(Apollo)
The soul screamed like metal being torn in half.
The sound wasn’t just noise; it was vibration. It punched through the cavern walls, rattled ancient runes carved into stone, and made loose pebbles skitter across the iron walkways like fleeing insects. Even the lava seemed to flinch, its surface breaking into frantic ripples as if the river itself recoiled from the agony.
Apollo watched the sound rattle through what was left of the creature’s body, enjoyed the way it shuddered on the hooks. The echo bounced around the cavern—high, jagged, eager—picked up and warped by the stone until it sounded less like a single throat and more like a chorus of agony answering itself. The reverberation crawled along the ceiling and down the pillars like a living thing, a wail that got thinner a
