"Oh, yeah, push it harder, baby."
"Deeper."
"Yes, right there! Don't stop!"
"Perfect… that's it… the climax!"
The voices echoed through the dim chamber filled with desperation and rhythm.
To anyone listening it from outside, it would've sounded like a scene straight out of some cheap porno.
But it wasn't anything like that.
Instead, on the cold stone floor, a young man slept with his shirt covered in something dark and sticky.
His body trembled as his head throbbed like it was being split in half.
Finally, his eyes snapped open to a blur of light and some shadowy figures surrounding him.
What the hell…?
He blinked, his mind trying to catch up what had happened.
He remembered being at the convenience store, half asleep and trying to buy some chips and an energy drink.
Then… some strange people with weird masks had kidnapped him out of nowhere.
And now… this?
His body was wrapped in chains, making him unable to even move… but the voices were getting clearer.
A woman's trembling voice echoed in excitement again. "Harder! Go deeper!"
A man's grunt followed.
The young man frowned.
What the hell are these people doing?
Did they seriously kidnap me for recording some deranged porno?
Then something clicked and haze in his mind cleared just enough for him to see.
The man who was screaming wasn't thrusting anything obscene. He was twisting a dagger, right into the young man's chest. Slowly and deeply with devotion.
And the woman beside him wasn't moaning from pleasure. She was worshipping.
"Perfect…" she whispered, her voice shaking now. "Yes, yes… this is the climax!"
The blade slid down, tracing his ribs with a lover's care as blood spilled over his skin but he didn't scream or even flinch because he didn't feel anything.
Pain didn't come. Neither did fear as if this was just another Tuesday for him.
What the fuck is happening?
The young man panicked.
Out of all the things to freak out about what really got to him was how weirdly chill he felt about it.
The cultist didn't care for his panic as more of them gathered from the shadows, laughing, crying and moaning like lunatics in some unholy ecstasy.
Their voices overlapped, a twisted chorus of devotion and madness.
Each one held a blade.
Each one was smiling.
"F–fwekrr… stawp…"
He tried to speak but his mouth wouldn't obey him. The sound that came out wasn't a plea, it was just… noise and from the looks of it, the cultists loved it.
Their moans grew louder.
Some wept, others laughed and yet all trembled in something that looked too much like pleasure.
He even saw one woman collapse to her knees, twitching in ecstasy with her pristine white robe now stained with something dark and suspicious around the hem.
It was obscene.
And somehow… sacred for the cultist.
"Ka'threl… naxur… sha'nael thar…"
"Blood for the Hollow Star! Flesh for the Sleeper!"
"Let it drink, let it wake, let it see!"
"Lurae… Thal'vahn… e'thir ren."
"Blessed be the silence that devours the sun."
"May His eyes open beneath the skin of the world."
Fuck…
The boy cursed under his breath because he knew there was no saving him but before the thought could even finish forming.
BOOM!!!
The ceiling exploded.
Rubble and smoke rained down as the air itself split apart with a sound like the world tearing in half and through the haze, for just a heartbeat, he saw it.
A shape impossibly vast.
A presence that didn't belong in any world touched by sanity. It stood above the ruin of the roof, a silhouette crowned in light and shadow. An octopus-like head with its tendrils writhing and shifting with stars.
And behind it… seven radiant and pure wings.
It stared directly at him and in that instant.
Those seven wings were the last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him whole.
—
When the boy opened his eyes again, the world was… white and radiant. He had just blinked and the pain, the blood, the dagger, all of it was gone.
Instead, he floated in a place that felt happy or maybe it just wanted him to think it was.
Everything shimmered in slow motion. Fragments of gold drifted through the air like lazy fireflies. The ground, if it could even be called that, was soft and weightless.
For a moment, he thought this was heaven.
Then he noticed the silence as if the world was holding its breath and within that stillness, he saw something move.
The same creature from before, the one that had looked straight at him through the collapsing roof. That thing with an octopus-like head and seven wings
It floated above the endless white, every movement slow and graceful as if the air itself worshipped it.
The boy froze, his throat went dry.
So… this is hell?
He thought bitterly.
Because there was no way in any universe that he was getting into heaven.
He knew better than anyone.
"Who… are you?"
Still, he asked.
The words slipped out before he could stop them, his voice trembling between awe and exhaustion.
Not that it mattered because he was already dead.
What was the worst that could happen now?
More pain?
He has had plenty of that in life.
He expected the creature to answer in some reality-breaking roar… or maybe not answer at all.
Instead, a clear and gentle feminine voice echoed through the radiant void.
"I am the Angel of Compass, oh poor soul."
The boy's brain blanked and his mouth went dry. The sheer wrongness of hearing a gentle, almost motherly voice come out of something with tentacles and seven wings short-circuited his thoughts.
Then,
"What the fuck?"
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
Not exactly the kind of thing you were supposed to say to divine eldritch entities… but honestly, it was the only sentence his brain had left.
The angel just smiled.
It was a gentle and almost tender expression, one that didn't belong to something so alien.
Her voice dripped with sweetness, every syllable echoing through the radiant emptiness like a lullaby.
"So… are you ready to be sent to another world, my child?"