They say Hell wasn't always a furnace of screams.
Once, long before the bone towers rose and fire rivers flowed, it was quiet. Deathly quiet. Like something ancient had pressed a finger to the world's lips and demanded silence.
Back then, demons didn't rule. They hid.
There was no crown. No king. Only a presence. Watching. Waiting.
They say that when the First Demon King rose, he didn't fight for power. He fought against something greater. Something nameless. And when he vanished, he left no body. No grave.
Only echoes.
They say if you walk deep enough. If you bleed enough. Those echoes find you. And sometimes… they speak
Krelith stared at Asvard.
Not with suspicion. Not with fear. But with something heavier.
He had just asked his third question.
Who was the man in the dark?
Krelith had muttered the word almost without thinking.
"Impossible."
But he regretted it the moment it left his lips.
The air changed.
Asvard didn't press for more. He didn't need to. His presence now said more than his words ever could.
The path out of the Maw behind him. The ground below still scorched from his return. The shard. No longer in his hand. Now pulsed in his chest, hidden but powerful.
He didn't know it had replaced his heart. Didn't realize his very existence had shifted.
His skin looked the same. But his eyes... They held weight. The kind that came from something darker than survival.
Krelith had crouched by the exit stone, looking calm. But inside, his thoughts weren't.
He hadn't seen anything like this in centuries.
Not since the First.
Still, he played it quiet.
"You survived the Maw. And you came back walking." he said, almost casually. "So, three questions you earned. You asked them. I answered."
Asvard didn't say a word. He stood still, head tilted slightly, staring into nothing.
Krelith exhaled and straightened his back.
"Let's walk." he said.
But even as he turned, a thought screamed at the back of his mind.
That whisper from before. The one no demon dared speak aloud.
The Last Shard has awakened.
And somewhere, far deeper in Hell, something ancient stirred.
Something that remembered silence.
They walked through a valley carved in blackened stone, surrounded by cliffs that cried with distant wails.
Ash rained down slowly, like snow in a dead world.
"What happens now?" Asvard finally asked, his voice rough but steady.
Krelith glanced at him. "You walk. You fight. You climb. That's how Hell works."
"That's how it works for demons." Asvard replied.
Krelith chuckled, dry. "You're not human anymore."
Asvard didn't respond. He already knew. He could feel it.
His heartbeat didn't sound like a beat anymore. It sounded like a pulse of molten stone.
There was power humming under his skin. Raw, heavy, and waiting.
And something inside him whispered… not in words, but in pressure. A pressure that guided, pulled, and warned.
Not yours. Not yet.
They reached the edge of the valley where a broken statue stood half-buried in magma. The figure had wings. Horns. A shattered crown.
"The old thrones are gone." Krelith said, staring at it. "No ruler's sat for eons."
"Why?"
"Because no one's worthy. Or brave. Or stupid enough."
A faint smirk crossed Asvard's face. "Maybe I'm all three."
Krelith didn't laugh.
He looked at him. Really looked.
"You shouldn't say things like that in Hell," he said. "Some places… listen."
Far away, across a land of iron forests and screaming rivers, a black tower shivered.
Inside, chained in silence, a creature opened one eye.
"...The last shard."
Its breath came out as smoke.
"Then the gate… is cracking."
The chains tightened, as if trying to hold the thought in.
But the whisper had already escaped.
And the silence was ending.
Back near the Maw's rim, Asvard stood before a cliff that overlooked the hellscape.
Fires burned across the horizon. Shapes moved in the haze. Demons. Hunters. Scavengers.
"This world isn't kind." Krelith said.
"Neither am I."
For a second, Krelith almost smiled.
Then he looked at Asvard's chest.
Where no wound should've healed. But did.
Where no heartbeat should echo. But did.
It replaced his heart, he thought.
The shard didn't just survive.
It chose him.
And now, Krelith wasn't sure what had walked out of the Maw.
But he knew what it might become.
Not a demon.
Not a king.
Something worse.
A watcher.
A judge.
And perhaps… the end of Hell itself.
Unprecedented event's were starting to unfold.
Hell has begun shifting. The shard has found it's desired host.
Kreliths word's weren't mere common moral. Asvard had yet to see the real hell. The shard has nullified unnecessary energies which disturbed him, his growth. Asvard turned into something. Something which was unprecedented. Truly. The threads of reality begun originating. For the hell. For the first time.
(To be continued...)