The wagon lurched into motion with a violent, grinding jolt that threw the tightly packed slaves against each other. Velrith's shoulder slammed into the iron bars of the cage, sending a sharp spike of pain through her already bruised body. The chains connecting the iron collar welded around her neck—the permanent band marked "Property of Arena Master Volgath—Expendable Class"—to the central ring in the wagon's floor pulled taut, limiting movement to just a few inches in any direction. The collar was a constant reminder of her status, the metal heavy and unyielding against her throat. Around her, more than fifty bodies pressed together in a space designed for perhaps thirty, creating a suffocating wall of flesh, fear, and desperation.
The wagon was crude and brutal in its construction. The floor was rough wooden planks, warped and stained with old blood and other fluids she did not want to identify. The sides and roof were iron bars, thick as her wrist, spaced just wide enough to allow air circulation but far too narrow for even the smallest slave to squeeze through. The bars were hot to the touch, already warming in the morning sun, and would only grow hotter as the day progressed.
The wheels beneath them were massive, carved from solid stone and reinforced with iron, designed to traverse the brutal terrain of the demon realm without breaking. They made a constant, grinding noise against the volcanic rock road, a sound that vibrated through the wooden floor and into the bones of every slave chained within.
The wagon was pulled by creatures Velrith had never seen before—massive, six-legged beasts with thick, scaled hides the color of cooling lava. Their heads were low and brutal, featuring multiple eyes that glowed with a dull red light. Steam vented from nostrils in their flanks, and their clawed feet struck the stone road with rhythmic, thunderous impacts. The beasts were chained to a reinforced yoke, and an overseer rode on a high seat at the front of the wagon, holding reins made from what looked like braided metal cables.
As the wagon began its journey away from the sorting yard and into the open realm, Velrith forced herself to observe everything despite the crushing press of bodies around her. This was reconnaissance. Every detail might be useful for survival or eventual escape.
The road they traveled was not paved with stone or dirt but with solidified volcanic rock. It was black and glassy in places, reflecting the harsh sunlight with painful intensity. In other sections, the surface was rough and porous, full of sharp edges that would shred the feet of anyone forced to walk barefoot. The road curved and twisted, following the natural contours of the volcanic landscape, occasionally rising steeply or dropping into shallow valleys.
On either side of the road, the terrain was hostile and alien. Rivers of slow-moving magma flowed in channels carved deep into the rock, glowing with intense orange and red light. The heat radiating from these lava rivers was immense, creating visible distortions in the air and adding to the already oppressive temperature. Occasionally, geysers of superheated steam would erupt from vents in the ground, shooting high into the air with a hissing roar before dissipating.
The sky above was a strange, oppressive color—not the blue Velrith remembered from her human life as Joseph, but a deep reddish-orange, as if the entire atmosphere was stained with fire and ash. The sun itself appeared larger and more intense, a burning disk that seemed too close, too aggressive. There were no clouds, only occasional drifts of black volcanic ash that floated on the hot wind.
Within the first hour of travel, the true horror of the journey became apparent. The iron bars of the cage, heated by the relentless sun and the ambient heat from the lava rivers, began to burn any exposed skin that touched them. Velrith had instinctively grabbed one of the bars when the wagon lurched, and the contact sent a searing pain through her palm. She jerked her hand back with a hiss, seeing an angry red blister already forming on her pale white skin.
Around her, other slaves were suffering the same fate. Those pressed against the outer edges of the cage had no choice but to endure contact with the scalding metal. Their skin blistered and peeled, the smell of burning flesh adding another layer to the already nauseating atmosphere. Some cried out in pain, earning shouts and whip-cracks from the overseers riding alongside the wagon on smaller, faster beasts. Others endured in silence, their faces twisted in agony but their mouths clamped shut.
Velrith positioned herself as carefully as possible, using the bodies of other slaves as a buffer between herself and the burning bars. It was a cruel calculation, using others as shields, but survival required such thinking. She wedged herself between a thin, elderly slave and a younger male whose body was covered in old scars. Neither had the strength or will to challenge her positioning, and she maintained her slightly more protected spot through careful balance and constant micro-adjustments as the wagon swayed and bounced.
The heat continued to intensify as the sun climbed higher. The volcanic roads seemed to amplify the temperature, the black rock absorbing and radiating heat like a massive oven. Velrith's white skin, though it seemed to have some natural resistance to the heat—a trait of her demonic body—still reddened and burned in places. Sweat poured from every pore, soaking her hair and running in streams down her back and between her breasts. The chains around her neck and wrists grew hot enough to be painful, the metal conducting heat directly into her flesh.
Breathing became difficult. The air itself felt hot and thick, almost liquid, and each inhalation seemed to scorch her throat and lungs. Around her, slaves began to gasp and wheeze, their bodies struggling to cope with the extreme conditions. Some tried to shield their faces with their hands or press their heads down between their knees, seeking any relief from the direct assault of the sun.
As the wagon traveled, they began to pass signs of demon civilization. The first was a distant city, visible on the horizon as a cluster of tall, dark shapes. As they drew closer over the course of an hour, the details became clear.
The city was built entirely from obsidian, the black volcanic glass shaped into towers and structures that rose hundreds of feet into the red sky. The architecture was sharp and angular, all spikes and edges, with no gentle curves or soft lines. The towers seemed to stab at the sky like weapons, and their surfaces reflected the sunlight in painful, glittering flashes.
Between the buildings, Velrith could see rivers flowing—but these were not water. They were blood. Thick, dark red blood flowed through channels carved into the streets, the liquid moving sluggishly in the heat. The sight was horrifying and surreal, challenging her understanding of what a city should be. The blood rivers seemed to serve some functional purpose, perhaps as a coolant or power source, but the casual normalization of such horror spoke volumes about demon culture.
As the wagon passed closer to the city's outskirts, sounds reached them over the grinding of the wheels. Screaming. Constant, overlapping screams coming from what could only be marketplaces. Not the screams of pure agony—though those were present—but also screams of commerce, of vendors hawking their wares, of buyers haggling and arguing. The normal sounds of a market, but amplified and distorted into something nightmarish.
Velrith caught glimpses through the gaps between buildings. Large open plazas where crowds of demons moved in swirling masses. Market stalls displaying goods she could not identify from this distance. And everywhere, the casual presence of violence—public whippings, bodies hanging from posts, what appeared to be live dissections performed as street entertainment.
The wagon did not stop at this city. It continued past, following the volcanic road as it curved around the obsidian towers and back into the open wasteland. But over the following days—Velrith lost exact track of time in the constant heat and misery—they passed several more cities, each one similar in its brutal architecture and nightmarish daily life.
One city was built into the side of an active volcano, the structures carved directly from the stone and cooled lava. Smoke and ash constantly drifted from the peak above, coating everything in a fine black powder. Another city floated above a massive lava lake, the buildings suspended on enormous chains attached to pillars of stone. The heat from below created a constant shimmering distortion, making the entire city appear unstable and dreamlike.
Each city they passed was a reminder of the realm's nature: powerful, brutal, ancient, and entirely alien to the human sensibilities that still flickered in Velrith's mind.
The journey was measured not in hours but in casualties. The extreme heat, combined with dehydration, exhaustion, and the crowded conditions, began to kill the weaker slaves. The first death occurred on the second day. A slave near the back of the wagon—an elderly female with a broken horn and extensive scarring—simply stopped moving. Her body went limp, eyes rolling back, mouth falling open. She had succumbed to heatstroke, her body's systems shutting down from the stress.
The reaction from the overseers was casual and efficient. When the wagon stopped briefly to allow the pulling beasts to rest and drink from a trough of some dark liquid, one of the guards climbed onto the cage roof. He peered down through the bars, identified the corpse, and used a long hooked pole to snag the chain around her neck. With a few practiced motions, he unlatched the chain from the central ring and dragged the body toward the edge of the cage.
The side of the wagon had a small gate, just wide enough to pass a body through. The overseer kicked this open, hooked the corpse, and unceremoniously shoved it out onto the volcanic road. The body hit the black rock with a dull, meaty thump and rolled a few feet before coming to rest in an awkward, broken position.
The overseers did not bury it. They did not even move it off the road. They simply climbed back onto their mounts, cracked their whips, and the wagon lurched back into motion, leaving the corpse behind to be scavenged by whatever creatures inhabited this wasteland.
This process repeated itself multiple times over the course of the journey. Another slave, a young male who had been coughing blood since the sorting yard, died on the third day. Then an older male on the fourth day. Each time, the overseer would climb up, unhook the chain, and throw the body off the moving wagon with the same casual indifference one might use to discard trash.
By the fifth day, seven slaves had died. The space in the wagon was slightly less cramped, which should have been a relief, but instead it only heightened the terror. Every slave understood that they could be next. That their death would be meaningless, their body discarded without ceremony or care, left to rot on a volcanic road in a realm that did not value life.
Velrith endured. Her body, despite being new and unfamiliar, seemed to possess some inherent resistance to the heat. Her demonic physiology, whatever changes had been made during her reincarnation, allowed her to survive where others failed. Her white skin burned and blistered in places, but she did not succumb to heatstroke. Her breathing remained difficult but functional. Her heart continued its steady, working rhythm.
During the brief stops when the overseers allowed the pulling beasts to rest, the slaves were given minimal water. A single bucket would be passed through the gate, and the slaves would fight desperately for a handful of the lukewarm, mineral-heavy liquid. Velrith participated in these scrambles, using her positioning and her growing understanding of the violent hierarchy to secure her share. She drank quickly and efficiently, ignoring the taste of sulfur and blood, focusing only on the necessity of hydration.
It was during one of these brief stops, on what Velrith estimated was the sixth day, that she learned more words. The slaves, despite their exhaustion and fear, occasionally whispered to each other in the demonic tongue. Velrith listened carefully, her body's inherent language processing working constantly to decode the sounds.
Two slaves near her were whispering urgently, their voices barely audible over the hiss of steam from a nearby vent. One word repeated frequently: "Arena." The tone was heavy with dread and resignation. From the context—the gestures toward the direction they were traveling, the references to Volgath, the resigned expressions—Velrith's body parsed the meaning. Arena. Not just a place, but a concept. Death. Combat. The location where expendables were sent to die for entertainment.
The word settled into her consciousness with the same instinctive understanding as "Kravesh" had before. Arena meant death. It was their destination. Their purpose. The reason they had been sorted, collared, and transported through this hellish landscape.
Another word emerged during the whispered conversations, this one directed at her. A female slave, positioned across from Velrith in the cramped space, had been watching her with calculating eyes. This slave was older, perhaps in her thirties by human reckoning, with thick, corded muscles and a face marked by countless scars. Her horns were intact, curving back from her temples in elegant spirals.
The scarred female slave leaned slightly forward, chains clinking softly, and spoke directly to Velrith. The words were quiet but clear, delivered with a tone of grim curiosity.
"Velrith."
It was not a question. It was a statement, an identification. The slave was naming her, or perhaps recognizing a name. Velrith's body reacted to the sound, a deep, instinctive recognition that went beyond conscious thought. The word felt right, felt connected to her in a way that transcended explanation.
Velrith. A demon name. Her name in this new existence.
She met the scarred slave's gaze and gave a small, careful nod. Acknowledging the name. Accepting it. The last remnants of Joseph, the identity that had been shredded in the void and ground down in the cell and pit, finally released their grip. She was Velrith. Whatever history the name carried, whatever fate it implied, she would own it.
The scarred slave nodded back, a gesture of grim respect, and settled back into her position. The brief interaction was over, but it had accomplished something important. Velrith now had a name recognized by others. She was no longer just Da'ra, the generic term for slave. She was Velrith, a specific individual with an identity, however dark and constrained that identity might be.
The wagon continued its grinding journey through the volcanic wasteland. The heat remained brutal. More slaves died and were discarded. Cities passed in the distance, their obsidian towers and blood rivers a constant reminder of the civilization that awaited. And Velrith endured, her body adapting, her mind hardening, her understanding of the demonic language growing word by painful word.
By the time the wagon finally approached what appeared to be their destination—a massive structure on the horizon, circular and brutal in its architecture—Velrith had survived where many had not. Of the original fifty-plus slaves packed into the cage, perhaps forty remained. She had learned the word for their destination and accepted her new name. She had witnessed death, endured heat, and cataloged everything for future use.