The corridor did not lead them forward so much as it delivered them.
One moment they were moving through the ribs of Floor Two—stone passages bending like old scars, air thick with heat and old metallic smell—and the next the floor tightened under their boots as if it had decided their stride for them.
Caelum felt it first: a subtle drag in the soles, like walking through shallow mud that wasn't there. It didn't stop him, just guided him. A suggestion that became a command when he resisted.
Mireya noticed too. Her jaw set, shoulders drawing into that careful, controlled posture she wore before a fight.
Seraphine lifted a hand, signaling the group to slow.
There were no enemies.
No sound.
No vibration that meant Echo-Bound.
Just a widening ahead, the corridor opening into a chamber that didn't make sense for this floor—too symmetrical, too intentionally shaped, as if someone had built a room for a single purpose and then hidden it behind miles of chaos.
A Quiet Zone's opposite.
A stage.
They stepped in, and the stone behind them sealed with a soft, final scrape.
Not a slam.
A decision.
The chamber was circular. The ceiling arched high, the stone above patterned with grooves that looked like claw marks frozen mid-swipe. Torches burned in perfect intervals around the walls, their flames steady and bright, offering no shadows deep enough to hide in.
That was the first cruelty: nowhere to look but at what was placed in the center.
Chains hung from above.
Thick links, blackened like they had been fired in ash.
A man hung from them.
Not a monster. Not Echo-Bound. Not anything shaped wrong.
Human.
Adult.
Bare in the way of someone who had been stripped with intention, forced into vulnerability as part of the process. His head sagged forward, hair plastered to his face with sweat and blood. His body had the color of something drained too often and kept going anyway—skin pallid, bruising dark in places where it shouldn't be possible.
He was alive.
The proof was in the movement of his chest: shallow, unwilling breaths that still happened, again and again, like his body couldn't understand why it hadn't been allowed to stop.
Caelum's stomach turned.
Iscahrel swallowed so hard the sound carried in the too-perfect air. He seemed to realize it a second later and froze, as if sound itself might be punished.
Ysara didn't flinch, but her eyes narrowed, studying everything: the torches, the grooves in the stone, the precise arrangement.
"This isn't random," she murmured.
Seraphine said nothing. She stepped forward once—only a single step.
The floor tightened around her ankle.
Not a shackle.
A warning touch, like a hand at the wrist.
Seraphine stopped immediately. Her face didn't change, but something in her eyes hardened.
"We're meant to stand where we are," she said quietly.
Mireya shifted her weight. The moment she leaned as if to move, the same pressure brushed her boot, subtle and undeniable.
The chamber had marked their positions.
Witnesses—arranged.
Then the figures emerged.
They did not come from doors. There were no doors. They rose from the floor itself, stone splitting like skin over bone, and stepped out as if the chamber had simply decided it needed workers.
They were not fully seen—dark robes, shapes beneath, hands that glinted with metal in the torchlight. Tools moved between them with smooth familiarity. Their pace was slow, practiced.
Not excited.
Not angry.
Professional.
The first sound the man made wasn't a scream.
It was a broken exhale that turned into a low, ruined moan. His head lifted slightly as if he'd recognized the rhythm of what was about to happen.
Caelum realized then: this had happened before.
Maybe not to this man. Maybe not in this room.
But the method was old.
The torturers approached him with the same calm you'd use to sharpen a blade.
They began.
The man's body jerked against the chains. The links clattered once, then settled. The restraint was perfect—enough movement to keep him aware of himself, not enough to allow him to escape what was being done.
The first scream came seconds later, ripping out of him so violently it sounded like it tore his throat on the way up.
It echoed around the chamber, loud and raw.
The figures didn't react.
They continued with the patience of people who knew that pain was not the point.
Duration was.
Blood began to fall.
Not a spray, not a sudden burst—an ongoing, steady drip that turned into streams, painting the stone beneath him. The smell rose quickly, warm and metallic, mixing with sweat and torch smoke until the air itself felt thick.
Caelum's hands tightened on Red Amendment without him meaning to. The weapon hummed faintly, not hungry—interested. As if it recognized the room's purpose.
Mireya's breathing slowed into something controlled, but Caelum saw the tension in her neck, the slight tremor in her fingers.
Ysara's gaze kept shifting—man, tools, floor, walls—as if she was trying to locate the rule inside the cruelty.
Seraphine stared forward without blinking.
Iscahrel whispered something under his breath. A prayer, maybe. A habit.
The floor did nothing to stop him.
That was another cruelty.
It wasn't punishing faith.
It was letting it die quietly.
Minutes passed.
Or hours.
Time behaved strangely in this chamber, stretching until Caelum couldn't tell whether he was watching a single moment dragged out or many moments stacked into a continuous line of suffering.
The man's screams changed.
They didn't stay loud.
They broke down.
At first, they were full-throated, furious, animal. Then they turned hoarse, ragged, shredded at the edges. Then they became brief bursts of sound—short, shocked noises forced out of him when something reached a new boundary.
Eventually, the screams became pleading.
Not coherent.
Not dignified.
Just desperate sounds shaped like language.
"Please—"
"No—"
"I can't—"
Then, later, barely audible:
"Stop."
And later still, so quiet Caelum almost didn't hear it:
"Don't… make me… watch…"
The last phrase wasn't for the torturers.
It was for himself.
The man wasn't only suffering.
He was being forced to remain present inside it.
Hell had denied him the one mercy pain usually grants: fading away.
His eyes rolled, unfocused, then snapped back with sudden clarity each time his body tried to slip toward unconsciousness. Something—some rule, some force embedded in the chamber—kept him awake, kept him aware, kept him available.
Caelum felt his own throat tighten in sympathetic reflex, like his body wanted to reject the air it shared with this scene.
He didn't look away.
He couldn't.
The torches were arranged so that no matter where he tried to shift his gaze, the center remained the brightest point in the room. Even lowering his eyes felt wrong—like the chamber would notice.
Ysara tested it once.
She blinked, hard, then let her gaze drop to the blood pooling on the stone.
The floor pulsed gently.
A whispering pressure crawled up her spine like cold fingers.
Her eyes snapped back up instantly, pupils tight.
She swallowed. "We're not allowed to look away," she said.
Seraphine nodded once, grim. "That's the rule."
Mireya's voice came out low. "Why?"
The answer arrived without words.
The man sagged suddenly, head dropping forward. His breathing turned thin and uneven, as if his body had finally reached a limit even Hell couldn't stretch.
A small, involuntary hope flickered in the room—thin and stupid, but human.
Then the chains tightened.
The man's body convulsed.
His eyes snapped open wide, violent with awareness, and a sound came out of him that wasn't a scream so much as a ruined attempt at one.
The chamber did not allow him to stop.
It also did not allow the witnesses relief.
Iscahrel made a small choking sound. Tears ran down his face before he seemed to realize they were there.
"Why are we—" he started.
The floor pulsed again, sharper this time.
His words died in his throat. He clamped his mouth shut, breathing through his nose like he was trying not to drown.
Seraphine's hands curled into fists at her sides. Her posture remained controlled, but Caelum could see it—the urge to act. The instinct to intervene.
The floor had built the scene specifically to tempt it.
To make obedience feel like cowardice.
To make compassion feel like a mistake.
Caelum understood then what was really being tested.
Not whether they could watch.
Whether they could stay themselves while watching.
Because the easiest way to survive Hell was to stop being human.
The figures continued their work until the man's voice became nothing but wet air and trembling. His body shuddered in small, meaningless spasms, muscles firing without purpose. His head rolled slowly as if he was searching the room for someone—anyone—who looked like mercy.
His eyes found Caelum.
Not because Caelum mattered.
Because Caelum was looking.
The man's mouth moved.
No sound came out at first.
Then, a whisper—so thin it barely existed:
"Remember… me…"
Caelum's chest tightened hard enough it felt like pain.
He didn't respond. He couldn't.
The chamber wanted responses. It would punish them.
So he stayed silent, eyes locked, and let the moment carve itself into him like a brand.
At last, the work stopped.
Not with finality. Not with release.
Just… stopped, as if a timer had ended.
The figures stepped back.
The man hung there, shaking, breathing shallowly, eyes still open.
Then the chains released.
His body dropped—
And vanished before it hit the stone.
No corpse.
No closure.
No proof it had ever happened except the blood that remained and the smell that clung to the air.
The torches dimmed slightly.
The chamber loosened.
The pressure at their feet eased.
The rule had been satisfied.
Witness completed.
Seraphine exhaled through her nose. "We're allowed to leave."
No one moved immediately.
They stood as if their bodies had forgotten how to obey commands that weren't pain.
Ysara wiped a hand across her mouth, eyes still fixed on the empty space where the man had been. "That wasn't punishment," she said quietly. "That was instruction."
Mireya's voice was tight. "Instruction for what?"
Seraphine looked at the blood-stained floor. "For what we'll become if we keep going."
Iscahrel spoke without meaning to, voice small and broken. "It didn't even give him death."
Caelum finally lowered his gaze, not away from the scene, but to Red Amendment.
The blade hummed once, as if agreeing.
When the corridor opened, it didn't look like an exit.
It looked like a mouth.
And as they stepped through, Caelum realized something that made the inside of his skull feel cold:
Hell didn't just want them to survive.
Hell wanted them to carry what they witnessed downward, floor by floor—
So the suffering never truly ended.