The ceiling above him cracked with faint shadows, like thin veins beneath the skin of the world—pulsing in rhythm with his fading heartbeat. The room was still. No distant cars, no hum of machines. Just silence.The kind of silence that settles in when the body gives up before the mind does.
He lay on the bed, chest rising and falling in slower intervals. Limbs numb. Breath thin. Vision fraying at the edges like torn film.
But he wasn't scared. Not even sad.
He had lived a normal life. Nothing grand, nothing tragic. Some days were good, others weren't. He'd worked, laughed, stumbled, and carried on—like most people did. One moment after the other.
And that had been enough.
His last breath slipped out quiet.
Fingers twitched once.
Then stopped.
He died with his eyes open.
He woke in darkness.
Not sleep. Not a dream. Something stranger. Deeper.
The first thing he felt was heat.
Not warmth—heat. Blistering, raw. The kind that clung to your lungs, seared your skin, and didn't ask permission.
He gasped as the air burned through him—yet somehow, impossibly, it kept him alive.
His eyes opened.
The sky above wasn't sky at all. It was fractured, pitch-black stone stretched tight across a red haze. Smoke twisted through the air like it was alive.
The ground beneath him was jagged stone, stained red. It steamed in some places, hissed in others. It hurt to stand on, but not enough to stop him.
He sat up, coughing.
His hands were wrong.
Slightly smaller. Fingers sharper. The skin was dark and ashen, veined with faint crimson light. He touched his face—it felt different. The bones sat wrong beneath the skin. His nose was thinner. His jaw sharper.
And then he felt them.
Small horns curling back from his temples.
"…No way."
He stumbled to his feet, legs shaky but responsive. His balance was off, lighter than before. But his body moved like it belonged to him.
It didn't feel foreign.
It felt… natural.
Then it hit him, cold and simple:
'I died.'
And now…
'This.'
He stood on a plateau, overlooking a crude sprawl of cracked huts and glowing pits. Rivers of lava glimmered in the distance, and everything smelled of ash, rust, and something metallic and old.
This wasn't Earth.
This was Hell.
He didn't scream. Didn't fall to his knees.
Instead, a strange calm settled over him, heavy and quiet.
Like some deep part of him already knew.
This wasn't fire and brimstone. It wasn't a pit of eternal suffering where devils poked people with pitchforks.
This was something older. Wilder.
Some twisted version of Hell.
He exhaled, voice rasping. 'I guess some religions were right after all.'
Then came the footsteps.
He turned quickly.
Two demons walked past, one broad and scaled with blade-like ridges down its spine, the other tall and lanky with twitching limbs and narrow eyes. They barked something in a jagged, guttural tongue.
And he understood them.
"…he won't last the week," the thin one muttered.
The words cut clean into his mind—clear, like a memory he'd never made.
Before he even thought about it, he spoke.
"What makes you so sure?"
Both demons stopped.
The larger one turned, raising something like an eyebrow. "Well, well. It speaks."
The twitchy one sneered. "Keep talking. And someone'll rip that tongue out."
They moved on, chuckling.
He stood there, heart steady. He hadn't studied the language. Had never heard it.
But it flowed out of his mouth like he'd always known it.
Another part of this new form, maybe. A survival tool.
'Fine,' he thought. 'I can work with that.'
Time passed.
Or whatever counted as time in this place.
There were no suns or moons—just a constant twilight glow that dimmed and brightened with no pattern he could follow. Still, he adapted.
He found shelter near the village edge, among others who didn't ask questions. A hollow carved into the stone wall became his home. For food, he mimicked what others did—bit into twitching meat, chewed on burning fruit, drank from blackened springs. The taste was foul. The nourishment worked.
He learned fast.
This world didn't reward kindness. It didn't offer safety. The weak survived only by avoiding the strong. Respect was earned with blood and posture, not words.
Yet no one bothered him much.
He kept quiet. Kept out of fights.
Watched. Learned.
Some demons ruled with fear. Some with strength. Some with size. And others—others had strange powers, controlling fire, shadows, or flesh. He saw one breathe smoke that made others cough up their own lungs. Another could vanish completely—then reappear behind his prey.
Hell, it seemed, had its own hierarchy.
The strong didn't lead because they were smart. They led because they couldn't be stopped.
Still, somehow… he blended in.
He didn't know how long he'd been there. Just that something in him had stopped wondering how to escape.
One night—if it was night—he sat near a low ridge, watching rivers of molten rock flow beneath jagged cliffs.
The glow painted his skin red.
And in that strange warmth, he remembered…
Rain on a window. The soft whir of a fan. Mugs of coffee held with both hands. Shoes kicked off at the end of a long day. Long walks with no destination. The hum of streetlights and the way the world looked just before dawn.
Nothing grand. Nothing cinematic.
Just life.
And it had been enough.
He hadn't chased greatness or clung to regret.
He lived. Simply.
And now… he was here.
A part of something monstrous. Something vast and cruel.
He didn't know why.
Didn't know what came next.
But as he sat, quiet and breathing the ash, one thought returned and stayed:
'I'm still me.'