The darkness inside the subterranean vault was absolute.
Five-year-old Ritsu sat frozen in the heavy iron interrogation chair, his small wrists and ankles biting against the freezing metal cuffs.
For a long time, the only sound in the dungeon was the frantic, ragged rhythm of his own breathing.
He wept until his throat was completely raw, calling out for his mother, for his older sister Ren, and even for his father to come back and say it was all a terrible jest.
No one came.
Time lost all meaning.
Ritsu measured his existence in racing heartbeats and shivering breaths.
The damp cold of the black stone walls seeped into his bones, and a jolt of terror paralyzed him every time a rat scurried across the unseen floor.
He squeezed his dark-green eyes shut, praying to the Supreme entities of the realms that he would wake up in his warm bed.
Then, the rusted hinges of the heavy iron door shrieked.
A sliver of dim torchlight spilled into the dungeon, casting a long, distorted shadow across the floor.
Ritsu gasped, his small body instinctively pulling against the chains.
A figure stepped into the vault.
It was not Zenjiro.
The man appeared to be in his twenties, possessing a tall, lean, and athletic physique.
He wore a long, structured dark robe that reached his shins, featuring layered, textured shoulder pauldrons and a high, imposing collar.
A deep hood was pulled up, but it could not hide the unsettling mask that covered his entire face.
The mask was split perfectly down the middle.
One half was pure, pitch black, decorated with a painted, blood-red tear dropping from the eye hole.
The other half was a stark, bone-white mixed with red, featuring a matching black tear design.
From beneath the hood, voluminous, layered dark hair fell past his shoulders.
Through the eye holes of that sinister mask, pure cyan eyes stared at the chained boy.
They were cold, detached, and completely devoid of empathy.
“W-Who are you?” Ritsu whimpered, his voice cracking.
“Where is my father? What are you going to do to me?”
The man did not speak.
He did not possess a mouth slit on his mask, and the heavy miasma of magical pressure radiating from his body suggested he had no intention of using a voice.
Instead, the man stepped forward in absolute silence.
He reached into the folds of his dark robe, pulled out a small piece of parchment, and wrote something down with a charcoal stylus.
He stepped close enough for the terrified boy to see, placing the parchment on the edge of the nearest wooden table.
Ritsu’s trembling, tear-filled eyes read the messy scrawl.
I am Null.
Null turned away from the boy.
With a slow, deliberate motion, he grabbed the heavy canvas sheets covering the three long wooden tables and pulled them away.
Ritsu’s breath hitched in his throat.
On the first table sat hundreds of glowing glass vials, alchemical funnels, and bubbling magical liquids.
The boy did not know their names, but the vile colors radiated dark energy.
There were swirling vials of Titan Blood, bubbling Grave Dust Mixtures, and thick, glowing green Frostbite Venoms.
Next to them sat jars of Mutated Chimera Extract, Phantom Rot, and Drops of the Black Sun.
On the second table lay a horrifying array of rusted iron tools and brutal tearing devices.
Ritsu saw things from his worst nightmares: Bone-Grinder’s Wheels, heavy Thumbscrews, spiked iron boots, Heretic’s Forks, and Flesh-Tearing Tongs.
But it was the third table that made a fresh wave of tears spill down Ritsu’s pale cheeks.
It was covered in dozens of reinforced glass jars, and inside them writhed monstrous, creepy crawlers.
Huge Blood-Widow Spiders slammed against the glass.
Corpse-Kissing Bugs clicked their mandibles, alongside Spine-Backed Crawlers, Ghost-Silk Moths, and massive Abyssal Scorpions.
Null picked up a sharp, curved flaying knife from the second table.
“No… please!” Ritsu screamed, thrashing wildly against the heavy iron cuffs.
The chains clattered loudly, but his five-year-old strength was entirely useless.
“I want my mother! Please, let me go!”
Null’s cyan eyes did not even blink.
He stepped up to the chair and pressed the cold edge of the knife against Ritsu’s collarbone.
With a swift, upward motion, he sliced through the boy’s linen tunic, tearing the shirt completely open to expose Ritsu’s small, shivering chest.
Null tossed the knife aside.
He reached back to the table and picked up a pair of heavy, iron flesh-tearing tongs.
He clamped the cold iron around the index finger of Ritsu’s right hand.
CRACK.
The sound of snapping bone echoed like a thunderous impact in the small dungeon.
Ritsu’s scream was deafening.
It tore from his small throat, an agonizing shriek of pure, unadulterated agony that echoed against the damp stone walls.
His vision flashed white, his racing heart threatening to burst from his chest.
He begged, he yelled, he thrashed until his wrists bled against the iron cuffs.
Null did not stop.
He moved to the middle finger.
CRACK.
Another horrific scream.
Ritsu gagged on his own saliva, his mind unable to comprehend the sheer scale of the pain.
It was a five-year-old child, innocent and frail, being systematically broken by a silent monster.
Null clamped the tongs down again.
And again.
And again.
He did not care that Ritsu was sobbing uncontrollably.
He did not care that the boy was calling out for his family.
Null worked with the terrifying, rhythmic precision of a butcher.
By the time the tenth finger was shattered, Ritsu was barely conscious.
His head hung limp against his chest, his breath coming in shallow, ragged wheezes.
His hands were swollen and bruised, radiating a pulsing, white-hot fire that consumed his entire world.
Null set the bloody iron tongs down.
He picked up his charcoal stylus and wrote another line on a fresh piece of parchment, holding it up in front of Ritsu’s drooping, tear-soaked eyes.
You too Weak.
Null discarded the paper and reached for a new tool.
It was a sharp, thick iron spike, resembling a cherry pitter but designed for bone.
He knelt down, grasping Ritsu’s bare foot.
Without a moment of hesitation, Null pressed the sharp iron tool against the boy’s big toe and violently thrust it deep beneath the nail, piercing straight into the bone.
Ritsu’s voice cracked.
A choked, guttural wail escaped his lips, thick with raw emotion and unbearable suffering.
“R-Ren… Akari…” Ritsu sobbed, his voice reduced to a broken whisper.
“Mother… please… it hurts…”
But no one came.
There was only the cold dungeon, the flickering torchlight, and the silent man with the cyan eyes.
Null stood back up, wiping a speck of blood from his dark glove.
He wrote one final, long message on the parchment and pinned it to the table directly in Ritsu’s line of sight.
Count from 700000 backwards while I torture you.
If you are able to make it to 0 from 700000 in one day, I will release you.
But if you do not, the next day it will reset.
And it will reset also if you faint or dazzle.
Ritsu stared at the numbers, his young mind fracturing under the weight of the impossible demand.
Seven hundred thousand?
He barely knew how to count to a hundred.
Before Ritsu could even attempt to open his mouth, Null picked up a heavy, hand-cranked iron auger.
He pressed the serrated drill bit directly against Ritsu’s bare shoulder.
Null turned the crank.
The jagged metal bit into Ritsu’s fair skin, tearing through muscle and grinding directly into his collarbone.
The agony was absolute.
It was a wave of sensory destruction so violent and overwhelming that Ritsu’s brain simply shut down to protect itself.
His dark-green eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped forward in the chains, his consciousness swallowed by the merciful void of a faint.
-Break-
When Ritsu finally opened his eyes again, the dungeon was still engulfed in shadows.
A dull, throbbing ache radiated from his ruined fingers and the massive, bloody puncture wound in his shoulder.
But as his vision slowly cleared, a new, entirely different kind of terror washed over him.
He could not move his arms at all.
He looked down, his breath hitching.
Pierced directly into the delicate veins of his small arms and the backs of his bruised hands were twelve thick bone needles.
The needles were attached to long, hollowed reeds that led up to a series of hanging metal funnels.
Inside the funnels, thick, glowing magical potions were slowly dripping down the reeds, forcing their way into Ritsu’s bloodstream.
The liquids were unnatural.
Some were a thick, bubbling red, like the Titan Blood he had seen on the table.
Others were a toxic, sickly green, a vibrant blue, and a glowing, sickly yellow.
He could feel the freezing, burning sensation of the foreign alchemy forcibly mixing with his Gladeon blood, crawling up his arms and spreading toward his racing heart.
He was a guinea pig.
A living vessel for horrors he could not comprehend.
Through the dim light, Ritsu saw Null standing by the potion table, calmly preparing another vial of writhing, black liquid.
The man in the half-black, half-white mask paused, his cold cyan eyes locking onto the boy.
He raised a single finger, pointing to the parchment still pinned to the table.
Count.
Ritsu’s lips trembled.
The burning in his veins intensified, feeling as though liquid fire and jagged ice were simultaneously flowing through his body.
The sheer physical dread of what was about to happen next crashed down upon him.
The five-year-old let out a choked sob, his vision darkening around the edges as the terrifying alchemy overwhelmed his fragile system.
Before he could utter a single number, his head lolled to the side, and he fainted once more into the abyss.
This was only the first day.
He had ten years left to go.
Will Ritsu ever be Free again?