"HUAH!"
Malik gasped for air, his chest heaving violently as he panted. It felt as if he hadn't breathed for an eternity, as if his lungs had been crushed into a flattened tin can.
He forced his eyes open, but he was met with nothing but oppressive darkness. Only thin, jagged lines of light bled through a few narrow cracks somewhere above him.
He tried to move, but the space was suffocating. He felt pinned, trapped between solid, heavy objects. Then the sensation was suddenly overtaken by the smell.
It was a rot so foul it nearly made him faint. Never in his life had he perceived anything so sickening.
Malik's fingers clawed at the cold, yielding surfaces around him. He tried to push upward, but his arms were pinned. Every time he managed to shove a weight off his chest, another heavy, limp limb rolled into its place.
The darkness above him began to leak.
At first it was a slow, rhythmic tap against his forehead.
Then a thick, warm stream began to find the gaps between the bodies, soaking into his hair and matting it against his skull.
I won't die like this. Never.
The thought burned through his mind, crackling with a tinge of madness.
A muffled, ragged sob escaped his throat as his boots kicked frantically against the tangled mess below him. Slowly, agonizingly, he gained an inch.
Then another.
He used his elbows to lever himself upward, his skin tingling as it brushed against the freezing, rotting flesh of the others.
With a final, desperate heave, Malik's head broke through the surface of the bodies.
Then his hands.
Then his arms.
He clawed his way upward, his gaze wild and frantic as he scanned the space around him. Above him a single weak lantern hung from the ceiling, casting a dim yellow glow that barely reached the depths of the pit.
It was just enough light to confirm the suspicion he had fought so hard to suppress.
Corpses filled the chamber to the brim.
Men.
Women.
Malik looked at the face nearest his own. It was half rotted, the skin sloughing away in the damp heat. As the dim light flickered across its features, his breath caught in his throat.
"Children," he gasped, the word escaping as a choked sob of horror.
He recoiled instantly, his body jerking backward. He scrambled toward the opposite side of the pit, his boots sinking into the mangled mass beneath him.
He tried to move carefully, his mind screaming at him not to crush the remains beneath his weight.
But there was no solid ground.
Only death.
He looked up, searching erratically for a way out.
Ten meters above him a small platform jutted from the stone wall.
Malik threw himself at the wall, his fingers scraping against the cold surface.
But it was too slippery with moisture.
He tried again. And again.
His fingernails tore against the merciless stone, leaving thin streaks of blood behind. He kicked at the corpses beneath him, trying to pile the bodies higher to reach the platform.
But they only shifted and collapsed, dragging him back into the rotting pit.
"HELP!" he screamed, his voice cracking.
"IS ANYONE THERE? PLEASE!"
His fist slammed against the wall one last time.
Then Malik slowly sank down onto the bed of corpses, his breath growing shallow.
He sat there for what felt like an eternity, his mind drifting into a void. The air was so saturated with the scent of death that he could no longer perceive the stench.
It had become his world.
As natural as the skin on his back.
"Little human."
The voice was ghostly and distant, a dark echo vibrating directly inside his right ear.
Malik's head snapped to the side, his eyes wide and frantic.
Nothing.
Only twisted limbs.
The same corpse.
Slowly he turned to the left, his heart hammering harder and harder in his chest.
Then he froze.
With a gasp he threw himself backward, his spine slamming against the stone wall.
Inches from his face loomed a massive serpent.
Its body revealed itself slowly in the yellow glow. The head was broad, its scales slick obsidian that seemed to swallow the light completely. It was so close he could feel the cold breath of the creature.
"What... what is this?" Malik stammered, his voice barely more than whisper.
He pressed himself against the wall, trying to flatten his body into the stone.
His eyes never left the terryfing crimson pupils of the predator.
The voice echoed again, deeper now.
And this time it clearly came from the enormous head of the otherworldly serpent.
"What do you tremble for, little human?"
Malik's eyes widened even further.
The serpent drifted closer.
Its crimson eye now hovered directly in front of Malik's face.
"Is such a sight already too horrendous for your limited mind? Perhaps choosing you was foolish…I sought a vessel with the strength to look into the sun without blinking."
Malik stared into the enormous eye, confusion and a faint tinge of hope mixing inside his stomach.
He did not understand what was happening.
But he understood one thing.
The serpent had chosen him.
Perhaps this creature could get him out of here.
"Help me," Malik whispered.
The serpent studied him silently.
"Why?" it finally asked, its tone vast and strangely melancholic.
Malik hesitated.
"Because… you chose me. Did you not say so yourself, beast?"
The serpent recoiled.
Then a laughter erupted from its throat, dark and evil.
"Beast?" it hissed.
"You humans and your desperate need to domesticate the infinite."
The serpent lunged forward suddenly, stopping just short of Malik's face.
The rush of air forced him to blink.
"I am no ordinary beast. I am no ordinary creature."
The crimson eyes burned brighter.
"I am the Abyssal Serpent Abaddon, feared and revered throughout the endless universe, across seven hells and nine heavens."
The serpent's voice lowered.
"At least I was..."
"So choose wisely, human."
"You may end your suffering now and leave the burden of your flesh to me."
"Or you may prolong it."
"Once we fuse, we share everything. Every moment. Every scar. Every sin."
"You will change."
A pause followed.
"Perhaps for the better. Or perhaps for the worse."
"But you will never be human again."
Malik stared into the crimson eye.
Memories surged through him.
Helplessness.
The crushing weight of others standing above him.
Even now he was helpless.
But the fury inside his chest had grown far beyond a spark.
"What about power?" Malik asked quietly.
"Will you give it to me?"
The serpent's gaze sharpened.
Its interest deepened as it tasted the resolve in his voice.
"In abundance," it hissed, a deep echo vibrating through the pit.
"More than you could ever imagine."
"What should I do?" Malik asked.
"Just open your eyes."
"Just open your ey—"
"Just open yo—"
The serpent's voice dissolved into nothing.
An unknown amount of time passed
Malik's eyes snapped open.
His lungs suddenly flooded with air as he gasped desperately.
The reality of the pit rushed back.
He was exactly where he had been.
Buried beneath a mountain of corpses.
Crushed under the weight of countless bodies.
Yet something had changed.
A new crimson glow burned in the darkness.
His own pupils.
They shone with a serpentine glow.
"So… all of this was just a dream, huh?" Malik muttered weakly.
"You think so?"
The voice that answered him was eternal.
Cold.
Mocking almost...