i fell Balanced.And with that balance came memory.
Clearer.Sharper.Painfully honest.
I looked around the place where I had awakened — Silent Maw.
The name fit.It was silent.But not dead.
Far below the seven rings of sin, below the politics of Hell, below everything recognizable, Silent Maw was a vast, ancient hollow. A fracture in the understructure of Hell itself. A place older than the sins, older than the cities, older than sinners and demons.
A place that didn't belong to anyone.
The stone here was cracked like dried skin, glowing faintly where hell-energy leaked through old wounds.The air was heavy, thick, pressing against my lungs with a weight I still wasn't used to.The entire chamber felt like a long-dead heart — one that occasionally twitched.
And… creatures lived here.
Not demons.Not sinners.Not beings with language or intellect.
Just hungry shapes, formed from Hell's leftover scraps:
bone-thin silhouettes crawling between fissures
eyeless things that clicked and tasted the air
pulsing mounds that burrowed under the stone
instinct, not thought
hunger, not malice
One of them tried to devour me the moment I appeared in this world.
I remember it now —the lunge, the teeth, the scraping flesh-sound…
And Alastor's voice cutting through it all:
"Don't move."
A flash of power.A violent crack of sound.And the creature collapsed beside me like a bag of wet stone.
Even now I could see the dark smear left behind — already sinking into the Maw's thirsty ground.
Alastor hummed inside my mind.
"Charming, isn't it?"
I exhaled slowly."…This place?"
"No. The company."
I ignored him.
Standing here now, with the ring stable, I understood why my body formed here.
Silent Maw wasn't safe.It simply wasn't… occupied.
Too low for demons.Too forgotten for sinners.Too empty for overlords.
Hell's hierarchy didn't even acknowledge this place existed.
A perfect void.A neutral womb of stone and pressure where unstable Echo Qi could condense without interference.
My body had formed where the noise of Hell was thinnest.
But it would not grow here.
Could not grow here.
There was no emotion, no conflict, no life — only instinct and silence.Silent Maw had given me birth…but it could not give me evolution.
I brushed dust from my clothes and tightened the straps around my wrists.
"I suppose," I muttered, "this is goodbye."
"Until we fall back down here again," Alastor teased.
"Hopefully never."
The natural path out of the Maw rose sharply between the cliffs — a jagged, winding passage carved by the slow crawling of time. It led upward, toward the first of the seven sin rings.
Ring Seven — the lowest.
Still dangerous.Still cruel.But alive.
Life meant emotion.Emotion meant cultivation.
The Echo Ring pulsed again, reacting to the faint trickle of emotional residue drifting down from the sins above — distant ripples of fear, greed, jealousy, hatred.
Even here, far below, I could feel them.
The ring wanted more.
Needed more.
I placed a hand on my chest, feeling the subtle warmth radiate beneath skin that still felt too new, too freshly made.
"All right," I whispered."Let's go meet the rest of Hell."
"Oh, excellent," Alastor purred."I was getting bored."
I took one last look at Silent Maw — the cracked stone, the crawling shadows, the silent creatures hiding in the fissures.
My birthplace.My shelter.My silence.
Then I turned my back on it and began walking upward — toward the world, toward sinners, toward emotion.
Toward life.