(The Devil)
The moment he stepped through the veil, Hell greeted him like an old, hungry friend.
Heat slammed into his skin. The air thickened, heavy as wet ash. And beneath it all, the sound rose.
Screams.
Endless, layered, trembling screams woven into the very wind. Some sharp, some low, some hardly more than broken sobs. Souls who had wandered too far. Souls who had never left. Souls whose names he did not care to remember. They braided together into one constant, ragged hymn—pain and rage and regret spiralling upward toward a sky that never listened.
The sound did not simply echo—it vibrated, rattling through the blackened stones and rippling across the molten rivers far below. The sky, a swirling throat of smoke and ember, pulsed dimly as if reacting to the disturbances in his ma
