When Sin passed out, he found himself suspended in a dark, void-like area. His eyes scanned the emptiness, searching for anything familiar—a landmark, a shadow, any point of reference in this absolute nothingness. There, standing directly in front of him, was a figure that looked exactly like him—or almost exactly. Sin's breath caught in his throat as he studied the doppelganger more closely, his pulse quickening with each passing second.
The resemblance was flawless, yet something was profoundly wrong. A giant smile stretched across the figure's face, unnaturally wide and deeply unsettling, like a mask carved by someone who had never truly understood human expression. Its eyes gleamed with a manic intensity that made Sin's skin crawl. The aura emanating from it wasn't malice exactly, but something far more terrifying—something primal and uncontrollable that made the air itself feel heavy, suffocating.
Sin looked down at his own hands, his mind racing through possibilities, each more disturbing than the last. Was this what he became when consciousness slipped away? The thought sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the void's temperature. It would explain everything—every brutal act committed during those blackouts, every inexplicable moment of violence that haunted his waking hours. He remembered the first time he'd passed out. When he came to, someone lay dead, impaled on a bamboo stick. Not just any bamboo stick—one soaked crimson with blood, the wood splitting under the weight of its gruesome burden. There was no way he could have conceived such brutality, not the Sin who stood here now. Something else had to have taken control.
The battle with the Hunter flashed through his fragmented memories like broken glass cutting through fog. He'd lost consciousness during the fight, yet somehow the Hunter had been defeated. This thing—this Shadow Demon—had been released before Sin even knew what was happening. All he remembered was darkness pressing in from all sides, and then waking to find the Hunter's broken body sprawled in the dirt.
"Is the Hunter dead?" Sin whispered to himself, his voice barely audible in the vast emptiness, swallowed almost immediately by the void.
The Shadow Demon took a step forward, its smile widening impossibly further, stretching beyond what any human face should allow. Each word dripped with malevolent anticipation as it spoke. "Come here."
Without warning, it lunged forward, dashing toward Sin with inhuman speed that left afterimages in the darkness. Caught off guard, Sin tried to dodge, but his body moved too slowly, as if the void itself resisted his movements. The Shadow Demon crashed into him with devastating force, knocking him backward. Pain exploded through his chest as he hit the ground, the impact driving the air from his lungs.
The demon didn't let up. It continued its assault, bashing Sin's body against the shadowy floor repeatedly, each impact sending tremors through his bones. It grabbed him by the collar, lifting him effortlessly before smashing his face into the void beneath them. Sin felt his nose crack, blood streaming down his face as the demon laid him flat and began stomping on his face over and over. Each impact sent shockwaves of agony through his skull, white-hot pain that threatened to shatter his consciousness entirely.
The Shadow Demon grabbed Sin's arms, that wide, uncanny smile never faltering, never showing even a flicker of effort or emotion beyond sadistic glee. With a gesture, it conjured a large ax from pure blood, the weapon materializing with a wet, organic sound that turned Sin's stomach. His vision blurred as pain coursed through every nerve in his body. His face had been dragged across the ground, stomped repeatedly, his body flung like a ragdoll in the hands of a cruel child. The demon version of himself had slammed him down multiple times with merciless precision, each movement calculated for maximum suffering.
He tried to ignore the pain, to push through it, but it overwhelmed his senses like a tidal wave. This was beyond anything he'd experienced before—beyond the physical, touching something deeper and more fundamental.
The Shadow Demon created blood chains from thin air, the links forming with a rattling sound that echoed through the void. The chains bound Sin to the ground, forcing him to bend forward until his back was fully exposed, vulnerable. With cruel deliberation, it tore off Sin's shirt, revealing his bare skin to the emptiness. Sin's heart pounded with terror as he realized what was coming, ancient knowledge surfacing from somewhere deep in his memory.
The ax descended, stabbing deep into Sin's back. He screamed—or tried to—as the demon pulled out his ribs one by one, the sound of bone separating from flesh filling the void. The bones hung over his shoulders like grotesque wings, a parody of something divine. Then, with surgical precision that spoke of countless repetitions, the demon extracted his lungs from his back, draping them over the exposed ribs with almost artistic care.
The blood eagle was complete.
Sin's lungs tried desperately to breathe, making the rib-wings flap pathetically with each failed attempt at drawing air. Tears streamed down his face as agony unlike anything he'd ever known consumed him, burning through every cell of his being. He wanted to cry out, to scream for mercy, to beg for death, but his lungs dangled uselessly outside his body, unable to form even the smallest sound. Blood covered everything—his ribs, his back, his entire form—creating the horrifying image of an actual blood eagle, a torture from humanity's darkest history.
This torture was designed to keep victims alive for hours, prolonging their suffering to impossible lengths. Sin knew he faced at least thirty more minutes of this unbearable suffering, each second stretching into an eternity of pure torment.
Time became meaningless in his agony, seconds and hours blurring into one continuous stream of pain. Finally, after what felt like an eternity spent in the depths of hell itself, Sin's eyes began to close. The chains dissolved like smoke, and his mutilated body collapsed to the ground, still locked in that tortured form, a broken puppet with severed strings.
Then, impossibly, his body disappeared and reappeared fully intact, whole and unmarked. The demon stood right in front of him again, that same terrible smile plastered across its face, as if nothing had happened, as if Sin's suffering had been nothing more than a brief entertainment.
Sin could die here, but apparently, he could respawn as well. The realization brought no comfort, only a deeper horror. Was this all happening in his mindscape, or had he been transported to another dimension entirely? Either way, the implications were terrifying—an eternity of death and rebirth, of endless suffering at the hands of his own darkness.
The demon rushed forward again, but this time Sin was ready, his survival instinct overriding his fear. He created a blood drill and hurled it toward his dark counterpart with all the force he could muster. The demon caught it effortlessly, throwing it right back with casual disdain. Sin dodged, his body moving on instinct honed by countless battles. He leaped forward and kicked the demon squarely in the face, putting every ounce of his strength behind the blow.
The demon flew backward, landing on the dark void-like ground with a heavy thud that echoed through the emptiness.
It laughed—a staticky, unnerving sound that echoed through the emptiness, layering over itself until it became a chorus of madness. Rising to its feet with fluid grace, it rushed forward again, shooting multiple blood bullets toward Sin in a deadly pattern. Sin dodged and even caught one mid-flight, throwing it right back with fierce determination, refusing to be a victim again.
A rush of adrenaline flooded through him, sharper and more intense than anything natural, almost chemical in its potency. If this adrenaline hadn't surged through his body, he would probably be dead again, broken and bleeding on the void's floor. But this wasn't normal adrenaline—it heightened his reflexes beyond human limits, sharpened his senses until he could track individual droplets of blood in the air, made his movements faster and more precise than they had any right to be.
Sin jumped into the air, launching a spinning kick toward his demon counterpart with renewed confidence. The demon dodged smoothly, catching his foot and slamming his body onto the ground with brutal force that drove the breath from his lungs. It grabbed his foot again, flinging his body left, then right, then left again—over and over without mercy, giving Sin no time to recover or even think, reducing him once more to a plaything.
Back in Kylie's room, she stared at the red tube where Sin's body lay suspended in the viscous liquid. For a moment, his body twitched. Her eyes narrowed as she leaned closer, concern etching lines across her forehead.
"Is he waking up?" she said aloud, her voice tinged with both hope and dread, her hand unconsciously reaching toward the tube.
The body continued to flinch, muscles spasming beneath the skin, then suddenly began thrashing violently. Sin's fists pounded against the tube from the inside, over and over with increasing desperation, the impacts creating dull thuds that resonated through the room. The liquid churned and roiled, turning darker with each violent movement.
Kylie jumped back, demon energy surging toward her fists as she prepared for anything, her stance shifting into a defensive posture. Her heart raced as she watched the violent display, torn between wanting to help and knowing she might need to defend herself. The tube began to crack—hairline fractures spreading across its surface like a spiderweb.
Eventually, the thrashing stopped. Sin's body became still again, suspended motionless in the crimson liquid, as if exhausted by the outburst. The cracks remained, a testament to the violence within.
Back in the mindscape, Sin created multiple blood blades, each one razor-sharp and gleaming with deadly light. He threw them toward the demon with all his strength, channeling his rage and fear into each projectile, but the demon dodged every single one with fluid grace, moving like water between the deadly rain. In response, it created an even bigger blood sword, the weapon materializing with an ominous hum that filled the void, vibrating through Sin's chest like a second heartbeat.
*If that blade hits me, I'm dead,* Sin thought, his mind racing for a strategy. The demon just smiled wider, its expression twisting into something beyond human comprehension, as it thrust the massive blood sword toward him with terrifying speed.
Sin couldn't catch it. He couldn't dodge it. The blade was too large, too fast, too inevitable.
The giant weapon struck him through the chest, and as soon as it did, the blood blade disappeared. Sin was dead again. A few moments later, he materialized near the demon version of himself, gasping and whole once more. This cycle would continue until he probably woke up—an endless loop of death and resurrection.
Sin's jaw clenched, determination hardening his features. *All right. I'm done playing games. It's time to go all out.*
This thing couldn't be stronger than him. It might be more powerful, it might be exactly like him, but it was sick in the head—demented, chaotic, driven only by violence and destruction. It couldn't strategize like he could. That gave him an edge, however slim.
The Shadow Demon disappeared into the shadows, reappearing moments later clad in shadow armor. Its eyes were no longer red but black, with shadows rising in its pupils like smoke. Darkness pulled from its feet, spreading across the void floor like an infection. This was going to be a fight Sin knew he might not win. This could be the end—the final confrontation with his own darkness.
He knew what would happen if he lost this battle, but he couldn't afford to take any chances. Not now. Not when everything hung in the balance.
The demon version of Sin smiled one last time, its deepened, staticky voice ringing out in the void, echoing multiple times over itself in a cacophony of malice.
"Come here."