Ashn put his foot down on the dead gray ground, or so he thought. But the place was not ground in the usual sense, nor was it sky. Everything around him was a viscous void, pulsing as if it were breathing, pulling his soul into endless depths. He was not alone, yet there were no other beings… except his screams.
At first they were only distant sounds, faint whispers from within him: the echo of an old scream, the echo of a moment of past pain, mixing with his heart fluttering like a broken butterfly. With every step the sounds multiplied and began to shape his torn shadows around him. Each shadow carried his face, but not only his face — every moment of weakness, every mistake, every stumble in his past.
"Ashn… come back… come back…" a strange echo whispered, not human but familiar. He froze for a moment, his heart beating fast. Every step on the void drained blood from him, a feeling of his body dissolving bit by bit, as if the non-existent ground was quietly devouring him, absorbing his mind, muscles, and bones, then returning him to a semi-human, mutilated form full of scars and blood.
Then the first one rose. Ashn's first duplicate rose from the gray ground, translucent but heavy, a precise repeat of his death in an ancient demonic forest. Its eyes were full of panic and hatred, a living scream frozen in time. Ashn stepped back but could not escape; every movement made the other copies come closer.
"I… will not surrender… I will not allow this…" he muttered, but he realized his own voice was part of the mad symphony around him. Every scream he heard brought real pain through his limbs, as if his body relived every death he had experienced.
Days passed, or maybe weeks—time had lost meaning here. Each time a copy rose, he had to face the version that represented the harshest moment of weakness in his life. If he failed to kill it, it fed on his consciousness, absorbed his memory, and merged him into its torn body. With every killing, more copies multiplied, uglier and more deformed, screaming and attacking him, whispering: "Your weakness… will not spare you… you will not survive."
Ashn felt an indescribable torment; his body was breaking from the inside. Bones burned, limbs tore, skin stretched as if blood floated over the bones themselves. But the worst was the psychological terror, the utter despair of time. Every scream fed the surrounding brutal intent, a living force that swallowed reason and slowly washed his mind. Every part of his consciousness became obsessed with vengeance, words repeating without stop: "I will avenge… I will avenge…"
In the middle of all this chaos, a horrifying idea formed: maybe the only way to survive was to kill every echo of himself, every copy. But he did not know how to do that, because with each century he spent here, the part of him that remained grew smaller and smaller, and his inner voice became a warped whisper among a thousand screams.
Decades passed… maybe centuries. Each scream created another echo; each echo mirrored his deaths in ever more savage ways: melting in frozen blood, being torn by invisible claws, drowning in a sea of pulsing flesh… Each time his body was torn and reconstructed, but he did not weaken, because he knew that his weakness would make him vanish.
Ashn began to see himself changing into something no longer human. His bones started merging with the shadows, his skin turned gelatinous, his nerves became like taut strings. Every time he rose, the other copies came closer, pressing on him, trying to devour him, sucking him dry of the last grain of consciousness.
Amid all this madness, one thing kept him: the obsession with revenge. Whenever the copies felt him losing his mind, he would scream inside himself: "I will avenge… I will avenge… I will avenge…" These words were his only beacon, a small flame in a sea of insane silence, the brutal force that kept him alive.
Years went by… Ashn no longer knew how many copies he had killed, or how many times his body was ripped apart and rebuilt. Everything became only movement within a whirl of pain, madness, and brutal intent. Each copy tore away part of his humanity, and every killing brought him closer to a new being, harder, more savage, more ready for absolute intent.
After decades, maybe centuries… time here had lost all meaning. Ashn no longer counted days or distinguished night from day; everything was a continuous scream, and each scream created a new, more deformed, more violent copy.
The place filled with torn duplicates, destroyed bodies piled behind bodies, eyes overflowing with panic and hatred, and voices screaming as one: "Your weakness… you will not survive…" Each copy embodied a real weak moment from his life: abandoning his parents, failing to protect his clan, his first moment of fear… and each tried to swallow him, devouring his soul piece by piece.
Ashn began to feel his body fragmenting from within. Nerves unraveled, muscles ripped like threads, blood poured from every gap, but he stayed standing, moving, fighting. Every movement was resistance against total collapse.
With every copy he tore apart, he felt a loss of memory, a loss of self, a loss of humanity… but inside his mind he kept shouting without stop: "I will avenge… I will avenge… I will avenge…" Those words were no longer a whisper but an epic cry reflecting his will to survive, a small flame in a merciless ocean.
As time passed, the copies grew more violent and deformed, and began to attack en masse, surrounding him from every side, trying to crush him, shred his soul, and absorb all his consciousness. Every strike, every scream, every moment of pain fed the brutal intent inside him, a living force seeping into every artery and heartbeat until the intent itself became part of his body and could not be separated.
Ashn lost the ability to distinguish his body from the copies', his consciousness from theirs, scream from silence. But he learned something important: he could not run from himself, could not retreat, could not allow any copy to remain. Each copy represented weakness, and every weakness meant death — inner death, eternal death.
In a terrible moment, he understood that survival was not only physical strength but control over every inner consciousness. Every copy he tore apart purified a part of his soul, and each time he raised his inner voice: "I will avenge… I will avenge… I will avenge…" the words became his only identity, a flame of light in a merciless sea.
---
After a full hundred years, after killing thousands of copies, after a continuous battle against himself, his body shattered, his spirit exhausted, and his consciousness close to total collapse, silence came.
The place emptied suddenly, no screams, no copies, no blood, no light. Ashn stood alone, his body completely changed, mutilated, renewed, but whole this time. His bones were coherent, his skin shiny and flexible, but he bore a single eye that always bled, a mark of all he had lost and all he had survived.
Inside his heart seized a horrible feeling: he had crushed every part of his old self, every weak moment, every painful memory, every echo of an old scream. At the same time, a pure brutal intent was born inside him, free of any weakness or mercy. A living power, transparent yet tangible, wrapping every artery and heartbeat.
Ashn was no longer human in the traditional way, but he had not died. He had become a being of absolute intent, a guardian of madness, master of brutality, ready for the next ordeal that would be bloodier, more brutal, and harder than anything before.
With the final silence, only one echo remained in his head: "I will avenge… I will avenge… I will avenge…"
That whisper became his single beacon, the flame that would lead him through the next hundred years, amid the torments of time and absolute brutality.