The darkness was not the absence of light. It was a presence heavy, crushing, alive.
I opened my eyes and found no ground beneath me, only a vast black void that swirled like oil over deep water. The last thing I remembered was my son's scream, the flash of teeth, and then… nothing.
Yet here I was. Still thinking. Still feeling. Still… existing.
The air if it could be called that reeked of something worse than rot. It was grief made tangible, despair fermented over centuries. It clung to me, soaking into my skin until I felt like I was made of it.
Shapes moved in the dark. They were not human. Not demon. Not animal.
I saw a head human at first glance but its jaw split open into four petal-like flaps lined with glistening teeth. Something long and wet coiled out, latching onto another shadow and ripping it apart in silence. The victim's body dissolved into pale wisps, sucked into the attacker's mouth like smoke.
That was when I understood This was a place where the dead devoured the dead.
The ground beneath me solidified without warning, black stone slick with a crimson sheen. Something warm trickled down its cracks. I didn't want to know what it was.
Above, there was no sky. Only an inverted ocean of pale spirits, writhing as unseen hooks dragged them screaming into the dark.
And then… I saw him.
The crowd of twisted spirits parted as if compelled, and a figure emerged from the distance — tall, regal, beautiful in a way that hurt to look at. His hair was a silken black that seemed to drink the light from everything around it, and his eyes… they were not eyes. They were twin eclipses, voids within voids, with a faint ring of dying starlight around them.
He walked as though the Abyss itself bowed to him. And perhaps it did.
The air grew colder the closer he came, until frost formed along the edges of my vision. I could not move. My spirit felt pinned in place, like a fly beneath a needle.
When he finally stood before me, I understood what this place was.
The Abyss was not fire, nor brimstone, nor the crude torture mortals imagined in their scriptures. It was a **slaughterhouse for souls** a realm where every moment was another butchery, another feast. And at its heart stood **Lucifer**, not the serpent of Eden, but something infinitely older.
His voice slid into my mind, soft yet absolute:
"You died. And yet, you are here. That means you are mine."
Behind him, I saw the truth mountains of broken spirits, their faces twisted in agony, their bodies shredded and fused into grotesque statues. Rivers of pale essence ran between them, feeding colossal, worm-like beasts that floated through the air, their segmented bodies pulsing with stolen life.
I wanted to speak. To ask where my son was. But my mouth… was gone.
Lucifer tilted his head, studying me like a craftsman examining a rare and flawed gem.
"You carry grief deeper than most. Rage, too. I can taste it. In this place, such things are not burdens… they are currency."
He extended a hand. Long fingers, each tipped with a faintly glowing claw, sharp enough to slice thought itself.
"You may wander the Abyss until something stronger consumes you. Or… you can take my hand, and devour instead."
Somewhere in the distance, I heard the wet tearing of another soul being ripped apart, its scream abruptly cut short. The ground shook as one of the floating worms descended, its eyeless head splitting open to reveal a pit of grinding teeth. It swallowed the remains and rose again, leaving only silence.
I looked at Lucifer's hand. Then at the darkness beyond him.
I thought of my son's smile. Of the green sky. Of the teeth that took him from me.
And without knowing why… I reached out.
The moment my hand touched his, the Abyss breathed and I felt it sink into me like a thousand hooks.
Before I could even take a step toward him, the words clawed their way out of my throat. "Why? Among all the souls here why me? Why would a god of your level choose a mortal like me? It makes no sense."
Lucifer's eyes two voids shimmering faintly like dying stars turned toward me. His smile was not warm, nor was it cruel; it was something far more unsettling: the smile of someone who had seen every possible future and still found only one that amused him.
"You think I chose you because you are strong?" he said, his voice rolling through the abyss like a slow, inevitable tide. "Strength is common. Even here, among the shredded remnants of warriors, kings, and conquerors, I could pluck a thousand blades sharper than yours ever was. And you think I chose you because you are righteous? Foolish. Righteousness breaks faster than bone."
He stepped closer, and the ground beneath him pulsed alive, breathing. The abyss seemed to lean in to listen.
"No… I chose you because you are *ruined*," Lucifer continued, his tone quiet yet inescapable. "You carry a wound so deep it gnaws at your soul even here. You have nothing left to cling to, nothing left to fear losing. Men with hope can be broken. Men with nothing can be *shaped*."
He tilted his head, studying me as though I were a blade he intended to forge. "In the moment your son's blood touched your skin, you stopped belonging to the world of men. Your rage, your despair, your willingness to throw yourself at an enemy you could not possibly defeat those are the threads from which I weave my contracts. You are a perfect vessel for war, because you have already been hollowed out."
His smile widened, almost imperceptibly. "And lastly… you asked *why you*?" He leaned in close enough for his whisper to chill my bones. "Because I saw what you will become… and it terrified even me."
Lucifer straightened, his gaze drifting beyond me toward the vast expanse of his dominion.
"If you are to serve me… firstly, we must strengthen your soul."
I turned, finally taking in what lay beyond the obsidian pillars of his throne room.
The Abyss was not fire and brimstone it was something far worse.
A sky of shifting flesh-colored clouds pulsed like the inside of a dying beast, their shapes writhing as if birthing faces that screamed silently before melting back into formless horror. The ground beneath was a patchwork of bone and blackened stone, stitched together by rivers of thick, ink-like liquid that carried glowing fragments souls, drifting aimlessly before being swallowed by the dark currents.
Monstrous silhouettes wandered the horizon some so tall their heads vanished into the shuddering sky, others crawling on all fours with limbs too long and too thin to be anything natural. They tore at each other without reason, their wounds spilling not blood but threads of pale light that were greedily devoured by the earth itself.
Closer to the throne rose the Black Spire Castle a monument of jagged onyx and veins of molten shadow. Its spires twisted into impossible angles, stabbing into the flesh-sky like spears piercing a god. Windows were not windows but open maws, breathing faint whispers that echoed like the memories of the damned.
Lucifer's voice cut through the grotesque symphony.
"To strengthen a soul… you must feed it. Hunt. Tear. Devour. Only then will my mark not destroy you."
He gestured toward the horizon. "Bring me the soul of a lesser shade. Alone."
The air in the Abyss was heavy not with heat, but with weight, as if each breath I took was being pulled from my lungs by unseen claws. I moved through the wasteland, past cracked plains where tendrils of shadow slithered just beneath the surface.
Then I saw it my prey. A lesser shade, twisted into a mockery of a man, its translucent body flickering like a dying candle. It stood over another spirit, tearing it apart, each bite releasing bursts of pale-blue light that it swallowed whole.
The moment it saw me, it let out a screech that rattled my bones.
I didn't wait. I lunged.
Its claws ripped into my arm, and pain soul-pain, nothing like flesh tore through me. But rage burned deeper. I slammed it to the ground, hands gripping its throat, and forced my will into it. The shade's body writhed and convulsed as I pulled, not on its flesh, but on the core of what it was.
The taste of it if taste could exist without a tongue was bitter, burning like swallowing molten iron and frost at the same time. It clawed at me until nothing was left, only a fading echo of its scream lingering in the air.
I staggered back toward the castle, that soul now inside me, writhing against my own like a trapped animal.
Lucifer waited, seated upon his throne, eyes like deep wells that saw everything.
Without a word, he motioned for me to kneel.
"Open yourself," he commanded.
I obeyed and that was when it began.
His hand, pale as moonlight yet shadowed at the edges, pressed against my chest. The moment he touched me, something vast and ancient poured into me his essence, thick and crushing, like the weight of a thousand oceans pressing against my soul.
The stolen shade's soul inside me screamed, thrashing as Lucifer's energy burned through it, stripping it, remolding it. The sensation was beyond pain it was reconstruction, every fragment of me being shattered and reforged at once.
My vision bled into black and crimson. My bones felt like they were turning to glass, my thoughts scattering like ashes in a storm. My soul felt stretched too small to contain what he was forcing into it until it tore, and I felt something new filling the empty spaces.
Every nerve if a soul even had nerves lit up with raw agony. It was the feeling of being flayed alive from the inside out, but also of being rebuilt stronger, denser, more real than before. My scream was not my own voice it was something deeper, older, dragged from the very marrow of existence.
Then, slowly, the agony dulled not because it stopped, but because I was becoming used to it. I could feel my soul knitting back together, now heavier, sharper, pulsing with a power that had never been mine.
Lucifer's hand withdrew. His smile returned cold, knowing.
"Good… Now, you will not crumble when I give you more."