No one spoke after THE WARDEN vanished.
They stood frozen on the obsidian plain, staring at the blood where the man had been torn apart. It didn't evaporate. It didn't sink into the stone. It spread slowly, warm and dark, as if Hell wanted them to look at it a little longer.
Three thousand people breathed the same terrified breath.
Someone whispered, "Is it over?"
No one answered.
Nothing happened.
The sky stayed sealed. The floor stayed still. No doors opened. No monsters arrived to give them something external to hate.
That was when Caelum understood.
Floor One wasn't a challenge.
It was a permission slip.
People began to move.
Not all at once. Not in a rush. Just small steps. Glances. Repositioning. Distance being measured. Fear turning into awareness. Awareness turning into calculation.
Caelum felt it around him—the shift.
Eyes lingered too long. Hands flexed. Shoulders squared.
The rules were simple enough to understand now.
Kill with intent.Earn steel.
Someone broke first.
A woman collapsed near the edge of the blood pool, sobbing uncontrollably, nails digging into her own arms as if she could claw herself awake. A man crouched beside her, murmuring reassurances that didn't sound like he believed them.
Another man watched.
He was thin. Nervous. Hands clean. The kind of person who had survived so far by not being noticed.
He looked at the woman.
Then at the blood.
Then at the sky.
He lunged.
The woman didn't even have time to scream. His hands locked around her throat as he drove her onto her back, knees slamming into her ribs. She clawed at him instantly, shrieking, feet kicking wildly against the stone.
People scattered.
No one intervened.
He squeezed.
Not cleanly. Not decisively. His grip shook. His breathing hitched. Tears streamed down his face as her struggles weakened, then returned in desperate bursts.
"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I'm sorry—I don't want to—"
She gurgled, blood bubbling at her lips.
He squeezed harder.
When her body finally went still, he collapsed backward, gasping, staring at his hands like they belonged to someone else.
The corpse stayed.
Nothing fell from the sky.
The man looked up, wild-eyed. "I did it," he said hoarsely. "I killed her."
Silence.
Then someone laughed.
Short. Sharp. Hysterical.
"He didn't mean it," a voice said. "That's why."
The man screamed.
He threw himself at the corpse, shaking it, punching it, sobbing as he begged the sky to notice him.
Hell did not.
The lesson burned itself into the crowd.
Fear kills didn't count.Hesitation killed you twice.
The second kill was different.
A man named Gideon didn't cry. He didn't shout. He didn't apologize.
He chose.
He grabbed the nearest person—a young woman who had frozen in place, eyes empty with shock—and slammed her into the stone hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. His hands closed around her throat with purpose.
She fought like an animal.
She clawed at his eyes, bit into his forearm, kicked until her legs failed. Her resistance didn't slow him. It only made him press harder, jaw clenched, muscles shaking with effort.
When her skull cracked against the stone, the sound echoed across the floor.
Her body went slack.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then her corpse vanished.
The sky screamed.
Something fell.
It struck the stone near Gideon with a violent crack—metal biting deep into obsidian. A weapon. Dark. Heavy. Breathing faintly as if alive.
The crowd recoiled.
Gideon stared at it.
Then he reached for it.
The moment his fingers closed around the hilt, he screamed.
Not from the weight.
From the pain.
The weapon burned.
A sound like flesh tearing filled the air as something moved—not outside him, but inside. A black symbol ignited across his chest, crawling outward like living ink, carving itself into his skin.
He collapsed, howling, nails tearing at his own flesh as the mark finished forming.
When the pain stopped, he lay shaking.
Armed.
Marked.
Hell had recognized him.
That was all it took.
The floor erupted.
People attacked each other in pairs, in trios, in sudden ambushes. Screams overlapped. Bodies hit the stone. Blood slicked the ground until footing became uncertain.
Some kills failed.
Some succeeded.
Weapons fell like judgment.
Each time, the scream followed—the tattoo burning its way from steel to skin, choosing its place, claiming its owner.
Caelum did not move.
He watched.
He waited.
He learned.
He saw how panic ruined intent. How rage shortened lives. How those who rushed died faster than those who chose.
He found his moment at the edge of the chaos.
A man stood alone there, back to the crowd, breathing hard. No weapon. No allies. Alive because no one had noticed him yet.
Caelum stepped behind him.
One step.
Two.
His hands closed around the man's throat.
The grip was precise. Calm. No shaking.
The man gasped, hands clawing uselessly at Caelum's wrists. His eyes bulged as air vanished. His feet scraped the stone weakly.
Caelum watched his face change.
Red. Purple. Still.
He held on three seconds longer.
Then released.
The body vanished.
The sky tore open.
Red Amendment fell.
The katana struck the stone point-first, embedding itself deep as blood sprayed outward. Dark steel drank the light, seams along its blade shifting subtly. Along its edges, small folded daggers waited.
Caelum reached for it.
The pain hit him like fire.
He screamed as the mark burned its way from the weapon into his body, carving itself into his flesh with deliberate cruelty. His vision went white. His knees hit stone.
When it ended, he lay gasping.
Marked.
Armed.
Alive.
The floor trembled.
Cracks spread outward across the obsidian plain as sections began to peel away, folding inward like a throat opening to swallow.
Floor One was finished.
Those who remained stood blood-soaked, shaking, weaponed.
The descent had begun.