Virith landed on the fourth floor, well aware that Souls on this level were stronger than the Warden himself. Without his domain, any inmate here could crush the little guy like the bug he was.
"Did she just think of the Warden as a bug?" A dozen voices clattered inside Virith's head.
"Get out of my head!" she snapped at Panno and rounded a corner, finding Solgrave nearby.
Through Virith's eyes, everyone watched Solgrave drop a key, kick open a cell, flash in and out, then vanish down the cramped corridor, the events transpiring before they could finish blinking. If they hadn't had their shared link to Virith, they wouldn't have caught any of that and likely would have kept blaming the phantom in the Soul Prison.
Virith caught a glimpse of the victim's cell as she passed by: the inmate's head was splattered across the rear wall, while his limbs and torso were tied into a neat, grotesque knot, left for her like a kebab ready to roast. A ribbon of ancient letters chimed with power, forming a love-shaped knot, and he even had time to write 'From Solgrave, to Virith' by borrowing the prisoner's blood.
"I have a better, much less gruesome ritual," Solgrave told Prisoner '97' with a sneer. "Perhaps we can exchange notes… hm?"
"Say…" the inmate elongated the word, trying to summon the power of the Gospel, only to growl in frustration as it slipped past his tongue.
He plucked the limbs skewering him from the wall and reattached them, giving himself four massive arms. "There's no one below this level anymore." He smirked. "Your only titan got bored and walked away. Took that ridiculous title of yours with him."
He cracked and reformed every bone in his body, warming up for the fight ahead. "Voidborn Prison, my ass. A couple of Eclipse Souls trapped in a domain isn't impressive. Why don't we take this outside? I'll let you revive after I'm done with that little body of yours."
His laughter turned into a guttural roar as his jaw split open, unable to contain his growing muscles.
"Okay," Solgrave shrugged, dropping a key and kicking open the bars.
The world flipped, and suddenly, they were standing on a vast, empty field; the sun their only witness; the rusty prison bars standing inexplicably between them, though attached to nothing.
The prisoner inhaled deeply as if tasting the air. "I don't sense your domain anymore, Warden." He crouched low, ready to launch himself toward the sun. "Now… you… are—"
Solgrave appeared beneath him, sweeping his legs alongside his power. The stored energy meant to send him rocketing to the sun blasted forward instead, carving a trench across the land.
"My, my. Aiming for the sun?" Solgrave chuckled. "Oh, how many times must it burn you, for you stop messing with celestials, Icurus?"
Dizzy and unable to locate him, Icurus grew eyes across his entire body. The eye on his left foot spotted Solgrave floating one inch above the ground at an impossible angle.
"Aww. Miss me?" Solgrave twisted within that one-inch pocket and kicked him across the field. "Keep up. You are the one who asked to play outside after all."
He struck again, and again, each kick landing from a new blind spot that shouldn't have existed. A thousand blows landed in a heartbeat, each one reminding every listening soul why Solgrave held the title of Warden.
Moments later, the prisoner lay embedded in the dirt, his will extinguished.
Solgrave stepped on his giant head, which was larger than his entire body. "Big head. No brains." His next kick exploded the prisoner's skull. "My job is to keep you lunatics in here. Pray I'm never demoted to hunting you'lot out there!"
He admired the splatter, adding a touch of color to one of his cell walls, a moment longer than he should. "I must've been a painter in a past life." He chuckled and reached into the prisoner's memories.
Solgrave materialized inside a shadow-choked chamber where misery clung to the walls like mold. Slave girls hunched over stone tablets, their bare skin mottled from cold and fear. They had no tools; only their nails, chipped and bleeding, scraping jagged symbols into the slabs. Every stroke produced a wet, gritty sound as nail met rock. Their thin, tattered cloth barely concealed their shaking bodies, while the stench of blood, dust, and old memories hung thick in the air. Some didn't even look up when he entered, too broken to acknowledge another presence. The room felt suspended in time, a mausoleum of living memories carved by hands that had long forgotten gentleness.
"Dude needs to erase his own existence ASAP," Solgrave muttered.
He found the memory fragment buried in garbage, but lacked the authority to burn the core and purify the soul completely.
"Please tell me you didn't purify him!" Virith's voice pulled him out of Icurus's memories.
"No. But I really wanted to." Solgrave flicked slime off his coat. "Filth like this shouldn't get second chances. Honestly, purification is too kind."
"How is death kind?" she asked.
"Compared to lifetime torture?" Solgrave nodded at the remains. "Trust me… everyone chooses death."
"And what does torturing filth give the torturer?"
"You don't have to like it. You just have to do it."
"Did you atleast get the memory?"
Solgrave clicked his tongue in disappointment. "The bastard was broken enough to destroy it before I arrived. Must've been the moment the inmates escaped."
Virith locked the cell with the recovered key. "What about the ones who escaped?" She asked, already fearing the answer, but hoping it would serve as a distraction.
"The Voidborn prisoner got away," Solgrave confirmed. "The first prison break was a ruse. It never figured out a way to escape. It figured out a way to hide." He rubbed his forehead. "The clever bastard got us… the good news is it killed everyone on the fifth floor. Then everyone who tried to flee with it on this level. During the chaos, several inmates on the third and second floors managed to escape, but I'll round them up soon. All the third-floor ones are dead. Except for that little girl bastard, and—" He broke off, sighing deeply. Virith understood the hidden gesture, nodding in understanding. "Found a few hundred bodies on the second floor. Only a handful are missing."
"And the first?" Virith asked just as Azrith's signal hit.
"Used as fuel," Azrith answered. "Any idea what spell caused this much devastation?"
Solgrave's jaw tightened. "Voidborn are such a pain in the ass…" he muttered, clenching his fist. "…Especially when they live up to their hype."
"Also," Azrith hesitated. "I don't think your good news is Yash's goodnews. You know how he—"
Solgrave lashes out, a single punch collapses the prison wall, dissipating the remains of prisoner '97' instantly.
"Don't kill the messenger." Azrith steps back.
Solgrave snapped his mangled wrist back into place with a wet crack and drove his fist into the wall again, and again; each blow echoing down the prison like a cannon shot. He repeated the cycle until the fire in his chest finally dulled to embers. Only then did he shove his hands into his pockets and strolled away, burying the entire moment somewhere deep inside himself. In a place he hoped he'd never have to reach into.
"He had almost two thousand years of punishment left," Virith reminded him with a huff.
"Doesn't anymore." Solgrave waved dismissively without turning around.
"Stop! Where are you going?" Virith shouted after him.
"I'll be out of a job if those damned survivors make it below and start causing chaos."
"Shouldn't you be more worried about the humans?" Azrith asked.
"Those imbeciles are the reason we've had a full house." A particular human flashed through the sisters' thoughts as Solgrave continued after a slight pause, "Couldn't care less about those apes."
"What other chaos are you worried about, then?" Panno chimed in.
"The kind that might disrupt the Soul King's fight!"
Those words shattered the prison's fragile calm. Prisoners who had been plotting their next moves immediately locked themselves deeper within the domain, becoming model inmates. Guards scrambled to repair what little of the domain they could with the scraps of soul magic available.
The sisters chased after Solgrave to assist him, heading toward Earth, the land of Tri-Sul, birthplace of Broken-Souls, Heaven, and humans.
Panno wanted to stay behind and help restore order; he desperately wanted to decode the Voidborn's master plan. But thanks to his terrible luck, he thought while his ability was still active, and Solgrave heard it all.
"No prisoner alive or dead has the full plan," Solgrave said, annoyed. "That thing moves pieces without my knowledge… sometimes without the pieces themselves knowing. A drain-dead soul like you couldn't figure it out even if it carved the whole plan into your skull." He dragged him along for the ride.
"That's… a bit too mean," Panno pouted.
"One hundred and fourteen," Solgrave said with a devious smirk.
Panno knew that number by heart. He had engraved that rule into the center of his core during his first year of Soul Snatcher training. He even remembered that ridiculous rap his instructor made him memorize before he joined the Warden's Soul Prison:
"Once your soul falls deep into this trust pit,
Darker than the void, yeah, you lost it.
Ain't no prison, ain't no chains, just a mind twist,
Worse than the depths where the lost sit.
No escape, no light, no vision,
This is hell, ya'll... And it's way worse than the one and only Soul Prison.
Trust gone, now you're locked in,
Echoes in your head--keep talkin'."
Seriously, since when did Broken-Souls require cues?
Soul Snatcher General Rule 114: A scared soul is easy to manipulate — But true manipulation is done over trust.
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Forty-Three. ———<>||<>———