It wasn't hell.
Hell had rules. Fire. Punishment. Order.
Kurozume's domain was chaos wrapped in silence — a place where the laws of reality had been forgotten, rewritten by emotion and decay. The Hollow Sanctum stretched beneath the earth like a cancer, pulsing with the memories of every soul that had ever regretted being born.
The walls were alive.
Not with flesh — with feeling. They wept. They whispered. They bled shadows that slithered across the floor, feeding on stray thoughts. The air was thick with sorrow, heavy enough to drown in. Every breath tasted like guilt.
The ground was made of broken altars — shattered symbols of faith, love, and hope. Statues of faceless gods lay in ruin, their mouths open in silent screams. The deeper one walked, the louder the silence became.
Kurozume didn't rule this place.
He was this place.
He had no throne. No crown. He was the fog that clung to your skin. The voice that echoed your worst memory. The shape that formed in the corner of your eye when you thought you were alone.
He fed on emotion — not just fear, but the kind that humans buried deep:
The shame of betrayal. The lust that turned to loathing. The rage that never found release. The grief that soured into madness.
Every corridor led nowhere. Every door opened to a reflection — not of the body, but of the soul. Ayane and Momiji would feel it before they saw it. Their regrets would rise like ghosts, clawing at their minds, whispering truths they refused to face.
And Ryu?
He would be welcomed.
Not as a hero. Not as a killer.
But as a brother.
The Grip of Murder would pulse in harmony with the Sanctum's heartbeat. Kurozume would not fight him. He would embrace him. Invite him to stay. To become part of the domain. To finally stop running.
But Ryu wasn't ready to die.
Not yet.