Aurelius never remembered the moment he died. One second he had been a man in his twenties, full of plans that never quite left the ground, and the next he was swallowed by a darkness so absolute it felt like a second skin. No horizon. No warmth. No breath of wind. Only the knowledge that he was somewhere he was never meant to be.
Hell did not roar. It whispered.
At first, he couldn't even tell if he still had a body. The blackness was so complete that he could not see his own hands, his own shape, even the faintest outline of something human. But he could hear. The sound came slowly, like an echo traveling across miles of empty space.
A sound like something pulling at him.
A sound like himself being unmade.
But the horror wasn't in the tearing. It was in the way he felt it without ever seeing what touched him. Pain rose in waves, but nothing dripped, nothing splattered. The darkness devoured every trace before it could form.
He tried to scream. The void swallowed that too.