Chapter 6 - Dancing with Fury

The Circle of Wrath was a furnace of chaos. Not a literal fire, but an oppressive heat emerging from the incessant violence. Screams turned into echoes, striking the deformed walls like invisible fists. The ground seemed to pulse beneath my feet, driven by the intensity of rage. There was no rest here. No moment of pause, only an unbridled energy consuming everyone—and itself.

I advanced across the uneven terrain, my eyes fixed on the heart of this turmoil. It wasn't the landscape that struck me, but the ferocity of those who inhabited the circle. They attacked each other with insatiable hatred, their forms distorted by the anger that defined them. Men and women, now grotesque caricatures of themselves, wrestled in battles with no purpose or end. Blood flowed from open wounds, but they kept going, driven by something greater than pain.

I stopped before a valley where fury seemed to have reached its peak. There he was. The ruler of this circle. Not a human or demon, but a living manifestation of wrath, a pulsating monolith of destruction. His form was unstable, a blend of flesh and fire that seemed to shift every moment. His eyes were black holes, absorbing light and emanating an overwhelming presence.

He said nothing at first, but his presence was a scream in itself. The ground cracked beneath his feet, the air vibrated with the force of his anger. He was the circle incarnate.

"Who dares set foot here?" His voice was not dark, but hot and sharp, like molten iron being shaped. "A mortal? Are you foolish or simply tired of living?"

I didn't reply immediately. Instead, I observed him. There was no fear in me, nor anger. Only emptiness. He was a brute force, but I had seen forces like this collapse under their own weight.

"And what if it's both?" I replied, my voice almost casual. "Maybe I'm foolish. Or maybe I just understand something you can't."

He laughed, a hollow, metallic sound. An earthquake accompanied the laughter, as if Hell itself were laughing along.

"Understand?" he roared. "There's nothing to understand. Wrath is the purest force. It consumes everything and everyone. Including you."

"That's precisely what makes it pathetic." I took a step forward, my tone so calm it felt out of place here. "Something that consumes without creating. That feeds without purpose. Wrath is just a flame, and flames always die out."

He surged forward, as fast as a storm. His fist, wrapped in fire, came down on me with enough force to crush an army. But I was no longer there. My body had moved before he acted. Not by reflex, but by anticipation. Rage is predictable. It screams its movements before it acts.

"You run?" He turned to me, his voice echoing with disdain. "Is that how you face strength?"

"I'm not running. I just won't waste unnecessary effort." I took another step, closer now. "Your strength is impressive, but you've already realized you can't touch me."

The truth struck him deeper than any blow. He hesitated for an instant, and in that instant, I saw it. The exhaustion. Wrath is powerful, but it exhausts whoever carries it. He could roar and thrash, but every movement cost him more than it did me.

"You think words can defeat me?" he roared, his form oscillating between human and beast. "Wrath doesn't need logic, only strength!"

"And where is your strength now?" I retorted, coldly. "Look at yourself. You're already fragmenting. You're so consumed by rage you don't even realize you're dying inside."

He charged again, this time with more desperation than fury. His blows were chaotic, brutal, but devoid of precision. I moved around him like a shadow, always out of reach, dancing between his strikes as he spent everything he had.

In the end, he stopped. His body, once immense, now seemed smaller, more unstable. The fire that surrounded him diminished. His eyes still burned, but not with hatred. With fear.

"What did you do to me?" He could barely speak, his words broken by heavy breaths.

"Nothing." I looked him in the eyes. "You did this to yourself. Wrath is a flame, and every flame dies out when there's nothing left to burn."

He fell to his knees, his body disintegrating into embers. For a moment, I thought he would say something. One last scream, perhaps. But no. Wrath has no words in the end. Only silence.

When he disappeared, the circle seemed to change. The violence around me subsided, as if the monster's absence had drained its energy. I remained there for a moment, observing the void where he had stood.

The beast, once an uncontrollable fury, had now crumbled before my patience. The wrath of Wrath was like a fire that, without fuel, extinguished slowly, leaving only ash and the smell of destruction in the air. But it wasn't the end of the pain. In the aftermath of the battle, other echoes, deeper and darker, began to emerge.

At my side, Gluttony was there, watching the scene with a silence only she could carry. She was no longer a distant shadow, a mere impersonal hunger. Gluttony was there, now in a more tangible form, a figure that reflected her own tragedy with a palpable intensity. Her eyes were empty, as if she knew nothing would ever satisfy her. She wasn't seeking food, but something far deeper—the filling of a void she would never find.

"Rage, in the end, dies out," said Gluttony with a cold, almost mechanical voice, broken by experience. "But hunger... hunger never ends. It only grows. It transforms. And it always demands more."

I looked at her. It was hard to see beyond the figure of a woman consumed by something as impersonal as hunger. But there she was, standing before me, sharing a bitter truth. Gluttony's hunger wasn't simply the desire to eat, to satisfy a physical need. It was the hunger to fill a void that could never be filled. A void born from years of searching and hopelessness.

"I'm not just food, you know," she continued, each word weighed down by the pain of her own condemnation. "I am the reflection of a void no one can see. I am the insatiable desire to be something more, to fill something nameless, a need that never ends."

I understood. The Hell she inhabited wasn't just fire and hunger. It was a place where the pain of never being enough, of never being fulfilled, manifested as an endless quest to satisfy something she couldn't even define. Gluttony wasn't a monster; she was the embodiment of a personal tragedy. She had been shaped by a life where excess became the only thing that defined her. But that excess had never brought the satisfaction she sought.

"I tried," she said, her voice cracking. "I tried everything, more and more. I ate, I drank, I danced… but all it did was make me emptier. I never knew what I was looking for. I just knew I needed more. And now… now I'm just this shadow. This hunger that will never be satisfied."

She lowered her head, and the silence that followed was heavier than any words I could have spoken. Gluttony wasn't seeking redemption. She didn't want to be saved. She wanted to be understood, but even I couldn't give her that. She was the reflection of something that couldn't be fixed — an existence defined by an insatiable search, by the pain of never finding enough.

And then, as if Gluttony's pain merged with Hell itself, suddenly another being appeared: Wrath. The internal storm of fury hadn't completely dissipated. She was still there, her eyes blazing, but her wrath had quieted, transformed into something... calmer. More introspective.

"I am wrath," Wrath said, her voice now laced with a somber calm. "But you don't understand. I wasn't born this way. I was created by loss. By a pain no one wanted to see. I am the world's response to a child who never knew what true love was. And when that love was gone, all that remained was anger. It's not just the desire to destroy. It's the desire to never feel the pain of loss again. To never be left behind."

Wrath hadn't been born of fury. She was like Gluttony, a soul transformed by suffering. She had been shaped by the pain of losing what she loved most, of being discarded by a world that rejected her. And, like Gluttony, she became a shadow — a shadow of fury that never truly faded, even as her anger began to cool.

"You think anger is the end of everything," Wrath said with a bitter smile. "But anger doesn't fade, doesn't disappear. It lives inside you, feeding on your wounds until you no longer know who you are without it. And when you think it's all over, you realize the anger never left. It was just... waiting."

Both Gluttony and Wrath were trapped in cycles they could not break. Hell, indeed, was not a place for redemption. It was a place of endless tragedies, of souls lost in their own needs and pain. Each circle I passed through showed me another side of the same coin — a distorted reflection of an existence that had become more shadow than being.

They were condemned. And, in the end, so was I.

I didn't know how I could free them or if it was even possible. But one thing was certain: Hell was not just a place of fire and torment. It was where tragedies became eternal. Where pain, desire, and anger turned into monsters, and those monsters were beyond redemption.

And I, seeking answers, found myself sinking deeper into this abyss.