This life had been a nightmare, an endless cycle of blood and despair from which there was no escape. Each passing day became a cruel reminder of our powerlessness, an invisible chain binding us to an unforgiving fate. We had no choice but to accept the inevitability and fight, tooth and nail, for a survival that felt more like punishment than hope.
Even if I had stood face-to-face with God and hurled my rage, my pain, my pleas at Him, He would not have listened. God was merely a distant spectator, an indifferent observer watching our suffering from an unreachable throne.
No matter how deep our despair, how deafening our screams, He would not have stirred. His silence was a verdict, a reminder that it was us, and only us, who had to carve our path through this hell.
I was the sole architect of my fate, that vile, oppressive destiny crushing me under the weight of a mountain. I would fight to the end, to the very edge of the abyss, until not a single breath of life remained in me, though every step on this path was paved with blood and sacrifice. There was no other choice. My will was the only thing keeping me upright, a fire that refused to be extinguished.
"Ahh!"
A scream tore through the silence. Blood, hot and thick, splattered across a white marble wall, leaving a crimson trail that slid slowly to the floor. The echo of the impact reverberated through the chamber, a grim prelude to the carnage surrounding us, already tainting the air with its metallic, nauseating stench.
"Help!"
A severed hand, still twitching in its final spasms of pain, fell to the ground beside two eyeballs that rolled with a wet, grotesque sound, leaving a viscous trail of coagulated blood. The horror of the scene was almost unbearable, but there was no time to pause and dwell. Survival demanded action, not contemplation.
"Ah!"
A man collapsed against the wall, his body sliding slowly to rest on the polished marble floor. His head hung at an utterly unnatural angle, and his hands, outstretched toward the ground, trembled weakly as if still grasping for the last vestiges of life slipping through his fingers.
A gaping, bloody hole in his chest revealed the glistening sheen of his internal organs, while half of his left leg was gone, torn off by some inhuman force. Blood poured relentlessly from the wound in his chest and the stump of his leg, forming a dark pool that spread slowly, reflecting the dim light like a macabre mirror distorting images of death. Beside him, a rusted, notched sword was embedded in the ground, its blade stained with dried blood.
"N… No!"
The scream choked into a desperate gurgle. Further ahead, the scene grew even more grotesque and heart-wrenching. Several bodies lay lifeless, scattered like broken dolls on a battlefield forsaken by the gods and abandoned by hope.
The corpse of a blonde woman, cleaved in half, lay in a pool of thick, coagulated blood. Her internal organs, exposed and mangled, spilled onto the cracked floor, mingling with the blood to form a gruesome tapestry of flesh and bodily fluids.
A few steps away, the headless body of a man lay slumped, his arms outstretched as if still reaching for something unattainable in his final moments of agony.
Further still, the head of that same man rolled alone, its eyes wide open, frozen in an expression of absolute terror, as if in its last instant it had seen the very face of death approaching to claim it.
Around them, more corpses in equally horrific states filled the scene with their silent, accusing presence. Some had their torsos split open like bloody books, others were mutilated in ways that defied human imagination and comprehension.
Their weapons lay scattered around them, some still clutched by hands stiffened by rigor mortis, as if even in death they refused to surrender to the inevitability of their fate. The chamber where this senseless slaughter unfolded was imposing in its architecture, with high ceilings that seemed to vanish into eternal darkness.
The walls, a metallic gray, were adorned with intricate concentric circles and geometric patterns evoking advanced technological design forgotten by lost civilizations.
Yet now, those walls were defiled by splashes of blood that dripped slowly, leaving crimson trails sliding to the floor, as if the chamber itself wept tears of blood for the lives lost within.
"Aaaahh! S-someone… Please help me!" cried a woman with navy-blue hair, brandishing a trembling spear in her right hand.
But her desperate plea was utterly in vain. In an instant shorter than a blink, something too fast for the human eye tore her left arm clean off, and blood splattered her white tunic, spraying into the air like a crimson rain that painted her face with droplets of her own life.
"Ugh! I don't want to die like this, so pathetically!" shouted a man in a tattered robe and a hood that partially concealed his terror-stricken face.
His hands, outstretched with fingers clenched in concentration, emitted arcs of blue lightning that shot toward the ground with tremendous force, aimed directly at the monster dominating the center of the chamber.
But his desperate effort was utterly futile. A thick, pale blue tail sliced through his waist without mercy, as if his desires and will to live held no weight in the balance of death.
Another man attempted to flank the humanoid giant from the left, wielding two warhammers, each the size of a small table. He was over forty, with a rugged face and prominent mustaches that gave him the air of a veteran hardened by a thousand battles.
His bare torso revealed a robust, sun-tanned body with incredible, chiseled muscles, like those of a titan forged in the fires of war. With an explosive shout that echoed through the chamber, he spun like a destructive whirlwind, swinging his hammers with a force that seemed capable of leveling entire mountains.
But a pale blue scythe, as long as a cavalry lance, sliced half his face in an instant, and blood rained into the air as his massive body fell lifeless, like a felled tree.
"Damn it!" cried another dying man, his words drowning in his own blood.
From the other flank, another scythe cleaved from top to bottom through the torso of an attacker who had fully charged his strike but never had the chance to unleash it before death claimed him.
All fell under the relentless fury of the monster's scythe-like arms, which swept through the chamber like a bloodthirsty tornado, reaping lives without discrimination or mercy.
I observed the massacre with the coldness I had cultivated over years. Each death was a reminder of what I already knew: in this world, only the fittest survived. Compassion was a luxury we could not afford.
"Don't break formation! That thing is specifically targeting those straying from the main group!" I shouted, my gaze fixed on the monster dominating the chamber with its terrifying presence. "Don't let it move freely! KathyIn, now!"
KathyIn reacted instantly, like a war machine, and drove her crimson sword into the marble floor. A wave of icy energy surged from the blade like a tsunami of cold, and the chamber's temperature plummeted abruptly, as if winter itself had stormed in to claim its dominion.
The floor around us was coated in a layer of glistening, treacherous ice, trapping the humanoid monster's thick legs and long, scaly tail in a crystalline prison. The creature, a colossus over three meters tall with translucent blue skin, froze in place, its body partially encased like a nightmare statue.
In its right hand, stained with the blood of its victims, it held a severed human head from which protruded a pale blue scythe, sharp as death's edge and seemingly vibrating with a thirst for more blood.
"Hurry! I can't keep it immobilized like this for long, Raymond!" KathyIn shouted, her voice laden with urgency as her breath condensed in the frigid air like small clouds of vapor.
"Let's go, Eric!" Raymond responded with ironclad determination.
Raymond was an imposing man, tall and robust, with bronzed skin that seemed to have absorbed the sun's fury. His long, chestnut hair, neatly combed back, contrasted with the shaved sides of his head, creating a bold style that amplified his commanding presence.
His bare torso revealed a tattoo on his back: the silhouette of a golden tiger, majestic and fierce, that seemed to come alive under the dim light. His hands were enveloped in two glowing purple spheres of energy, crackling with sparks and electric flashes.
"Don't order me around, idiot! I can handle my own business perfectly well!" Eric snapped back, an older man with weathered dark skin and black, disheveled, braided hair hanging in uneven strands like dark serpents.
He wore a white tunic, now torn and stained with his own and others' blood. His face, etched with deep wrinkles like furrows in the earth, reflected a mix of hard-earned authority and accumulated exhaustion, as if he carried the weight of too many battles on his shoulders. In his hand, he wielded a sword whose blade glowed with a mesmerizing silver sheen, ready to cut through any obstacle.