Forged And Bound

Doom stood amidst the carnage, his breath steady, his body thrumming with a dark, insatiable power. The warehouse was a tomb now, the silence broken only by the slow, rhythmic drip of blood from the mangled corpses that littered the floor. The air was heavy, suffocating, saturated with the coppery stench of death and the faint, acrid odor of voided bowels. The bodies were not merely dead, they were ruined. Limbs twisted at unnatural angles, bones jutting through torn flesh like jagged spears. Faces frozen in masks of agony, eyes wide and glassy, staring into the void with unspoken terror. Some were barely recognizable as human, reduced to pulped meat and shattered bone, their innards spilling out in grotesque, glistening coils. Blood pooled beneath them, thick and dark, creeping across the concrete in slow, deliberate rivulets, seeking the cracks and crevices as if eager to escape the horror above.

Doom stepped over a severed arm, its fingers still curled as if clutching for life, and felt the sticky warmth of blood clinging to his boots. He paused, his gaze lingering on a corpse slumped against the wall, its chest cavity hollowed out, ribs splayed like the petals of a macabre flower. The heart was missing, torn free with brutal efficiency, and Doom felt a flicker of satisfaction. He had done this. He had taken this. The power within him surged, a dark, primal force that reveled in the destruction, in the raw, unfiltered violence of it all. It was intoxicating, overwhelming, a symphony of an unholy scripture that resonated in every fiber of his being.

He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. The obsidian claws that had torn through Kevlar and bone now retracted, leaving his hands human once more. But he could still feel them, lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed. His body was a weapon now, honed to perfection by the chained entity's fire. But weapons were tools, and tools always had a wielder. "Who wields me ?" he wondered.

"What is the cost ?". The thought sliced through the unnatural calm. Power like this didn't come freely. He remembered the fire, the agony of being unmade and remade in that impossible prison. He remembered the entity's bottomless hunger. It hadn't bestowed this gift out of charity. He flexed his hand, watching obsidian claws slide from beneath his fingernails and retract. The ease of it was monstrous. "What does it want?".

" What am I bound to?".

Ainar's spectral voice, thick with possessive awe, echoed in the stillness. "Magnificent. Utterly... magnificent." But even her presence felt distant, overshadowed by the raw, alien power thrumming within him.

Before he could dissect the feeling further, the air before him ripped. Not like the vortex that had taken him, but a sudden, jagged tear in reality itself, revealing a glimpse of the impossible prison, the twelve blood-red pillars, the groaning chains, the silhouette of the chained horror at its heart. A crushing gravity seized him, not physical, but existential, a command written in the fabric of his newly forged being. He had no choice. He stepped into the tear.

---

The transition was instantaneous, jarring. One moment, the reeking gore and cold concrete; the next, the crushing silence and bone-deep chill of the prison dimension. He stood naked again on the seamless obsidian floor, the twelve infernal flames casting their hellish light. The entity hung suspended, its abyssal eyes fixed upon him with unnerving intensity. The damaged chain wept its iridescent fluid onto the dark floor, the tiny fracture on one link barely visible.

The pressure was immense, a physical weight pressing down on his soul. Doom met its gaze, the cold core within him hardening. "What price?" His voice, though healed, carried the rasp of someone who had recently screamed his throat raw. It echoed strangely in the vast chamber.

The entity's too-wide mouth stretched into a grin, revealing endless rows of needle teeth. "Price?" Its voice scraped like continents grinding. "You accepted the covenant. You are the price. And the instrument."

"Do not speak in riddles," Doom growled, the power within him flaring, a silent challenge. The chains groaned louder.

The entity tilted its head, a gesture both predatory and amused. "Very well, little killer. You burn with borrowed fire. My fire. I am bound, as you see." A taloned finger, obsidian nail gleaming, gestured vaguely at the massive chains.

"Sealed here by powers long ascended, forgotten by the dust of time. This prison... it is not merely these chains. It is woven into the fabric of this reality, anchored by rituals etched into the bones of dead stars. I cannot break it. Not from within."

Its gaze intensified, the hunger within its void eyes flaring. "I cannot reach beyond these chains to reclaim my birthright, to rend the flesh of those who caged me. I cannot even forge a true champion from the void, for my power is leashed." The entity paused, its gaze dropping pointedly to the small pool of Doom's blood still staining the floor near the damaged chain. "But blood... spilled in rage, in desperation, offered in the silence... blood carries a resonance. A prayer I can hear."

"People like me," Doom stated flatly.

"Rare," the entity hissed. "So rare. Fragile sparks in the dark, whispering pleas for violence that resonate across the gulfs. Most flicker and die before their cries reach me. Or their offerings are... insufficient. Weak."

Its gaze raked over Doom, radiating satisfaction. "You... you burned bright. Your pain, your fury, the sheer volume of life you extinguished in my name... it was a beacon. A feast."

Its tongue, long and grey, flickered over needle-sharp teeth. "Delicious."

"And now?" Doom pressed. "What do you want now ?"

"Freedom," the entity rasped, the word vibrating with millennia of pent-up rage and longing. "These chains must break. The anchors must be shattered. But I cannot touch them. You can."

"How ?" Doom demanded. "You said it was impossible."

"Impossible or me," the entity corrected. "Trapped here. But you... you carry a fragment of my essence now. You are bound to me, but you are free. You can go where I cannot. To the source."

The entity leaned forward, chains shrieking in protest. The stench of cosmic decay intensified.

"This prison dimension... it is a construct. A cage built around me. But my origin... the place where I was, where I became, where the seals were first forged upon my flesh... that place exists. It is the root of this prison. Shatter the source, shatter the reflection. Go there. Find the heart of the seals. Break it."

The enormity of the task was staggering. Journey to the origin place of an ancient, chained god? Shatter seals crafted by powers capable of binding such a horror ?. Doom felt the cold weight of inevitability. He had asked for the power to break his enemies. He had been remade for this. There was no refusal.

"Before I go," Doom said, his voice devoid of inflection, "I require something. My father's body. On Earth. It deserves burial."

The entity froze. The predatory amusement vanished from its face, replaced by utter, chilling disdain. The air temperature plummeted. "Burial ?" The word dripped with contempt, colder than the void between stars. "Waste. Sentiment. Weakness." It spat the last word like venom. "That vessel served its purpose. It held the spark that ignited you. Now..." The entity raised its right hand, the one bound by the weeping chain. "Now it serves me."

Before Doom could react, a gesture, sharp and final, sliced the air. Back on Earth, in the derelict warehouse, Kael's slumped corpse vanished from its resting place against the generator.

It reappeared suspended in the air before the chained entity, held aloft by unseen forces. Doom's breath hitched, a phantom pain lancing through his chest, not physical, but a deep, primal wound.

Standing naked before the horror.

"No!" The word ripped from him, raw and instinctive. He took a step forward, power flaring around his fists.

The entity didn't even look at him. Its focus was entirely on Kael's body. A low, guttural chant began, not in any language Doom knew, but in syllables that vibrated the obsidian floor and made the pillar flames gutter violently. The sound scraped against Doom's mind, ancient and profane.

 A spasm ran through the entity's right hand, the hand bound by the weeping chain. Its obsidian talons, jagged as broken glass, clenched and released in a grotesque mimicry of life, a tremor of anticipation or perhaps effort. Kael's leather coat and clothing dissolved into greasy smoke that stank of burnt hair and ozone. His body hung naked and pale in the hellish light.

The entity made a twisting motion with its clawed hand. Kael's bones began to sing. A high-pitched, agonized whine emanated from them as they visibly shifted beneath the skin. His spine elongated, straightened with a series of sickening pops, becoming impossibly rigid and dense. His ribs flared, then curved inward sharply, their ends sharpening to needle points. His skull seemed to compress, the jawbone distending slightly, teeth fusing into a single, serrated edge.

The entity gestured again. Kael's skin split open along precise, invisible lines, not bleeding, but peeling back like parchment. Underlying muscle and sinew writhed, not like living tissue, but like molten metal being drawn and shaped. Tendons thickened, coiling like steel cables, weaving around the reshaping bones. Organs liquefied in a grotesque display, melting into a viscous, dark slurry that flowed over the shifting musculature, hardening instantly into a substance resembling blackened, fossilized leather.

The entity extended its right index finger. From the tip of its obsidian nail, a single drop of its own black, tarry blood welled. It fell, striking the center of Kael's transforming chest where his heart had been.

Where the drop hit, a point of absolute darkness appeared. Then, fire erupted, not red like the pillars, but a cold, void-black flame that consumed Kael's body from the inside out. There was no heat Doom could feel, only a sucking coldness that stole his breath. The black fire raced along the newly formed tendons, etched itself into the reshaped bones, and soaked into the hardened flesh-slurry. Kael's body contorted violently in the grip of invisible forces, limbs snapping into new, brutal angles. The high-pitched bone-whine escalated into a shriek that seemed to come from the matter itself.

The black fire condensed, pulling the contorted form inward. Limbs fused. The elongated spine became a central shaft. The flared, sharpened ribs swept back and down, forming a heavy, brutal crossguard. The compressed skull flowed downwards, merging with the upper part of the spine, forming a massive, angular pommel, the fused teeth creating a jagged, saw-toothed edge along its base. The substance covering it all, hardened organ-slurry and transformed muscle, became the weapon's dark, textured grip and the flat of the blade, which seemed to absorb the light around it. The black fire died abruptly.

Where Kael's body had been, a weapon hovered. It was a greatsword, but utterly alien and terrifying. Longer than Doom was tall, impossibly heavy-looking. The blade was matte black, seemingly carved from volcanic glass or fossilized bone, with veins of deep crimson pulsing faintly within its depths. The crossguard was formed from those sharp, swept-back ribs, looking like the jaws of some predator. The grip, textured like scaled leather, flowed seamlessly into the massive pommel, unmistakably derived from Kael's transformed skull, the serrated jawbone edge glinting wickedly. The entire weapon radiated a palpable aura of cold fury, sorrow, and brutal, uncompromising violence. It was Kael, distilled into an instrument of annihilation.

The entity flicked a talon. The weapon floated towards Doom and dropped, point embedding itself an inch into the unyielding obsidian floor with a resonant chime that vibrated up Doom's legs.

"Take your legacy, little killer" the entity rasped, its voice thick with dark satisfaction. "Wield it."

Doom stared at the weapon. The skull pommel. The rib-crossguard. The faint pulse of crimson within the black blade, his father's blood, his essence. The cold power thrumming within him didn't react to the weapon; it recognized it. It felt like an extension of the rage, the brutality, the relentless drive that Kael had hammered into him. But staring at that skull, a hollow space opened up inside Doom, vast and freezing.

He's gone. The thought was simple, devastating. Not just dead. Used.

Consumed. Transformed. There was no body to bury, no grave to visit, no lingering presence but this monstrous blade. Kael, the force that had shaped his entire existence, the man he had both feared and fought to please, the man he had dragged bleeding through the streets... was reduced to a tool. His final expression, that grim triumph, echoed in the weapon's brutal lines. He had seen his creation ascend, even if it meant his own utter erasure.

Doom was alone. Truly, utterly alone. An orphan not just of family, but of any semblance of his past identity. Ainar was a whisper tied to a ghost. Kael was a weapon. He was... Doom. Only Doom. And the thing in the chains.

He reached out. His hand closed around the grip. It felt cold, yet perfectly shaped, humming with a familiar, ferocious energy. As his fingers touched the scaled leather (was that skin ?), a jolt ran through him, not pain, but a surge of connection. Memories flashed: Kael's fist connecting with his jaw, the cold instructions in a damp basement, the wet gasp as he died, the triumph in his eyes. The weapon settled into his grip with terrifying rightness, as if it had always been meant to be there. It was heavy, incredibly so, but his reforged muscles bore the weight effortlessly. He pulled it free from the floor.

"No more delays," the entity intoned. The vortex, the whirlpool of blood and darkness, exploded into existence at Doom's feet, far larger and more violent than before. It roared like a living thing, a maw leading into absolute uncertainty.

"Go. To the place of my birth. To the place of my binding. Shatter the seal."

The vortex surged upwards, engulfing the naked Doom. He had a final glimpse of the chained entity, its void eyes fixed on him with ancient, ravenous expectation, and the damaged chain, the hairline fracture seeming to pulse faintly in time with the weapon in his hand.

Then he was falling. Not through space, but through screaming chaos, the skull pommel of his father's remains cold against his palm, the weight of the blade a constant reminder of his solitude and his purpose.

---

Doom pushed himself up from the unyielding, alien rock, the greatsword held easily in one hand. He stood completely exposed on the desolate plateau, under a sky choked with swirling, bruised-purple clouds. Three sickly green moons hung low, casting their eerie, pallid light over his unclothed form.

Before him stretched a landscape of shattered obsidian mountains and rivers of flowing slag. The air vibrated with a deep, resonant hum, the sound of the planet itself groaning, a tangible pressure against his bare skin. In the far distance, silhouetted against a perpetual, blood-red twilight glow, stood impossibly vast, cyclopean structures, ruins of terrifying scale and alien geometry, half-buried in the tortured rock.

This was not Earth. This was not the prison dimension.

INITIATING ASSIMILATION: DESIGNATION - [DOOM]

BIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS:

PRIMORDIAL SYMBIOSIS DETECTED 

ENTITY: [BOUND ONE/NAMELESS]

STATUS: SEALED (FRAGMENTED) - POWER: 0.7%

GOD-MARK: [INCOMPLETE] - ASCENSION THRESHOLD NOT ACHIEVED

CHAMPION STATUS: [INVALID] - SACRIFICIAL YIELD INSUFFICIENT

DESIGNATION:

ASPIRANT PREDATOR (BLOOD/BONE CLASS) ::INCOMPLETE/FRAGMENTED

ENVIRONMENT:

ASHEN GULF - TIER 3 DEAD ZONE

SACRIFICE REQUIREMENT DETECTED:

BIO-TITHERIUM DETECTED: [BONE MARROW/PLASMA FEEDING SEALED ENTITY - 0.003%]

DIRECTIVE:

HUNT. HARVEST. SACRIFICE. BREAK THE SEAL

THE [VERDICT SYSTEM] AWAITS YOUR OFFERING.

The jagged shards of static-light burned into Doom's retinas. As they faded, the ghostly HUD solidified at the edge of his vision. His gaze snapped downward, past the phantom interface, to his own chest. 

There, burned into the flesh above his heart, was a corrupted sigil. It pulsed with a slow, sickly rhythm, echoing the groaning chains of his imprisoned god, a jagged circle, like a shattered sun, wrought in deep, tarnished crimson that bled into veins of tar-black corruption. The mark was starkly incomplete its edges were ragged and uneven, whole sections seeming to fade into raw, unmarked skin before resuming in fractured lines. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, weeping faint tendrils of the same void-black energy that had forged his sword. It pulsed, a brand starved of the divine radiance a true Champion's mark should possess. The greatsword in his hand vibrated faintly, its own dark energy resonating with the fractured sigil on his flesh. 

Doom, the orphan, the weapon forged by a dead man, guided by a dead woman's ghost and bound to a weakened god, stood utterly naked and alone on an alien world, his father's transformed bones cold in his grip. The hunt for the seal had begun. And the,, Verdict System watched.