In The Name of The Father, The Son and The Unholy Spirit – The Chained God
Blood filled Doom's mouth, a hot, metallic slurry that coated his tongue and trickled down his raw throat. It wasn't just the taste; it was the smell, thick and cloying in the damp air of the derelict warehouse, mixing with the greasy scent of old machinery, cordite, and the sharp tang of fresh violence.
This time, the enemies had names and badges. Task Force Aegis. The elite unit created solely to bring down Kael and his "demon spawn."
Doom's father lay slumped against a rusted generator five feet away, breathing in wet, shallow gasps. Kael's leather coat was sodden with blood, not just the spray of Aegis operatives they'd cut down during the frantic escape from the F.C.B, but his own. Two rounds had punched through Kael's lower back during the ambush outside the bank. He'd killed three more on the stumbling, bloody retreat to this warehouse, his movements growing slower, more labored, his legendary precision faltering under the weight of shattered organs. Doom had dragged him the last hundred yards, Kael's blood painting a slick trail on the pavement, the shouts and disciplined footfalls of Aegis closing in.
Now, cornered. Doom had fought like a rabid animal to buy seconds, taking bullets meant for his father, shattering bones and windpipes with his bare hands until a tactical shotgun blast had finally caught him square in the chest, spinning him to the concrete floor. The knife came later, plunged into his gut by a cold-eyed Aegis sergeant as Doom struggled to rise.
His ribs were shattered, jagged edges grating like broken pottery with every shallow, hitching breath. His left eye was swollen shut, a throbbing mass of pain and pressure that narrowed his world to a blood-filmed slit. His right arm hung bent at a grotesque angle, the bone protruding whitely through torn skin and fabric, a useless weight.
The warehouse floor beneath him was slick with gore, his, Kael's, and the Aegis operatives who'd paid the price for cornering wolves. Shadows moved at the edges of his failing vision, boots crunching on concrete grit stained crimson. Tactical vests, helmets, the glint of rifle barrels catching the dim light filtering through grimy high windows. They moved with trained efficiency, securing angles, their faces grim behind visors, devoid of the jackal-like cruelty but radiating the cold satisfaction of a hunt nearing its end.
"Targets contained," a voice crackled over a radio, clipped and professional. "Alpha is critical. Omega is down and neutralized."
Omega. Doom. The designation scraped against his fading consciousness. His father groaned, a wet, bubbling sound. Doom tried to turn his head, to see him, but agony lanced through his neck.
Kael's voice, weaker than Doom had ever heard it, rasped through the pain. "Get... up... boy." It wasn't encouragement. It was an order from a dying king, a refusal to let his legacy end on its knees.
But Doom couldn't. The knife in his gut was an anchor, cold steel kissing his spine. Every shallow, desperate inhalation scraped torn flesh against it, sending fresh waves of nauseating agony through his core. It wasn't just pain, it was an invasion, a violation of his very center. His vision swam.
Ainar's voice was silent. Utterly, terrifyingly gone. Two years, her whispers had been the constant current beneath the surface of his thoughts, a guiding hand, a cruel comfort, the architect of his becoming. Now, there was only a yawning void where her presence had resided. Just the wet, ragged sound of his own breath, Kael's weakening gasps, and the calm, methodical movements of the Aegis team tightening the noose.
This is it, he thought, the words forming with glacial slowness in his fractured mind. This is how it ends. Not in some grand blaze of glory, but here, on cold concrete, drowning in his own fluids, his father dying beside him, surrounded by hunters paid to erase them. The image was bleak, final. A failure. Kael's failure. His failure.
But Doom had never been one to accept endings. A spark, cold and hard as flint, ignited deep within the ruin of him. Not like this. Not in front of him. His fingers twitched against the sticky floor, curling into the thick, lukewarm pool of his own blood. It felt obscenely intimate, this connection to his own draining life. The pain was a distant thing, a roaring fire glimpsed through thick ice, present, immense, but muffled, separated by layers of encroaching numbness and shock. He had been here before, broken, bleeding, teetering on the crumbling edge of oblivion. Each time, a silent plea had been his anchor.
And each time, he had whispered the same prayer. A desperate bargain offered into the indifferent dark. A plea for power, for violence.
Now, with death's teeth sunk deep into his throat, his father's blood mingling with his own on the concrete, the icy breath of the void washing over him, he dredged the words from the wreckage of his lungs and spoke them aloud. They scraped free, raw and guttural, a challenge thrown at fate and the men who thought they had won.
"Let me break them."
His voice was ruined, little more than a growl, a vibration in his ruined chest. But the words carried, heavy as a vow forged in iron and despair. They hung in the suddenly still, thick air, seeming to echo in the vast, shadowed space beyond the physical confines of the warehouse.
"Let me kill them."
The air stilled. The calm radio chatter cut off abruptly. The advancing boots froze. The very dust motes dancing in the weak light seemed to freeze mid-fall. The pressure in the room shifted, growing denser, charged with an ancient, predatory awareness that had nothing to do with tactical training. The hairs on his remaining skin prickled, not from fear, but from the sudden, undeniable sense of presence.
Somewhere beyond the world, beyond the veil of blood and concrete and pain, something vast and hungry and impossibly old listened. It turned its attention, like a colossal beast shifting in the dark depths of eternity.
---
Darkness. Absolute, suffocating, a velvet shroud that pressed in from all sides, devoid of light, sound, or sensation. It was the darkness before creation, the silence of the grave amplified a thousandfold.
Then
Fire. Not gentle flame, but eruptions of violent, blood-red light that cracked into existence atop twelve immense pillars. They stood in a perfect, impossible circle, towering monoliths of a stone so dark it seemed to drink the very light it bore. Each pillar was ancient, scarred with deep, unreadable runes that pulsed faintly with the rhythm of the flames above, symbols that hurt the mind to linger upon, hinting at geometries and concepts that defied mortal understanding. The air hummed with a low, subsonic thrum, a vibration felt deep in the marrow rather than heard.
At the base of each pillar, the chains began, impossibly thick links, each larger than a man's torso, forged from a substance darker than the void between stars. They stretched inward, impossibly taut, groaning with a sound like continents grinding against each other, bearing an unimaginable strain. The metal wasn't merely dark; it seemed to absorb light, radiating an aura of absolute negation.
At the center of this circle of fire and shadow, suspended by the agonized chains, was the figure.
Vaguely humanoid, yet fundamentally other. Tall, impossibly so, yet emaciated, its form wasted as if by eons of imprisonment. Its skin, the colour of dried blood and obsidian ash, was stretched drum-tight over a jagged, angular skeleton that seemed too large, too sharp, too wrong. Limbs elongated to disturbing proportions, ending in hands where fingers like gnarled talons flexed slowly. The nails were shards of purest black obsidian, long, cruel, and wickedly sharp.
Its face was a nightmare sculpture: high, knife-edged cheekbones, a jawline that could cut stone, a mouth that stretched far too wide when it moved, revealing needle-sharp teeth like splintered bone. And its eyes… they weren't eyes. They were pits, bottomless voids that held not darkness, but a hunger so profound it warped the very air around them, pulling at the soul.
The chains bound it with brutal finality: massive manacles at the wrists and ankles, biting deep into the unnatural flesh, and a collar of the same dark metal locked around its throat, forcing its head slightly forward. One chain, attached to its right wrist, showed distinct signs of damage. The metal wasn't rusted or worn thin; it looked dissolved, pitted and scarred as if splashed with a cosmic acid. The scars wept a thin, viscous fluid that wasn't quite liquid, shimmering with faint, sickly iridescence in the hellish light. Strangely, directly beneath this weeping chain, on the featureless, dark floor that seemed to absorb the pillar-light, lay a small pool of fresh, vibrant crimson blood.
The creature's gaze was fixed utterly on this pool. Its head was tilted, an unnerving stillness about it. Within the blood's surface, reflections danced not of the fiery pillars, but fleeting, fragmented scenes: the warehouse floor slick with gore, the glint of the knife in Doom's gut, the circling predators, the raw agony on Doom's face, moments plucked from the very edge of oblivion.
Then
The prayer, ripped from a dying throat, echoed not just in the warehouse, but here, in this impossible prison, vibrating the very chains.
"Let me break them."
The creature's lips, thin, grey, and cracked, peeled back slowly from its needle teeth in a grin of pure, chilling ecstasy. It stretched wider, impossibly wide, splitting the lower half of its face.
It laughed.
The sound wasn't merely heard; it happened. It was the shriek of tortured metal amplified, the crack of glaciers calving into an abyss, the wet crunch of a spine snapping, layered over the primordial scream of the first dying star. It echoed not just in the chamber but through Doom's fading consciousness, a sound of terrible, ancient recognition.
"Finally."
Its voice followed, a grating rasp like a blade dragged slowly over unyielding stone, yet resonant with a power that vibrated the air itself, thick with millennia of waiting.
With deliberate, agonizing slowness, it raised its right hand, the one bound by the damaged chain. The obsidian thumb-nail, long as a dagger, gleamed wickedly. It pressed the razor edge against the pad of its emaciated index finger. Black blood, thick as molten tar, heavy with the scent of ozone and grave soil, welled instantly. A single, glistening drop formed, trembling at the tip.
It fell.
It hit the small pool of fresh, red human blood.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent. The red blood didn't just boil; it screamed silently, erupting in furious, hissing bubbles. Then it twisted, defying gravity and physics, spiraling upwards with terrifying speed into a vortex, a whirlpool of blood and darkness, a doorway ripped screaming into existence, a maw hungry for what was promised.
And Doom...
His broken body on the warehouse floor seemed to dissolve into the vortex, pulled not by physical force, but by the sheer, gravitational will of the entity and the covenant of his own desperate prayer.
Doom was pulled.
---
Naked.
Covered in gore that felt suddenly alien, not just his own blood, but the mixed essence of the men he had killed, now cold and sticky against skin exposed to an atmosphere thick with the taste of old copper and ozone. The transition had been instantaneous, brutal. One moment, the cold concrete, the knife's kiss on his spine, the jackals laughing. The next, this: kneeling on a floor that felt like cold, seamless obsidian, radiating a chill that seeped into his bones deeper than the warehouse's damp.
The air pressed in, dense and metallic, heavy with the scent of ancient violence and something else, the dry, infinite cold of interstellar void. Above, the twelve blood-red flames flickered, casting jagged, leaping shadows that made the towering pillars seem to sway and the chained figure's emaciated form stretch and contort into even more impossible shapes. The silence here was profound, broken only by the deep, rhythmic groan of the straining chains and the wet sound of his own, miraculously steady breathing. His wounds were gone. The agony was a phantom echo. But the violation of the knife, the crushing despair of Ainar's absence, those lingered like ghosts.
He didn't flinch. He didn't beg. Survival instinct screamed, but a deeper, colder core, the part shaped by his father's brutality and Ainar's whispers, locked it down. He lifted his gaze, meeting the abyssal pits that served as the creature's eyes. And in that endless, devouring hunger, he understood. Recognition slammed into him, colder than the obsidian floor. This was the silence that had listened when he broke bones in dark alleys. This was the void that had drunk the psychic spillage of every kill offered like a prayer. This was the unnamed god he had been sacrificing to all along.
The creature tilted its nightmare head, the movement causing its chains to shriek a protest that vibrated through the floor and up Doom's spine. Its too-wide mouth stretched further, revealing more of those needle-sharp teeth in a grin that held no warmth, only the promise of dissolution.
"You have been mine from the moment you made your first prayer" it rasped, the sound like mountains grinding to dust. The words resonated not just in his ears but in the hollow spaces of his newly healed bones. "You just didn't know it."
Doom's breath came slow, deliberate. The air burned his lungs with its alien tang. "What are you?" The question was raw, stripped bare, echoing the vulnerability of his nakedness.
The creature's laugh was a physical assault, a low-frequency vibration that made his teeth ache and his vision blur. "What do you want me to be?" It leaned forward, the chains screaming in protest, pulling taut like bowstrings. The stench of decay and cosmic cold intensified, washing over him. "A god? A devil? A voice in the dark?" Its breath, hot and rancid, yet carrying the sweet, cloying scent of forgotten graves, washed over Doom's face. "I am the thing that answers when men like you pray. I am the hunger behind every fist, the rage behind every knife. The silence after the scream."
Its taloned hand, the one bound by the weeping chain, uncurled slowly. The obsidian nails gleamed like shards of dead stars. It hovered, palm down, over Doom's chest, over the place where the knife had been. The air crackled with static, raising the hairs on Doom's arms and neck.
"And you, little killer," it breathed, the voice dropping to a terrifying intimacy, "have been delicious."
Doom remained statue-still. The entity's presence was a physical weight, an ancient, crushing gravity. "What now?" The words were ash in his mouth.
The creature's grin became a rictus of pure, unholy anticipation. "Now?" Its palm descended, not fast, but inevitable. The cold, dry, impossibly hard surface of its skin pressed against the center of Doom's chest.
"Now you burn."
---
Fire.
Not on his skin.
In him.
It erupted from the point of contact, a white-hot lance of pure agony that tore through muscle, bone, and marrow. Doom's back arched violently, his spine bowing like a drawn longbow, tendons standing out like cables under his skin. A silent scream locked in his throat, choked off by the sheer, overwhelming intensity of the violation. This wasn't healing; this was reforging.
His skin split. Not in wounds, but in seams, like clay cracking in a kiln, revealing glimpses of incandescent light beneath. His bones moved with wet, grinding pops, elongating, reshaping, denser, harder. He felt his ribs reknit, not just mended, but armored. His shattered arm snapped back into alignment with a sickening crunch, the bone thickening, the muscle fibers coiling like steel springs. His swollen eye pulsed, the pressure building until the bruised flesh tore slightly at the corner, revealing an iris that flickered, for a terrifying instant, with the same abyssal hunger as the chained god's voids.
His blood sang. It roared through his veins like molten metal, carrying not oxygen, but raw, destructive potential. Every nerve ending shrieked, overloaded, then fused into conduits for this new, terrifying energy. He felt the limits of his flesh straining, tearing, then expanding to contain the impossible power flooding him. It was agony beyond any torture his father had devised, beyond the cold betrayal of the knife. It was the universe pouring into a vessel too small, reshaping it with brutal, indifferent force.
The creature watched, its head tilted with rapt, horrifying fascination. The bottomless pits of its eyes drank in Doom's transformation, reflecting the internal inferno. It saw the ruin being reshaped into something sharper, deadlier. It saw the spark of humanity, already so dim, gutter and threaten to be extinguished by the rising tide of divine violence. A low, rumbling sound emanated from its chest, satisfaction, pure and primal.
When the fire finally receded, leaving behind a trembling, steaming husk, Doom collapsed forward onto his hands and knees, gasping. Sweat and blood-streaked gore slicked his skin. But he was whole. More than whole. He felt the concrete-like density of his bones, the coiled, hydraulic power in his muscles, the hyper-acuity of his senses, he could smell the iron in the distant blood pool, hear the individual groans of each massive chain link, see the minute fluctuations in the blood-red flames atop the pillars. And beneath it all, a cold, deep, hungry well of power, waiting to be unleashed.
He looked at his hands. They were still human-shaped, but the knuckles seemed heavier, the tendons more pronounced. When he clenched his fist, the air crackled faintly around it.
The creature leaned back, the chains slackening slightly with a groan of relief. The predatory satisfaction radiating from it was palpable, a pressure against Doom's newly heightened senses.
"Go," it whispered, the sound slithering directly into Doom's mind, bypassing his ears. "Break them. Kill them. Be what you were always meant to be and more."
The vortex, the whirlpool of blood and darkness that had brought him here, reappeared before him on the obsidian floor. It pulsed with the same malevolent energy as the chained god.
Doom didn't hesitate. He didn't look back. He stepped into the screaming vortex.
He fell and landed back on the warehouse floor.
Alive.
Whole.
Hungry.
---
The Aegis operatives standing over the spot where his broken body had lain froze. The professional calm shattered, replaced by primal, gut-chilling terror. The air, thick with blood and gunpowder moments before, now crackled with something other. Something wrong.
He stood naked amidst the carnage, coated in drying gore like a second skin. Steam rose faintly from his body in the cool air. His eyes, when they opened, held no pain, no fear. Only a flat, chilling emptiness that reflected the abyss he'd just visited. And beneath that emptiness, a furnace of pure, focused hunger fixed on the men who had shot his father.
They died screaming.
Not because he was faster, though he moved with a speed that blurred, a flicker of shadow between the weak overhead lights.
Not because he was stronger, though when his hand closed on the first operative's rifle barrel, the hardened steel crumpled like foil with a shriek of tortured metal.
But because he was wrong.
He moved like liquid shadow given lethal intent. Physics seemed a suggestion he no longer heeded. A controlled burst of fire stitched the air where he had been a microsecond before. He was already among them. His hand, fingers now tipped with claws like obsidian shards, plunged through Kevlar and ceramic plate as if they were paper, ripping out a spine with a wet, tearing crunch. He discarded it like garbage and was on the next.
He didn't just kill them. He unmade them. Tactical vests offered no resistance; flesh parted like rotten fruit under his touch. Bones shattered into dust or splintered into jagged shrapnel that tore through others. He moved through the disciplined formation like a scythe through wheat, a whirlwind of impossible angles and brutal efficiency. There was no rage, no frenzy. Only a cold, methodical application of his new, ruinous gift to the task of extermination. He was violence incarnate, a walking blasphemy against flesh, bone, and the authority that had sent these men.
A strangled sound came from the generator. Kael.
Doom paused, mid-motion, a dying Aegis operative dangling from his grip like a broken doll. He turned his head, the movement unnaturally smooth.
Kael was propped against the rusted metal, his face ashen, blood frothing at his lips. His eyes, dimming with approaching death, were wide. Not with fear of the end, but with raw, disbelieving recognition. He saw the impossible speed, the effortless brutality, the obsidian claws, the eyes holding the abyss. He saw Ainar's terrifying grace fused with his own ruthless efficiency, then twisted and amplified into something monstrous and divine.
A wet, rattling cough shook Kael. He tried to speak, managed only a whisper that cut through the dripping silence. "...Ainar..." It wasn't a question. It was an acknowledgment. A confirmation. The fire, the chaos, the hunger, it was hers, reborn and perfected in this abomination he had forged.
A flicker of something passed over Kael's face, not pain, not regret. Something colder. Darker. Triumph. His blood-slick lips twitched upwards, the ghost of a smile, the final expression of a man who saw his terrible legacy not just endure, but ascend. His head lolled back against the generator, the light fading completely from his eyes, fixed forever on the impossible thing his son had become.
Doom stared at his father's corpse. The hunger within him pulsed, a deep, satisfied thrum, but it didn't extend to the still form. Kael was... done. A chapter closed. The only thing left was the carnage, the silence, and the power singing in his veins.
---
Far away, in the darkness bound by fire and chains, the massive links groaned.
One link, the damaged one, weeping its iridescent fluid onto the dark floor, shuddered.
A hairline fracture, fine as spider silk, snaked across its pitted surface.
Just a little.
Just enough.