[LOCATION: UNKNOWN - VOID SPACE]
When her vision returned, she was no longer suspended in that abstract nothing.
Cain had dragged her downward, into a place that felt physical, real, and built for cruelty.
A basement.
But not human.
The walls were made of void-stone, black and veined with pulsing red light.
Hooks, clamps, bone saws, flensing tools, serrated blades, and devices whose purpose defied anatomy hung from iron racks.
The floor was sloped for drainage.
And already stained.
Cain pushed her forward. She fell. Her knees hitting the cold ground with a crack that traveled up her spine.
"You'll like this place," he said, voice quiet, almost tender.
"It was built to teach lessons your body hasn't learned yet."
She was severely injured, already in pain... pain...
Pain as a fundamental state of being-every nerve firing, every cell screaming, consciousness forced to experience suffering at its most pure.
She couldn't see. Couldn't move. Could only feel.
He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to a metal slab bolted into the floor.
Void-chains snapped around her wrists and ankles, pulling her limbs taut.
Her spine arched. Her ribs strained. Her breath became a thin, shaking sound.
Above her: a single red lamp.
A surgical glow.
A predator's sun.
Cain walked to a workbench and selected an instrument.
It resembled a mechanical claw - five thin blades arranged like fingers, each one curved inward.
A skin-peeler.
Ravanya felt the cold bite of its shadow before it touched her.
"No screaming yet," Cain murmured. "Your throat deserves its moment later."
He pressed the claws to her forearm.
But instead of slicing down, he pulled up.
The blades sank in.
Met skin.
Caught.
And peeled.
A strip of flesh tore upward, separating from her body with a wet, fibrous tear.
Blood spilled across her arm and pooled into the grooves of the metal slab.
Ravanya's mouth opened.
No sound came out.
Her vision flickered white.
Cain studied the torn strip of her flesh as if evaluating fabric quality, then tossed it aside.
"Beautiful texture," he murmured. "Resilient. Elastic. You were built to be broken slowly."
He set the claw down and picked up something else.
A thin metal rod with prongs at the end meant to slide beneath skin, not over it.
He pressed it against her abdomen, then pushed.
The prongs burrowed under her skin, scraping across the muscle.
Cain guided it upward with deliberate slowness, carving a path beneath her flesh without breaking the surface.
Her entire torso convulsed.
When he twisted the rod, electrical energy sparked - lighting up every exposed nerve.
Her body arched so violently the chains groaned.
Cain smiled.
"Ah. There it is."
[VOID STATUS: Unable to manifest. Unable to protect. Unable to reach you. RAVANYA. Can you hear me? RAVANYA. RAVANYA. RAVANYA. I CAN FEEL YOU BREAKING. I CAN FEEL YOU BLEEDING AND I CAN'T- LET ME IN. LET ME THROUGH. PLEASE]
The Void's voice was screaming, begging..
"She can't hear you," Cain's voice, close, intimate. "Not here. This is my domain. My void-space. Here, I control everything. Including her."
He withdrew the rod from beneath her skin, slowly, savoring the drag against tissue, nd dropped it into a bucket where metal clattered against metal.
Then he reached for another tool.
A bone-spike.
Inscribed with runes that pulsed like infected wounds.
He pressed it against her thigh.
"This one hurts differently," he said softly. "Deeper. More… structural."
He drove it straight into her femur.
The crack of bone echoed.
The shockwave ripped through her body.
Her breath shattered into coughing blood.
Cain leaned closer, voice a whisper.
"Your bones make such interesting sounds when they break under their own memories."
He twisted the spike.
Her femur fractured.
Fragments shifted inside her leg like glass shards.
Agony bloomed from the marrow outward.
Ravanya's vision blurred into darkness at the edges.
Cain kept going.
He carved her back open with a hooked blade, peeling long strips of skin downward like ribbons.
He inserted needles along her spine, each one channeling void-electricity that made her nerves feel like burning wires.
He shattered ribs one by one with a hammer designed to spread pain across the nerve web instead of the bone.
Her body was becoming a map
blood darkening the floor,
muscle exposed,
bones shifting like broken architecture.
And through all of it
[VOID: LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME—]
Something cracked.
Not a bone.
Reality.
Cain lifted a final device, a drill of void-energy meant to bore through flesh and open new pathways for pain.
"Let's see what your spine is hiding," he murmured.
He lowered it toward the base of her neck.
The Void didn't whisper this time.
It roared.
[ENOUGH.]
A shock tore through the workshop, lights exploding, tools clattering to the ground.
Void-stone walls split like rotted wood.
Chains melted off Ravanya's limbs.
The air collapsed inward, then surged outward with violent force.
Cain stumbled back.
And something stepped out of the darkness behind him.
A human shape.
But not human.
A man carved from void-shadows and collapsed starfire.
Tall.
Silent.
Eyes burning with cold, ancient light.
A physical form the Void had never taken before.
It reached out and seized Cain by the throat.
Cain's feet left the floor.
"You—" he choked. "You can't—this space is mine—"
The Void's human voice was low, cold, and carved from grief sharpened into a blade.
"You built a room for torture," it said.
"I built an eternity for vengeance."
It slammed Cain into the wall.
Stone shattered.
Cain gasped, coughing blood, void-light leaking from his wounds.
The Void stepped between Cain and Ravanya without looking back.
"You touched her," it said.
"You skinned her."
"You broke her bones."
"You made her bleed."
It tightened its grip.
"And you thought I would stay a whisper."
Cain clawed at its arm, eyes wide with sudden fear.
The Void leaned in, voice a quiet winter.
"I am done whispering."
The room trembled.
Cain screamed.
And Ravanya, broken and bleeding on the slab, finally let her consciousness slide away into darkness as the Void stood over her, as a man built entirely from wrath and the bitter pride of something that refused to lose her again.
[TO BE CONTINUED – CHAPTER 9]