist. Around him, the survivors—those who still drew breath—were pressed tightly together, too afraid to speak, too terrified to scream.
Behind them, the dead were coming. He could hear them—scraping, groaning, whispering in that unnatural tongue that made the skin itch and the eyes sting. The priest was laughing again, his voice echoing off the stone, high-pitched and cracked, like a broken hymn sung backwards.
In front of them, the stitched horror waited. It filled the tunnel like a tumor, its bloated, warped body pressed against the stone, oozing blood from every seam. The mouths on its flesh twitched and muttered in unison, gibbering secrets meant for no living mind. One arm, too long and jointless, dragged behind it like a useless tail. Another arm, made entirely of bones wired together with sinew, tapped against the cavern floor like a spider testing its prey.
They were trapped.
Lucien's mind raced. The desert had been a torture, the river of blood a test, the scorpion a warning. But this—this was the cage. The final snare. The moment where choice was stripped away and only instincts remained.
"We move," he said quietly, though his voice cracked and bled at the edges. "To the side. Stay low. Slow."
Someone whimpered.
"I said move!" Lucien snapped, his voice loud enough to echo, loud enough to be noticed.
The creature twitched.
Its heads—or what passed for them—turned. It began to slither forward again, dragging itself one inch at a time, each movement accompanied by a wet suction sound and the moan of shifting bodies fused beneath its skin.
They scattered. Or tried to. The cavern was too narrow. The walls too close. One man shoved another aside and fell directly into the beast's path. The stitched horror surged forward with surprising speed, one clawed limb hooking the screaming man by the ribs and yanking him into the mass of flesh.
There was no scream after that—only muffled, wet crunches, and then the sound of a new mouth forming in the creature's side, opening wide and gasping like a newborn.
Lucien didn't watch.
He pushed forward, pulling two of the survivors with him, squeezing through a narrow crack in the rock that curved around a bend in the tunnel. They ducked beneath a low ceiling, crawling through ancient dust and bones that shattered beneath their hands like dry leaves.
Behind them, the others followed, crawling like insects into the dark.
The tunnel forked.
Lucien paused, torn between left and right. One path reeked of rot and decay. The other smelled... dry. Clean. Almost too clean.
He chose the rot.
At least it meant something had died there—and might have left behind space, silence, even a wall to put between them and the abominations behind.
They crawled for what felt like hours, until the stone gave way to a narrow chamber, wide enough for them to stand and breathe and scream if they dared.
They did none of those things.
They collapsed.
Sweating, trembling, crying quietly into their hands.
Lucien did not. He stood, back to the wall, eyes on the passage. He could still hear the faint noises—farther away now, but not gone. The stitched horror hadn't followed. Yet. But the priest's undead were still out there. And he knew Hell didn't forget its prey. It only waited for them to run out of ground to stand on.
He looked at the survivors—five of them now, out of dozens. All too weak to speak. Eyes hollow. Souls frayed. He couldn't rely on them for long.
And yet he'd need them.
He would need every last flicker of hope and terror that burned in their chests. Because this was no longer about escape. Not anymore. The way out didn't exist. Not here. Not in Hell.
This was about endurance.
This was about leverage.
Lucien was starting to understand the rules. This place didn't kill you. It used you. Again and again. Suffering as currency. Pain as purpose.
They were trapped.
But he was still Lucien Virelli.
And even here, surrounded by the dead and damned, he would find a way to turn it all to his advantage.
Even if it meant breaking the last of the living to do it.
The tunnel seemed endless.
A ragged throat in the world's body, carved by time, swallowed by silence. Lucien led the way, one hand brushing the uneven wall, the other wrapped tightly around the wrist of a survivor named Selene—the youngest, quietest, and still too shell-shocked to question anything. Behind them, the others followed: Brent, Goro, Tasha, and Malen, four broken souls clinging to the faint hope that Lucien knew where he was going.
He didn't.
He was following a gut feeling. Not instinct—he'd learned to distrust instinct in Hell. No, this was calculation. The deeper they went, the fewer paths back. That was good. That was necessary. Because he didn't need escape. He needed advantage.
He just needed to live long enough to gain it.
As they pushed further into the cavern, the air grew heavier. Thicker. It clung to their skin like rot and filled their lungs with the taste of old meat. Something in the stone oozed a dark humidity, and now and then, faint tremors passed through the walls—as if the very bones of this place were shifting in their sleep.
Then the whispering began.
Soft at first. Faint echoes of voices not their own. Children crying. Mothers singing lullabies through bloodied teeth. Laughter that didn't belong to any sane mouth.
They came to a widening chamber, a hollow void in the earth that yawned into shadow. Faint bones lined the walls—curved spines, arms frozen mid-reach, skulls embedded like fossils.
Lucien stopped. Turned. Looked at the others.
"This is it," he said.
Brent squinted. "What do you mean?"
Lucien's face softened with false sympathy. "We can't keep running. You've seen what's out there. That thing—it's still following. We need a distraction. Something to draw it off while we find a way out."
Goro's lips trembled. "You mean… bait?"
Lucien nodded.
Tasha screamed. "No. No. You son of a—"
He moved faster than she expected. One quick step, one hard shove, and she stumbled backward into the wall. Not enough to break her—but enough to silence her.
"I won't lie to you," Lucien said, voice cold and measured. "It's not fair. None of this is. But you four—if you run out there, if you scream, if you lead it away—we might have a chance. All of us might. But someone has to act. Or we all die here, together. And that thing, whatever it is, stitches us into its body like the rest."
Brent's eyes darted between the shadows and Lucien. "You'll come back for us?"
"Of course."
He wouldn't.
Tasha's sobs became quiet, choking things. Goro stared at his feet. Malen whispered something under his breath—perhaps a prayer, perhaps a curse. Then, slowly, one by one, they turned. They moved.
Lucien gripped Selene's wrist tighter. "Stay quiet. Follow me."
And as the others stumbled back toward the path they came—voices raised, feet pounding on the stone—Lucien led Selene down a narrow slit in the cavern, barely wide enough to squeeze through.
Behind them, it began.
The screaming.
The wet, tearing sound of limbs pulled from sockets.
The awful chorus of mouths howling at once.
Selene clung to Lucien, her breath ragged. "We left them."
"They chose," he whispered, never looking back.
She didn't respond. Maybe she knew the truth. Maybe she didn't want to believe it.
They crawled through the slit of rock into blackness. It wasn't safety. It wasn't salvation. It was just further down. Further in.
And still, the whispering followed.
The air down here was thicker than blood—warm, wet, and clinging. The walls glistened like meat. Each breath Lucien took tasted of iron and rot. The darkness was absolute, yet alive. It breathed. It watched.
He and Selene had fled deep into the bowels of the flesh-cavern, the screams of the bait still ringing somewhere behind them—muffled now, but still very much present. The sacrifice of the other four had bought them this momentary silence. But silence, in Hell, was never peace. Silence meant something was listening.
Selene stumbled beside him, her bare feet raw and slick with gore. Her eyes darted around the tunnels like wild insects. Her lips moved constantly, muttering things that made Lucien's stomach knot.
"The worms have mouths… they remember names…The contract is written in the bones… but which bones?He sees us. The one beneath the roots. He sees us. He dreams of our skin."
Lucien kept walking, hand trailing along the glistening wall for balance, jaw clenched so tightly he thought his teeth might crack. He should've left her behind.
No—he kept her behind. That was the plan. Meat shield. Distraction. One last pawn to toss into the fire if things went wrong.
But she was talking too much now. Too loud. Saying things that sounded like nonsense, but scratched at the base of his brain like a splinter he couldn't reach.
"We are not the first," she whispered suddenly, dead still in the path."We are never the first. We're just the newest version of the same pain."
Lucien turned slowly. "What the hell does that mean?" he hissed.
Selene didn't answer him. Her eyes rolled up, unfocused. She started laughing. Quiet at first, then louder. A hollow, unhinged thing that echoed far too deeply through the tunnels. Her body shook as she clutched her head with both hands.
Then, like someone else entirely had taken over her voice, she murmured:
"To leave this ring... the first ring... you must make the first move.Be the one. Of your kind. Make the contract of soul. Make it first."
Lucien froze. "What the hell are you talking about?" he said again, louder this time. But the words felt cold leaving his mouth. Like something had shifted. A pressure in the air. The tunnel groaned around them like a living throat tightening.
Selene blinked, confused—like she hadn't spoken at all. "What?" she asked, voice trembling. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Lucien stepped back from her, just slightly. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He'd seen madness before—he was well-acquainted with it, hell, he cultivated it in others when it suited him.
But this wasn't just madness.
This was infection.
He eyed her as she shivered and clutched her arms, muttering to someone he couldn't see. Her skin was pale, soaked, and bruised, and her eyes flicked toward corners of the cavern where nothing waited… except for the things she claimed to see.
"They crawl in the dark when we stop moving," she murmured."They don't like the heat. They chew through the dead to reach us."
Lucien's breath slowed. His instincts screamed at him: Cut her loose. Leave her behind. She's already gone. She's going to draw something to you. She's bait. That's all she ever was.
But that line… the contract of soul.
It echoed.
It sounded like a riddle. Or a rule. And Hell loved its rules.
He squatted down beside her, brushing a hand through the grime of the cavern floor, watching her lips move. She didn't even notice him anymore.
Was it possession? Madness? A memory leaking from a soul that had died too many times?
Or was she something else entirely now?
Lucien hated not knowing. He hated worse that part of him needed her alive, at least a little longer. Just enough to wring out the rest of the answer. Then… well.
He'd detach her.
Just like the others.
Something shifted in the wall behind them—something heavy, wet, dragging itself forward.
Lucien didn't move. He didn't blink.
Selene giggled beside him. "He's here," she whispered, her grin splitting far too wide. "The one beneath the roots. He's crawling closer."
And then, just for a second, the wall ahead of them breathed.
Lucien barely heard Selene's voice anymore. It was like the words had burrowed into his skull and nested—whispering themselves long after her mouth had gone silent. The contract of soul. The first move. The one of your kind.
Nonsense.
He shook his head, turned away from her—and felt it.
The ground pulsed. Just faintly. As if something enormous beneath the stone had breathed.
He stopped walking. Listened.
Another pulse.
Not an earthquake. Not the deep rumble of shifting tectonics. No—this was closer. Personal. Like a heart beating just beneath the soles of his feet.
The tunnel walls were no longer dry and brittle. They were damp now. Soft. The texture beneath his fingers felt like flesh. Lucien yanked his hand back.
Behind him, Selene giggled again, quietly.
"It's waking up," she said. "It's always waking up."
He turned back to the wall and pressed his palm to it. It yielded slightly, like pressing into a bloated stomach. Warm, slick. Veins ran just beneath the translucent surface, pulsing gently—red, black, some green. They twitched when he touched them. They twitched back.
From the ceiling, something warm dripped onto his cheek.
Lucien wiped it away with shaking fingers. Thick. Sticky. Red. He slowly looked up—and froze.
The ceiling wasn't stone.
It was tissue. Vascular. Wet. Alive.
Above them, undulating folds of muscle shifted and squeezed, like the inside of some massive creature's throat. It wasn't a tunnel anymore. It was a gullet. A passageway. A womb of suffering.
And they were no longer walking through Hell.
They were being swallowed by it.
"We should run," Selene said softly."But there's nowhere to go. The walls remember us."
Lucien turned around—and screamed.
Shapes moved at the end of the tunnel. No, not shapes—faces. Four of them. Four things crawling toward him with too many arms, twisted spines, fused torsos. They were sewn together in a single mass of shuddering flesh. Heads pushed out of shoulders, mouths screamed from kneecaps, eyes opened on their bellies and bled with hate.
They were the ones he had sacrificed.
But they weren't people anymore.
Their faces were warped, stretched tight over strange skulls. Their limbs were too long, too sharp. Fingers turned into hooks, teeth grown outward into jagged weapons. And their eyes—those eyes—all locked onto Lucien, full of betrayal.
They didn't speak.
They remembered.
The tunnel pulsed harder now, vomiting sound—a low, gurgling moan from every direction, as if the world itself was writhing in agony. The walls trembled, splitting open in places to reveal deeper layers of wriggling meat beneath the thin veneer of skin.
Lucien grabbed Selene's arm and ran, but the tunnel twisted around them. The path shifted. It moved beneath their feet, reshaping as if the hell-flesh were trying to herd them.
The four undead behind them screamed—not in pain, but fury. They moved faster than they should have. Their broken limbs flailed and cracked as they scrambled over the living tissue, growing more monstrous by the second. One of them, a bloated fusion of two torsos, vomited a stream of black bile across the tunnel wall—and it melted a hole straight through the flesh.
Selene stumbled beside him, her laughter breaking into sobs.
"They never forgive. They never stop. You killed them wrong. You did it wrong."
Lucien didn't answer. There was no time. He could hear the walls tightening around them—thickening. Choking off routes. The tissue under his feet swelled with each step. His boots sank with wet squelches. The air turned syrupy. Breathing was a labor now.
This wasn't a tunnel. It was a trap. A digestive tract.
Hell didn't just punish you.
It fed on you.
And then he saw it—just ahead, a cavity in the tunnel wall splitting open like an ulcer. A temporary escape. A new passage being offered.
A choice.
Too perfect. Too timed.
But the things behind them were only seconds away. Lucien grabbed Selene and dove inside.
The walls screamed behind them. The four betrayed souls howled in bloodlust.
And Lucien—slipping in ichor, barely able to breathe—realized one thing.
This place knew him.
It had seen what he'd done.
And it was rejoicing.
The walls groaned behind them, wet and alive, as if the womb of Hell had clenched tighter after swallowing its prey. The tunnel they'd entered pulsed softly now, like the inside of a throat—flesh glistening with sweat and blood, veins twitching just beneath the surface. The stench of copper, bile, and something ancient filled the air. Every breath was a labor. Every step stuck with a wet squelch.
Selene sat curled against the far wall, her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking slowly.
Her laughter was gone.
Her madness had burned away in the fire of true horror.
She had come back to herself—and the weight of it was unbearable.
Tears streaked her dirt-caked cheeks, and her chest heaved in silent sobs. Her eyes, wide and trembling, locked onto Lucien with the full awareness of someone who'd seen too much and realized just how little control she had.
Lucien knelt before her slowly, with practiced calm. The sounds of wet flesh shifting around them, of snarling hatred echoing through the tunnel, were ignored. His face softened. His eyes gleamed not with cruelty, but with a carefully cultivated tenderness. The kind that makes people lower their guard. The kind that made juries cry and widows smile. The kind that had made him rich in life and dangerous in death.
"Selene…" he said softly, voice dipped in honey. "It's alright. I know. I know this is too much. But we're going to be okay."
She flinched at his voice. Her eyes narrowed, mistrust sharpening the edges of her grief.
Lucien continued, leaning closer.
"You were right about everything. All of it. The whispers, the contract, the first move. I didn't understand at first, but now I do. You've seen more than anyone down here. You're stronger than you think."
She blinked at him, confused.
"We're trapped in this place," he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, "but you and I—we still have a chance. We can survive. Together. I just need you to trust me, Selene. I'll get us out. I promise."
He took her hands in his own, gently, like a lover, like a brother, like anything but the thing he truly was.
"All you have to do," he murmured, eyes shining, "is say yes. Say you'll follow me. Trust me. Obey me. Just this once. Just once."
For a moment, the tunnel quieted. The air still. The very flesh around them seemed to hush.
Selene looked into his eyes.
And saw the wolf beneath the smile.
"You killed them," she whispered. "You threw them away like meat. You smiled while they screamed. You used me."
Her voice cracked, pain and rage wrapped around each word.
"And now it's my turn, isn't it? I'm next."
She yanked her hands from his, stumbled to her feet, and backed away in blind panic.
"LET ME GO, YOU MURDERER!"
She turned and ran—feet slipping in blood, lungs gasping against the thick air. Lucien stood slowly, disappointment cold in his chest, calculating.
And then the wall behind her opened.
A rift of flesh peeled wide, and from it lunged one of the undead—no longer stitched with human grief but something deeper, a hatred rooted in betrayal. Its arms were swords of bone. Its face—unrecognizable, but its scream—inhuman.
Selene shrieked.
Lucien didn't think.
He moved.
Fast.
He threw himself between them, his back slamming into the creature's full momentum. Bone tore into his side—sharp, sudden, agony. He screamed through clenched teeth, twisted his body, and kicked the thing off with a strength born of desperation.
The creature staggered back into the flesh-walls, snarling.
Lucien collapsed to one knee, blood pouring down his ribs, pain pulsing in time with the tunnel's sick heartbeat. But he kept his face calm. Gentle. As if nothing had happened. As if it was all part of the plan.
Selene stared at him, wide-eyed, confused.
"You… you saved me…"
Lucien smiled through the pain. Soft. Trustworthy.
"Of course I did," he said. "I told you. I only want us to survive."
He gripped her hand again, fingers trembling. His wound throbbed, burning like fire beneath his skin.
"We're in this together, Selene. You and me. Just trust me."
She didn't speak.
But this time, she didn't run.
And Hell watched. And listened.
Selene stared at him like he had grown a second head—no, not a second head, something far worse: a soul. A real one. She couldn't reconcile what she had just seen. This was Lucien, the man who had thrown four people to their deaths, carved their names into silence for the sake of his own preservation… and yet…
He had saved her.
He was bleeding.
But his smile hadn't changed.
Calm, unshaken, as if pain didn't quite know how to latch onto him.
He stood again, despite the wound that stained his side, and stepped toward her with that same damnable composure. His eyes—still the color of polished ice—glimmered with something softer now. Not quite warmth. Not quite deception. Something between them. A mirage of comfort.
"All you have to do is trust me," he said, voice soft as falling ash. "And do as I say. I promise you, both of us will leave this place behind. All you have to do is say yes."
She hesitated.
Confusion warred with dread on her face.
"You—" her voice cracked, "you sacrificed them. You let them die."
"Yes," Lucien said, without hesitation. "But I didn't let you."
His words fell heavy between them, soaked in blood and logic and something more primal.
And his eyes—those cursed, crystalline eyes—looked like the purest thing she had ever seen in this putrid hellscape. Not because they were innocent. But because they looked like a choice.
Hope, sculpted in flesh.
"Just trust me," he said again, softer. "Okay?"
Selene bit her trembling lip. Looked down at the floor, where muscle twitched beneath her boots. Then, slowly, she nodded.
"...Fine," she whispered. "I promise. I'll do what you say. But just this once."
Lucien's smile didn't widen. It deepened. Like a knife slowly sinking into warm meat.
"Good," he murmured, stepping closer. "Because there won't be a next time."
Her brows furrowed.
"W-What do you mean?"
"Simple," he said. "You already know what I need from you."
"What… do you want me to do?" she asked, hesitant. "To help us escape. What's the price?"
Lucien reached out, his fingers feather-light as they cupped her chin.
He looked at her like a priest offering salvation.
"Give me your soul."
She recoiled.
"What? What the hell are you talking ab—"
Then she coughed.
Once.
Twice.
Violently. A wet, gagging sound that echoed through the twitching tunnel like a church bell struck too hard.
She fell to her knees, clutching her chest.
Her back arched.
Her eyes rolled back—and then something glowed behind her teeth.
A flicker.
A shimmer.
Then it came out—like a pearl dragged from the deep sea—a small, glowing orb of pale golden light, exhaled from her mouth in a shuddering gasp.
Her soul.
Lucien caught it with reverent fingers.
It pulsed in his palm. Warm. Innocent. Fragile.
Without pause, he brought it to his mouth—and swallowed it whole.
Selene screamed.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!"
Lucien wiped his lips with the back of his blood-stained hand, and looked down at her—not with cruelty, but with truth.
"You see, Selene… while you were rambling like a lunatic, something was talking through you. And I listened. It gave me instructions. I just needed to make you say yes. That was the price. Consent. A door cannot open unless it's invited, after all."
The roof above them split.
Not cracked—opened.
Peeled wide like the mouth of some ancient, forgotten beast.
Behind it was no sky.
Only red.
Swirling, pulsing red.
And then—Lucien began to rise.
The gravity reversed—for him, and him alone.
His feet left the ground.
His body lifted slowly, smoothly, as though the tunnel's flesh now willed him upward.
He looked down at her one last time—bathed in bleeding light and trembling awe.
"You were right, Selene," he said. "There is a way out."
She reached up for him, screaming.
"WAIT—NO—LUC—HELP ME—!"
But she wasn't chosen.
And the walls around her began to pulse again—faster.
Closing.
Dripping.
Hungry.
The mouth of Hell began to devour her.
Lucien disappeared into the red above, vanishing like a prophet into the heavens—except there were no heavens here. Only layers deeper, doors darker, truths crueler.
And below him…
Selene's final scream was swallowed whole by the womb of suffering.