Chapter 2 - The Valley of Gluttony

Looking back, lights constantly descended from the sky, announcing the arrival of new souls, to whom God would deliver His divine judgment.

Hell was a gallery of human horrors. It was not merely the result of suffering, but an amplified and distorted reflection of humanity's darkest deeds. The walls of pulsating flesh were not just organic; they were made of living bodies, violently stitched together in an eternal cycle of regeneration and destruction. Men and women fused together, twisted like sculptures made by a mad god. Some still breathed, moaning in agony, while shattered hands emerged from the seams, trying to break free.

A viscous swamp of decaying matter. The ground was dark and muddy, swallowed by a dense fog of rot and putrefaction. The floor, covered with rotting food remains, was hailed by the damned, who were consumed by a desperate and cruel hunger. But the damned could never satiate themselves, for the food was always mutable, always slippery, escaping their hands like a cruel mockery. They fought each other, crawling through the filth, to bite pieces of rotten flesh or swallow filthy liquids that tortured them.

The bodies of the sinners were deformed and swollen, like balloons of flesh and fat, their faces distorted by an endless hunger. Their stomachs were bloated and sagging, but they continued to burn with an unquenchable hunger, for the cycle of gluttony is eternal, a torment that is never satisfied. They swallowed incessantly, but found no pleasure, only a deeper emptiness, a thirst that deepened with every failed attempt at solace.

As I walked through the circle of gluttony, various men attacked me, trying to devour my flesh. By luck, I emerged unscathed, and in the background, I could hear. Brutal sounds: the cracking of bones being broken, the nauseating sound of throats being torn apart in attempts to swallow, the muffled cries of hopelessness and frustration. At times, the grotesque creatures fed on their own limbs, eating and regurgitating, rejoicing in the decay of their own bodies. The flesh they consumed offered no relief, only a cycle of self-destruction, as if every piece ingested was an even harsher punishment.

Among these grotesque figures, a group of children appeared, or rather, what remained of them. Their empty eyes reflected no more innocence, but an ancestral pain, a loss that transcended death. They were skeletal bodies, deformed by hunger, with bones exposed and skin stretched thin, barely covering their shattered structures. Their features were unrecognizable, and their small fingers, now claws, reached out towards me with an eagerness that surpassed reason. They were no longer children, but echoes of suffering. There was something profoundly philosophical in their existence: they had been consumed even before they died, were they from an asylum or an orphanage? It mattered not... like souls belonging to the abyss, never having known satisfaction, and now, reduced to wandering pieces of flesh, eager to swallow whatever remained of life.

They lunged at me, a frantic mass of bones and viscera, with an inhuman growl echoing throughout the circle. There was no difference between them and the beasts that inhabit the worst nightmares. Like beings ripped from a world where compassion no longer existed, they attacked me with animalistic violence, their mouths grotesquely open, ready to tear into my flesh. I stared at them, not with fear, but with the coldness of one who understands that here, in Hell, death is not a solution—it is merely a part of an endless torment.

With a gesture, I grabbed one of the children, so light it seemed like a puppet of flesh and bones, and with one motion, threw the others aside. They fell with a crack, swallowed by a boiling lake of fire and poison that bubbled like a miniature hell. The scalding flames instantly devoured their bodies, but death did not free them. Instead, they were consumed by an eternal fire, a never-ending cycle of suffering where pain never ends. Their screams were lost in the chaos of the abyss, their torn souls merging with the fire, and I felt nothing but the inevitable weight of an empty existence.

The remaining child, a pale and lifeless figure, looked at me with eyes pleading for a mercy I could not offer. She was condemned, pleading with all the compassion that still remained in her. Without hesitation, I ripped her skin with my bare hands, tearing it with the brutality of a predator who no longer knew how to distinguish between pain and pleasure. The shredded flesh came off with a sound of raw meat being torn apart, and the blood, hot and thick, gushed into my hands like a river of sin. There was no struggle. Her life was extinguished the moment her flesh was torn apart, her body transformed into something so grotesque that no fragment of her humanity remained.

I killed not only a human being, but the last spark of compassion that could exist there. By tearing her skin off, a symbol of her own loss, I turned it into a trophy, a pouch where, with sadistic precision, I placed the still-pulsing, still-warm pieces of flesh. The corpse was no longer anything but soulless meat, a grotesque sculpture that would accompany me on my journey. I heard that child screaming and agonizing in pain, but my philosophy was logic—I cannot survive here without killing others. What remained there, after the last breath of life, was flesh that became nothing more than matter, something with no value other than its ability to feed the void.

In Hell, death is not merely an end, but a transfiguration. Hunger is an omnipotent entity that consumes both flesh and soul. Gluttony is not a simple need, but a philosophy of the abyss, an eternal principle of destruction that surpasses the desire to satiate. The desire is never satisfied, because the emptiness within us can never be filled. I was left with the feeling that, in that place, souls do not die, but are deconstructed and reconfigured, transformed into pieces of a grotesque puzzle.

Walking further ahead, I see.

Gluttons, with their mouths deformed from eating, walk toward a source of food—but it is not just any food. What lies before them are infernal flames, a fire that seems to have a life of its own, always dancing and changing, but never consuming itself. When they attempt to bite, the fire burns their mouths and tongues, as though a living fire had replaced the food. The suffering is immediate and brutal, but the cruelest part is that, even while burning their mouths and stomachs, the hunger never disappears. The pain mixes with the hunger, creating an insane cycle: always wanting more, but never able to satisfy the desire.

As they struggle to eat, the gluttons are forced to swallow rotten food, wilted and decayed vegetables, covered in dirt, infected with poisons. Every piece ingested does not bring relief. On the contrary, the food dissolves in their throats, releasing toxins and purulent wounds that spread throughout their bodies. Their flesh rots, and open sores emerge where there was once pleasure. They try again, driven by a hunger that never ends, but with every attempt, the pain increases. The putrid and poisonous taste corrodes their organs, but the persistent emptiness within them does not cease. They can never stop eating, for hunger consumes them more than the suffering itself.

Looking around, the scene is a sea of pain and despair. Several other gluttons are scattered about, all in similar situations, their faces twisted by pain, their hands trembling as they try to eat more, always hoping for a satisfaction that will never come. They scream in agony, but the echoes of their voices are lost in the vastness of Hell, as if the environment itself had swallowed them.

To my left, I saw a mother holding the corpse of a child, the two of them fused by a misshapen tissue that pulsed as though it were alive. Her hands were embedded in the child's chest, pulling out organs to consume. Her eyes expressed no guilt, only desperation, as if this were the only way to continue existing.

Further ahead, men and women were chained to iron chairs. Mechanical arms continuously fed them pieces of boiling flesh ripped from other damned souls. They screamed, but kept chewing, even as their mouths bled. The metal burned their skin, and the flesh they swallowed seemed to regenerate them only for the cycle to restart.

In the center of this brutal spectacle stood grotesque sculptures made of human flesh. They were not simple statues, but living works of art, fed by rivers of blood flowing from open veins in the ground. Each sculpture represented acts committed by humans in life: genocides, betrayals, excesses. One of them depicted a figure with multiple arms holding severed heads, its eyes still moving, while a cascade of blood fell from its open mouth.

Around these sculptures, a group of human figures worked relentlessly. They were not demons, but human souls forced to sculpt others as punishment for their crimes. I saw a man using a bone chisel to cut a piece of living flesh from a woman who screamed. He did not hesitate, his hands trembled, but he continued, as if he knew that stopping would result in something worse.

The demons were not the executioners here. It was the humans who did the work. Those hands, those minds, were the same ones that, in life, had created weapons, exploited others, or consumed the world without limits. Now, they were condemned to transform their own species into grotesque art, each piece a reminder of what they had done or allowed to be done.

When I finally reached the valley, the sight became even more grotesque. The ground was made of human fat, slippery and foul-smelling, and the rivers flowing through it were filled with a thick, yellowish liquid, boiling with the heat of hell itself. Trees made of bones sprouted, their branches adorned with pieces of flesh that dripped blood. Beneath these trees, human creatures crawled like animals, devouring the remains that fell.