Prosperity In Torture

The cavern devoured all light, swallowing it whole until nothing remained but an endless abyss of black stone and suffocating silence. Darkness layered itself upon darkness, stretching in every direction as if the world had forgotten what it meant to be seen. Time did not move here—only the weight of emptiness pressed down, thick and unrelenting. The air was damp and stagnant, clinging to the skin like the breath of something unseen, something ancient and watchful.

A teen lay sprawled on the ground, bloody and battered, with a small imp unconscious on his chest. He had no energy to shout at the creature, so he simply let it be. A soft sigh escaped his lips as he focused, trying to summon his scripts. There had to be something—something he could use, maybe even a feature.

"What do I have to lose?"

Kaz tried to read his Beyond feature, but it resisted him. A sharp headache shot through his skull, making it impossible to focus. Under the "Null" section, there was nothing—nothing at all. The letters seemed to mock him, the emptiness stinging more than the pain in his body.

"I guess I am going to die in this hell after all," he muttered bitterly, staring blankly at the nothingness before him.

Kaz decided to glance at his last feature, Prosper. To his surprise, it was readable. It felt almost like a miracle—like the gods, or whatever force had control over this world, were finally giving him a break. But he couldn't help but wonder if it was a trick. That would be low, even for the gods… or was it the gods? It could be the devil, or some otherworldly being, messing with him. In the end, it didn't matter. Not when he was this close to death.

"What the actual hell is this?" he muttered, his voice tinged with disbelief as he stared at the script in front of him.

Kaz stared at the feature, disbelief creeping through him. The more he read, the more it felt like the feature was broken—or worse, it was some kind of cruel joke. Prosper? The very idea of it felt beyond insane. How could something like this be his? It had to be a mistake. To give him a feature like this now, when he was on the brink of death, seemed like a sick joke—something to mock him in his darkest moment.

He laughed bitterly, the sound hollow in the quiet chaos around him. "This is just... too much," he muttered.

Kaz's eyes narrowed as he read the feature, disbelief sinking deeper into his bones. The words seemed to mock him, yet also offer a strange, twisted promise.

[Prosper]: To prosper is to have solace, your hands wrapped tightly by the forces of prosperity. Dangerous situations will find you, but safety will find you, rich with knowledge… but at the cost of scars.

He felt a cold shiver run through him. Solace? Knowledge? It all sounded like a twisted paradox, a cruel combination of hope and suffering. Kaz scoffed, his mind reeling. "So, I'm supposed to find peace and wisdom… by getting hurt?"

For Kaz, it felt like a death sentence. Where was the safety in this? He was trapped in a desert, buried deep beneath an oasis, surrounded by deadly scorpions. The very notion of solace seemed like a cruel joke. The harshness of his situation clawed at him, and the weight of it all pressed down harder than the exhaustion in his bones.

He hated it. He hated everything about this—his broken body, the feature that mocked him with promises of safety that felt like a distant fantasy. But something inside him snapped. He couldn't just lie there, waiting to die. With a grunt, he forced himself up, his muscles screaming in protest, but his will drove him forward. It was a struggle, but he had to try—had to move. Whatever Prosper meant, it wasn't going to decide his fate without a fight.

It was time to go. He couldn't lay there for another second. He had to get up and move. Kaz pushed himself off the stone ground, groaning in pain, but his determination swallowed the discomfort. He couldn't afford to stop.

He picked up the small imp, still deep in sleep, cradling it gently in his arms. Ahead of him, an opening shrouded in darkness beckoned—seemingly the only place to go. Kaz couldn't fly, and the dark, mysterious cave seemed like his only option.

Prosper would not dictate whether he lived or died. With that thought, he stepped forward—only to be swiftly corrected.

The creature was about half the size of the enormous scorpion but still towering in its own right. It was human-sized, an unsettling sight for something that should have been a scorpion. Its pincers were sharper than the sharpest sword, the claws looking as though they could crush bone with a single squeeze. In the oppressive darkness, it was barely visible, its form blending into the shadows. Kaz had no idea how he was going to escape.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Two wings suddenly unfurled, glowing with an ethereal light. A sword, blacker than the cavern's deepest shadows, sliced through the scorpion with precision. Green blood splattered across the stone floor.

The being stepped forward, a small glimmer of light illuminating his silhouette. His eyes flickered, flashing red for an instant before settling into a lime green hue, cold and piercing.