The High Soul's hand tightened around my throat, lifting me from the fractured abyssal ground. His eyes if they could be called eyes were pits of starlit void, swallowing light whole. The cage loomed behind him, a colossus of black bars that weren't metal but condensed, screaming souls bound into form. The sound was… wrong. Not wailing exactly, but a thousand whispered pleadings layered on top of each other until it was one continuous, maddening hum.
"You are unworthy," the High Soul's voice rumbled, deep and hollow as if echoing through my bones. "But I will give you a chance to prove me wrong."
He flung me through the bars. There was no impact I simply passed through them like smoke, and the next instant I was inside.
The Abyssal Cage closed around me with a wet, grinding sound.
And then came the silence.
No not silence. The hum shifted, became breathing. Many breaths.
Shapes began to move in the dark.
The floor beneath my boots wasn't stone it was ash and bone fragments, crunching under my weight. The air tasted stale, thick with something metallic. And beyond the faint mist drifting through the gloom, figures circled. Not living things. Not even corpses.
They were souls, but not the drifting, half-formed kind I'd hunted before in Lucifer's lower realm. These were solid, anchored by their own malice fragments of once-great predators now stripped of flesh and chained to this prison. Their shapes were humanoid, but wrong. Faces stretched too thin, eyes black and gleaming, mouths too wide.
One stepped forward, its voice a rasp that slid across my skin like frost.
Fresh.
They all moved at once.
I barely raised my guard before the first slammed into me. Its weight was crushing, heavier than any soul should be. Claws raked across my shoulder, slicing through cloth and skin and the pain was sharp, real.
I shoved it back, my arm shaking, and drove my hand into its chest where a heart should be. My fingers passed through into something colder than death and I gripped.
The soul shrieked, its body writhing as I pulled. My instincts screamed to let go. My mind whispered don't do this.
I didn't listen.
The moment I wrenched its essence free and dragged it into myself, agony bloomed in my core. It wasn't like eating, it wasn't like magic it was a burning, as if molten lead was pouring into every vein of my spirit. My knees buckled. My head pounded. And yet… beneath the pain was a heat that spread, slow and deliberate. Strength.
Before I could even catch my breath, another soul lunged. I tore its essence out faster this time. The pain still hit, but my body braced for it.
Hours blurred into a haze of combat. They came in waves, their hunger matching mine. I don't know how many I fought five? Ten? More?
The ground was slick beneath me now not with blood, but with something darker. Spirit ichor. It clung to my hands, to my skin, refusing to fade.
At some point, I realized the cage was changing. The air grew heavier, the whispering louder. My arms ached. My breathing was ragged. But I could also feel it a faint thrum in my chest, like my soul had found a new rhythm.
Still, I hesitated between kills. A voice in my head kept asking if this was what I wanted if I was becoming the same as these things.
Then one came at me with a jagged blade of its own soulstuff, and I didn't think anymore
When I devoured the last of them, I collapsed against the bars. They were warm to the touch, like a heartbeat pulsed inside. The hum became a low chant, almost approving.
And then I heard him.
The High Soul's voice seeped through the cage, slow and deliberate.
"Better. But still soft. Tomorrow, the hunt begins again."
The mist rolled back in, and with it, the shapes began to form anew. The cage reset. My brief rest was over before it began.
I clenched my fists. I was tired. I was still human. But I knew one thing: if I wanted out, I had to kill more.
The hunger was already stirring.
It coiled inside me like a serpent, whispering in a voice that was almost my own. More.
The mist thickened until the cage was nothing but shifting shadows. The first of them emerged from it a twisted shape dragging its malformed limbs, eyes glinting like shards of obsidian. The soul's mouth split open too far, its jaw unhinging as a torrent of spectral mist poured out.
It lunged.
I didn't even raise my guard this time. I stepped into it, my hand spearing through its chest. My fingers clenched around that pulsing knot of essence, and I tore. The sound it made wasn't a scream it was like glass fracturing in water. The instant the essence hit me, my vision swam. The serpent in my chest uncoiled, stretching, hissing in delight.
Another one was already circling to my left. It moved like smoke and shadow, but its claws were sharp enough to score across my ribs. Pain flared. The scent of my own blood mingled with the metallic taste of the cage's air. I seized it by the neck no flesh, just the suggestion of one and crushed until the chains of its form shattered.
The hunger surged. My pulse quickened. I stopped feeling the sting of my wounds.
They came in packs now, three, four at a time, howling without sound. One vaulted over my head; I spun and caught it mid-air, slamming it into the ground so hard the bone-ash floor cracked. I didn't even kneel to rip out its soul I drank it where it lay, the essence spilling through me in molten currents.
A blade of soulstuff swept toward my spine. I bent, letting it pass overhead, and rammed my hand into the attacker's gut. This one fought harder than the rest the essence inside it thrashing like a wild beast, resisting extraction. My teeth clenched. Every nerve screamed. And then I wrenched harder, until it gave. The flood of power nearly brought me to my knees.
I rose, shaking. My hands trembled, not from exhaustion but from wanting more.
The cage itself seemed to respond. The whispers grew faster, overlapping into something like laughter. The bars pulsed faintly, each beat in time with my own.
One of the larger souls approached. It was twice my height, its form plated in overlapping fragments of black soul-armor. Empty sockets stared down at me. Its weapon a halberd of woven screams carved grooves in the bone-ash floor with each step.
It struck. The force jarred my entire body, sending me skidding back. My boots crunched through layers of ash and old remains. I barely had time to sidestep as the halberd came down again, shattering the ground.
Kill it. Take it. Make it yours.
I surged forward, my hand meeting the shaft of its weapon. My other hand drove into its chest. The armor held for a moment. Then cracks spread outward from my fingers like frost. I roared, pushing every ounce of stolen strength into the blow, until the armor shattered and my hand sank into the cold furnace of its essence.
The moment I pulled, the world tilted. The essence was vast almost too much flooding into me like a black tide. My knees buckled, my breath caught, and for a heartbeat I thought I would drown in it. But then it settled, coiling with the others inside me. My vision sharpened. My limbs felt lighter.
The rest came faster after that, as if sensing the inevitable. I tore through them one by one, ripping out their cores before their shapes even hit the ground. My body moved without thought, each kill feeding the rhythm in my chest.
When the final one fell, the cage was silent. No breathing. No movement. Only the echo of my own heartbeat and the faint glow of the essence writhing beneath my skin.
The bars shivered. The whispers quieted into a low, approving murmur.
And then, just as before, the High Soul's voice slid through the dark.
"Better still. But you are not yet ready."
The mist began to curl back into the center of the cage. Shapes formed again, slow at first, then faster as if the prison itself had no end.
I wiped the ichor from my hands, but it didn't come off. It never would.
I didn't care.
Because now… I was starving. But first I felt dizzy.