It was pain that woke him; his right shoulder had hit the ground first. The pain was very specific, the pain of bone slamming into something hard, a dull ache that jarred all the way from his shoulder to the back of his skull. Allen tried to suck in a breath, but his chest felt as if a stone slab were pressing on it, and the air he drew in was thin and short, as though someone had him by the throat. He lay face down, half his face against cold stone, and his eyelids twitched several times before he finally managed to open them a crack.
His field of vision was nothing but blurry, dark red light.
He blinked. Then blinked again. Slowly the lights took shape. Candle flames. Tall candelabra set into the walls, cluster after cluster, burning quietly. The flames didn't flicker, as if they were painted on. They lit only a limited area, leaving everything else hidden in shadow, which made the place feel towering and empty.
Allen lifted his face a little off the floor. The floor was black, like polished obsidian, carved with extremely fine lines that ran from right under his nose all the way into the depths of the darkness. The lines didn't look like decoration; they looked more like some kind of writing, or incantations, with a very faint red light flowing in the grooves, like blood beneath the ground.
He pushed at the floor, trying to climb up. The moment he put weight on his right arm, a sharp pain shot through his shoulder, like an iron nail driven into the gap between his bones. He grunted and collapsed back onto the floor, his forehead knocking against the stone, and for a moment everything went black.
Pain. Good, he could still feel pain. He lay there panting, the thoughts in his head scattered all over like shattered glass. The plane. The clouds. The whirlpool. The red eyes. And that voice. He remembered. He remembered all of it. That voice still seemed stuck to his eardrums, low and heavy, as if traveling from very far away, or as if it had never left him at all.
"I'm not dreaming..." he said hoarsely, and with the last of his strength he rolled over onto his back. The moment his right shoulder touched the floor, it jolted as if seared by fire. He gritted his teeth and forced himself not to cry out.
The ceiling was high. Absurdly high. He could see that it was covered in patterns he didn't recognize, and in the candlelight those patterns looked like a pack of living things lurking in the dark, ready to swoop down at any moment. A smell hung in the air. Very faint, neither fragrant nor foul. Like old wood, and also like iron after it's been burned, cold and dank, drilling up his nose and into his head with every breath.
Where was this?
He forced himself to stay calm. First his fingers, then his wrists, then his ankles. He checked them one by one. His fingers could still move. His wrists could still turn. His ankles were a bit numb, but not broken. His lower back ached dully, as if someone had kicked him from behind. His right shoulder was the worst. Maybe dislocated, or maybe just badly bruised. He tried to lift his right hand a little. Halfway up, the joint gave a crack, and cold sweat instantly broke out across his forehead.
"Fuck..." he swore, his voice hoarse and faint, like ash squeezed out of his throat.
He just lay there like that, gazing up at the high, dark ceiling while his mind replayed the last scenes before he'd passed out. Those purple threads, that light, that man who looked so much like him. And those words: "You're the most suitable one I've ever seen."
A chill crept up from the base of his spine. He wanted to sit up, to run, to get as far away from this place as he could. But his body felt as if it had fallen to pieces, and every part of it hurt. All he could do was lie on the floor, like a fish that had been hauled out of the water and tossed carelessly onto a rock.
He didn't know how much time passed before he heard a sound.
Footsteps. Very light, very steady, unhurried, coming from somewhere behind him. The steps fell on the stone floor with hardly any echo, yet each one felt as though it landed on Allen's chest. Every hair on the back of his neck stood up.
He wanted to turn his head and see who was coming. But his neck felt as if something were holding it down, and he couldn't move. All he could do was listen to the footsteps coming closer and closer, until finally they stopped beside him.
Whoever it was didn't speak right away. Allen saw a pair of boots. Black, tall, the leather giving off a very dark sheen. Above them, the hem of a garment in the same color, like night congealed into cloth. The person stood right beside him, neither bending down nor crouching, just looking at him. The way you'd look at something that had just fallen on the floor.
"Not dead yet," the person said. His voice was flat, like someone confirming the weather.
Allen's breathing turned heavy all at once. He had heard that voice before. In the darkness. In that current of light. In the deepest part of his mind. Not coming in through his ears, but welling up out of his bones. It was this person. These boots. This flat tone, as if he were an outsider to everything.
The person finally moved. He bent down, gripped Allen's chin in one hand, and turned his face toward him. The grip wasn't forceful, but it was very steady, like turning over a pebble he'd just picked up. Allen was forced to tilt his head back, and he found himself looking straight at that face.
The dark red candlelight fell across it from the side, cutting half of it into shadow. High brow ridges, a straight nose, thin lips, pressed shut. The outer corners of his eyes were a little long and half-lowered, as if he weren't quite awake, or as if nothing were worth his full attention. But those eyes were red. Dark red, like that deepest point of light within the candle flames earlier. They looked at Allen without blinking, as if they meant to bore right through his pupils.
Allen's throat felt as though someone were choking him.
Alike. Far too alike.
So alike he couldn't even say where the likeness lay, so alike that he laid that face, piece by piece, over the man in his mirror every morning in his memory. Everything was clearly the same, and yet nothing was the same. Allen thought: so a person and their own face could turn out this different.
"Who are you..." he forced out.
The man didn't answer right away. He simply let go, as if he'd confirmed something, and slowly straightened up. He stood there, the black hem of his garment hanging down, like a drop of ink falling into water, not spreading, only sinking quietly downward.
"I am the master of this place," he said. "The one you humans call the Demon King."
Allen was stunned. It took him quite a while to realize his mouth was still hanging open. The Demon King. The words circled once through his head as if they couldn't find anywhere to hang. It was too absurd. He'd lived on Earth for twenty-odd years and had never seen anything supernatural. And now a man with the same face as him was standing in front of him, saying he was the Demon King. He should laugh, should curse, should think it was all the ravings of a madman. But he couldn't laugh. His right shoulder still hurt, beneath him was a cold black stone floor, and above him was a ceiling covered in demonic runes that seemed to rise without end. He didn't even know where he was.
"The Demon King..." he repeated, in a voice that sounded borrowed from someone else's mouth.
The man didn't care whether he believed it or not. He only turned around and took a few steps forward. The footsteps rang out again, one after another, striking the stone and striking Allen's nerves. Then he stopped, without looking back.
"Welcome to my castle," he said.
Allen wanted to say "I didn't want to come," but only half the sound made it out, and the rest was forced back down by a sudden surge of dull pain in his chest. He started coughing, and the more he coughed, the more it hurt, until his right shoulder felt as if it would tear apart. He turned onto his side, propped himself up on the floor with his left hand, and curled into a ball. The coughing bounced back and forth through the empty hall, as though someone were mimicking him.
When the pain had passed, he raised his head to look again. The man had already walked far off, leaving only a very dim silhouette that slowly melted into the darkness deep within the hall. The candle flames on either side wavered slightly as he passed, as if startled by the wind his figure dragged along with it.
Allen lay on the floor, breathing hard. He had no strength left to shout, and no strength left to think. He only felt cold. A cold seeping up from the floor, spreading like water over his back, over his limbs, soaking all the way into his bones.
He didn't know how long he lay there. Maybe a few minutes, maybe longer. His consciousness was like a broken thread, clear one moment and hazy the next. Dimly, he heard footsteps. More of them this time, and more jumbled. Several women in long dark dresses gathered around him. Their faces were hidden in shadow, showing only pale hands and very, very soft voices.
"Don't touch him yet," someone said.
"Lift from that side, by the arm. The shoulder needs to be braced," said another.
Allen felt himself being helped up off the floor. The movements were very gentle, but his right shoulder still felt as if it were being wrenched apart, and he nearly passed out again. Someone fed him a little water. It was very cold, with a slight bitterness. He couldn't swallow in time, and water ran from the corner of his mouth, down his chin and into his collar. He opened his eyes groggily and saw several blurry figures moving around him, like a flock of very quiet birds.
"He's awake," someone whispered.
Allen lifted his eyelids with all the strength he had. Everything in front of him looked soaked in water, warped and wavering, impossible to see clearly. He could only make out the face of a woman leaning in close, very pale, with very deep eyes. Her lips moved, as if she were saying something to him. But Allen could no longer make it out. The darkness was rising again, from the tips of his toes, from the tips of his fingers, from every direction, dragging him inward bit by bit.
The last thing he heard was a very soft voice that could have belonged to anyone.
"We'll await further orders from Lord Demon King."
And then there was nothing.