⚠️ This chapter contains intense psychological horror and gore. Reader discretion advised.
His throat burned like battery acid.
He dropped to his knees on cold stone.
A church?
No.
A mausoleum.
Huge. Circular. Lit only by flickering candlelight and humming, unnatural sigils carved into the marble walls.
The air stank of wet meat and rotting flowers.
In the center was an altar.
And on that altar—lay him.
Elias blinked.
No—he wasn't on the altar. He was watching himself on it. Naked. Eyes wide open. Not breathing. Not blinking.
As if waiting.
The robed figure standing over him looked like a cardinal, or maybe an executioner. Hooded in crimson. Face wrapped in bandages soaked in old blood. Its hands gloved in human skin sewn together like patchwork.
It turned to Elias and gestured politely, like a butler at a fancy dinner party.
"Please," it rasped. "Lay yourself down. We've been fasting for this."
Elias tried to run.
He didn't move.
His body wouldn't obey. His legs walked forward on their own, shaking, twitching like marionette limbs.
He climbed the steps to the altar.
Lay down beside his own corpse.
And the figure leaned close.
Whispered:
"Which version shall we peel today?"
Then it raised a scalpel. Bone-handled. Serrated. Slightly too curved.
It didn't start with the skin.
It started with the toes.
One by one.
Snapping each off like pretzels. Not cutting. Not sawing. Snapping. Bone cracking. Ligaments tearing.
Then the heels.
It peeled back his Achilles tendons like strings of mozzarella, exposing the bone underneath—splintered, still twitching with nerve endings.
Elias screamed. He begged. He screamed again.
His voice echoed up to the ceiling—and came back as laughter. His own laughter.
Then came the hands.
The figure peeled his fingernails one by one with the edge of a coin.
Old Roman coin. Rusted. Still marked with blood from past rituals.
Each nail removal felt like a razor slicing through his spine.
The pain radiated like wildfire.
And then came the eyes.
But this time—it didn't take them out.
It took the eyelids.
Just the lids.
Slid a thin wire under the skin, looped it, and pulled until the upper lids ripped clean off. Elias's eyes remained wide, unblinking, exposed to candlelight, dust, pain, air.
Everything burned.
And still, he couldn't die.
The figure reached into a bag made of scalp-skin, pulling out a maggot-covered heart.
The figure placed it on his chest. Then picked up a hammer.
And nailed the heart to his ribs.
Each hit was like a car crash. Bone cracking. Tissue snapping. Blood soaking him like rain.
He wanted to pass out. He begged to pass out.
He couldn't.
Finally, the figure leaned down and whispered:
"You think this was bad?"
Then it drove a nail through his tongue.
The world went black.
He woke up in a surgical theater.
An old one. Rusted metal railings. Bone-white tiles covered in yellow stains and brown handprints.
Giant rusted surgical lights flickered overhead, humming with an electric buzz so sharp it sounded like it could carve bone.
The entire room smelled like sterilized death—a mixture of rubbing alcohol, iron, burned hair, and festering wounds.
He was strapped down to a surgical table with hooks.
Not belts.
Hooks.
Shoved straight into his joints—knees, elbows, shoulders, ankles—keeping him pinned open like a frog in a biology class.
The table beneath him was tilted slightly forward, forcing him to watch everything that was about to happen.
And standing before him were three surgeons.
One had no eyes, only empty sockets stuffed with pulsing leeches.
Another wore a porcelain mask of a smiling child, but beneath it, a human jaw hung loose, split at the center, held together with barbed wire.
The last one… had a mouth on its stomach. Rows and rows of teeth where its belly should've been. Chattering, hungry.
None of them spoke.
They just began.
The first incision was silent.
A scalpel down the center of his torso.
But it didn't cut skin—it unzipped it.
Like flesh had been waiting to open.
The insides didn't just spill out. They were lifted, cataloged. Each organ tagged and placed neatly on trays.
They removed his stomach first.
Set it in a dish.
Poked holes in it.
Then filled it with live cockroaches, sewing it shut and shoving it back in while they laughed quietly.
Then the lungs.
They took each one and sanded the insides with jagged metal wires.
They weren't trying to remove them.
They were trying to make them breathe blood.
Elias was still conscious. Still seeing. Still screaming, though his vocal cords had been sliced so the sound came out in gurgles.
They then took his eyes.
Cut them out—not with scalpels, but with ice cream scoops, twisting slowly until they popped free.
Then they placed insect larvae into the sockets and stitched them shut with fishing hooks.
They shaved his teeth down to the nerves.
Then they broke his jaw.
Unhinged it.
Tore it sideways like peeling a banana, until it hung in a direction jaws shouldn't even dream of going.
Then they pushed a rusted dental drill straight through the roof of his mouth—until it came out of his eye socket.
Elias couldn't even scream anymore.
His voice had become a wet hiss.
Like steam leaking out of a torn throat.
Then the worst part began:
They tore open his spine.
From the nape of his neck down to his tailbone.
They pulled the vertebrae out one by one—without anesthesia, without hesitation—and replaced them…
With spinning gears.
Rusty. Screeching. Mechanical. Not designed for bone.
Each turn scraped the inside of his body like a cheese grater running through his nerves.
He convulsed violently.
The nerves sparked.
Muscles snapped.
He could hear himself falling apart.
And then—
They turned the lights off.
Pitch black.
Except for a red light over his open chest.
It was a camera.
Recording.
And just before he passed out, the surgeons whispered:
"Let's do this again. But slower."
He woke up in himself.
Or rather—something that claimed to be him.
The floor beneath was fleshy, pulsing like a heartbeat. The walls of this new space weren't walls at all but tissue. Pink. Red. Veiny. The smell was fermented pus, so thick he gagged the moment he inhaled.
He wasn't lying down.
He was standing inside a cocoon, shaped like his own body, as if it had been skinned from the inside out.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't scream.
But he could feel.
Everything.
And that's when it began.
The first wave was gentle.
A single insect.
Thin. Almost elegant. Like a cross between a silverfish and a leech, with tiny centipede legs. It slithered out of a fleshy ceiling pore and dropped onto his chest, where it disappeared into the space between his ribs.
He felt it nest inside his left lung.
It scratched the inner lining for a few seconds…
Then began laying eggs.
Each egg was the size of a rice grain.
But they grew. Fast.
He could feel them expanding, multiplying, forming colonies. Dozens of tiny things crawling around in his lungs, until one of them—hatched.
It burst out the side of his neck like a snake breaking through an eggshell.
Flesh split.
Skin tore sideways.
The creature squirmed halfway out, then crawled back in, dragging in three more.
He fell forward, trying to vomit.
What came out was thick green foam, wriggling with microscopic worms.
Then the second wave began.
His arms started to move on their own.
Like puppets.
He looked down—his skin was bubbling. Boils. Some small, others like softballs.
And then, the boils started screaming.
Each one had a face.
His face.
Distorted. Twisted. Some were laughing hysterically, others sobbing, others just repeating the word "WHY?" again and again.
One of them bit into his shoulder.
He ripped the boil off. But when it popped, it sprayed larvae into his mouth.
He swallowed half of them by reflex.
The rest crawled into his ears.
They burrowed through his auditory canal until they reached his brain stem and began to bite.
The third wave was subtle.
He began to lose control of his body.
Not from outside. From inside.
He watched in horror as one of his arms twisted backward, the elbow bending the wrong way. Bone snapped out through skin. Flesh tore like wet tissue paper.
But no blood.
Instead, it was spider silk.
His bones were hollow now, stuffed with arachnid webbing. Something was building inside him.
And then—
Something crawled out of his eye.
Not through the tear duct.
Through the pupil.
As if something had grown behind his retina, pushing forward until it ruptured the eye from within.
It wasn't just a worm.
It was a limb.
And then another.
And another.
He screamed.
And the sound was joined by all of them—a symphony of agony, from every direction.
He collapsed, vomiting blood.
And when he looked at what he puked—
He saw hundreds of baby versions of himself squirming, gnawing at each other, begging him to "Please put us back."
He begged for death.
And he got it.
He awoke again—barely holding on to whatever was left of his sanity.
No screaming this time.
No flailing.
Just... shivering.
A stillness born not from peace, but from the complete erosion of hope.
He looked around.
A sterile white room.
Surgical lights.
Metallic gleam.
The floor had a faint tint of pink, like blood that had been cleaned too many times.
The air smelled like antiseptic. And copper.
And then—
He realized.
He was strapped to a steel operating table.
Naked.
Arms and legs stretched out and locked.
But not with cuffs—with tendons. His own.
His wrists were stitched into the table using his own ligaments, pulled taut through slits in the skin, like some kind of grotesque marionette.
He tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
He looked down—
His tongue was gone.
Just a cauterized stump left in its place. The pain hadn't even started yet.
That was just setup.
A figure approached.
Clad in surgical scrubs—only, instead of a mask, it wore his face. Not in a metaphorical sense.
It was literally Elias's face. Peeled off like a latex mask, stitched onto some other thing's skull.
The eyes behind it weren't human. Just black pits. Deep. Bottomless. Like sockets that looked back.
It didn't speak.
It just cracked its knuckles.
And wheeled over a surgical tray.
Tools.
A bone saw.
Scalpels.
Rusty scissors.
A melon baller.
A long, jagged icepick.
And... a meat grinder.
The first incision wasn't made with a scalpel.
It was made with forceps.
The surgeon inserted them through Elias's nostrils, prying upward until the cartilage snapped and he could feel his septum tearing like soggy paper. Blood flooded his sinuses. Breathing became gasps and whines.
Then, the surgeon peeled back his face.
Literally.
Starting from the forehead, down to the chin.
Skin came off like a mask.
Elias saw his own muscles twitching, every spasm visible as the air hit his raw nerves.
And he was awake. Fully awake.
No sedative.
No mercy.
Then came the eyes.
Not removed—replaced.
The being cut into his sockets and plucked out his eyeballs, then shoved in two glass marbles, etched with ancient runes. He could still see. But not the room.
He screamed through clenched teeth.
A sound like a dog choking on its own collar.
Then it moved to his fingers.
One by one, each nail was peeled back slowly using pliers.
Underneath wasn't flesh anymore—it was tubes of nerves, squirming like worms.
The surgeon inserted steel wires into each of them. The nerves began to dance.
Then it twisted his fingers backwards, 360 degrees, until the bones shattered and the skin unraveled like torn ribbon.
Still not done.
The hands were hollowed—bones scooped out, tendons rethreaded, muscles stuffed with leeches soaked in acid.
Elias watched his own fingers bloom into flowers made of agony.
Then—
everything turned black.
There was no sound anymore.
There was no breath, no whisper, no heartbeat.
Just a body.
A husk.
A hollowed-out shell of a boy who had died a million times, and somehow kept waking up.
Elias lay on the floor of that black void, the same place that had learned the shape of his blood, the pitch of his screams, the echo of his soul's last trembling gasps. His arms twitched now and then—not out of resistance, not anymore—but from the nerve endings that hadn't yet gotten the memo: we are done fighting.
His jaw hung slightly slack. His eyes were open, but they didn't see. They just looked. A soft fog glazed over them, not tears, just... absence.
His throat had long since given up on forming pleas or curses. It knew better now. The god wouldn't stop. The god didn't care. The god watched.
Elias didn't remember the last death. Or the one before. Or the thousand before that.
They had blurred into each other.
Serrated blades spinning through muscle like it was air.
Barbed wire tightening around his face until his eyes burst.
Liquid metal poured into his throat until he couldn't scream, couldn't breathe, only choke on heat and the smell of burning esophagus.
His fingernails had been pried off so many times he started to forget they were ever meant to exist.
They sewed rats into his abdomen.
They hollowed his chest and filled it with writhing, oil-slicked centipedes that chewed through the soft tissue and squirmed behind his eyes.
They turned him into a canvas. A stage. A punchline.
And still, he woke up.
Still, he breathed.
But now? He didn't scream.
He didn't cry.
He just was.
This was the kind of silence people prayed never to know. The kind of silence that didn't just ring in your ears—it replaced your ears.
Then, the void whispered. It was barely a sound. A ripple.
"This is fun."
It wasn't praise.
It wasn't sympathy.
It was amusement. Dry. Casual. Detached.
Elias didn't reply.
He couldn't.
But deep, somewhere in the dust and ash that used to be Elias Moreau, a voice whimpered.
Not out loud.
Just inside.
A child's voice. Frail. Forgotten. Curled up in the corner of his mind, holding its knees and rocking slowly.
"Please stop."
And even though the void had no features… it smiled.
The blackness rippled again.
Chains began to rise from beneath him.
They didn't bind him.
They didn't lift him.
They pulled through him.
Like veins of rusted steel erupting from his bones, dragging his nerves out with them.
And still, he lay there.
Blank.
Breathing.
Half-dead.
Not because he was strong.
But because he had no idea how to live or die anymore.
There was no sensation of travel.
No sound of wind.
No shift in light.
Elias simply blinked—what was left of his eyelids barely twitching—and when they opened, he was somewhere else.
He stood—if you could call it that—on a vast obsidian floor that cracked and pulsed like it was alive. The air wasn't air. It didn't move. It didn't carry breath. It just existed—thick, metallic, wrong.
Then, he saw it.
The throne.
It towered above him like a mountain made of bones and galaxies, dripping molten red from its sides, weeping black oil that hissed into the floor. Spikes jutted from its base—some were arms, others were spines, a few were still twitching.
And on that throne…
It sat.
The being—was beyond shape. Beyond reason. Its form shifted with every glance: a grotesque amalgamation of limbs and mouths and faces stitched over each other, rotating around a core of eyes that never blinked.
Its size was incomprehensible. Elias looked like a flea at its feet.
No—less.
He was a tired worm dragging its ruined body toward something that wasn't just bigger—it was infinite.
And the worst part?
There was no anger. No cruelty. Only joy.
The being was tormenting him because it hated him.
It did it because it could.
Because Elias mattered.
Somehow.
Somewhere.
At some point.
And now, the thing that saw time like threads and souls like ants, had decided that Elias needed to be unmade, again and again, until… what?
"Approach."
The voice wasn't loud. It didn't echo. It was in him. In his marrow. In his memories. In the dust between his atoms.
Elias didn't walk. His legs didn't work anymore.
But still, his body moved.
Dragged.
Pulled.
Crawled.
The being watched.
Its thousand faces didn't blink.
Its eyes just stared, unmoved.
A rotten choir of whispers hummed in the air:
"He lives again."
"He dies again."
Elias reached the foot of the throne. His face tilted upward—not from will, but from whatever thing deep inside him hadn't completely died yet.
And then, finally, after an eternity of silence...
The being leaned forward.
Its head—if it could be called that—descended from the throne like a collapsing star.
Its mouth—too wide, too wet, too wrong—opened slightly.
And in a voice that sounded like a billion mothers weeping at once, it whispered:
"You have died... one billion and six hundred seventy-four million times."
A pause.
"And you still cannot scream."
Elias didn't answer.
Couldn't.
He just stared.
Eyes hollow. Mouth slightly open. Like a puppet with its strings cut but still held upright out of habit.
The being extended one hand.
Each finger was made of limbs. Entire people. Twisting. Screaming. All Elias.
And then—
The finger descended.
Pressed gently on Elias's chest.
And he exploded.
Not outward.
Inward.
His organs crushed into each other. Bones folded like paper. His lungs shriveled like rotten fruit. His heart burst like a grape under a boot.
But he didn't die.
Not yet.
Because the being wanted him to feel it.
The flesh peeling from his ribs like sunburnt skin.
The nerves catching fire one by one like matchsticks.
His tongue unraveling like thread, sliding down his throat.
He twitched.
But didn't scream.
He only twitched.
And the being smiled.
"Still alive."
Then—
Snap.
Another death.
Then again.
And again.
He was just lying there.
Silent.
Not dead.
But used.
When these deaths stopped, Elias asked the being...
"If you really are this strong that you could kill me and make me feel the feeling of death so many times in my mind...
Tell me what's happening with these timeline, how did they combined and started from three years back...
Where's Sienna..."
The God replied "you care about her more than finding out why i did this to you ?"
Elias stood there.
"Become worthy enough, and meet the universe itself to get all your questions answered." the God said, voice slow, almost gentle.
The throne pulsed.
The darkness trembled.
Elias didn't move.
Not because he didn't want to.
Because he couldn't.
He had forgotten how.
Then Elias woke up in the grass again.
He was able to move now.
His body was fine, no scratches. nothing.
He started vomiting, His mind wasn't able to take all that.
And the only thought he had in his mind now was....
"I am going to find the universe....
And I am going to find you....
Sienna."