The silence of the blood river did not last more than the blink of an eye, then the place suddenly recoiled as if someone had breathed another spirit into it — a moving black breath, an ancient mockery older than death itself. The air shivered, and sounds rang out like massive chains being dragged across old stone.
Ashen could not feel any part of his body clearly; he was like a piece of wood dipped into a vat of red paste: heavy, unable to move, every joint screaming in pain. But his consciousness kept resisting, clinging to a small part of himself like holding a rope before a final fall.
Then a sound came from the ceiling, not just a sound — a metallic rustle that heralded the fall of hundreds of chains.
These chains were not ordinary: they were not just cold iron, but stained with old blood, carved with ancient runes of dried blood, and at their ends were hook-like barbs, mouths sharp enough as if made to catch human flesh and to suck out intentions.
A roar burst out of him as the first chain was supposed to be pulled.
He did not only see it fall — he felt it, as if the whole air became the sensation of a cold touch biting into the skin of his back. The first hook plunged into his chest, crushing, like an iron sting entering flesh that had not healed.
"Ah!"
A torn cry escaped him, swallowed by the whispers that still hissed in his ear: traitor… weak…
But the chain was not alone — other chains descended, swung, and sank into a thigh, a shoulder, a back, pulling.
Each chain represented a name; each iron thread had a history, a melody of curse. With every plunge a spirit of his clan rushed and was planted inside him as a killing intent.
At first the pain was physical: violent tears in flesh, splits turning into scars, strips of flesh pulled and thrown.
But the inner pain was more terrible: every time a chain sank in, a voice came from it — a brother's voice, a mother's voice, a elder's voice — directly accusing his heart: "Because you survived, because you failed, because you were weak."
The chains pulled his body in opposite directions as if the place itself tried to tear away his human unity.
One chain pulled his shoulder, another wrapped his thigh, one pushed his chest inward, another exposed him until his bones felt like a display board. Each pull was a wound, every wound a whisper, every whisper a curse.
Then the injections began — not medical injections, but a rain of intentions.
From the hook barbs flowed black threads, not always visible to the eye, felt as a cold creeping into the vessels. Those threads entered the cracks in his body, seeping deep into his blood; each thread carried an idea: revenge, hatred, mutilation, killing without reason, the erasure of humanity.
Each push of intent came with a phrase born from the depth of regret: "If only you had been stronger…" — "If only you had not left us…" — "If only you were not—"
The messages were short, lethal, repeated like a slow pulse carving an unhealing wound inside him.
Ashen tried to scream, to wrench the chains, to cut them with what remained of his strength. But the chains made of collective desire were more than a sword or an axe; they were a curse carrying recordings of dying eyes, silent hands, and stopped hearts.
He was forced to bend, and images appeared in his mind — each image summed a moment of his clan's fall: faces rising in horror, screams, fire, the last moments when they looked at him and he could not push them away.
And each time he remembered one of them, the chain carved a deeper message: "You did not share our fate, therefore be damned."
Days lost meaning, and hours melted in an endless loop of pulling, injections, and whispering.
In one of those moments, he felt as if everything snapped: the sounds calmed, the pain receded, and the chains rested for a few seconds as if in contemplation. Then the loudest whisper came: "Forget your humanity."
Here his last spikes of resistance collapsed.
Ashen, who had devoted his life to preserving his clan, was now surrounded by a piece of hanging flesh on which their images were fixed, and by a hook that re-sketched the features of an unending curse.
The bleeding from his body did not stop. Blood mixed with the oil smeared on the old chains, becoming glossy like a mirror. From the mirror came a single sight: his reflection — or what remained of it — staring at him with eyes that no longer judged.
Regret, which had been an internal idea, became now a shout, a needle, a blade cutting everything.
Each chain that plunged broadcast into him a fragment of the clan's curses: "Take revenge, or never be human again."
"Abandon your mercy now!"
Then came the climax: a fleeting calm, as before a storm. Ashen felt deep exhaustion, as if all the remaining energy in his body had melted away. The chains lifted him slightly off the ground, then clamped down on him with equal force, binding his limbs in a way that left no room to breathe.
At that moment, while air left his lungs and cold sweat soaked his scarred skin, an inner voice appeared — not the voice of the chains this time, but something else: a low, old, familiar whisper, as if coming from the root of his bloodline: "Clinging to regret is not vengeance… it is continuous death."
This time was the meeting of two forces: the clan's intent demanding revenge, and the Primordial Blood's ability in which seeds of devouring had long been planted.
The chains thought they were taking him, but in truth they had created an ideal environment to plant something else — to plant a final test: would Ashen accept being slaughtered by regret, or would he turn it into a weapon and use it for himself?
The fusion of torment became strikes upon his heart; each departing strike cut a span of his humanity, but another span of power rose from the depths.
In a moment that could not be precisely distinguished, his awareness began to crack — not to get lost, but to transform. Things he cared about grew distant: family images, intimate memories — everything retreated behind a thick layer of frozen rage.
While the chains roared and pushed him toward madness, a different roar was born. It was not the beastly roar from the calcium arena; it was the roar of a captive regaining awareness in the form of a cold threat.
Ashen opened his mouth; a broken, torn sound came out, but it was a declaration: "If you want me to be a monster… I will be the monster. My revenge will make the world bleed—"
Then he released another roar, harsher, deeper.
It was a cry of surrender and rage at once.
The chains trembled.
The clan's whispers fell into a brief silence.
But the suffering did not end; it was only the beginning.
Ashen was now a different person — a torn body carrying inside it a legacy of regret and brutality together. He was no longer just a victim. Something began to grow inside him: an armed anger, a desire to turn regret into a weapon, but it was a hard desire, merciless.
His eyes hung in the air, and he knew he would change more than they expected. He would learn how to wear the murderous intent, how to refine it, how to make it a tool — but the price was a dark ally: part of his measured humanity.
Then the light faded slowly, and the chains pulled his body back to the center of the place, wrapping around him like a living coffin. The clan's whispers became a distant tune, and the sound of approaching footsteps from far away announced the end of one cycle and the start of another — but Ashen, now at the heart of this darkness, might see something he had never seen before: not just blood that cleanses, but fires that transform.