Ran woke up groggily, his skull vibrating from the tolling of the morning bell.
He brought his hands to clean his eyes but froze halfway.
Why was the bell still tolling. It only tolled for what he counted as five heartbeats. The bell had a weird spiritual effect that woke everyone up at the same time. They didn't need to ring for long as they got the job done quickly.
Six heartbeats since he'd awoken. The walls still shook, bones continued vibrating, the bell tolled on
Eight heartbeats… ten…twelve…fourteen…fifteen and it was still ringing.
Ran began to hear something, he heard it as much as he felt it.
A quake.
He was on his feet before one could blink and was already dashing out of his room.
The ground quivered long before the screams began.
He rushed to the highest tower of the palace, which for some reason felt more silent than a dead night.
He reached the tower panting, he managed to stagger to the parapet as he gasped for breath.
Squinting to adjust his eyes to the full glow of the urban universal sulphur-stone that barely lit up the environment, Ran looked beyond.
In the obsidian City of Severance, where the bricks breathed bright smoke and demons filled every corner, silence was unnatural—but now, it fell like a curse.
He could barely see anything, he made out what seemed like tall shadows upon the walls of the city, but the streets were empty.
Heart, racing, he mused over this mystery.
What was going on? Where was everyone? How had the night gone from celebration to complete quiet?
Then he heard it, a sound that caused every single hair on his body to stand in alarm. It was like a wet thunder.
Like an ocean dragging a corpse at unimaginable speed through a mountain cavern.
From the west, beyond the gates, the shadows split open.
They did not move but split as reality peeled back, and from the wound crawled out something of shadows and goo, exuding a feeling that sent a cold terror of recognition coursing through Ran's veins..
It did not walk, it did not crawl.
It slithered through the sky as if the air itself were syrup. Its disjointed body moved like a thousands serpents joined at the head in a Siamese union.
Black tendrils burst from its body—no, not tendrils. Limbs. Mouths. Thoughts.
Each one was alive, screeching, whispering, and folding through dimensions. Its mass shifted like a dream mid-vision—never the same shape twice, yet always wrong.
It's entire form was like and independent dream, a lucid dream. It appeared to exist in all dimensions and in none.
For lack of a better word, the creature was wrong—just wrong.
This beast was shadow, but deeper. It consumed light from the sulphur-stones. The glow that bathed the city, the only warmth this place ever knew, was devoured like a reverse of a smoker puffing as they inhaled the smoke.
Streets plunged into true black.
Ran, for the first time, felt Mukoku's aura cover him and suddenly he could see. Not with his eyes—with something else.
It was like a sixth sense. A dream eyes, a virtual sight, what it would feel like if one had air for eyes.
With it he saw something only the most powerful monks and prophets had been able to make happen—Demons ran.
They fled, they screamed, they turned on each other as the creature reached the city.
It felt even more familiar now, and as it struck, Ran realized why he recognized it, emotionally if not visually.
This was the creature that welcomed him to hell!
One of its tentacle struck the main market. The entire plaza inverted—sky became ground, spikes sprouted from walls, and merchants melted into blood statues.
Another tendril pierced the obsidian Guard Tower. It didn't crumble. It aged.
In seconds, it withered into fossil dust, its centuries of protection erased like chalk in rain.
Ran, blinked as ash rained down upon the Palace, reached him, and continued down to the courtyard.
He looked up, eyes raising high.
And he saw what a mortal was never meant to see.
He looked and the void look back.
The beast's face—if it had one—was a spiral of weeping eyes and gnashing wings. It saw not just flesh, but thoughts, the Aura of the Queen of Severance protected him from deconstructing into particles of shadow and memories.
Still, Ran felt his memories boil. His name unstitched.
Gasping and clawing at his throat, his tongue tried to speak in another voice, and choked on burning salt.
That was what the ashes were, somehow salt had been carbonized and turned into a rain of ashes and pain.
From the palace spires and walls, he caught a glimpse of warlords unleashing firestorms and chain-lightning.
Commands were shouted in forbidden tongues. It did nothing. The creature absorbed magic like breath, learning.
Then it struck the palace.
One tendril lanced through ten spires, dragging them into itself. Another unfurled across the skull-shaped plaza, spraying ichor that burrowed into stones and made them scream.
From where he was, Ran felt the tremor travel up from the surface of the rooftop, up his legs to his skull.
The palace—miles wide, bone-carved and eternal—groaned.
It was losing.
Then the bell tolled.
Not for morning.
Not for tasks.
For war.
Taking the risk, as his life depended on it, Ran placed all his hopes and prayers on Mukoku's protective aura and jumped.
He fell, and it felt like time slowed for him while continuing at normal pace for everyone else.
Descending in a supine position, his eyes roamed everywhere around him.
And he saw.
He bore witness to what happened when demons and eldritch powers clashed.
He witnessed how reality suffered as a consequence.
Ancient demons the size of cathedrals rose from molten pits.
Forgotten generals donned armor grown from regret and a thousand emotions of damned souls manifesting.
The sky cracked, the fabric of space vibrated.
And a huge winged horror rose—a Demon Duchess, a body of shrieking nullification—and screamed into the creature's tendrils, shattering stone for miles and miles ahead.
Ran continued to fall and the palace fell with him.
A collapsed archway rushed passed him, shattering at it went in audible booms. Blood filled his ears, eyes blind from smoke.
He whispered, "Not again…"
Because this wasn't the first time. The Book of Calidation had explained this.
They should be extinct, caged, seal…
Now he remembered the conversation he'd eavesdropped on.
Something had broken out of its seal. They talked about the Lagarakei.
He remembered it from the Book of Calidation.
The Horrors of Hell. They should be extinct, gone. But now they have broken free.
Just when he decided to come to hell, history was broken like clay jar.
Now the Lagarakei have returned.
Before they would come. Every thousand years, they always came.
Not to conquer.
Not to speak.
Just to remind Hell itself—that hell has nightmares.