"You only leave Hell if it lets you."
---
The room was quiet.
Soft sheets.
A faint breeze curled through the curtains.
His brothers were gone.
The pastries eaten—no crumbs left behind.
Elarion lay on the bed, eyes closed.
And then—
He remembered.
Or… revisited.
That place.
Those things.
That feeling.
Again.
He hadn't meant to remember.
Sleep came slowly, warm and heavy.
But memory doesn't wait for sleep.
It waits for silence.
And silence… came.
---
Hell doesn't begin.
It just arrives.
He opened his eyes—
And the ceiling was no longer there.
Above him stretched a sky of fractured iron.
The ground beneath his body was not earth—
It breathed, like flesh.
Rain fell.
Not wet.
But sharp.
Flakes of rusted bone and glass splinters.
The air was red.
Not with light—
But with blood, ash, and rage.
Beneath his bare feet, the dirt trembled.
And breathed.
---
He was there again.
Too real for a dream.
Not memory.
A return.
The place where his sanity had thinned.
Where he'd nearly broken.
---
> "Welcome," said the voice.
Not loud.
Not soft.
Not human.
It came from the sky, the ground, his bones.
A figure appeared—cloaked in black.
Faceless.
Only light where its face should be.
Too bright to see.
Not bright enough to blind.
A god?
A warden?
Something worse?
> "You chose this," it said.
He tried to speak—
But his throat burned like it hadn't held water in years.
This was a memory.
But he was only watching.
Not awake.
Not asleep.
Just… witnessing.
---
> "You chose to live," the figure said.
"But before that, you must forget."
It stepped forward.
Its voice remained calm.
Indifferent. Cruel in its peace.
> "You will forget who you are.
What you've done.
Your name.
Your blood.
Your brothers."
> "If you remember, you return.
If you remain sane, you survive.
If you turn monster… you stay."
---
Then—
The world shattered.
Mountains made of screaming faces.
Pits that swallowed souls like gravity.
Creatures stitched from hunger, gnawing at their own bodies.
And in the center of it all—
A boy.
No name.
No voice.
Just… him.
Stripped bare.
---
He wandered.
The ground sobbed.
The walls whispered.
Everything breathed.
He saw others—
Some devoured by shadows.
Some locked in cages made of memories.
Some laughing as their bones shattered.
And he did nothing.
He wasn't there to save.
Not to rule.
Not to judge.
Only to suffer.
To witness.
To remember what he had forgotten.
---
He wasn't alone.
Tall, broken, insect-thin shapes crawled through the haze.
Their skin melted.
Their mouths didn't move—
But they screamed.
Screamed so loud it lived in his bones.
One brushed past.
Another chewed its own tongue.
One crawled with hands made of knives.
And all of them whispered the same thing:
> "You shouldn't be here."
"You weren't chosen."
"Why did you stay?"
---
Elarion didn't answer.
He couldn't.
He was still a child—
Or something that remembered being one.
His past. His future. His purpose—
All blurred.
---
He walked.
The sky bled again.
Glass fell like rain, slicing his skin in elegant, cruel lines.
But he didn't cry.
That part of him had ended long ago.
He found a throne of bones beneath a broken arch of stone.
He sat.
He stared.
And that was his day.
---
Time in Hell doesn't move.
No dawn. No dusk.
Only survival.
Only silence.
And the seconds between screams.
---
Sometimes the walls laughed.
Sometimes something bit his throat just to taste the pain.
Once, he saw a smaller boy begging for a mother that didn't exist.
Elarion watched.
He didn't help.
In Hell, no one is innocent.
Caring is dangerous.
Because the moment you reach out—
Hell chooses what to take next.
---
> "I chose this," he whispered.
Even as he bled.
Even as his lungs filled with ash.
Even as his voice disappeared into the void.
> "I chose this."
---
He spun a cracked black mask between his fingers.
Even here, he had it.
Even now, it waited.
Some monsters wear crowns.
Others wear skin.
---
Time blurred.
Pain became language.
Silence became thought.
And thoughts began to rot.
---
One day—
He saw a boy staring up from a pit.
Rior.
Or something like him.
Mouth sewn shut.
Another figure—Sirus.
Half-melted, submerged in molten stone.
His eyes full of blood.
Still watching him.
Elarion took a step toward them.
Then stopped.
They weren't real.
Nothing here was.
But something in him had… paused.
Chosen.
That was enough.
---
The mask returned.
Not on his face.
In his hand.
He spun it.
Once.
Twice.
The world shifted.
---
He opened his eyes.
Back in bed.
Curtains still moving.
Sheets still soft.
Quiet.
His body untouched.
But the sheets beneath him—
Damp.
Not with sweat.
With ash.
---
He smiled.
Detached.
Faint.
> "It feels like just yesterday I died," he thought.
"Dragged to Hell. Given one last chance."
"And now… I'm here again."
And he closed his eyes.
Not to sleep.
But to listen.
To silence.
And the memory that still waited for him.
---