♤ The City of Damnation ♤
I came into a world that didn't feel like it should exist.
The sky wasn't black, more like ash smeared across dying light. Purple clouds bruised with red, frozen like someone had paused the end of the world. The air burned in my lungs, rust, smoke, and something sharp I couldn't name. Like breathing in a memory that never belonged to me.
"What is this place...?" I said, my heart reacting slightly...."I shouldn't be here."
"This can't be what living feels like."
I was on my knees. My hands dug into the ground,only it wasn't ground. Finer than sand but darker than coal. It gave beneath my weight like the earth didn't want to hold me.
Everything around me twitched and shifted, nothing stayed still.
I stood up slowly, my legs barely remembered how to stand. My hoodie clung to me, soaked through with cold sweat and rain that had already stopped. No blood, no alley, no streetlights or sirens.
Just this weird place I got dragged into.
-Blackglass-
The name slid into my thoughts like it had always been there. Like it was waiting for me to remember.
I didn't ask questions because I couldn't. Because the longer I stared, the more certain I became that I wasn't on Earth anymore.
This wasn't anywhere close to it.
Buildings towered in the distance, barely standing. Rusted steel and broken glass stacked into towers that leaned like drunks about to fall. Neon signs flickered in languages I couldn't read. Fire burned behind windows, cold and sour.
The streets weren't empty.
They were alive with living things I couldn't quite understand.
Shapes slithered through the mist. Some walked like people, tall, hunched, cloaked. Others skittered on too many limbs, or too few. One clung to a wall, eyeless, sniffing like it could smell my soul.
They were demons.
Not the kind from books or boss fights. No horns, no wings. Some looked human, almost. That made them worse.
I kept walking.
Because what else could I do?
The buildings seemed to watch me, their windows blinked. Doors hung open like mouths whispering secrets just loud enough to unsettle. My shadow dragged behind me like it wanted to stay.
And still… no one touched me.
Not yet.
I passed a kiosk where a demon with no mouth sold glowing fruit to a three-eyed customer with hooves. They didn't see me or maybe they didn't care. Just traded in silence.
Like I didn't exist, like I was already dead.
I pushed forward.
A sign dangled overhead. Crooked and rusted. Black paint peeling from faded letters:
"Welcome to Blackglass."
A joke or maybe a promise of hope.
The world here had no color, even the flames glowed like dying embers. The fog moved like it had purpose, clung to my ankles like hands.
Then I turned down an alley. Narrow, pinned in by trash and steaming pipes.
And there he was. It was the figure from before.
Standing still, he looked like he was waiting.
His cloak was made of shadow. Smoke curled at the seams, I couldn't see his face. Just the hood, deep and empty. Except for his eyes, two points of fire buried deep.
I froze, but he didn't react
"You made it," he said. His voice wasn't loud, it didn't need to be. It settled into my ribs, like it already knew me.
I took a step back. My throat was raw. "What is this place?"
"Your second chance," he said. "But nothing here is free."
The fog thickened, the buildings creaked like they were listening to our conversation. Somewhere behind me, something screamed with an eerie voice.
"You said I'd live," I managed to ask.
"I said you'd choose to live," he corrected. "There's a price for everything."
He lifted a hand, thin and pale. And in his palm, something glowed, a mark, red and sharp like a brands fresh off the forge. It cracked with heat that didn't belong to fire.
"This world remembers the forgotten," he said. "But it marks them first."
Then he moved, too fast for me to react.
One moment he was in a distance and the next, his hand was on my stomach.
I didn't scream because I couldn't breathe.
It wasn't just pain, it was ruin. It felt like I was being torn open from the inside, like every part of me that made sense was being shredded and remade. My knees hit the dirt and my mind split in too many directions.
Something was being burned in me, not on me.
The mark sank through fabric, through skin, through memory.
And then he let go and the pain stopped.
But something else remained.
Just right below my chest region, on the left side of my stomach, the skin smoked. A black sigil curled in sharp angles and broken circles. It pulsed faintly.
I stared at it like it might blink back.
"You carry the mark now," the figure said. "It means this world sees you, hears you and judges you."
"What the hell does that even mean?"
He didn't answer.
"Am I supposed to thank you?" I snapped. My voice cracked with anger I wasn't sure I had the right to feel.
"You're not here to be grateful," he said. "You're here to survive or vanish again."
And just like that, he turned and disappeared into the fog, like he'd never been there.
And I was alone.
I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. Not because of fear, but because of what I felt.
The mark… wasn't just burned onto me. It had entered me, twisted into my blood. I could feel it settling under the surface, watching with eyes that weren't mine.
I stood up, barely.
The world sharpened. The fog cleared just enough for me to see. I saw things tucked into alleys, symbols drawn in ash, names etched into brick. Demons staring at me, faces where there shouldn't be faces.
They saw me now and they knew I was marked.
Across the street, a pair of demons whispered. One pointed at me, a woman with stitched lips locked eyes from a broken window. Then she vanished.
I wasn't passing through Blackglass anymore.
I'd been claimed by it.
I moved fast. No plan, no map. Just instinct and the weight of something hungry pressing down on me.
The mark burned every few steps. I didn't know if it was warning me, guiding me or testing me.
Then the horns began.
Deep, long. Like mourning sung through broken pipes. The city reacted, demons scattered. Doors slammed, lights died.
The streets pulsed slowly like a heartbeat, walls shivered, graffiti's moved when I wasn't looking. The ground cracked and insects glowed as they poured out, crawling like they knew me.
And beneath all of it, I felt it again.
The city wasn't just watching me.
I stumbled into a plaza, if it could even be called that. Twisted statues and a broken vending machine. A dead bonfire in a metal barrel and at the center stood a sculpture, part man, part machine, part nightmare. Eyes gouged out, nails driven into its skull like a crown.
Words carved beneath it:
"We Were All Kings, Once."
It hit me somewhere I didn't expect.
Not fear, more like grief.
I didn't know what it meant. Maybe I didn't want to know but I couldn't look away.
The fog closed in again. Thick and suffocating. My thoughts dragged and my breath hitched.
And in the quiet, I heard my voice again, somehow echoing back:
"Let me live."
And I wondered, was this living?
Was this the price?
"I didn't know if I was running toward life or just away from the silence of death. But I moved and that was enough."
But the mark still burned. My side still smoked like burning fire but my feet still kept on moving.
And deep down, I knew the truth.
I wasn't ready to die again, at least not yet.