The land was broken beyond recognition.
There was no sky, only a ceiling of dark pressure that pressed down without weight. No sun, no stars, no horizon that promised distance or escape. The ground stretched outward in every direction, a vast expanse of ruin where nothing lived long enough to claim it.
This was the first level of Hell.
The earth itself was a grave. Bone and stone were crushed together until neither could be told apart. Rivers of dried blood ran through the land like scars that never healed, staining the terrain a permanent, rusted red. Corpses lay everywhere beasts split open, demons torn apart, things without names piled upon one another in twisted shapes.
Some were small, little more than scraps of flesh. Others were enormous, their bodies collapsed like fallen mountains, horns shattered, wings broken, eyes long since devoured by lesser creatures that no longer moved.
Nothing here rotted.
Hell did not allow decay. It preserved failure.
At the edge of this ruined world, where the land thinned and dropped into endless black, a man struggled to breathe.
Each breath scraped his lungs raw. Blood ran freely from his body, dripping from torn flesh and soaking into the ground beneath him. Cuts covered him deep, shallow, jagged, clean. His clothing had long since lost its shape, reduced to strips of fabric clinging uselessly to his frame.
He should have fallen already.
Instead, he stood.
His sword was planted into the earth, driven deep enough to hold his weight. He leaned against it, not for balance, but because there was nothing left to lean on. His fingers were slick with blood, yet his grip did not loosen.
The blade was slender and straight, its surface etched with ancient markings that glowed faintly, not with light, but with refusal. Designs ran along its length—symbols older than the world that now lay in ruin.
The God Slaver Sword.
One of the twelve mythical blades.
A weapon forged not to kill gods, but to remind them they could bleed.
Before the man stood a devil.
It was humanoid in shape, but only in the loosest sense. Its hands were massive, fingers long and jointed wrong, each movement dragging shadows with it. Five horns rose from its head, twisting and branching like broken crowns. Its body was not flesh, but darkness made solid, swallowing light rather than reflecting it.
Two wings spread behind it, vast and absolute. They were not black in color, but in absence. Light bent around them and failed to return, as though swallowed by a void.
Behind the devil stretched an army.
Thousands upon thousands of beasts and demons crowded the land, layered deep into the distance. Scaled creatures with too many limbs. Winged things with mouths along their bodies. Armored abominations dragging weapons grown from bone and sinew.
Some stood behind the man.
They did not move.
They were dead.
Their corpses painted the land red, piled high enough to form ridges and slopes. The path behind the man was carved through slaughter, a straight line of ruin leading from the depths of Hell itself.
The devil regarded him in silence for a moment, then spoke.
Its voice was deep and heavy, carrying the weight of something ancient and certain.
"Give up," it said.
"Surrender your body to my lord. He will free you from the pain of reality itself."
The man did not answer immediately.
His hair, long and gray, hung loose around his face, matted with blood. His eyes were steady, unclouded by fear or desperation. They held no hatred either.
Only awareness.
Then he smiled.
It was small. Almost absent.
He pushed himself upright, forcing weight back onto legs that had already failed him more than once. Bone shifted. Muscle tore further. He ignored it.
The ground cracked.
Boom.
He moved.
The sound echoed across the land, a dull, heavy impact that shook the earth beneath him. Another boom followed, then another, each step landing with quiet inevitability.
As he advanced, beasts rushed forward.
They died.
He did not slow. The sword moved once, twice clean arcs that left no flourish behind. Bodies came apart. Heads fell. Limbs scattered. Blood sprayed and vanished into the already stained ground.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The army surged, screaming, roaring, howling in countless voices. It made no difference. Wherever the man passed, the sound stopped.
He walked toward the edge of Hell itself.
The land thinned beneath his feet, the ground narrowing into fractured stone that crumbled into nothingness. Below lay endless black, a depth without bottom or echo.
The devil appeared before him again, wings folding inward as it barred his path.
It spoke, voice colder now, edged with something closer to certainty than command.
"Why fight a battle you have already lost?"
"Your death is inevitable."
"When you fall, my lord will still claim what he seeks."
The man stopped.
He looked at the devil.
His smile returned, unchanged.
"You're right," he said calmly.
"I lost long ago."
He shifted his grip on the God Slaver Sword and raised it high.
"My life has no meaning left."
The blade came down.
There was no explosion, no flare of light.
Only a soundless rupture.
A magic circle appeared beneath them, vast beyond comprehension. It formed instantly, carved into existence by force alone. Symbols layered upon symbols, rotating, intersecting, overlapping until the air itself bent beneath their weight.
The circle swallowed the space they stood in.
The devil was inside it.
The sword was at its center.
Blood began to drip down the blade, flowing not from a wound, but from the man himself. Each drop fell with purpose, sinking into the markings etched along the steel.
The man spoke.
"Mana Zone."
The air locked into place.
"Gods' Forbidden Seal."
The words carried authority older than Hell.
From the north, a pillar rose.
From the south, another.
Then east. Then west.
Four pillars emerged, towering and immense, each one transparent, glasslike, yet unbreakable. Light refracted strangely through them, splitting reality into fractured reflections.
The circle closed.
The devil moved too late.
Its wings struck the barrier and rebounded. Darkness rippled uselessly against the seal. For the first time, its voice fractured not in fear, but in disbelief.
The man's strength failed him.
He fell to one knee, then to the ground, the God Slaver Sword still embedded at the center of the formation. His breathing grew shallow, each breath a quiet effort.
He smiled again.
"Now," he whispered, "I won."
The seal activated.
A sound unlike anything Hell had known resounded across the realm. It was not loud, yet it carried everywhere a final, absolute note that pressed into every layer of existence.
Then,
Elsewhere.
Far beyond Hell.
Across the current world, in lands separated by oceans, mountains, and time itself, the ground began to shake.
In one place, stone split apart, revealing ancient foundations long buried. Pillars rose, carved with symbols no living hand remembered how to read.
In another, forests were pushed aside as massive structures emerged from beneath the soil, their walls smooth and untouched by age.
In a third, deserts cracked open, sand flowing away to reveal steps descending into shadow.
And in the fourth, beneath a city that did not yet exist, something ancient awakened and forced its way upward.
Temples.
Four of them.
They rose silently, without celebration or witness, anchored into the world by a power that refused to fade.
Time moved.
History erased names. Legends blurred into myth. Records burned, crumbled, or were rewritten.
No one remembered who built the temples.
No one remembered why they existed.
Only that they had always been there.
Eight hundred years passed in the space of a breath.
And the world continued.