The Voice Within

Kairo woke up to pain.

Not the sharp kind that made you scream and thrash. The deep kind. The kind that settled into your bones and whispered that this was your life now.

Every inch of him was broken.

His skin hung in strips where Azareth's claws had found him. His ribs felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. His knee was swollen to twice its normal size, throbbing with each heartbeat. His left hand... he couldn't even move his fingers anymore.

The purple light from before? Gone.

Just pain in its place.

His body wasn't healing. Wasn't even trying. He was just... falling apart.

The ground beneath him pulsed with heat. Not burning, but alive. Like he was lying on the chest of some massive creature, feeling its heartbeat through the stone.

Behind him, that river of molten rock hissed and bubbled, painting everything in sick orange light.

He was alone.

No weapons. No plan. No way out.

He pressed his forehead to the hot stone and felt something break inside his chest. Not bones this time.

"Why me God..."

The words came out cracked and small. Like a kid asking why the bigger boys always picked on him.

"You still breathe. That's answer enough."

The voice hit him like ice water. Not from outside—from inside his skull. Heavy and hollow and way too familiar.

The Will of Hell.

Kairo tried to ignore it, tried to push himself up. Every movement was agony, but he had to move. Had to keep going.

Azareth was still out there. And probably pissed off now.

That surge of power he'd felt before? It was gone. Used up. Like a phone battery that had died right when you needed it most. His chest ached just thinking about trying to call it back.

A sound made him freeze.

Stone scraping against stone. Close.

Too close.

He spun around too fast and his broken ribs screamed in protest. He hit the ground hard, gasping.

But it wasn't a demon.

Just a corpse.

Half-buried in ash and soot, like it had been there for centuries. Charred bones wrapped in the melted remains of armor. But clutched in its skeletal fingers...

A sword.

Kairo crawled toward it on his belly, leaving a trail of blood in the dirt. The blade was rusted, chipped, looked like it might fall apart if he looked at it wrong.

But it was better than his bare hands.

He pried it free with shaking fingers. The metal was warm. Almost alive.

At least I won't die empty-handed.

Far above, in a palace of black glass and flowing lava, the Demon Queen, Second Sovereign stirred.

Merevael. The Ashmother.

She wasn't like the First Sovereign—all rage and teeth and brutality. She was something worse. Beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful. Deadly in the way poison was deadly.

Slow. Patient. Inevitable.

Her domain stretched for thousands of miles. Volcanic wastelands. Cities of bone that crumbled as you watched. Seas of lava that sang lullabies to the dying.

Stage Two of Hell.

She watched the scrying flames with eyes like molten gold, seeing the boy drag himself through her realm with a broken sword in his broken hands.

"So he still lives."

Her voice was smoke and honey. The kind of sound that made you want to trust her right before she killed you.

A lesser demon cowered at the foot of her obsidian throne, not daring to look up.

"Should I... should I send the Hellhounds, my lady?"

Merevael rose from her seat like liquid shadow. Ash swirled around her feet with each step. The air itself seemed to bend away from her presence.

"No."

She moved to the great window overlooking her domain. Far below, tiny figures moved through the wasteland like ants. Some were her demons. Others were lost souls.

And one was something else entirely.

"Let Azareth finish his hunt. If he fails..."

Her lips curved into something that might have been a smile on anyone else. On her, it looked like a promise of pain.

"Then we'll see what happens when you push a mistake too far."

Kairo stumbled through the ruins.

His throat felt like he'd been swallowing glass. Every breath was work. The air here wasn't just hot—it was thick, like breathing soup made of ash and suffering.

He didn't know where he was going.

Forward. Just forward. Because stopping meant the voices would come back.

And they were getting louder.

"Little ghost..."

"Lost little lamb..."

"Heaven's broken toy..."

Sometimes the Will of Hell spoke in riddles. Sometimes it just laughed at him. But underneath all the mockery, he could hear something else.

Fear.

Not of him. Because of him.

He didn't belong here. Wasn't supposed to exist. Some kind of cosmic fuck-up that had somehow gained consciousness and started walking around.

Time meant nothing in this place. Could have been minutes. Could have been days. The sky never changed—just that endless bleeding red, like the whole world was one big open wound.

His stomach had stopped growling and started eating itself. The hunger was worse than the pain now. Worse than the fear.

He found some kind of moss growing on a rock. Gray and slimy and probably poisonous.

He ate it anyway.

Tasted like death and regret.

But it was something.

Then he heard them.

Footsteps.

Not running. Not searching.

Just walking. Calm and sure and getting closer.

Kairo's blood turned to ice. He dove behind a chunk of fallen stone, pressing himself against the rock like he could disappear into it.

His heart was beating so loud he was sure they'd hear it.

The footsteps stopped.

Silence stretched like a held breath.

Then, through the smoke and heat haze, a figure emerged.

Another hunter.

But this one... this one was different from Azareth.

Bigger. Built like a walking siege engine. His armor wasn't just metal—it was made from bones. Human bones, fused together with molten iron. Skulls for shoulder pads. Ribcages for a breastplate.

His mouth was sewn shut with barbed wire. Thick black threads pulled tight through torn lips. He breathed through slits carved into his throat, each exhale a wet rasp.

He looked like every nightmare Kairo had ever had, rolled into one and given permission to hunt.

Kairo's grip tightened on his rusted sword.

I can't fight that thing.

But running was just dying slower.

So he didn't run.

He charged.

Screaming like a madman. Swinging the blade with everything he had left.

The sword bit deep into the demon's thigh, right between two pieces of bone armor.

The creature didn't even blink.

His backhand caught Kairo across the chest and launched him twenty feet through the air. He hit the rock wall so hard he heard something crack. Maybe the stone. Maybe his spine.

He couldn't breathe. Couldn't see. The sword was gone, lost somewhere in the rubble.

Massive hands grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground. His feet kicked uselessly in the air.

The demon's breathing was like a broken bellows. Those throat-slits opening and closing, spraying Kairo with something warm and wet.

"I'M NOT AN ANGEL!"

The words tore out of his throat like broken glass. "I'M NOTHING! I-I'M JUST A KID!!"

The demon's grip tightened.

Orders were orders.

And Kairo was just another target.

That's when it happened.

A memory.

Or maybe a hallucination.

He was falling again. Through that crack in the sky. And something had been waiting for him in the darkness between worlds.

A figure made of shadow and starlight. Ancient beyond measure.

It had spoken only once:

"Let it out, little mistake. Let them see what happens when Heaven drops its trash in the wrong place."

Something deep inside him snapped.

Not broke. Not cracked.

Snapped.

The power didn't surge this time.

It exploded.

Purple-white light erupted from every pore, every wound, every broken piece of him. The air itself caught fire. The ground split open in a dozen places.

The demon was blasted backward like he'd been hit by a meteor. He crashed through three stone walls before finally coming to rest in a pile of rubble that used to be someone's house.

Kairo collapsed.

Blood ran from his nose, his ears, his eyes. His body felt like it was tearing itself apart from the inside. He could taste copper and ozone and something that might have been his own soul burning.

But for just a second...

For just one perfect second...

He'd felt powerful.

Then the smoke cleared.

And the world went quiet.

Too quiet.

New footsteps. Soft as whispers.

Black robes that seemed to drink the light around them. A hood that cast shadows too deep to see through. No sound. No breathing.

But Kairo knew.

Azareth had come back.

And he'd brought friends.

Two more shapes materialized from the heat haze. Nightmares given form. Death wearing different faces.

All of them focused on him.

All of them patient.

All of them certain.

Kairo tried to push himself up. His arms gave out. He tried to crawl. His legs wouldn't work.

The Will of Hell whispered in his ear, and for once it didn't sound mocking.

"Endure, Vessel. Or die here forgotten."

Tears mixed with the blood on his face.

He didn't want to die.

Not like this.

Not alone.

But as the hunters closed in, as his broken body finally gave up the fight, Kairo realized something that made his blood run cold.

He wasn't going to die here.

That would be too easy.

Too merciful.

They were going to take him alive.

And then the real suffering would begin.