Welcome to Hell

Chapter 22: Welcome to Hell

Falling Into the Abyss

Shiro had felt pain before.

Broken ribs. Split lips. Knuckles raw from punching walls, from punching them—from fighting, failing, struggling to exist in a world that wanted him to suffer.

But this?

This was something else entirely.

The abyss wasn't empty.

It breathed.

I watched.

And as it dragged him down—not gently, not mercifully, but like claws ripping through his very being—Shiro realized something terrible.

Death wasn't the end.

It was just the beginning.

The Voice of the Unseen

"You intrigue me, mortal."

Shiro couldn't move.

Couldn't speak.

He couldn't do anything but feel as something—something ancient, vast, beyond comprehension—stretched through the darkness, curling around him, pressing against his thoughts, his rage, and his hatred.

"You died filled with fury, with agony, with the need to tear the world apart."

"I wonder… given another chance… What will you do?"

Shiro tried to scream.

Tried to fight.

But before he could speak his rage into existence—

The abyss collapsed.

And he fell.

Agony Like No Other

Pain.

Not the dull, lingering ache of bruises.

Not the sharp sting of a cut.

But a tearing—an unraveling—an agony that stripped him down to his very core.

His chest slammed open, air pouring into his lungs like fire, choking him, forcing his body to breathe again.

His heartbeat returned violently—pounding against his ribs like it was fighting to escape.

His muscles twitched—foreign, different, like they weren't entirely his anymore.

And then—

Sound.

Not silence.

Not peace.

Screaming.

Not human.

Not anything human.

Shiro's eyes snapped open.

And Hell greeted him.

The World That Shouldn't Exist

Shiro lay on his back, staring up at the sky—if it could even be called a sky.

Red.

Not the red of sunrise.

Not the warm glow of dusk.

But blood, shifting, curling—alive.

Veins of darkness slithered through the clouds, moving like parasites burrowing through flesh.

The air was thick.

Heavy.

Tasting of metal.

Shiro sat up.

His fingers pressed against the ground beneath him—cold, cracked stone that pulsed under his touch, beating like a living heart.

He wasn't alone.

Something was watching him.

He could feel it.

The Whispers From the Shadows

"You don't belong here."

"You should have stayed dead."

"He is watching."

Shiro spun around.

Nothing.

No figures.

No bodies.

Just the land itself, pulsing, shifting, whispering.

He wasn't afraid.

Not yet.

But something deep inside him—the instinct that had kept him alive, that had shaped him into the creature he was before death—

knew.

This world did not want him here.

But it would not let him leave.

The Domain of the God of Death

He took a step forward.

The ground split open beneath his feet.

A river bled through the cracks—thick, black, dragging half-rotted bodies in its current, limbs twitching, mouths gaping as if caught in an eternal scream.

Shiro started.

His stomach twisted.

Not in fear.

In a rage.

"Is this some kind of punishment?"

"A game?"

"You think this will break me?"

He gritted his teeth, fists clenching.

If the thing watching him—if the God of Death himself—thought he could shatter what was already broken, then he had chosen the wrong soul to torment.

Shiro had already died once.

There was nothing left to fear.

Only the desire to destroy.

The Sky Breaks

The ground shook.

The air darkened.

The sky cracked open, veins of black lightning splitting through the blood-red expanse above, rippling like the world itself was about to change.

Something was coming.

Something ancient.

Something that I had been watching since the moment he arrived.

And hell had only just begun…