The knife in his hand was no longer a knife.
It had melted away — just like every idea of a tool had melted with it.
Now, pain itself was the blade, the nerve was the hand of the executioner, and the soul was the altar.
Ashen stood in the middle of the hall that was no longer a hall.
Everything pulsed — the walls, the air, the ground, even the shadows.
The entire world had become a living body, twisting in endless agony.
But he no longer heard the agony as sound.
He felt it — the same way the heart feels its own beating, as if the universe itself was now inside him.
Centuries passed… or seconds. It no longer mattered.
In this place, time had lost its meaning.
He stood stripped of everything except intent.
A pure intent — like fresh blood newly born.
The ground beneath him began to move, opening like an old wound bleeding again.
From within, faceless bodies crawled toward him on all fours, breathing through their wounds.
They were beings from his past —
those he had killed, those who had betrayed him, those he had loved.
All of them came bare of names, covered in open flesh.
The first one approached —
a woman with no features, yet her voice came from his own chest, not her mouth.
> "You didn't kill me… you only forgot me."
She reached out and sank her fingers into his chest.
He didn't scream.
Pain no longer had meaning; it had become a language of remembrance.
In an instant, he saw everything he had buried within — weakness, doubt, mercy, fear.
All of it was peeled from him like skin torn from bone.
He didn't resist.
He let her take it.
Then came the second, and the third, until the entire space filled with skinned spirits tearing him apart slowly,
taking from his soul as one would strip flesh from an immortal bone.
Each had a different voice, yet all of them were his.
He was devouring himself.
Skinning himself — not as punishment, but as liberation.
> "Everything that ties me to humanity… must be skinned."
"Every memory is a prison."
"Every feeling is weakness."
He began to laugh.
His laughter sounded like metal breaking in fire.
He laughed until blood flowed from his mouth, until his voice came out as the first growl of a beast being born.
Then everything stopped.
The hall, the spirits, the screams — all froze.
Time itself halted.
And in the center of the silence, he appeared.
A being unlike anything the mind could imagine —
a form of flesh burning with red light, without eyes or mouth,
yet every part of it spoke, every cell whispered:
> "I am you."
Ashen bowed his head without will.
He felt his heart being pulled from his chest and replaced with something else —
something that didn't beat, but burned.
> "You are nothing but a reflection of me,
a broken image seeking its completion."
The being approached,
and as it touched him, his body opened on its own, like a blood flower blooming to the sun of extinction.
There was no more pain —
only stillness, as if he had awakened inside a dying star.
In that moment, Ashen understood the truth —
pain had never been a test, but a sculptor's tool.
His soul had been carved until nothing remained but pure intent —
the savage intent.
The being took his head, and instead of tearing it apart…
it entered him.
The boundaries dissolved.
Flesh merged with flesh, nerve with nerve, awareness with awareness.
There was no longer "Ashen" or "the other" —
only a new creature, shaped from a thousand wounds and red consciousness screaming between worlds.
> "From flesh, thought is born.
From pain, existence begins."
He opened his eyes.
He could now see beyond flesh —
he saw thoughts bleeding, intentions forming into crimson worlds,
and he saw himself as a being that fed on meaning itself.
He laughed again.
This time, it was not the laughter of a man who lost his mind,
but of a being who had discovered his essence.
He placed his hand on the blood-soaked wall
and wrote with his burning fingers one sentence of living flesh:
> "Every wound… is a path to immortality."
Then he walked forward.
Each step left behind a trail of red light,
and with every step, one wound in the world closed, while another opened within him.
At the end of the hall, he stood before a door beyond description —
a door made of consciousness itself.
Behind it waited a new trial — one that went beyond pain, beyond awareness.
He paused for a moment, lifted his head toward the sky that no longer existed,
and spoke in a quiet voice filled with calm savagery:
> "The skinning is complete.
Now… let's see what remains after everything is skinned away."
Then he stepped forward —
and the red light vanished, leaving behind an empty hall…
and a wall that still bled, slowly.