The transition from Purgatory's mist to the hellish office corridor was a violent, wrenching pull. For a split second, my soul felt like it was being unraveled, destroyed. The world dissolved into a silent, black void.
I wasn't unconscious. I was nowhere, between reality and fiction.
I was standing in an endless, dark space. The air was cold and still. And I was not alone.
Six other figures stood in a loose circle. My face. My eyes. My body. But each was a distortion. One radiated arrogance. Another pulsed with pure fury. One stared with hollow, wanting eyes, while another watched with a predatory smirk. One looked bored to tears, and one nervously counted something in the air. A seventh stood apart, larger, with a vacant look as he chewed on nothing.
The arrogant one spoke first, his voice a cold echo of my own.
"Wonderful. The weakest link finally snaps and drags us into his ugly mess."
The wrathful one took a step forward, his anger a tangible heat. "If I'm stuck here because of you, I'll—"
"Save your energy," the slothful one mumbled, not even looking up. "It's a shared hallucination. Just wait it out."
"Where are we?" I asked, my voice sounding small.
The greedy one ignored me, muttering to himself. "No discernible assets. The ROI on this interaction is zero."
My eyes moved from one to the next. The truth was in their eyes. They lacked the hollow ache that had lived in my chest for a lifetime.
"You have parents," I said. It wasn't a question.
The lustful one laughed. "And you don't. We know. We can feel the hole in you. It's... loud."
The envious one looked at me, not with pity, but with a strange, cold curiosity. "Your suffering is so much more... complete than ours. It's almost impressive... I'm jealous of you."
They didn't care. My tragedy was just a point of data to them. A flaw in the pattern. I was the only broken one.
The larger one, Gluttony, stopped chewing. His vacant eyes focused on me. "You're empty,"
he stated, his voice a wet rumble.
"You have room for more."
He raised a hand. The chains on my wrists, the ones from my Kephriel, glowed a faint blue. Then, new chains erupted from the darkness around him—thicker, heavier, forged from black iron and despair. They slammed into my own, reforging them, reinforcing them. A wave of cold, immense power flooded through me. The Mindbreaker aura around me intensified, becoming a visible, chilling mist.
"The pain is a gift," Gluttony said, as my new chains settled. "Feed it."
Before I could process the change, he opened his mouth wide. Not to eat us, but to consume the moment itself. A silent scream pulled at the very fabric of the void.
The other Rafs began to flicker, their forms unraveling into streaks of light and memory.
"What is this?!" Wrath yelled, his fury turning to panic.
"He's the god of loneliness... you don't have him... you didn't suffer enough," Gluttony said, his voice now a cavernous echo.
"Crap! I'm so jealous..." the Envious one whispered, his form dissolving into nothing.
Their voices were sucked into the void along with their bodies—all of it devoured into a red jar near him.
I was the only one left standing, my new chains glowing faintly, the memory of the others already feeling like a distant, fading dream.
Gluttony looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something like kinship in his empty eyes.
"He chose you too," he rumbled. "The God of Loneliness. He doesn't bother with those who are full. Those who have families... love... things to lose." He patted his own chest.
"He only comes for the empty ones. The ones who are already alone. The ones who have nothing left but room for him... like me... and you."
He looked up. The void above us was a massive, scaly eyelid. It slid open. A single, colossal eye, glowing with cold blue fire, looked down. We were standing on Gluttony Kephriel's palm.
"My Kephriel got bigger because I never stopped feeding him," Gluttony said.
"I gave him everything. Everyone. Your Kephriel is still small. Still hungry. You're holding back."
He sighed, a sound like grinding stones.
"Be proud of the upgrade I gave you... you'll need it."
He chuckled, a low, terrible sound.
"I apologize, but... you're the key. So, I have to get a piece of your soul to get out of here...
i made you stronger so... its a fair trade."
The giant eye focused on me, and the voice that echoed in my skull was ancient and hungry.
"Let go."
"I won't," I mumbled, looking up at the colossal eye.
The hand beneath us began to close, fingers like continents curling inward to squash me.
"Then... perish."
The darkness consumed everything. The pressure was immense, final. My new chains screamed as they strained against a god's grip.
And then, a different voice cut through the void. Familiar. Amused. And infinitely closer.
*ONTO THE NEXT ONE*
The universe wrenched. The crushing pressure vanished. The colossal eye and the giant hand disappeared, replaced by the nauseating sensation of ethereal chains pulling me through reality itself.
I landed hard on cold linoleum, back in the sterile, fluorescent-lit office hallway. Lamia, Dao, Niran, Preecha, and Julia were staring at me, their faces pale with shock. I had only been gone for a second.
Kephriel stood beside me, examining his own wrist as if checking a non-existent watch. The chains around his arms glowed with a satisfied blue light.
He looked down at me, a wicked and smug grin spreading across his face.
"One soul spent," he said. "A rather gluttonous one, at that."