The mill turns.
But this time, there was no flesh left to grind.
All that remained inside was blood boiling around a bare will — a mass of awareness and madness with no fixed form.
The sound of the mill became a deep rumble, like the heartbeat of a vast cosmic heart pounding slowly inside Ashen's chest.
Each pulse reshaped the rhythm of his life — as if his old heart had been crushed, and from its ashes, another was born.
He stood at the center of the vortex, gasping, his breaths like the hiss of living embers.
His body was half liquid, half bone, and every particle of him bled.
For ages — or maybe just a moment, he no longer knew — he had fought against the mill.
Now… he was the mill itself.
The ground beneath him cracked, and from the depths erupted old screams — the pain of his past trials, his weakness, his falls, his failures — rising from the fissures as red spirits twisting like serpents, trying to devour him.
But he did not retreat.
He raised his hand and struck the air — existence itself trembled.
There was no weapon, yet the air split apart, and sparks of dark blood shot out like symbols of vengeance made flesh, chasing those spirits and shattering them into a red mist that swirled around him.
Every strike turned the echoes of his pain into floating ash, and every grain of that ash returned to him, rebuilding him anew.
The entire universe seemed to be ground within him, cycle after cycle, without end.
---
Amid the storm, a voice rose from within.
It wasn't foreign — it was his own, from a distant time, when he was weak, when he cried for the first time.
> "Is this what you really wanted? To become a grinding machine? To lose all your humanity?"
He laughed — a dry, cracked laugh from a chest filled only with dust and blood.
> "Humanity?"
"Ha… just an empty word."
"In a world ruled by strength, the greatest sin is to be weak."
"Hahahahahahaha… what a foolish word."
He lifted his head, as if speaking to a sky that could not hear him:
> "How long has it been? A century? Two? Seven? Eight? I no longer know."
"Where is your humanity now? Did it give you strength when you screamed? Did it save you when you were crushed?"
"Centuries of torment — and only vengeance kept you alive."
"Be grateful for it; it is the flame that kept you breathing."
He fell silent for a moment, then muttered like a man lost in delirium:
> "Ashen… you are no longer human. You are the vessel of a slaughtered race's blood."
"As long as you carry it, you must grind the entire world with it."
---
He raised his head, his eyes blazing with darkness streaked in crimson.
The savage intent gathered around him, taking the form of a colossal arm stretching out from chaos.
He reached toward it — and devoured it.
It was an inhuman moment.
The intent pierced his body and merged with his blood.
The mill stopped suddenly. Everything went still.
Then the ground began to tremble, slowly… fatally slow, as if the world itself hesitated to continue existing.
The blood in his veins began to boil. Thousands of souls screamed within him.
His skin cracked, and shards of glowing blood light burst out as if his spirit were burning from the inside.
He fell to his knees, clutching his chest, gasping as though it might explode.
> "I am… the mill."
"And I am… the flour."
"And I… will grind the universe."
Then he exploded.
---
It was no ordinary explosion — it was a birth through hell.
His body shattered, and the space around him turned into a storm of blood and crushed bone, every fragment spinning around a single point — Ashen's heart.
From that point, a circle of living ash was born — a new mill turning against the world's direction.
Each rotation rewound a moment of time, only to crush it again.
From the center of that newborn mill, his new body emerged — no longer human, but a being through which living blood flowed like an endless river.
Savage intent became his veins, sin his flesh, and will his bones.
Every breath he released tore the void apart.
Every step he took made a grinding sound, as though time itself was being crushed beneath his feet.
He closed his eyes, and the void ignited.
When he opened them, a vortex of blood burst forth, tearing apart the ground, the walls, and the air itself.
Nothing remained as it was.
The mill was now inside him.
It turned endlessly, grinding every weakness pulsing in his being — every memory, every fear.
And with each rotation, he heard the old voices moaning — the cries of fear, regret, and longing.
But instead of breaking him… they fed him.
> "Every weakness that's ground… becomes strength."
"Every pain repeated… gives birth to will."
---
A hundred years of endless rotation passed.
When the mill finally fell silent, only one body remained, standing in the void —
Surrounded by an aura of living blood slowly spinning around him like a planet of flesh and intent.
Ashen raised his head toward the emptiness. His voice came out soft, yet heavy as death:
> "Weakness is not something to defeat… but something to grind."
"Now I understand."
He opened his palm, and from it flowed a line of savage intent, forming a slow-turning circle of blood around him.
It was the new mill — his mill.
He smiled — half human, half something else.
Blood streamed from his eyes, but he did not feel it.
Every wound had become part of an endless cycle feeding itself and beginning anew.
> "Survival belongs to the strongest."
The mill within his chest began to spin again.
Its sound was deep, like the whole world groaning beneath it.
The light vanished, and silence fell.
But in the heart of darkness, one pulse remained —
The pulse of the mill.
The heartbeat of the butcher born from hell.