The pain was unspeakable.
Marcus was dragged across the slick stone floor like a carcass headed for the slaughterhouse.
One hooded cultist maintained a brutal grip on his matted hair, yanking his head back at an agonizing angle, while the second followed behind, keeping a tight grip on the iron chain around his neck.
‘Fuck you both…’ Marcus snarled inwardly, his teeth grinding against the coarse leather gag stuffed into his jaw.
As he was dragged, Marcus forced his eyes to scan their surroundings, his battle-hardened mind processing tactical details despite the white-hot agony radiating through his neck and skull.
They were moving down a long, vaulted stone corridor.
Narrow lancet windows cut into the thick walls at regular intervals, letting in howling, freezing gusts of wind and the deafening roar of ocean waves slamming violently against the temple’s outer foundation.
Every two or three meters, hooded sentinels stood guard on both sides of the passage.
Their faces were buried deep within dark cowls, and their hands rested on rusted spears and brutal, notched cleavers.
Marcus calculated the odds instantly: two executioners, dozens of armed sentinels, zero weapons, and an emaciated, chained body.
Any attempt to fight back in this corridor would mean certain death.
‘Shit.
The situation is only getting worse.’
The executioners dragged him further into the depths of the structure.
Marcus kept both hands raised, desperately gripping the wrist of the cultist holding his hair to relieve the tearing pressure on his scalp.
Suddenly, the heavy groan of an iron door echoed through the hall.
Without warning, the cultist released his hair.
Marcus collapsed hard onto the wet stone, his breath hitching as his chin slammed against the floor.
Before he could recover his balance or draw air into his starved lungs, the chain around his neck snapped taut with violent force.
The sudden jerk forced Marcus back onto his knees.
He blinked away the blurriness in his eyes, taking in the chamber he had been brought to.
His eyes widened in silent horror.
The room resembled the previous hall—vast, circular, and lit by the flickering, blood-red glow of ancient braziers.
Dark, dried stains of blood coated the walls from floor to ceiling, accompanied by fresh crimson streaks that glistened beneath the torchlight.
There were no other living captives here.
Instead, a massive altar-like structure stood at the exact center of the chamber.carved from a single block of jagged obsidian, dripping with fresh gore.
‘Wait…
Is that an altar?!’
The executioner behind him hauled backward on the neck chain, dragging Marcus toward the center of the room like a sacrificial beast.
Marcus planted his feet against the slippery stone, trying to resist the pull but this frail, malnourished Teen body was no match for the executioner’s brute strength.
His heels slid helplessly across the wet floor, leaving faint red tracks behind.
As he was dragged closer to the obsidian block, his eyes caught two pale figures lying crumpled in the shadows near the base of the altar.
It was the two young men who had been taken from the holding cell before him.
They were not alive.
Their bodies lay twisted at unnatural angles, their skin turned a mottled, hideous shade of deep purple.
A thick, yellowish-white foam seeped continuously from their bloated lips, pooling on the stone beneath their heads.
Their wide, lifeless eyes stared blankly into the ceiling, frozen in an eternal expression of sheer, agonizing terror.
‘No…
no…
I am not dying here,’ Marcus raged within his mind.
He threw his weight sideways, attempting to wrench the chain from the cultist’s grip.
His resistance was met with immediate, ruthless retribution.
The second cultist stepped forward, raised his heavy leather boot, and brought it down with terrifying velocity directly against Marcus’s right ankle.
CRACK!
An agonizing scream tore from Marcus’s throat, but the heavy leather gag choked the sound into a muffled, guttural growl.
“Aghh!”
The joint shattered instantly.
Marcus collapsed onto one knee, a dry heave racking his frame as the agony surged through his nervous system like liquid fire.
He looked down at his right leg his foot hung at an unnatural angle, the ankle unnaturally swollen as dark blood rapidly soaked through his filthy trousers.
‘Fuck…
Fuck!
This hurts like hell!’
Before he could process the shock, the cultist shoved his shoulder, knocking him flat onto his chest.
Marcus forced his head up, his vision swimming with red spots.
The taller executioner dragged the free end of Marcus’s neck chain and fed it through an iron ring embedded deep within the center of the obsidian altar, locking it in place with a heavy padlock.
Within seconds, two more cultists emerged from the shadows, binding his wrists and knees to iron anchors on the floor.
The pressure on his shattered right ankle was unspeakable.
Marcus gritted his teeth so hard his gums bled into his gag.
He had taken shrapnel to the shoulder, bullet wounds to the chest, and broken bones in his past life but the sheer, unadulterated pain radiating from this frail adolescent body was far worse than taking a bullet.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Slow, measured footsteps echoed through the vast chamber, gradually drowning out the crackle of the braziers.
The surrounding cultists immediately bowed their heads, dropping to their knees and pressing their foreheads against the cold stone floor in total, terrifying submission.
“Greetings, High Priest!” the cultists said in unison, their hoarse voices reverberating off the blood-stained walls.
From a dark archway behind the obsidian altar, a tall figure emerged.
He wore sweeping robes of deep crimson, woven with golden thread that depicted writhing, monstrous figures.
His face was hidden behind a bone-white mask shaped like a screaming human visage.
In his hand, he held a tall staff topped with a blackened skull.
Marcus stared up at the figure through narrowed, pain-filled eyes.
‘So that mask-wearing bastard is their High Priest…’
The High Priest walked over to the altar, stopping right beside Marcus’s trembling form.
He looked down, behind the narrow eyeholes of the bone-white mask.
Without a word, the High Priest reached down and unbuckled the iron harness holding the leather gag inside Marcus’s jaw.
He pulled the gag free and tossed it casually onto the floor.
Marcus sucked in a sharp, ragged breath, coughing violently as cold air rushed into his burning lungs.
He spat a mouthful of copper-tasting blood onto the stone, his eyes locking onto the High Priest with absolute, murderous defiance.
“Why…” Marcus rasped, his voice raw, hoarse, and cracked from disuse.
“Why are you doing this?
What do you want?”
The High Priest did not answer his question directly.
Instead, he raised his free hand, tilting his head as if admiring a prized piece of livestock.
“A soul that has suffered much,” the High Priest spoke.
His voice was deep, echoing with a strange, metallic resonance that seemed to vibrate directly inside Marcus’s skull.
“A container broken by agony, empty of hope, yet refusing to shatter.
The Spell has provided us with remarkable material.”
He turned toward an acolyte standing nearby, who held a small silver tray.
On the tray rested a long, flexible tube made of dried black intestine, connected to a heavy glass flask filled with a thick, viscous black liquid that swirled with an unnatural, sickly purple sheen.
“You ask why, little vessel?” The High Priest leaned down, his bone mask inches from Marcus’s ear.
“Because mortal flesh is weak.
Because this world belongs to the ancient ones.
Your flesh will serve a grander purpose.”
The High Priest gestured to the two executioners.
They immediately stepped forward, grabbing Marcus’s head and forcing his mouth wide open.
Marcus thrashed against his chains, pulling against his broken ankle with reckless abandon, but the iron grips on his jaw were unbreakable.
The High Priest lifted the glass flask, his voice rising in an ecstatic, chanting frenzy that filled the entire chamber
“Praise The Lord!
Receive the dark seed, and become the shell for our master’s return!”
Before Marcus could choke out another word, the High Priest jammed the flexible tube deep down Marcus’s throat.
The tube plunged past his tongue, sliding down his esophagus until it reached the base of his chest.
Marcus gagged violently, his eyes bulging as suffocating panic gripped his mind.
Then, the High Priest tilted the flask.
The thick, black liquid surged down the tube.
The moment the substance hit his stomach, Marcus’s world exploded.
It was not poison.
It was not fire.
It was absolute, unmitigated agony.
The liquid felt like molten iron flooding his veins, instantly burning through his internal organs.
But the physical pain was nothing compared to what happened inside his mind.
The substance attacked his very soul.
Marcus felt as if invisible, razor-sharp hooks had pierced his consciousness, violently tearing his spirit apart piece by piece, only to slam the shattered fragments back together in a chaotic, agonizing cycle.
The memories of his past life, the nuclear explosion, the deaths of his soldiers, the betrayal, his endless discipline, were dragged into a burning abyss
“ARRRGGGHHHHHH!”
A blood-curdling, terrifying scream tore from Marcus’s throat, echoing off the stone walls like the howl of a dying beast.
His body arched upward violently, snapping his back into a rigid, unnatural bridge.
His veins bulged against his pale skin, turning pitch-black as the corrupt liquid forced its way through his circulatory system.
His chest heaved so violently that his lungs screamed for oxygen.
Clank!
CLANK!
The sheer, unnatural force of his body’s violent convulsions began to strain the iron bindings holding him to the altar.
His soul violently rejected the foreign substance, putting immense strain on his weakened body.
CRACK!
With a sharp, metallic snap, the iron chain wrapped around his left wrist sheared apart under the tremendous pressure.
Links of iron scattered across the stone floor like hail.
The High Priest’s eyes widened behind his bone mask.
He did not step back in fear; instead, he threw his head back and burst into a hysterical, triumphant laughter that echoed through the blood-stained temple.
“Yes!
YES!” The High Priest shouted, his voice shaking with mad ecstasy.
“Look at him!
His soul is holding!!
The vessel is not shattering!
Our Master will return soon, this vessel is absolute perfection!”
On the altar, Marcus’s body continued to convulse violently, his fingers clawing mindlessly into the stone as his soul burned in the fires of an endless, agonizing hell.
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