There were no rays of sunshine to announce the morning. There wasn't even a morning, the bell just tolled once.
It did so in a low, bone-deep vibration that echoed through the stone and bones of the palace. That was how morning started here.
Again, if such a word still meant anything substantial in a place where the sky never changed.
Ran stumbled out of his mattress-sized room, barefoot on the sulfur-stone floor, already blistering with heat.
He didn't scream. Screaming was reserved for bigger pains. That was what he'd come to notice in what should be marked, today, as his one week in hell.
Well, it would, if time was fluid here. There'd been twenty-one bell tolls, three to signify each part of the day.
That should mean he had spent a week here, but there were factors like creatures ageing too quickly, the kin enhanced plants here growing faster than they did in Kurana, that made him believe more than a week had passed.
Also, he felt, and had memories of having done morning chores thirteen times this week.
Young Ran was starting to suspect déjà vu originated in hell.
Sighing, he decided to get on with his first task of the day, the Feeding.
Since he'd been caught listening to Mukoku's private conversation, all he knew was chores. It was his punishment.
He crossed the Hall of Hisses across the place's main atrium. The very walls here whispered secrets in languages that drove weaker minds to chew their tongues off.
Fortunately, he was under Mukoku's protection and according to what he'd learned, she'd casted a portion of her aura over him once he accepted to become her Knave.
That aura protected him from the natural hazards of hell, as he lacked kin abilities to use for looking out for himself.
At the far end of the whispering hall, a jaw-shaped vault awaited.
Inside were caged souls, all of them clawing at their barriers, glowing with divine light slowly dimming to embers. Soon, some of them would be damned and become scintillas, joining the stars of many colors in the airspace of hell.
One by one, Ran ladled a tar-like slam from a vat and poured it into their cages. It hissed and bubbled on contact, coating their halos in black. That was breakfast—for the palace.
From the Book of Calidation, which he was glad to have found a copy of here and immediately took to his room, this substance was hope turned to liquid.
How that was done, he had no idea. But all hopes that were lost in Kurana were harvested by Naraku and used to feed the souls of hell.
Next for his chores, was the Flensing Halls.
In the Flensing Halls the walls weren't built—they muscled. They flexed and pulsed with whatever agony they fed upon during the night.
Ran's job, one he found as among the freakiest chores, was to carefully oil the sinews of the living corridor, using a thick crimson grease harvested from the gallbladders of chained Fallens.
The walls moaned at his touch. Something that made him twitch even after having had some time to get used to them.
There were some things that were impossible to get used to, some of them even tried to crush him. He moved quickly.
He'd been slower once, it'd painfully cost him two fingers. They grew back, but wrong—longer, with too many joints. Fortunately Haru had been there to help him with them, he'd corrected the malformed fingers.
Ran didn't often see much of the young acolyte. The acolyte tended to be busy out in the city when he was free, and Ran most times had chores to see to when the boy usually returned from his night visits to the city.
He was still curious about what Soran Haru kept making trips to the city, yet oiling these muscular lintels and ridges reminded of the consequences of uncontrolled curiosity in this place.
He just wanted to get his father and get going. He'd promised Mukoku to serve for twenty years, but that did not mean he had to wait twenty years to save his father.
Who knew how long had gone by on Kurana already. He needed to see his father, find him and send him back to Kurana.
After that, if Mukoku wanted him to serve her for fifty years he'd do it.
He hadn't had an opportunity to meet with the Queen of Severance since he'd been caught listening in on her private conversation.
He'd tried to find her but her Lilims didn't really like him and kept giving him excuses, those and chores. Chores that allegedly came from the queen.
Ran was also starting to become just a little bit suspicious that Mukoku herself might be avoiding.
If she was doing that, he had no other inkling of her reason for it save punishment. Everything nowadays seemed like a punishment.
His soul did not belong to Naraku, not yet— he didn't harbor any doubt that it would at the end of this —still everyone was punished in hell.
He'd try his best later tonight to see if he could gain an audience with the Queen of Severance.
By midday, which was announced by the second tolling bell, he reached the Vault of Thousand Breath.
The Vault held the Airvine. The Airvine was a massive lung structure made of stitched corpses, preserved with kin, that kept on breathing in memories and exhaling sorrow.
It was another edifice of the palace, powered by the strange inner workings or its architectural kin.
His chore was to unclog the throat. This was his freakiest chore by a landslide.
Everyday, for this, he had to crawl through a tunnel of rotting, pulsing flesh to remove the bone fragments that jammed the sighing flow of eldritch, living lung building part.
Each fragment screamed at him as he touched it. So did he, when one bit back.
The final chore was the Audience Floor.
Ran swept it.
Not with a broom—but with tears.
Everyday, he'd have to sit before an acidic water that burned the eyes in a way that would make a farm of onions jealous.
This would help him cry a bucket, literally. A bucket of tears he'd then have to use to clean the floors.
The black, obsidian crystal stones exuded waves of emotions that felt like old fear and broken promises.
Sometimes they would blink. Sometimes they bite. Once, he found a tooth embedded in the tile that whispered, "Run."
He'd ignored it.
The last one he listened to had led him to a pit where time reversed and he aged backward five years before he crawled out—naked, and screaming, but wiser.
Soran Haru came through for him there again. Fortunately, according to the boy, he'd reached him in time. If he stayed with the changes for longer than a day he'd have remained five years younger until he'd begin growing again.
Night came with the third bell.
Ran returned to his tiny room, sore, bleeding, half-blind from smoke light, but alive.
He decided that he was going to catch a bit of sleep, just a bit, before he went searching for Mukoku.
Just a tiny bit.
He curled atop the cracked obsidian floor that passed for his bed.
Sounds from a lively night out in the city reached him, as lively as anything could be in hell, which would surprise most people.
Hell was the capital of sin; debauchery, abominations, perversions, addictions, all forbidden excesses were celebrated and stoked in hell.
He heard the sounds of celebrations as demons of all kinds partied, laughed, fed, danced, hunted with the Lilims of the city.
Somewhere in the palace, one of Mukoku's dukes was celebrating his coronation.
Ran, fortunately, hadn't been made to attend.
So dreamed, falling into the depth of nocturnal zen, he dreamed of simpler hells.