Max woke up gradually, like someone emerging from a deep nightmare. His mind was foggy, confused, trapped in an almost unbreakable torpor. His ears buzzed persistently, a high-pitched ringing that throbbed as if it were inside his skull. Yet, amid that buzzing, he began to notice something: voices. Many voices. They were not clear, but simultaneous, overlapping, like a dissonant choir. Men and women whispered, murmured, and shouted all at once, creating a cacophony that seemed to come from every direction.
He furrowed his brow, dazed, trying to organize his thoughts. Something inside him screamed that something was wrong, something deeply wrong. Then, like a blade cutting through the darkness of his mind, a memory abruptly surfaced. The woman. Her gaze. The cloth against his face. A strong, intoxicating odor invading his lungs. Weakness overtaking his muscles before he could react.
'That damn cloth…' he thought, feeling a wave of anger and despair wash over him.
His eyes snapped open. An instinctive reflex. He gasped, his body tensing completely, senses sharpening in a desperate attempt to understand his situation. His vision, initially blurry, slowly adjusted to the dim, flickering light illuminating the space.
And then, Max realized.
He was not in a room, nor in any familiar place. The ceiling was uneven, made of cold, damp stone. Shadows danced in grotesque movements around him, cast by poorly positioned torches on rusted holders. The walls, covered in cracks and darkened stains, emitted a putrid smell of mold and iron — iron that reminded him of dried blood. Perhaps it was a basement. Perhaps a cave. Perhaps something even worse.
His ears, now clearer, caught the sound of the voices. And they were not simple voices: they were frenzied chants, loaded with fanatical fervor. Men and women dressed in black and red robes knelt on the floor, hands raised and intertwined, fingers white from the strain. They shouted incomprehensible words, exalting, begging, and calling for something Max could not fully understand.
"Oh, Demon God, this is your final sacrifice! Come, consume the unfaithful, destroy the blasphemers, rebuild the world in your name!"
The phrases echoed and repeated in unison, louder and louder, more hysterical each time, as if the throats of those cultists could tear reality itself with their fervor.
Max blinked, confused, trying to comprehend the scene. Yet something even more disturbing hit him: the feeling that the world was… wrong. For a moment, he thought the cultists were upside down. All of them. Their bodies, their faces, their raised hands — everything seemed inverted. But he soon realized, with horror, that it was not them.
It was him.
His body was suspended, hanging upside down, as if gravity had decided to punish him. He tried to move, but his arms and legs were stretched and tightly bound, fixed to something solid. And when his gaze swept the edges of his vision, he understood even more: he was bound in an inverted cross position. Exposed, defenseless, like a human sacrifice in horror movies he had watched before.
He tried to scream, but his mouth was gagged with a coarse, damp cloth. Only a muffled sound escaped from his throat, a hoarse and powerless groan. If he could see himself at that moment, he would have fainted at the sight: his body suspended against a dark wall, stained with dried blood, scarlet liquid slowly flowing through cracks and fissures.
The cultists, realizing he had regained consciousness, raised their faces toward him. Under the hoods, mouths spread in wide smiles, yellowed teeth and manic eyes flashing. There was no sanity in those expressions. Only blind devotion and madness.
Max's heart raced, hammering in his chest. He began to struggle, shaking arms and legs, but the bindings were too strong. The cloth muffled his breathing. The foul air burned his lungs.
'No… this can't be real… this can't be happening…'
Then he saw her.
Amid the fanatic crowd, she was there. The woman. The same one who had used the cloth against him, who had deceived him, who had led him into this trap. Unlike the others, she did not smile, did not shout, did not writhe in ecstasy. Her golden, enigmatic eyes were fixed on him, shining disturbingly.
Max froze. His movements ceased, his breathing became shaky. The world around him seemed to fall silent just so the sound of her steps could echo. Each step reverberated like the very beating of his desperate heart.
She approached slowly, until she stood before him. Max watched her upside down, his body in an inverted cross, unable to look away. Thousands of questions consumed him, along with rage and fear.
But she said nothing. Her expression remained stoic, impenetrable. Only her eyes seemed alive, guarding a mystery he could never decipher.
Suddenly, a sword appeared in her hand. There was no clear movement, no summoning — it simply appeared, as if it had always been there. A black blade, made of a material resembling obsidian, absorbing the little light in the room. Red lines, like pulsating runes, ran along its length, vibrating with sinister energy.
Max's eyes widened, his whole body trembling. Panic took hold of him. He tried to scream, tried to call for help, but the cloth muffled everything. His muscles twisted in useless desperation.
She watched him in silence, without mercy, without hatred, without anything. Only that disturbing serenity. For a moment, her lips moved in an almost inaudible sigh. And then, with a speed no human eye could follow, she raised the sword and drove it into his left chest.
The blade pierced his heart in a single stroke.
The pain was indescribable. A searing heat exploded through his body, his throat constricted, and blood gushed from his mouth. His eyes widened, veins on his neck bulging. He tried to scream, but only a grotesque bubbling sound escaped.
Questions, hatred, betrayal burned in his mind. Why had she done this? Why had she used his trust, his kindness, to make him a victim? His eyes felt heavy, his vision blurred, and before death could consume him, he saw something.
A different glow.
In her eyes, for a moment, turbulent emotions flickered. Something hidden beneath that mask of coldness. Something he could not decipher.
And, along with it, a whisper. Weak, almost nonexistent. Words he could not understand.
Max's body shook in convulsions, his eyes glassy and brimming with despair. His heart pounded in agony until, finally, unable to endure any longer, he gave his last breath.
A suffocated, gurgling sigh, stained by the very blood filling his mouth. His lips moved one last time, in a mute mumble, cursing his own fate, cursing his cursed luck for being randomly chosen to become an incomprehensible sacrifice for a crazed cult.
Death came coldly. His vision darkened, his muscles relaxed, and the weight of silence fell over his mind.
But the room did not fall silent.
As soon as the final breath left his body, the blood began to move. Not naturally — it did not drip slowly, did not flow in gentle streams as gravity would dictate. No. The blood seemed to obey another law, another call. It was sucked, pulled from his body without resistance, flowing swiftly as if an invisible force were thirsty for every drop.
The cut veins, even the pores exuded blood in thin torrents, and that vivid red fell to the floor with frightening speed.
The floor beneath Max was covered with fissures carved in intricate patterns, like ancient cracks but imbued with a profane purpose. The crimson liquid flowed along those lines perfectly, running like rushing rivers following a secret map.
At the center, the destination of the flow revealed itself: a tablet.
Made of a strange material, an absolutely black rock, darker than obsidian, deeper than any shadow. Its surface was marked with inscriptions impossible to comprehend. It was not a human alphabet, nor any symbol known on Earth. The words seemed alive, twisting the mind of anyone who tried to stare at them, letters changing shape when observed.
And it was on them that the blood found its home.
As soon as it touched the symbols, it was as if the stone were thirsty. The red liquid vanished in seconds, sucked into the crevices like water into dry sand. But instead of disappearing, the blood ignited. The inscriptions began to glow a deep red, each letter pulsating like living flesh. The glow grew, ruby, crimson, almost blinding.
The cultists fell into absolute ecstasy. Their screams rose to the ceiling, a maddened cacophony. Many banged their own foreheads on the floor, opening wounds and laughing at their own flowing blood. Others raised their arms forcefully, convulsing in frenzy as if their bones would break. The Demon God's name was shouted, repeated, chanted like a maddening mantra.
In the midst of it, the woman.
She still held the sword embedded in Max's dead heart. With the same supernatural calm with which she had struck, she pulled the blade back. Blood sprayed in a grotesque arc, but not a drop touched her. The blade remained clean, as if repelling any impurity.
She did not smile. She did not shout. She simply turned slowly toward the tablet, which now began to float. Her expression was neutral, her golden eyes empty, as if nothing happening around her mattered. The collective hysteria did not affect her. Her face was a mirror of absolute coldness, as if her emotions were only masks she chose to wear or discard.
The tablet, once black, now shimmered intensely. Its red glow increased every second, illuminating the room as if torches of living fire burned in the air. Shadows danced on the walls, creating monstrous shapes that seemed to mock the mortals present.
The cultists screamed louder, many fainting from their own euphoria, others tearing their robes in frenzy. It was as if the presence of something greater, something unimaginable, was about to cross the veil of reality.
But then it happened.
At the exact moment the tablet reached its peak, when its glow became absolute, blinding red, the world was shattered by a deafening sound.
BOOOOOOM!
A crash made the ground tremble, made the air vibrate, made eardrums bleed. The tablet exploded into a thousand incandescent fragments, shattering like glass under pressure. The red glow condensed into a swirling vortex at the center of the hall, sucking air, particles, energy, and in an instant… vanished.
Everything disappeared.
The tablet. The blood. The energy. The very sound.
As if they had never existed.
The cultists were shocked. Some stepped back, others cried in confusion. Murmurs of doubt and fear replaced the previous madness. "What happened? Where is the sign? Where is our God?"
But the woman remained still. Her serenity did not waver. No surprise, no fear. Only golden eyes fixed on the void where the tablet had been. It was as if, deep down, she knew this would happen. As if she had planned it, or simply accepted it.
Meanwhile… Max.
His body was dead, chained. But his soul, his true self, did not disappear with the blood.
In another plane, another layer of existence, Max's essence emerged.
The soul should have followed the natural path: the tunnel of purification.
And he saw.
An infinite corridor, dark, but with a glow at the end. The light of restart, of cleansing, of oblivion. Like a "reset," a button pressed to overwrite a used tape, where his existence would be erased and shaped into a new life, a completely different being.
But suddenly, something happened.
Max's soul did not advance. His soul was pulled aside.
It was not his choice. It was not under his control.
The white tunnel tore like paper on fire. And through that gap, another passage revealed itself. Not light, not purification, but fire.
A red tunnel.
Red as boiling blood. Red as the coals of hell. Red as burned flesh, as embers still glowing.
And he was sucked in.
There was no resistance, no way to escape. His soul was dragged through the vortex, thrown into the corridor of flames. The heat was unbearable, yet he did not burn. Instead, the sensation was speed.
Speed beyond imagination.
The tunnel stretched in fractals, bending realities, revealing worlds and dimensions that formed and dissolved in an instant. Max felt his essence torn and recomposed several times per second. Time made no sense there. There was no past, no future. Only the journey.
And then, suddenly…
His eyes opened.
A desperate gasp escaped his throat. He wheezed, choking on the air itself, his hand instinctively going to his left chest. The spot where the sword had pierced his heart burned as if it were still there.
The pain was real.
The heart beat.
He was alive.
"I-I… I didn't die?! W-what… what happened?!"
His voice was trembling, broken. Each word seemed spat out between sobs of terror.