Consciousness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a violent, physical shock. Joseph did not wake up; he was dragged back to awareness by an overwhelming, immediate flood of negative sensation. The first thing he registered was the cold.
It was a deep, pervasive cold that radiated upward, sinking into the skin of his back, chilling the organs beneath his ribs, and making his breath catch in a sharp, sudden gasp. He was no longer drifting in a featureless void. He was anchored, agonizingly, to something real and utterly frigid.
He tried to shift his position, to move away from the oppressive, heavy chill that seeped into him. The resulting action brought the second, more terrifying reality: the sound of metal.
A sharp, high-pitched scrape, followed by a dull, heavy thud, filled the silence. He was shackled.
His wrists and ankles were tightly encircled by rings of crude, heavy metal chains. The iron was intensely cold, and where it pressed against his skin, it felt like icy fire. He gave a small, panicked jerk, trying to pull his hands free, and the chains instantly resisted, tightening their grip. The movement caused the heavy links to slide and bite against his wrists, and a stinging, liquid warmth immediately bloomed across his skin. He instinctively knew that the metal had scraped his flesh, and the wetness was raw, bloody discharge.
His eyes snapped open, a desperate, wide-pupiled attempt to bring sight to the terrifying situation. But the effort was wasted. Just as in the void, the space around him was consumed by absolute black. This was a different darkness, though. It was not the cosmic, soul-erasing nothingness of his fall, but the tangible, suffocating darkness of a confined space—a dungeon cell, a hidden room, a pit. He strained his ears, his sense of hearing now the only reliable input. The surrounding silence was profound, broken only by the wet, ragged sound of his own breathing and the soft, intermittent clinking of his shackles.
He lay on his stomach, his cheek pressed painfully against the floor. The cold stone beneath his naked skin was rough and unyielding. The texture was important; it was not smooth, polished marble, but coarse, uneven rock, suggesting a prison of great age or barbaric construction. The stone's surface felt wet, perhaps from condensation or some other noxious liquid, adding a clammy misery to the cold.
As he shifted his head slightly, trying to lift his face away from the damp floor, another distinct, sickening sensation arose from within his mouth. His jaw felt tightly bound. A coarse, dry cloth was rammed deep into his oral cavity, pressing painfully against his gums and tongue. This was the gag.
It was a thick piece of fabric, tied with crushing force behind his head, silencing him as effectively as the void had. The cloth was rough and irritating, and already saturated with his own saliva and the tears that had dried on his cheeks during his earlier psychic breakdown. The salty, sour taste of his own terror and dehydration filled his mouth. He tried to swallow, but the gag made the simple action a torturous, choking struggle. He could only manage a slow, painful trickle of liquid past the edges of the cloth.
Panic, cold and sharp, returned. He was bound, blind, gagged, and completely defenseless. His memories of the novels he loved, the ones that celebrated cunning and strength, were useless now. This was not the start of a power fantasy; this was the horrifying reality of enslavement.
He slowly, meticulously, began to map his situation using only touch. He pushed his torso upward using his bound arms, trying to sit up. The shackles immediately pulled taut. The chains were short, allowing him perhaps a foot and a half of movement in any direction, effectively confining him to a small area. The metal on his ankles scraped heavily against the stone floor, producing a noise that felt deafening in the silence—a noise that announced his location to anyone who might be listening in the dark.
Then came the observation that finally shattered the thin wall of psychological defense he had built.
As he rested his weight on his forearms, preparing to push himself into a sitting position, he felt the intense pressure of his own body against the stone. And under his chest, he felt the unmistakable, unfamiliar contours of soft mounds pressing against the freezing stone.
His familiar, male chest, the one he had inhabited for twenty years, was flat, hard, and bony. This was not. This was wrong. It was tender, full, and strangely sensitive to the rough, biting cold of the floor.
A wave of intense dysphoria hit him, stronger and more sickening than the cold or the chains. His mind had registered the change in his hands during the fall, but that had been subtle. This was visceral, undeniable proof. He paused his movements completely, frozen by the sickening realization. He ran the fingers of his bound hands over his ribs, and then, trembling, upward toward his shoulders and neck. His fingers brushed against something hard and curved, protruding from his temples—the smooth, rigid surface of twin curved horns or he think.
A low, muffled sound escaped him, a sound of profound terror and complete rejection, entirely trapped beneath the gag. No. This isn't me. This cannot be real.
The memories of the demon novels flashed through his mind—the reincarnation he had idly wished for. He had dreamed of being a formidable, terrifying anti-hero, but not like this. Not bound, naked, and stripped of his very identity and gender. The cold horror of the demon woman body he now inhabited overwhelmed him.
He began to hyperventilate. The gag, which had been merely uncomfortable, now became a genuine choking hazard. The cloth grew wet and heavy with his increasingly desperate breaths and frantic salivation, making the passage of air difficult and restricted. His chest began to heave in frantic, shallow movements, but the tight bindings around his wrists limited his ability to fully draw breath, increasing the sensation of suffocation.
He collapsed back onto the stone, defeated by the realization. The physical pain from the chains, the deep, heavy mental anguish of the body dysphoria, and the crippling fear of the absolute darkness fused into a single, unbearable emotional state: desperation.
He lay there for what felt like an hour, his consciousness reduced to the counting of his own strained breaths. The only relief was the faint, lingering metallic taste of blood in the gag from where he must have bitten his lip or tongue in his terror—a small, dark familiarity in this alien cage. Of course he didn't know it was cage but only assumption.
The environment, although dark, was slowly revealing itself through non-visual means. The heavy, mineral smell of damp stone, the deep, unrelenting cold, and the reverberation of sound indicated that he was in a subterranean cell, likely carved into rock. The walls were not close enough to touch easily, suggesting a space slightly larger than a coffin, perhaps six feet long and four feet wide. There was no distinct air current, meaning the cell was likely sealed, making any attempt at olfactory reconnaissance useless.
He slowly, painfully, used the slight friction of the rough stone to saw the chain against his wrist, a futile, desperate act. He could feel the fine, sharp edges of the iron rings grating the newly exposed, soft flesh raw, but the dull, gnawing pain was a welcome anchor—something real to focus on other than the impossible reality of the horns on his head and the softness of his chest.
The pain from the effort, however, was quickly becoming too intense. He ceased the sawing motion, and the blood that was weeping from the lacerations on his wrists began to slowly coat the cold iron rings. He felt the sticky warmth of it against his skin, a sharp, metallic odor that was immediately absorbed by the cold metal and the damp stone.
As the physical agony subsided slightly, the psychological torment of his transformation returned. He tried to access the deep, burning hate that had sustained him in the void, but it was momentarily eclipsed by a wave of pure, exhausted sadness. His shoulders began to tremble with silent, choked sobs. The tears streamed sideways into his temples, immediately mixing with the sweat and the dampness of the floor. The sound was muffled by the gag, a pathetic, contained misery that only deepened his sense of utter humiliation and vulnerability.
Hours passed. He measured the passage of this torturous time not by sound, but by his rising thirst. The initial fear had been replaced by a dry, crushing internal desperation. His tongue swelled, pressing painfully against the gag, making the already difficult breathing almost impossible. His lips cracked and peeled from the forced, frantic mouth-breathing he had to employ. The desire for a single drop of water became a singular, obsessive focus, eclipsing the fear of his location or the horror of his new body.
He tried, again, to shift his body, to search for any vessel, any spilled liquid on the stone floor, using his tongue. He strained his neck, rubbing his dry, cracked lips against the damp stone floor, searching for any trace of moisture. He found only the rough, cold wetness of the rock—a liquid that smelled faintly of brine and something acrid, utterly undrinkable. The taste of the stone was vile, gritty, and offered no relief.
The desperate search for water, combined with the continuous, unyielding pressure of the chains and the difficulty in breathing through the saturated gag, finally brought him to the brink again. His head felt light, his vision—which still perceived only the absolute black—began to swim with phantom lights, flashes of purple and red across the non-existent canvas.
The psychological shock of the awakening, the forced acknowledgment of his monstrous, shackled form, and the severe dehydration were too much. His desperate movement slowed, his ragged breathing hitched, and the low, muffled whimpers of pain and fear faded into a dull, heavy stillness.
The last sensation was the deep, working ache in his chest—not from the breathing, but the unfamiliar, heavy weight of his new lungs, drawing in the stale, mineral-heavy air of the underground prison.
Just as the sun sets and the light is simply withdrawn, Joseph's consciousness, strained beyond the breaking point by pain, dysphoria, and thirst, simply faded again. He did not pass out in terror this time, but in simple, physical exhaustion and total depletion. He lay on the cold, damp stone, a shackled, naked, demon woman, utterly unaware of the brutal arena life waiting just beyond the edges of the suffocating darkness. He was silent, still, and completely at the mercy of the unseen powers that had engineered his painful, monstrous reincarnation. He had survived the void, only to be immediately defeated by the chains.