He felt no pain, no blood, no end. It was as if he had slipped into a void where time and pain were merely concepts of a distant reality. His body was a puppet suspended in a theater of darkness, the strings of his fate slack in the hands of unseen puppeteers.
Then, a sudden jolt, a piercing light, and Lucius Silvis found himself standing on the ash-colored ground. He looked down at his hands, expecting to see the grime of the city clinging to them, but instead, they were clean, almost translucent.
The world around him was a wasteland. The sky above was not the concrete sprawl he was accustomed to, but a sea of gray, liquid glass, trembling as if the heavens themselves were afraid to break. There was no sound, not even the echo of his own breath. His heart didn't pound in his chest; it was as if it had stopped beating entirely.
The ground was barren, cracked earth stretching into the horizon like the skeletal remains of a forgotten world. No grass, no trees, no signs of life. Just a cold, lifeless expanse that mirrored the desolate landscape of his soul. The air was thick with an oppressive silence, a palpable weight that suffocated any hope of existence.
In the far distance, a gigantic archway loomed, made of ancient stone that seemed to have been forged by the very hands of time itself. It stood defiant against the void, a silent sentinel that bore witness to the ebb and flow of civilizations long since swallowed by the abyss.
"Where am I?" Lucius murmured to himself, his voice a whisper lost in the endless silence. The question hung in the air like a specter, unanswered and haunting.
He took a tentative step forward, his boots crunching against the ash. With each step, he felt a strange mix of terror and fascination.
„Is this hell? Or is it just the culmination of my despair taking shape here?" He had never been a fan of religion, but the concept of hell had always fascinated him, a place where pain and suffering were as eternal as the stars in the night sky.
The archway grew larger as he approached, its grandeur overwhelming his senses. It was a paradox, a structure that seemed to both absorb and repel the light. It was gold, but not the gold of riches, rather the gold of decay, the gold of a forgotten tomb, the gold of a crown that had lost its luster.
The archway was adorned with symbols that flickered like the memories of a demented mind. They danced and shifted, morphing from one image to the next, a silent narrative of a world that had been lost to madness.
"Or perhaps," Lucius mused aloud, his words a mere whisper in the desolate silence, "this is purgatory, a realm where the damned are sent to wander until their sins are forgotten by time itself."
The symbols on the archway shifted again, coalescing into a sentence that seemed to be written in a language both ancient and eerily familiar: "You have fallen, Lucius Silvis. But this fall is just the beginning."
The words disappeared as quickly as they had come, leaving only a faint afterimage that danced at the edge of his vision.
Lucius's body reacted before his mind could process the sudden pain. He staggered back, his legs buckling beneath him. The once cold, hard ground beneath his boots felt like it had turned to molten lava, searing his skin and bones. He screamed, the sound a pathetic echo in the vast emptiness that surrounded him. He tried to lift his hands to shield his eyes from the burning light, but they were caught in the fiery embrace.
The beam grew wider, enveloping him in a cocoon of agony. His skin felt as if it were being peeled away, layer by layer, exposing the raw nerves and sinew beneath. The smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils, a cloying scent that seemed to merge with the ash that coated the ground. His vision blurred, the archway's grandeur distorting into a grotesque parody of itself, the gold fading to a sickly green.
As the pain reached a crescendo, a date emerged from the ash, hovering above the archway like a specter from another time. «Oct 28, 1549» it read, the numbers glowing with an eerie light that pierced the gloom. The significance of the date eluded him, but the pain was too intense to allow for contemplation. His mind reeled, trying to make sense of the impossible.
The flames grew brighter, consuming him whole. His screams became one with the crackling of his flesh and the popping of his bones. He felt his essence being torn apart, molecule by molecule, until there was nothing left but a fine dust that danced in the fiery embrace of the light.
The ash that had been Lucius Silvis hovered for a brief moment in the stillness before the archway. It was a macabre ballet of his existence, a silent testament to the fleeting nature of life. The ground beneath him no longer burned, it was as if the fire had never been there.
The archway pulsed with a malevolent energy, the ancient stones seemingly alive as they drew the ash into their crevices. The gold of decay grew brighter, hungrily devouring the last remnants of his corporeal form.
....
With a jerk, Lucius woke up in a bed that was soaked in a cold sweat, his body trembling as if it had just been released from the icy grip of death. The room was unfamiliar, the air thick and suffocating. He took in a gasp of air, his chest heaving as his eyes darted around the space, trying to make sense of where he was. The pain from his vision remained, a phantom agony that whispered of the torments he had just endured.
The room was dimly lit by candles that flickered in the draughty air, casting an eerie glow that danced across the aged wooden beams and the heavy velvet curtains that shrouded the windows. The smell of damp earth and dust filled his nostrils, and the furniture was heavy and ornate, reminiscent of a time long past. The floor was stone, cold and unforgiving under his bare feet. He was no longer in his grimy, modern apartment but had been transported to a chamber.
"What the hell is going on?" Lucius' breathing became more labored as he moved frantically towards the mirror. His eyes searched his reflection, seeing himself, pale and trembling, but untainted by the fire that had consumed him moments before. His dark brown hair stuck to his forehead, and his icy gray eyes looked at him with shock.
....