Malrion — First Person
Silence embraced me again.
Not the silence of Alastor's upper domain — sharp, artificial, controlled — but the ancient, heavy silence of a place abandoned by Hell itself. The Silent Maw swallowed every sound the moment it left my throat. Even my own heartbeat felt distant, like it belonged to someone else.
I stood alone in the ruined hall.
It stretched out in all directions — a massive cavern shaped as though some colossal beast had opened its jaws and died mid-scream. Pillars of melted obsidian curved upward like broken teeth. Red veins pulsed faintly across the walls, glowing and dimming as if the chamber breathed.
And maybe it did.
I didn't know if the structure was alive, or if the demonic energy coursing through it only pretended to be life.
But something here remembered.
Something waited.
Something watched.
Alastor's voice stirred gently in the back of my mind.
"Do not be afraid. This place was built for resonance, long before the age of Overlords."
"That doesn't make it less terrifying," I murmured, even though the words vanished into the air before reaching the walls.
"Fear sharpens the senses. You'll need that."
His tone shifted—still playful, but edged with seriousness.
"Sit, Malrion. Your first cultivation cannot begin until your soul settles."
I lowered myself onto the warm, pulsing stone floor.
My legs shook.
Not from exhaustion, but from the overwhelming weight of this moment.
I was weak.
Weaker than the smallest fiend scuttling in the shadows of these lower rings. My limbs trembled from a few minutes of walking. My breath hitched, uneven. My pulse fluttered too fast.
This body was new.Untested.Vulnerable.
And yet…
Deep inside my chest, something else stirred. Something vast. Something ancient. Something hungry.
I closed my eyes.
Darkness folded over me — and the world inside opened.
Why Only I Can Cultivate
Before I saw anything, I felt Alastor's presence brush against my consciousness — a static whisper in a storm of memories.
"Before we begin… you must understand why you can cultivate, and Hell cannot."
"I'm listening," I breathed.
"Hell is built on one principle — stagnation."
The word echoed inside me like a bell struck underwater.
"No demon grows. No siner evolves. Even the Overlords only refine what they already are. Power in Hell is not gained. It is… crystallized."
"I've seen that," I muttered. "Everything here feels… trapped."
"Because it is," Alastor whispered. "Hell is a closed system. A cage made from sin and suffering. Energy here cycles but never changes form."
A pause.A crackle.Soft static, almost like laughter.
"But you are an anomaly."
"Because of the fusion."
"Because of what you ARE," he corrected sharply.
Then the truth hit me—and it hit like a tidal wave.
Two souls…Two worlds…Two karmic laws…
And when they fused…
A gap in the system formed.
A loophole.
A glitch.
A doorway through which something impossible could exist.
"Echo Qi," I whispered.
"Exactly."Alastor sounded proud.
"Infernal Qi — the energy of sin — is chaotic. Destructive. It corrupts anything it touches."
"I've felt it."
"But Echo Karma — the energy your otherworldly soul brought — is not from Hell. It is pure karmic resonance. It came through a world where energy follows growth, not stagnation."
I opened my eyes — but only to a deeper darkness.
"So when the two energies touched…"
"They didn't cancel out," he finished."They harmonized."
My chest tightened.
A truth older than Hell buzzed in my bones.
"Echo Qi is born only when a being contains both chaos and clarity. Only when a soul can perceive sin not as corruption…"
"…but as fuel."
"Precisely."
My breath trembled.
That was the difference.
Every demon absorbed sin — but it poisoned them.Every siner carried sin — but it rotted their souls.Every Overlord wielded sin — but it chained them to their nature.
No one in Hell could purify it.
Only me.
Only the one who devours.
The Call of the Maw
The ground beneath me pulsed.
Once.Twice.
A slow, resonant heartbeat.
The darkness shifted.
It grew thicker behind my eyelids, coiling like smoke. But when I opened them, the cavern had changed.
Not physically.
But perceptively.
My sight deepened. The red veins along the walls glowed brighter, revealing patterns within patterns — circular symbols, spirals of runes, jagged lines that hummed in faint resonance.
It looked like a forgotten language made of sound itself.
"What is this place?" I whispered.
Alastor hummed thoughtfully.
"In the First Era of Hell, before the Seven Thrones, before Lilith and Lucifer carved hierarchy into stone… some demons sought transcendence."
My pulse pounded.
"Transcendence?"
"A way to rise beyond flesh, beyond sin, beyond the cycle of punishment. They tried to shape energy instead of submitting to it."
"What happened to them?"
Static rose.
Then—
"They were erased."Soft.Final.Terrifying.
"Heaven intervened. The experiment was buried. Literally."
My hands tightened on my knees.
So I wasn't the first to attempt evolution.Just the first with the right soul to succeed.
"And this place…?"
"An echo of their attempt."
He chuckled.
"Fitting, isn't it?"
The First Breath
I exhaled.
And then—
I inhaled.
Not air.
Not heat.
But the echoes.
The cavern vibrated. The runes pulsed. The entire Silent Maw shuddered as if something ancient and starving woke inside it.
My lungs filled with a strange, thick resonance — like sound turned into mist.
Heat crawled through my chest.Cold followed.Then something sharp.
It wasn't pain.
It was recognition.
Energy spiraled into my body from the walls, the floor, the air — from the very memory of Hell.
And then I saw it.
The Web of Sin
The darkness melted.
The world unfolded into a lattice of red strings — countless, infinite, tangled, glowing like blood-soaked spider silk.
Every line pulsed with:
Suffering
Regret
Anger
Despair
Lust
Fear
Obsession
Death
Sin.
Billions of threads.
The entire universe of Hell existed as one enormous, suffocating web.
"This…" I choked, "this is what everyone in Hell is trapped inside?"
"Yes."Alastor's voice was quiet.Unusually quiet.Reverent.
"Hell is not walls or fires. It is this network of unresolved karma. Every demon, every sinner, every Overlord — they are knots in this web. Bound. Fixed. Never changing."
The web vibrated.
Louder.Deeper.Like a thousand drums in my skull.
"How can I see this?"
"Because your soul is not part of it."
I froze.
His words struck harder than any demon claw.
"You are not caught in Hell's karmic net. Your merged soul lies outside its design. You stand in the cracks between systems."
"…a loophole," I whispered.
"A glitch," Alastor corrected with amusement. "A beautiful… delicious glitch."
The web continued to hum.
At its center — or what I perceived as the center — a black whirlpool of energy churned, devouring echoes and memories.
The Core Sin — the heartbeat of Hell.
It called to me.
And I answered.
The Devouring Begins
I reached out.
My hand shook violently — not from fear, but from the overwhelming instinct rising in my chest.
A hunger.
A purpose.
A destiny.
My fingers brushed one of the red strings.
A scream.
A memory not mine flooded me.
A life extinguished.A betrayal.A murder.A sinner's fall through the gates of Hell.
The echo burned.
But I did not recoil.
I pulled.
The thread unraveled into my palm — a ribbon of pain and regret dissolving into crimson mist. It entered my body through my lungs, my skin, my very bones.
Heat exploded behind my eyes.
Something cracked inside my chest.
And then—
A circle formed.
Not drawn.Not imagined.
Formed.
A glowing, spinning ring of red and white light expanded inside my soul — pure resonance vibrating like a tuning fork struck by a divine hand.
Alastor gasped.
"Your first Echo Ring…"
His voice was shaking.Alastor — the Radio Demon — was shaking.
"Malrion… do you understand what you just did?"
"I…"My breath trembled.My heart raced.My vision pulsed with red halos.
"I consumed sin. Without corruption."
"Yes… yes, exactly!"He laughed — ecstatic, manic, triumphant."You purified it. You shaped it. You grew from it."
Another revelation hit me.
"Anyone else who touched that thread…"
"Would have been poisoned. Maddened. Damned again."
"And I…?"
"You turned it into power."
I looked at my hands.
They glowed faintly.
White at the fingertips.Red at the knuckles.A gradient of creation and destruction swirling like mist.
My hands were shaking.
Because I was terrified.Because I was overwhelmed.Because I was alive in a way Hell never allowed.
And for the first time—
I felt strong.
Not physically.
Not magically.
But fundamentally.
At the level of the soul.
The Echo Ring inside me spun faster.Resonating.Growing.Spreading warmth through my veins.
My first cultivation…
Was complete.
But the process hadn't ended.
The threads around me pulsed again.Dozens.Hundreds.Thousands.
Calling.Begging.Screaming.
For release.
I opened my palm.
And the web responded.
A flood of red lines rushed toward me — not in chaos, not in violence — but in reverence, like subjects kneeling before a king:
memories
sins
echoes
regrets
screams
wishes
curses
All pouring into me.
All transforming.
All feeding the ring.
The cavern shook.The walls cracked.The heartbeat beneath me accelerated, thundering like a giant waking after millennia.
"Alastor—" I gasped.
"Do not stop."His voice trembled with awe."Take it. Take ALL of it."
I clenched my teeth, bracing myself—
And I devoured Hell.
When the Ring Stabilized
When the flood finally slowed, my entire body collapsed backward.I landed hard, chest heaving, vision blurring.
I didn't feel exhausted.
I felt rewired.Rewritten.Reborn.
The Echo Ring inside me gleamed like a newborn star.
The first step of cultivation.The first break in Hell's stagnant system.
When I finally spoke, my voice was not my own.Stronger.Deeper.More resonant.
"I am not trapped in Hell."
"No," Alastor whispered, awe replacing amusement."Hell is trapped with YOU."
I opened my eyes.
The Silent Maw bowed.
Not literally.
But through resonance.
Through recognition.
Through instinct older than angels or demons.
This place — this relic of a forgotten rebellion — accepted me.
I inhaled—
And the air trembled.
I exhaled—
And the darkness bowed deeper.
The first cultivation…was complete.
But not silent.
Not anymore.
Far above, in the Overlord rings, Rosie paused mid-sentence.
Her head turned.
Her eyes narrowed.
Something…somewhere…had changed 'but she don't now what
Something that should not exist…
had begun to grow.