The gates of Hollow Deep groaned open like the jaws of something ancient and long starved.
Orien Thorne stumbled as the guard shoved him forward. Iron chains clinked with every step. Wrists, ankles, throat, all bound with pitted steel that still carried the warmth of a forge. His bruises throbbed with each movement, but worse than pain was the stench that welcomed him: hot iron, piss-soaked stone, rot, and something sourer. Something old. He gagged.
The ground beneath him wasn't dirt. It was cracked stone, pitted and blackened, warm like it remembered fire. His bare feet slipped slightly, and he almost fell. But no one would catch him.
The guards never spoke. Pact markings shimmered faintly beneath their armor, one with celestial runes that pulsed a pale gold across his throat, another whose demon-brand bled smoke like a slow leak in reality. Neither looked him in the eye.
They didn't need to. He was already forgotten.
They dragged him through the open encampment. Hollow Deep was no singular cell, but a fractured wound in the earth, a prison city carved into stone and heat, surrounded by jagged ridges and walls that blocked both sunlight and stars.
Smog hung like a second ceiling, trapping everything below. The scent of cooked flesh or something close to it, clung to the air. Fused with a metallic tang that coated the tongue. Orien swallowed, but it did nothing to clear the taste. It felt like licking rust.
Everywhere he looked, there were eyes. Watching.
Eyes ringed in pact scars. Eyes dulled by time. Eyes gouged out and replaced by burning brands.
There were fires, not for warmth but ritual. Stone towers rose like broken teeth, their windows filled with moving shadows. Somewhere, a distant scream echoed or laughter. Or both. Orien couldn't tell.
A priest branded by an angel walked barefoot on glass, blood dripping from his soles like prayer beads. A demon-bound twin with fire-slick skin sparred with himself, his limbs splitting like tree branches mid-swing.
Orien didn't look long. That was rule one: don't draw attention.
They shoved him into a cell barely large enough for a man to stretch out. The walls sweat constantly. Moisture clung to everything — floor, ceiling, skin — and every breath tasted like mildew and old blood. Chains hung from the corners, rusted through. A single slot in the wall promised food. And something in the corner twitched when he wasn't looking.
The door slammed shut.
Silence.
At first, he clung to sanity like it still meant something.
He counted ceiling cracks. The cell had 37.
He paced. Five steps corner to corner. On the sixth day, his knee gave out and he hit the wall hard enough to bleed.
The pain was sharp. Real. He welcomed it.
He thought of the girl.
Her smile, soft like sun-dappled rain. Her voice, trembling but grateful. "Thank you for making me feel loved again."
Her head rolling across the courtroom floor.
He vomited on the third night. Or the fifth.
Time bent in Hollow Deep.
He stopped counting.
Sometimes, the walls breathed. Other times, he felt things crawl beneath his skin. Not insects but thoughts. Regrets, memories, looping endlessly until they weren't his anymore.
And then came the hallucinations.
It began with scent. Fresh flowers like lilac and something sweet. So out of place it made his skin crawl. He turned toward the corner, the darkest one, and saw her.
The girl.
She sat with her knees pulled close, head resting on them. Smiling.
Her eyes were gone.
Her hair was soaked in blood.
Her smile did not move.
"Orien," she whispered. "Did you mean it?"
He crawled backward, hand scraping against the stone until nails split.
"Did you mean it?" she repeated, louder now, voice like dry leaves scraping stone.
He blinked. She was gone.
His hand was wet. Blood? No. Saliva. He'd bitten through his tongue.
The taste of copper swirled in his mouth. He swallowed it like communion.
The dreams grew worse.
He saw cities burned by angels, their golden light so bright it peeled skin from bone. He saw demon-pact soldiers flaying prisoners alive to feed their "blessing." And in every dream, he saw himself, bound in the same chains, but with no face. No voice. No purpose.
He woke screaming.
The pain was always real.
In the Hollow Deep, pain was a sixth sense.
It lived in his marrow. It hummed under the skin. It whispered promises of silence if he'd just give up.
And maybe, just maybe, he would've.
But then, the door creaked open but not with guards.
With him.
The torchlight of the Hollow Deep didn't warm, it only revealed.
Only a shove and the reek of rusted iron behind him.
He walked slowly, hugging the perimeter of the prison yard like prey. His legs trembled from disuse, his skin raw from the shackles. The air tasted of sweat, rot, and old blood. A sickly sweet mix that clung to the back of his throat.
Every sense was assaulted here.
Sight: Pale faces, hollow eyes, too many scars to count.
Sound: The low mutter of voices, broken occasionally by a scream or a laugh.
Smell: Like a slaughterhouse left in the sun.
Touch: The grit of stone beneath bare feet. The sting of old wounds reopening.
Taste: Dust. Metal. Blood.
Pain: Always pain. A low hum inside his bones with the weight of grief made flesh.
And always… eyes.
Inmates stared from their corners and crevices, pact-bearers with twisted limbs and glowing marks, and the truly broken, the Forgotten Ones, barely human in shape. Orien saw one man gnawing his own fingers. Another huddled in prayer to a bone idol smeared with dried feces.
A group stood around a rusted drum-fire, openly watching him.
He kept his head low. He just needed to survive.
He wandered into the food line without knowing. His body ached from hunger, and instinct led him to a line of inmates holding bowls of thick, colorless gruel. No guards. No instructions. Just a wooden trough and a ladle wielded by a woman whose arms were branded with angelic sigils.
Orien waited his turn.
A large, horned inmate shoved past him.
Orien instinctively held his ground.
"Move," the man snarled.
Orien didn't.
Not out of pride but just straight… stubbornness. A leftover scrap of dignity he hadn't yet buried.
The big man turned. Muscles like cords. Eyes burning red.
"What did you say, outsider?"
"I didn't say anything," Orien replied flatly. "You just cut the line."
The yard went silent.
It wasn't the words. It was the tone.
Flat. Calm. Unflinching.
A challenge.
The pact-bearer stepped forward, and now Orien saw the full markings: a serpent coiled around the man's spine in scorched ink, demonic sigils. His skin shimmered with faint scales. His breath smoked in the cold air.
"You must be fresh," the man said. "Still think rules matter. Still think you got rights."
"I don't care about rules. Just respect."
Wrong answer.
The man laughed a barking, ugly sound. Slugged him across the face.
Orien's head snapped to the side. His lip burst. A tooth rattled in his mouth. He spat it out with blood.
"Wrong kind of respect," the man growled.
He drove his fist into Orien's gut. The world folded inward. Orien dropped to his knees, wheezing, mouth wide in a silent scream. The pain was real. Sharp. Deep. Like being hollowed from within.
The others circled close.
A crowd.
Not to help.
Just to see.
In Hollow Deep, this was entertainment.
The man didn't stop.
A kick to Orien's ribs. Another to his shoulder. Then he grabbed Orien by the throat and slammed him against a stone pillar. Orien's head rang like a bell. The bruises bloomed instantly.
"Who do you think you are?" the pact-bearer whispered in his ear. "Another moral fool thrown in with the beasts?"
He slammed him again. Once. Twice.
Blood streamed from Orien's nose.
Still, something in him...wouldn't break.
Not yet.
Orien fell. His vision swam. The ground pulsed like it was alive.
From somewhere above, the man spat.
"Remember this, Thorne. Down here, we feed on each other. You? You're the fucking dirt."
The world bled into black.
And just before he lost consciousness, he felt something shift.
Inside him.
A cold breath against the back of his mind. Like someone or something, was knocking.
"Good… Now we begin."