The sound led the hero to the edge of the sea.
The last bridge ended in a stone arch, beyond which steps carved into the rock were visible. The hero looked back one last time—the gray sea with its wandering titans slowly dissolved into the fog behind him. This floor remained there, along with three new deaths added to his collection of pain.
He climbed the steps.
And smelled smoke.
Not acrid, not suffocating—strangely sweet, almost fragrant, like incense in a church. But it scratched his throat, and with each breath the heaviness in his lungs grew.
At the top, the steps led to another passage. The hero stepped through the arch and froze.
A village.
An entire village, spread out before him in a huge cave—no, not a cave, this was something else. The space rose upward into darkness, but there was no sense of a ceiling. It was as if the sky was simply absent, replaced by the blackness of emptiness.
And the entire village was ablaze.
The houses, the streets, the well in the center of the square, the wooden church on the hill—everything was engulfed in flames. But these flames were strange. They burned, but they didn't destroy. Tongues of flame licked the wooden walls, but the wood didn't char, didn't turn to ash. The fire danced across the rooftops, streamed across the pavement, but changed nothing.
An eternal conflagration. Frozen in the moment of destruction, but never completing its work.
And in the center of the village, in the square in front of the church on the hill, something towered overhead that made the blood run cold.
Seraphim.
The charred skeleton of an angel the size of a church sat, head bowed, right on the stone pavement of the square. Six wings—three pairs—spread over the village, covering it like a canopy. The bones of the wings were black and scorched, but the remnants of feathers were still visible between them—once white, now gray and charred.
The seraph's skull was tilted downward, its empty eye sockets staring at the ground. The rib cage, each rib as thick as a tree, gaped empty. The hands, folded in its lap, were long, graceful even in death.
And all of this burned. Quietly, unhurriedly, eternally.
Behind the seraph, on the hill, a church could be seen—wooden, burning with the same eternal flame.
The hero took a step into the village, and heat hit his face. But this wasn't the ordinary heat of a fire. This was something else—a warmth that penetrated deeper than the skin, touching something inside. Something that wasn't flesh.
Souls.
The hero felt something inside him tighten, aching with an unfamiliar pain. Not physical pain—he had plenty of that, a whole collection of phantom agonies. This was a different kind of pain. Spiritual. As if fire were touching the very core of his being and slowly, methodically burning it away.
—What the…
The voice was interrupted by a scream.
No, not a scream—a howl. Prolonged, full of despair and horror. The hero turned and saw them.
Shadows.
Figures moved through the village streets, but they weren't people. Translucent, shimmering silhouettes, they repeated the same movements over and over. A woman ran from a burning house, covered her face with her hands, and fell to her knees. A man tried to put out the flames by scooping water from a well and pouring it on the fire—to no avail. A child ran down the street, screaming silently, searching for someone.
The last minutes of life, frozen in eternal repetition.
The hero approached one of the shadows—an old man sitting on the threshold of a house. The shadow didn't react to his presence, but continued to sit there, staring into space.
The hero reached out, trying to touch it.
The shadow jerked. Its head turned sharply toward him, and eyes flashed in its translucent face—white, empty, full of hatred.
"Alive," a voice whispered, like wind through dry leaves. "Alive!"
The old man leaped up with inhuman speed and lunged at the hero. His claw-like hands reached for his throat.
The hero jumped back but tripped and fell backward. The shadow loomed over him. Its fingers touched his chest—and the hero screamed.
Pain. An icy, searing pain shot through his ribs, straight to his heart. As if something were trying to tear his soul from his body. The shadow pulled, and the hero felt something inside him begin to tear away, to separate.
He punched the shadow. His hand passed through the translucent body without touching anything. The shadow continued to pull.
The hero rolled to the side, breaking free from its grip, and ran. Screams were heard behind him—other shadows had noticed him. Alive. A stranger in their frozen hell.
The hero dove between houses, weaving through narrow streets. Flames licked his clothes, hair, skin—but they didn't physically burn. Instead, a dull ache grew within him, as if his essence were slowly melting under the influence of spiritual fire.
Ahead, he could see the square with the seraph and the church beyond it on the hill. He needed to get around the giant skeleton without attracting its attention. The hero pressed himself against the walls of the houses, moving along the edge of the square, away from the seated figure of the angel. The seraph was motionless, his head bowed, but the hero sensed an aura emanating from him—ancient, mournful, dangerous.
Rounding the square, he ran toward the church on the hill—perhaps it would be safer there. Old habits: the church—a place of refuge, a sanctuary.
What irony in the village of a fallen angel.
The church was as ablaze as the rest of the village. The wooden doors stood wide open, revealing rows of benches with an altar at the end of the hall.
The hero climbed the steps and went inside.
Silence. A strange, oppressive silence that contrasted with the chaos outside. Even the cries of the shadows didn't penetrate the walls.
Skeletons sat on the benches—real ones, not shadows. The villagers, those who hid here in their final moments. Burned alive, reduced to bones, but their bodies remained in place, frozen in prayerful poses.
The hero slowly walked between the rows. On the altar lay a book—thick, leather-bound, charred at the edges, but still intact. He opened it.
The text was handwritten. A diary? A chronicle?
"...the third day of the burning. The flames do not die down. Prayers are of no avail. He sits in the square and burns with us. Seraphim. The one who was supposed to protect. The one who fell..."
The hero flipped through several pages.
"...they say he raised his hand against the Creator. They say he doubted. For that, he was cast down, into this place. The dungeon. A prison for the fallen. And we, the village over which he served as guardian—we fell with him. Punishment for his sin. Eternal burning. Eternal pain..."
Another page.
"...the fire burns not the body. It burns the soul. I feel it thinning, melting, turning to nothing. Soon, only shadows will remain of us. Only a repetition of our last moments. But even this is better than his scream..."
Last page. The handwriting is shaky, illegible in places.
"...he wakes up. Every ten minutes. He realizes he's fallen. He's lost. And he screams. Oh, Creator, his scream... He kills every living thing within the village radius. Burns souls to ashes. We will all die again. And again. And again. This is hell. This is..."
The recording ended.
The hero closed the book. So this was part of the dungeon. A prison. For the fallen, for the damned, for those rejected by heaven.
And he was here.
The question was—why?
But there was no answer. Yet.
The hero left the church and looked at the seraph below in the square. The giant skeleton sat motionless, head bowed. Between the charred ribs of its ribcage, something glowing was visible—a faint, flickering light from within the void.
The light in the ribcage flickered brighter. Something was there. Something important.
He moved toward the seraph in the square, avoiding the shadows that still darted through the streets, repeating their eternal cycle. Flames licked his skin, and the pain in his soul grew—slow, inexorable, searing.
He had to hurry.
The hero descended the hill and approached the base of the skeleton. The leg bones sank into the ground of the square, as if the seraph had grown into the stone. The ribs rose up, creating arches under which he could pass.
He entered the ribcage.
The light emanated from the heart. Or rather, from what remained of the heart. A glowing object hung in the air between the ribs—the size of a fist, pulsing with a warm golden light.
The seraph's heart. Or what remained of it.
Nearby, stuck between the rib bones, feathers protruded. Enormous, as long as the hero's arm, white with gold veins. They didn't burn—the only thing in the village untouched by the flame.
The hero reached out for one of the feathers and plucked it. The feather yielded easily, slipping from the bone with a soft ringing sound.
At that moment, the air trembled. The hero froze.
The seraph's skull, previously motionless, slowly began to rise. The cervical vertebrae creaked, making the sound of rubbing stones. The empty eye sockets, which had stared at the ground, now turned upward.
Toward the sky. Toward the absent heavens.
The jaw opened.
And the seraph screamed.
It wasn't a sound. It was agony, materialized in a wave of pure pain.
The scream pierced the hero, passed through his flesh, through his bones, straight to the very core. To his soul. And began to burn it.
The hero fell to his knees, dropping his pen, pressing his hands to his head. But it didn't help. The scream was everywhere—inside his skull, in his chest, in every cell. His soul burned, melted, screamed back.
The pain was absolute. Not physical—that's worse. It was annihilation at the level of his being, the erasure of what made him him. The hero couldn't scream. He couldn't breathe. He could only writhe on the stone pavement inside the dead angel's ribcage, his soul slowly, painfully burning away.
How long did it last? A second? An hour? An eternity?
Consciousness faded like a blown-out candle.
The hero woke up outside the village. On the steps leading down to the bridges.
Whole. Alive. His soul was still there.
But the pain...
Oh, the pain.
This was a new pain. Unlike all the previous ones. Not breaking bones, not searing acid, not drowning lungs. This was the pain of his essence being consumed. The hero lay, trembling, feeling something pulsing, aching, screaming silently inside.
As if part of his soul still burned, even after his resurrection.
He lay there for several minutes—or hours—until the pain subsided to a tolerable level. Added to the collection. Another scar he would bear forever.
The hero sat up slowly. He looked at the village ahead. Flames still danced over the houses. The seraph bowed his head again, frozen in eternal sorrow.
Ten minutes. He had ten minutes before the angel woke again.
He needed a plan.
His next attempts were methodical.
The hero learned to count the time. He entered the village, ran to the seraph, grabbed the feather, tried to grab the glowing heart—and each time, a scream caught him inside.
Death. Resurrection. Soul pain, added to the collection.
Again.
And again.
And again.
On his fifth try, he realized he had to be faster. On his sixth, he grabbed a feather and managed to escape the ribcage, but a scream caught up with him in the square. On his seventh, he grabbed two feathers, but again, he didn't make it.
On his tenth try, the hero changed his approach.
He entered the village, avoiding the shadows, sneaking up on the seraph. He quickly plucked three feathers and tucked them into his belt. Then—and this was madness—he climbed higher, along the ribs, to the place where the glowing heart hung.
He reached out. His fingers touched the warm surface.
The heart pulsated, alive, despite the dead body around it. The hero grabbed it with both hands and pulled.
It resisted, held on by invisible threads of light. But the hero pulled harder, more desperately.
The heart tore free.
At that moment, the seraph stirred. The hero leaped from the ribs, clutching his heart to his chest, and ran. He ran with all his might, without looking back, between the burning houses, past shadows, toward the village exit.
Behind him, a scream began to grow louder.
The hero reached the edge of the village, crossing an invisible boundary—and collapsed onto the steps, sliding down, clutching his pulsating heart and three feathers.
The scream rolled behind him, but did not touch him. The village boundary held him.
The hero lay on the cold stone, breathing heavily. The seraph's heart glowed dimly on his chest, warm and strangely comforting. Feathers protruded from his belt, white and gold.
Trophies. Proof that he had been there. Survived. Overcame.
The phantom pain of his soul being burned pulsed inside him along with all the other agonies.
But he moved on. Nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-seven floors ahead.
And the hero rose to his feet, hid his heart and feathers, and walked up the steps.
To the next hell.