The Nest of Dementors, The Sixth Circle of Hell.
This was a land of death, but the darkness here was pure—far purer than the chaotic energy found in a common graveyard. The difference lay in the victims: the vast majority of those imprisoned here were children.
Children are simple. Their minds are not yet cluttered with the complex, murky thoughts of adults.
The dark magic found in graveyards is often mixed with chaotic, filthy evil thoughts. But here, actual malice was rare. Instead, the air was thick with "Obsession."
Where there is obsession, there is resentment. As Rey sat down to channel the ambient dark magic, he could feel the lingering resentment of every child who had died in this pit.
Their obsessions were heartbreakingly simple: I want to go home. I want to be happy. I want to see my parents. I want a full meal.
Having been raised under the Church's doctrine, their greatest hope in death was that their souls would ascend to Heaven. Heaven was their dreamland—a place without pain, without despair, without the darkness.
But Heaven isn't a place one enters so easily. At least, as far as Rey knew, ordinary people rarely ascended.
To enter Heaven required "Piety." And the level of piety demanded by the Church was something these children could never achieve.
Everything was about piety. And how was piety measured? By the greed of the High Clergy.
The interpretation of faith belonged solely to those in power. Their definition was simple: Give us your gold, your bodies, and your souls. Serve us. And until the moment you die, never utter a single word of complaint.
That was their "Piety."
---
Rey cast a spherical ward around himself, a transparent bubble about two meters in diameter.
Sitting at the center of this sphere, he began to draw the endless waves of dark magic toward him. The energy filtered through the barrier, stripped of impurities, before flowing into the Soul Orb within him.
However, the filtering process came with a side effect. To absorb the power, Rey had to witness the origin of every wisp of darkness.
For every bit of power he gained, he was forced to watch a life enter oblivion.
And within this montage of death, Rey witnessed something horrifying: the birth of a Dementor.
He saw a child whose soul had mutated due to sheer, unyielding obsession in the moments before death.
The child's physical body remained desiccated but intact. The rot, however, took hold of the soul.
The soul, once bright, developed a striking black spot—a manifestation of that final, desperate obsession.
As time accelerated in the vision, the black spots multiplied. Eventually, they consumed the soul, forming terrifying, rotting voids.
The rot spread. The surface of the soul began to tear and peel, turning into fluttering strips of tattered rag. Finally, the entire soul decomposed into layers of black fabric, looking like a human wrapped in decaying funeral shrouds.
And thus, a new Dementor was born.
---
Gasp!
Rey sucked in air greedily, like a man just pulled from drowning.
The vision of the Dementor's birth—the mutation of a soul driven by despair—had felt so real that Rey felt as if he had lived through it himself.
When he opened his eyes, he was startled to find a Dementor floating directly in front of his face. It was darker than the others, thick and viscous like ink.
It was terrifyingly close, hovering just inches outside his spherical ward. The blackness of its form swirled in a specific, hypnotic rhythm among its tattered robes.
It had no eyes, yet Rey could feel it staring at him.
Rey was drenched in cold sweat. The vision he had just experienced... this creature had forced it into his mind.
The pain, the torment, the despair of the struggle, and the final, crushing obsession.
"You... you are the original one," Rey realized, his heart pounding.
He connected the creature before him to the vision. This ink-black monster was ancient. And right now, a strand of its tattered, silk-like darkness was embedded in Rey's protective ward.
It was invading his barrier. The dark power Rey had been absorbing was connected directly to this creature. It had been feeding him its own history, trying to drag his soul into the same mutation.
This thing is intelligent!
Rey stared at the creature, certain of his conclusion.
It had used the memory of its own birth to attack Rey's mind. If Rey's soul and mental defenses hadn't been exceptionally strong, the despair within that memory would have shattered him. His soul would have begun to rot, just like the child in the vision.
"Get back!"
Rey shouted coldly, instantly maxing out his magical output. The spherical ward expanded rapidly.
The barrier was designed to filter and purify dark energy. As it expanded, the parts of the Dementor that were attached to it were instantly subjected to intense purification.
The speed of the expansion caused the creature immense agony.
The Dementor's hooded head twisted violently. A gaping black hole opened where a mouth should be, and it let out a screech of pure torture.
The sound was ear-splitting, like the desperate, final scream of a dying human, amplified a thousand times.
Fighting the pain in his ears, Rey pushed more magic into the ward, expanding it further.
Since this monster had voluntarily latched onto his purification barrier, he wasn't going to let go. If he waited for Raphael to wake up and save him, he might already be dead.
Evil must be eradicated completely. That is the only way to survive.
It didn't matter if this Dementor used to be an innocent soul. That was the past. Now, it was a monster that devoured souls, and it had to be destroyed.
---
The screeching grew louder, the pitch rising higher and higher.
As the ink-black Dementor thrashed wildly, the surrounding Dementors began to respond.
One scream. Two. Three...
Soon, the entire cavern was filled with a cacophony of shrieks.
Rey's barrier continued to grow. The Dementor, like an octopus stuck to a hot grill, found more and more of its body adhering to the burning surface of the ward the more it struggled.
Usually, absorbing dark energy required a meditative state because the ambient magic was thin.
But now? This Dementor had connected itself directly to him. The dark energy was so dense and concentrated that Rey didn't need to meditate at all; he just drained it.
As for the "obsession" within the energy? In his fully awake and adrenaline-fueled state, Rey simply ignored it.
The struggle continued. The screaming reached a fever pitch. The other Dementors, connected by their nature, seemed to feel the agony of their leader, their own forms writhing in sympathy.
Rey focused his magic on his ears, sealing his hearing completely.
But even with the silencing charm, the sheer vibration of the sound made him dizzy. He was running on pure willpower now, forcing the purification process to continue.
The sonic waves were so powerful that loose rocks and dust began to shake loose from the cavern ceiling.
The sound wasn't physical, yet it had formed a physical attack.
The screeching was so piercing that it penetrated the massive stone door and the thick walls of the dungeon.
Outside, the Church guards stationed at the entrance froze in horror. They had never heard such a sound before.
Some of the weaker soldiers didn't just freeze. With a dull thud, they collapsed to the ground, unconscious or dead, as trickles of blood began to flow from the gaps in their helmets.
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