The Abyss Prison sank into the heart of the Main Mothership like a wound carved into steel. Where the upper levels of the Empire's crown jewel pulsed with flame and creation, the prison plunged downward in silence, each floor darker and heavier than the last.
The fourth floor was where eternity itself went to die.
Stone walls pressed close, carved with runes that drank energy and stripped immortals of their strength. The air was damp with condensation, the scent of rust and blood blending into a metallic tang that clung to the tongue. Blue witch-flames flickered in sconces, casting long, trembling shadows across iron bars.
Every corridor echoed with the sound of chains.
Here the Golden Lion Empire kept their most dangerous captives: the Eternals of the Vampire Blood Empire, 1,070 in all. They had been dragged from shattered fleets, bound in nullification shackles, their immortal bodies suppressed until they were little more than husks. Once lords of terror, they now crouched in filth, their red eyes sunken, their pale skin marked with bruises and burns.
They had given up more than their freedom. Under torment, they had yielded their secrets.
They spoke of their ruler, Emperor Drakul Bloodflame, a tyrant who had drunk blood and fire for a million years. They named his dukes, Drakz and Prunure Bloodflame, full-blooded monsters who had once ravaged humanity until they were beaten back. They revealed the names of neighboring powers: the Holy Sacred Empire, the Tersiac Intergalactic Alliance, the hidden Elarisian Dominion of Fairies, the relentless Mineral Federation of Golems, the towering Gigantic Empire, and the ever-spreading Orckish Empire.
These confessions were not freely given. They were torn out, piece by piece, in the shrieks of agony that never ceased in the Abyss.
The Overseers
Two figures ruled this floor.
Erina Shima walked the corridors with a predator's grace. Her black hair gleamed in the torchlight, her Oni mask dangling at her hip. In her hand coiled a whip woven of spatial-thread steel, alive with its own hunger. She was beautiful in the way storms were beautiful: captivating, unstoppable, and merciless.
For Erina, cruelty was theater. She did not break bodies in silence — she made a spectacle of it. She would take a prisoner, bind him in the center of the corridor, and drive a steel pole through his body, inch by inch, until it emerged from his mouth. All the while, she would ensure his comrades were watching. She snapped fingers one by one, twisted arms until joints tore, severed legs only to dunk them in boiling oil. To her, the screams were music, the despair a canvas.
When she smiled, the prisoners trembled.
Lucivar Graves was her opposite in manner but not in cruelty. His hair was pale, his eyes cold, and his voice soft as silk. He did not break bodies. He broke minds.
His illusions were subtle, woven from Ena Core trickery and psychic talent. He gave his victims hope. He let them believe they were free, that they had escaped the prison, that they had returned to families long thought lost. He let them taste joy, peace, love — only to twist the vision into horror. A wife's embrace turned into a rape before their eyes. Children's laughter warped into screams as they burned. And then, just as despair consumed them, he would return them to the cell, only to begin again.
"Every time," Lucivar whispered to a prisoner whose eyes had gone hollow, "I let you believe it is over. And every time, you return to me."
If Erina was a storm, Lucivar was a tide, slow and inevitable, drowning hope until nothing remained.
The Prisoners
The vampires had once been predators, spreading across the stars like a disease, feeding on blood and fire. Now they huddled like cattle in their cages, forced to watch as their comrades were broken one after another.
One Eternal, his fangs still sharp despite his weakened state, hissed through the bars as Erina approached. "Our emperor will burn you. Drakul Bloodflame does not forgive."
Erina tilted her head, amused. "And yet here you are, bleeding in chains." She flicked her whip, and the steel thread split the vampire's cheek open, a thin line of crimson welling. "Tell me, when he drinks from your corpse, will he even remember your name?"
The vampire's snarl faltered into silence.
Another prisoner had resisted for weeks, his lips sealed against every question. Lucivar took him. For three days, the man lived in an illusion where he had returned home. His wife greeted him, his children embraced him, his world was whole again. He wept with joy, lived each moment as if it were real. And then, on the fourth day, the illusion shattered. He watched his wife's body torn apart before him, his children burned to ash, his empire drowned in blood.
When Lucivar released him back into his cell, the Eternal spoke every secret he knew. He did not stop speaking until his voice broke into sobs.
Every day, the same cycle repeated. Prisoners dragged from cells, tortured, interrogated, broken. Some screamed for hours before their voices gave out. Others begged. A few cursed until they lost the strength to curse.
Erina ensured that every act was done in view of others. She wanted despair to spread like a plague.
Lucivar ensured that every mind was touched. He wanted hope to vanish like smoke.
Together, they created a ritual of breaking not merely extracting information, but teaching every prisoner that resistance was meaningless. That the Golden Lion Empire was inevitable.
There were moments, rare and brief, when the corridors fell silent. The prisoners slumped in their cells, too exhausted to weep. The Overseers rested their tools. The torches flickered without sound.
In those silences, the truth pressed heavier than the chains.
Above, the Mothership's forges sang with creation. Mechs rose, cannons bristled, the Penetration Teleportation Cannon hummed with promise.
Below, the Abyss whispered only of endings.
Here, hope was not merely crushed. It was erased.