When Ashen opened his eyes, he didn't find light… but a red glow dripping from the ceiling as if the sky itself was bleeding.
He was lying on a black ground that breathed slowly, rising and falling as if watching his own breathing.
The smell of hot iron and burnt flesh filled the air, seeping into his lungs until his chest felt like it was boiling from the inside.
He raised his head with difficulty and saw the hall…
Its ceiling could not be seen, its walls stretched beyond perception, all covered with skins stretched by threads of nerves and blood.
From between those skins, thousands of bodies emerged — men, women, children, and twisted creatures that didn't belong to any known race or shape.
All of them were being skinned in total silence.
No screams, no moans — only the sound of knives moving without hands, cutting through flesh like wind slicing the surface of the sea.
But the true horror wasn't in the sight…
It was in the sound.
A sound not heard by the ear but felt in the bones — as if the torment seeped from flesh to soul, and from soul to something beyond.
The screams didn't come from outside, but from within him.
Ashen stepped back two steps, but stumbled and fell on his face.
When he lifted his head, he realized the ground itself was made of skinned bodies, breathing and moving beneath his skin.
Each time he touched it, he felt its pulse inside his veins, as if it was directly connected to him.
He reached out to stand up, but when he looked at his hand, he froze.
His fingers were slowly being skinned, thread by thread, without blood — only white steam rising from where the flesh had been.
But the pain was beyond anything he had ever known.
It wasn't physical pain… it was like losing a piece of his consciousness.
A faint scream escaped his chest, but it never reached his mouth.
The sound broke inside him, turning into a steady hum.
Then he understood — this place didn't allow screams.
Everything said here stayed inside, to be devoured later.
He stood up, half frozen by fear and half desperate to run, but there was nowhere to go.
Everywhere he looked, he saw endless rows of bodies being skinned and sewn back, only to be skinned again.
A cycle without end.
And before every skinned body stood a mirror of blood reflecting the scene in an even more distorted way.
He approached one without realizing, and saw a familiar face on the blood's surface.
His own.
His eyes stared back emptily, and his mouth was open as if screaming silently.
"This… isn't real…" he whispered hoarsely.
But when he reached toward the surface of the blood, his reflection vanished — replaced by another scene.
A young boy with black hair blowing amid flames, his father's voice shouting his name before everything was swallowed by a sea of blood.
His clan.
The moment everything began.
Ashen trembled.
He wanted to step back, but the blood clung to his hand, stretched like a living tongue, and wrapped around his arm.
In an instant, he was pulled toward the wall.
When his body hit it, he didn't feel the impact.
He felt something piercing his skin from behind — hundreds of needles being planted into his spine.
And in the next moment, his skin began tearing itself apart.
There were no knives.
The wall itself started skinning him.
Each thread of flesh was pulled away slowly, the meat beneath boiling and evaporating, while the air buzzed with sounds he couldn't understand.
But he felt them echoing inside his skull like waves of madness.
> "Every body here… is you."
The words echoed without a source, repeating like a pulse in his head.
> "Every piece of flesh torn here is yours. Every soul cut apart is you."
His eyes widened as he tried to scream, but no sound came out.
Instead, blood vapor escaped his lips in a red mist.
The pain was unbearable.
Each time a piece of his skin was stripped away, a memory vanished before him.
A laugh, a face, a scream, a voice — even the smell of the forest where he was born disappeared.
Every time he was skinned, he lost something of himself.
And every time he tried to resist, the flesh was sewn back together with burning threads of nerve.
Threads not stitched with mercy, but with fire.
Each one passing through his flesh ignited flames inside his consciousness.
As if pain itself had become a teacher, and brutality a sacred law.
There was no sense of time.
He didn't know if hours or years had passed.
But he could hear his heartbeat slowing… then quickening… then stopping… then returning.
Each beat taught him something:
Pain cannot be resisted — it must be understood.
When he began losing consciousness for the first time, he saw shadows moving in the distance.
Human-like shapes without faces, approaching him.
They carried threads and knives made of burning nerves, and all their faces were his — twisted versions of him with hollow eyes and open mouths.
One approached, placed the knife in his hand, and spoke in a voice like wind echoing in a deep cave:
> "Those who do not skin… will be skinned."
Then it disappeared.
Ashen remained alone in the endless hall, surrounded by bodies that could not die and souls that could not rest.
He held the knife with a trembling hand, stared at its blade made of living nerve,
and felt the savage intent inside him awaken like a beast opening its eyes for the first time.
The air grew heavier.
The pain became his companion.
And a voice whispered deep within him:
> "Begin, son of blood… for pain is the path to understanding."
He slowly raised the knife toward his chest…