When Ashen opened his eyes, he found neither sky nor ground as he once knew them.
The world around him was a circle of living flesh, pulsing and breathing.
The air was red, thick like the scent of fresh blood, burning his lungs with every breath he took.
Everything he saw was moving — the ground trembled like a heaving chest, and the sky twisted like giant intestines hanging above him.
A steady sound, like the beat of an angry heart, filled the space.
Each pulse sent a wave of vibration through the ground, rising through his feet until it reached his skull.
> "Welcome to the Feast of Existence…"
The voice did not come from outside, but from within him.
The words echoed through his blood, not his ears, as if whispered by the world itself.
He realized then that this place was not just a trial — it was a living being, a massive heart that had been beating since eternity.
The sky above him opened like a fresh wound.
From it fell drops of thick blood that turned into trembling chunks of flesh before settling on the ground, only to be swallowed by the soil itself — as if the land was eating what fell from it to rebuild itself.
Ashen took a step forward.
The ground beneath his feet was soft and warm, as if it were absorbing him.
He felt a faint pulse running from the ground into his legs, making him shiver.
When he lifted his foot, the flesh stuck to his skin and left small bite marks that slowly faded, as though the earth had tasted him.
Then came the first whisper:
> "If you do not devour… you will be devoured."
The sentence came from every direction — from the air, from the earth, from inside his mind.
It crept into him like an ancient truth he had forgotten.
A strange hunger awoke within him.
It wasn't hunger of the stomach, but something deeper — a hunger for life itself.
Years passed — he could no longer count how many.
At first, the creatures appeared suddenly before him.
Twisted shapes with no faces, bodies made of flesh that screamed and stumbled toward him with endless mouths.
Ashen fought them instinctively, like an animal defending itself from predators.
Blood flooded the ground up to his ankles, then was slowly absorbed again, restoring the land to its former state.
Each time he killed a creature, something inside him diminished.
The day he decided to eat the flesh of one to survive, everything changed.
Its taste was bitter, rotten, but it gave his body a strange warmth — a power that allowed him to stand again after being near death.
At first, he felt disgust.
Then the hunger returned, again and again.
After a decade, eating had become a habit.
But one day, as he bit into the shoulder of a creature, he felt pain in the same spot on his own body.
He stopped and looked at the piece of flesh he was holding.
It bore a scar he knew too well — a scar carved into his own shoulder.
Silence fell in his mind for a moment, then realization struck like a cold blade:
> Those creatures… were parts of him.
He screamed, but no sound came out.
Even his scream was swallowed by the blood-filled air.
From that day on, every bite erased something.
A face, a memory, an old laugh from his clan's days.
With each meal, something vanished, and the wild intent within him grew stronger.
He began craving flesh before even seeing it, smelling blood in the air and licking his lips unconsciously.
Every year that passed, the instinct devoured more of his mind.
He no longer knew if he ate to live, or lived to eat.
> "Who am I?"
The echo repeated, with no answer — only the sound of endless chewing in the distance.
Another decade passed, or so he thought.
Time had no meaning in this place.
There was no day or night, the flesh never rotted, and the blood never dried.
One day, as he looked into the reflection of a pool of blood, he saw a face he didn't recognize.
It was deformed — half human, half beast.
His eyes were swollen, his skin covered in cracks that bled constantly.
When he opened his mouth to breathe, black smoke came out, carrying the smell of burnt iron.
He laughed.
His laughter sounded more like a growl.
He no longer cared what he had become.
> "The strong survive."
"The weak are food."
The two sentences echoed inside him until they became law — unshakable truth.
When he fought the next creature, he felt neither fear nor pain.
He felt ecstasy.
When he plunged his hand into its chest and tore out its heart, he felt warmth — happiness.
Then, in the next moment, he realized that the hand tearing the heart was his own.
He screamed, but couldn't stop.
He sank his teeth into the flesh, chewed, swallowed, and felt strength flow again through his veins.
Each time he devoured a part of himself, he became stronger, heavier, further from the human he once was.
He became both the devourer and the devoured, the killer and the victim.
At the end of time — when nothing of his body remained but scattered fragments of awareness floating among clotted flesh — everything stopped.
The heartbeat ceased.
The world went silent.
Ashen had no eyes, no tongue, no skin, yet he could still hear.
He heard one voice coming from deep within him:
> "I will not end before I take my revenge."
The words ignited like the last spark in the void.
The world began to shake again.
The sky opened, the ground trembled, as if the being devouring itself had reached its peak.
From the red flesh, a new body emerged.
A body with no clear features, naked except for the blood dripping from it.
His left eye was bleeding endlessly, black blood heavier than time itself.
He lifted his head toward the collapsing sky and whispered softly through the eternal silence:
> "What is erased will not be forgotten."
All movement stopped.
The air froze, then began to pull back, as if the entire world was breathing in reverse.
In the moment everything vanished, the fifth stage opened before him, bleeding with a gray light that resembled annihilation.
Ashen took a step forward, his smile like an open wound.
He knew what was devoured would never return…
but he no longer wanted to go back.