There was no pain.
Only stillness—a silence that pulsed, like the echo of a heart no longer beating. It came in slow, rhythmic waves, washing over Elias Marrow like the universe itself was breathing out—soft, vast, and indifferent. For the first time in his fractured, fevered existence, he felt peace.
But peace, he knew, is never a gift. It is bait.
Then came the sound: a cry, inhuman and raw. It bled through the silence like a wound opening across the sky. The world around him shifted, bleeding into scarlet, and the calm waves twisted into something grotesque—a whirlpool of gnashing teeth and howling shadow, familiar as childhood nightmares, intimate as his own breath.
The madness returned, and it welcomed him home.
As he surrendered to it, riding the spiral inward, he heard the voice—so faint it might've been memory, or hallucination:
"Free me…"
The word curved through him like a spine snapping. It was not the voice of a victim. It was himself, beneath himself—the part buried in chains and salt.
And so he rose. Or perhaps he fell. Either way, the whirlpool surged, not of water but blood and thought, accelerating toward rupture. He saw faces there—his own among them—screaming, laughing, dissolving. This was not escape. This was exorcism.
But then—the light.
Yellow. Holy. Blinding. Not the light of mercy, but the light of containment, of celestial judgment. It bowed but did not break. It bent like stained glass under pressure, humming with ancient syllables that made Elias's bones itch.
It was a woman's voice now, screaming like a dying Valkyrie, arms outstretched, holding back the gates of Hell with nothing but love and pain.
The whirlpool struck the barrier and crumbled as the charge failed. The rebelion collapsed into silence.
And in that silence, Elias felt the return of something far colder than chains:
Helplessness.
Resignation.
Hatred.
He opened his eyes.
The world was white and pulsing. Around him stood wooden bars, not prison-like—more like the ribs of a giant, of a rotting god, curving around him in impossible geometry. They reminded him of home, if home was a place built entirely out of denial.
He was bound—tightly, ceremonially, like a corpse prepared for resurrection. But he felt no pain. His old wounds were gone, erased like lies from a dream. His body was clean, his vision perfect, and something inside him… watched.
"Is this Hell?" he thought.
"Or worse… is this reward?"
A smile crawled across his face without permission.
And in a voice that was not his—not even human anymore, he muttered:
"Me gusta."
Suddenly the bars began to splinter. The chains withdrew with elegance, like servants no longer needed. Even the seal—that ancient mark, pulsing with divine structure—began to crack.
A hole tore through the center of reality.
Through it, a red moon gazed back—an eye forged of ink, gravity, and ancient malice, orbiting nothing yet beholding all. The instant its stare touched him, something primordial within Elias tore open, as if the cosmos had named him and then unmade him.
Pillars burst from his limbs and torso, writhing like roots, popping out like nails out of wood, feeling like weapons. But he didn't scream. He understood. He enjoyed.
The only sound now was whispers in a dead language, crawling through his mind like centipedes. In his mind, he felt foreign memories coming back to existence. Then he said as it was a fundamental truth:
"Lo sapevo… Io sono Gesù."
(I knew it... I am Jesus.)
The floor beneath him evaporated.
No explosion. No fanfare.
Just absence.
The red moon let out a sound like a bell being dragged underwater, ringing not to mark time—but to end it. And so he fell. Bathed in red. Crowned in madness. No longer Elias. No longer man. But something holy in its horror, a gospel written in blood.
Far above, beneath the fragile sky, Konoha froze. Mothers clutched their children. Shadows lengthened against fires that hadn't been lit as if they heared a divine voice announcing the end.
Then came the sound.
A cry—feral, inhuman, but not from a beast. From something older. Something born of thought, and pain, and freedom bought in madness.
And that's when the night began to bleed.