Eros woke with poison in his mouth and fear already moving through him.
He sucked in a ragged breath and sat up too fast. The chamber tilted, steadied, and came back into focus: cracked stone laced with green veins that pulsed like a sick heartbeat, columns leaning like broken teeth, dust hanging in the air as if the place refused to let anything rest. The hiss was still there, low and constant. It sounded like the room had lungs.
Apophis slid through it like a verdict.
The serpent's coils scraped across rubble in slow arcs, scales whispering against stone. One eye was a ruined pit leaking tar around the bolt still buried in it. The other was blind, milky, and cold. It didn't need sight. Eros could feel its attention on his skin, the way a storm notices a leaf.
He checked his chest out of habit, fingers brushing smooth skin. No scar. He sighed, bitter.
«Of course. Why keep score when the house always wins.»
The serpent's pale eyes fixed on him. Its voice slipped into his skull, heavy as a hammer.
Back again. Still breathing. How many times will you crawl before you learn?
It was not a question. It never was.
Eros forced himself to stand. The daggers slid into his hands. They felt small. His lungs wouldn't slow down, no matter how hard he tried.
«Last chance,» he thought. «One left. After this, nothing.»
"Fine," he said, because silence would feel like giving up. "Let's dance again."
The serpent didn't wait.
It moved—tail first. He threw himself aside, the wind of it clawing his back. Stone where he had stood erupted into shards. The head followed instantly, jaws slicing the air clean. He rolled behind a half-fallen drum and shoved his shoulder against it until it shifted. Venom splashed across the front and turned it to slurry.
He ran. Pillars crowded close around him. Every time Apophis brushed one, runes flared and spat sparks. The god twitched, annoyed but not slowed, as if the bindings were gnats on its skin. Eros cut hard right, then left, never straight for long. The giant head threaded between pillars with terrible grace, finding him by sound, by heat, by the taste of his fear.
He slashed when he could. Steel rang off stone, scraped scale, drew sparks. Once, he managed to bite under the hinge of the jaw and hot black blood sprayed his wrist. The serpent jerked, smashed a pillar with its skull, and the floor jumped under him. His teeth clacked together hard enough to cut his tongue.
"Keep laughing," he muttered. "I'm hilarious."
The tail swept across the chamber in a blur. It caught his hip and spun him. He rolled until rubble dug into his ribs. He dragged himself up, vision pulsing at the edges. He hurt everywhere, but pain meant he still existed.
The voice pressed into him again, bending his posture without touch.
You struggle well. Show me how long it matters.
"I'll tell you after," he rasped. "If you're still around to ask."
He grabbed a broken slab, jammed it into the serpent's path. When Apophis hit, the runes burst bright as foxfire. The shock rocked Eros back. The god recoiled a fraction, then pressed forward, arrogant enough to take pain as a tax.
The mouth opened. Heat that wasn't heat poured over him, wet and suffocating. Venom fell in sheets. He hit the ground flat. A drop landed on his shoulder and chewed through cloth and skin alike. The pain was sharp, personal. He tasted iron.
«Forget the pain. Think angles.»
A crack split the floor where three pillars met. He remembered it from dying here before. He ran for it, limping, and the serpent chased, filling his vision with coils and muscle. He planted a dagger in the fissure and levered until stone groaned. The god struck. The runes lit up and Apophis flinched from the bite of its own bindings.
"Hurry up," Eros growled. "Be proud. Be stupid."
The serpent obliged.
He dug at the crack again, left the dagger stuck like a nail in the floor, then rolled as the head came down. The fissure yawned wider. Not much. Enough to remind him this wasn't a fight he could win by being someone else.
The tail lashed sideways like a falling wall. It swept his legs. He hit chest-first, something in his sternum snapping. His arms gave when he tried to push up. His breath came in jagged shards.
Apophis didn't strike to kill. It toyed with him. A nudge of the head sent him sliding. A flick of the tail knocked his arms out from under him. He got up. The serpent put him down again. Its laughter rattled in the stone.
«Stop playing with me, damn god!»
Anger steadied him in ways nothing else could. He reached for the second dagger with bloody fingers. His grip was weak but enough. He faked a run, then stepped back in and shoved the blade into the soft seam under the ruined eye. Steel sank deep. He screamed without air in his chest.
Apophis reared, tearing the weapon from his grip. Black blood burned across his knuckles. The tail whipped him against a broken drum, folding him until he wheezed like a crushed bellows. He dropped to the floor, legs trembling.
He laughed once, sharp and broken. "Not done."
He got up again. Gravity pulled. He told it to wait.
The serpent lunged. He charged, not because it was smart but because waiting felt worse. He dove under a coil, aiming for the thick neck. The coil dropped instead, crushing him. His ribs popped like thin wood in frost. Pressure drowned his vision in white snow. He clawed anyway, tearing skin off his fingers for nothing.
The coil lifted a fraction. He pulled an arm free. It wasn't enough, but he used it. He clawed again. Something tore inside him, but it didn't matter.
"Let me go," he croaked.
The coil obeyed. Not mercy, just curiosity. He dropped like meat and crawled back to one knee, coughing red into the dust.
"I'm still here," he told the floor.
The god heard. The god always heard.
Its head dipped. Venom dripped. The voice hissed inside his skull.
End.
The first splash hit his cheek. His skin slid sideways. The next carved across his collarbone, clean as fire without flame. He knew burns; this was worse. It stripped him like he was nothing but surface.
He tried to roll. His back stuck. He pulled free and left himself behind. He screamed until he couldn't, throat dissolving into ruin. He reached for the spark in his belly, the ember that had saved him before. It climbed the venom, slipped, tried again, then guttered. Even it seemed to apologize as it died.
The serpent didn't hurry. It didn't need to.
He reached for his daggers and found only stone. He reached for sense and found only instinct: move, breathe, lie to yourself until you can't. When even that failed, when breath was gone and screaming was only memory, two truths stayed:
This body was finished.
He still didn't want to go.
The serpent's amusement was the last sound left. Then the world let him drop.
***
The dark caught him like water, cold and endless. It pressed into him, stripping warmth and thought alike. He drifted, or sank. It no longer mattered.
The Reader's Notes appeared anyway. Its cover cracked open. Pages turned with a patience that felt cruel.
Immortal Martyr waited. One ember smoldered, faint as a candle in wind. He cupped it with hands he no longer had.
«Stay. Just a little longer.»
The flame shook. Everything shakes at the end.
He had nothing left to bargain with, so he gave it truth.
«My life was a joke other people told. I grew up as a target. Classroom, hallway, yard—same game, different floors. In the detention center, my world was concrete and keys and the change in air before someone decided I owed them pain. People like Halix smile first, then count, then sell. That's the math I learned.»
Shadows in the void shifted like old faces. Not clear. Just weight. Locks, fists, laughter.
«Family?» He almost laughed. «They learned how not to see me. I learned how not to need them. Nobody's priority. Never was.»
Amanda cut through sharper than anything else. A kitchen at dusk. A plate slid across a table. A voice saying his name like it wasn't a problem. Eyes that rolled at the right moments. A hand that didn't leave.
«She's still gone. Maybe in this book. Maybe worse. Maybe just gone. I can't stand not knowing. I won't.»
The cold wanted that too.
He held what he could. Not hope. Hope was too fragile. What he had left was heavier.
«I don't want to die.»
It came out small. He said it again, bigger.
«I don't want to die. Not like this. I want to live. I want revenge.»
The void paused, listening.
He roared it. «I WANT TO LIVE!»
The ember quivered. Then it went out.
No sound. No light. Just absence.
Eros felt it close over him like a locked door. Cold poured in and claimed every place that had ever been warm.
«That's it. I'm the line no one bothered to finish reading.»
He almost laughed at himself. The thought sat down instead.
The dark didn't need to push. It already owned him.
So he kept saying it anyway. «I don't want to die. I want to live. I want revenge.» Over and over, heavier each time. The words sank. The void noticed.
Minutes passed. Hours. Maybe days? He couldn't tell. He only floated—or was it falling?—into the vastness of nothing, and his fragile mind felt close to breaking apart. He wanted to cry but couldn't. All that was left was despair, and time itself had gone blurry.
But that calm was broken.
A new voice, like a thunder, cut through the cold, clear as steel pulled from water.
"Interesting strength of spirit, boy."
Not mocking. Not kind. Just curious.
The dark loosened by a fraction.
Light cut a wound into it. It widened, and gravity returned. He fell.
***
He hit wet stone, the shock of real cold ripping through him. Air stabbed into lungs that worked again. He curled, coughing until his body proved it could.
Water slid nearby, black and thick, carrying the cavern's silence with it. Stalactites hung like spears, stalagmites rose to meet them, ribs closing the space around him. The quiet here didn't want to be broken.
He pushed up on raw hands. His belly scar ached like a bruise left on the inside.
A man sat on a boulder by the river.
Skin pale as bone. Hair black as midnight. Features too exact, as if carved to remove anything human. His eyes held steady, deep and wrong, dragging Eros's gaze until it hurt.
He turned a red apple in his hand and bit into it without hurry. The crunch echoed in a place that didn't like echoes. Juice ran down his thumb. He licked it clean, thoughtful, like he already knew the taste.
He smiled. The cavern didn't brighten. It shifted to fit him.
"Hello, Eros," he said, voice smooth as polished stone. "Welcome to the Underworld."