Dante's p.o.v

'so… cold…' I kept on making my way through the eternal abyss hall, staring ahead of me and taking a view of a bright source of light at the end of the hall, which symbolized the next gate—the next gate that I must reach. I added more strut into my step due to my eagerness to reach the next gate. The plane on which I was walking seemed to be in the form of a thin ice layer, which, when I took a step on it, glowed with a furious golden radiance but vanished after I took the next step forward.

But never the less, it felt as if the chilling effects of the layer of ice ran through my spine, filling me with a sense of dread and anguish.

'so these are the effects of the abyss, huh? the reaper said this was the realm of the corrupted souls.' I thought while making my way carefully through the hall, trying my best to ignore the sense of soullessness and dismay moving through my head. 'the souls of those that had their very being corrupted by hamjis, and these very souls must have been condemned here... for all of eternity.'

Trying to push out all of these thoughts, I forced my attention only at the gate ahead of me. but still, these thoughts kept burrowing through my head with more intensity than before, as the chilling feeling of dread continued to gut my insides, making my breath appear even more visible due to the increasing cold that started to take over my very being with even more force.

"join… us." I brought up my head in a confused manner as I heard a whisper in my head, which seemed to increase the feeling of anguish in my heart. I directed my gaze to the bottom of the abyss, staring at the void pit underneath the layer of ice. From there, the voice seems to originate, and it is even more loud than before. "join us, Dante... this Is where you are meant to be."

'what is this… that v-voice-'

I started to feel my footing becoming out of place as I tried to maintain It by placing it firmly on the ground, but before I knew it, the sudden sound of cracking and breaking seemed to erupt from my foot, feeling as if the ice below me was about to cave in. I had a panicked look on my face as I began to charge out, trying to run towards the gate up ahead. But the thing that made this task even harder was the increasing cries and gnashing of teeth that seemed to be non-existent some moments ago, but now the volume seemed to heighten. I tried to ignore this, as the more I paid more attention to them, the more the ice beneath me gave way.

"You can't make it, no matter how you run. You belong here with us," the voice roared out louder in a very distorted voice at that very matter. I continued to ignore this, but at this very moment, the voice started to get even louder and unbearable, like as if the screams of people burning in a pit of fire filled the void.

"Damn it… these screams," I called out, trying to use both my hands to hold down on both my ears, stopping my run for a second, but this had resulted in the ice below me cracking even more.

I tried to continue walking down the path while blocking out the noises around me, but the moment I tried to lift my leg, I felt a sudden pull on my leg. Bringing my head down, I saw a dark, shadowy hand gripping my right leg, pulling on it, and due to this, the ice beneath me continued to shatter even more as if trying to drag me into the void with it, and then at that very moment, I saw the head of the figure pop out of the ice, shattering it even more to reveal a figure of darkness that seemed like a burnt man with his skin burnt to chattered ash and cinder. The man kept his grip on my leg, but I used a mighty kick to the side of his head to get him to let go, with the force pulling it under the ice and off my leg.

I stopped to look at the man, who now lay lifeless on the ground, though something about him didn't seem right.

"… a… mortal in hell… A LIVING BEING!" The man roared out, as if alerting some of the others that were with him. The ice started to shake, and all of a sudden heads and arms emerged from the ice, breaking it even more. The man that I kicked away seemed to have stood up and started to change his form into that of a faceless hamji, growing to a height of around nine feet and getting even more massive.

I felt the ice beneath me starting to give way. Turning my direction toward the gate, I began to run as fast as I could, dodging the erupting hands from the ice floor and also trying to outrun the hamji from before.

'damn it' I thought in panic, as the hands that kept on erupting from the ground seemed to be blocking my way even more, My eyes gave a white glow with a scowl on my face.

I stopped abruptly and moved as quickly as I could, grabbing my right hand and seeing the cool blue glow it gave off.

"magic technique: cold war, frozen gale!" the entire ice bottom was covered by a sudden surge of ice, and managed to freeze off all the hands in my path and also the hamji at my back from the spell I chanted before making a forceful leap in the direction of the gate, but what I saw next shook me to my very core, as a canyon without ice stood in front of me, with the dark void bearing dark figures trans mutating within that void and screaming out… and just the sight alone brought a sudden fear in my heart as I began to approach it even more.

"you can't make the jump. Just fall in with us. You don't deserve to be happy while we aren't… you're a scum like all of us," it rang in the air, trying to get to me. and from what it said, a sudden doubt plagued my heart as my movement began to slow down due to the sudden chilling feeling that seemed to have increased tenfold.

But as I finally reached that point, I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline fill me up to the brim, I quickly considered why I was doing this and why I must survive for my freedom. I pushed away the voices of the dark figures below and positioned my leg for a power leap over the 34-foot-wide canyon of corrupted souls.

I pushed every bit of uncertainty to the back of my mind and whispered under my breath.

"Aurora technique: leap" With a reddish purple glow covering my body, I leaped into the air, shattering the ice I was once on, but just as I made it to the middle of the canyon, a sudden hand reached out towards me, as if enlarging its humongous hand to trap me within it and crush me within its palm.

"JOIN US, MORTAL!" the darkness that owned the hand closed it, enclosing me within it, as I felt a sudden chilling presence cloaking my very being as if trying to put me in a lost state of inanimation. I felt myself losing it, but no, I won't be held down by anything. I felt the mana around me shifting and reacting violently to my emotion, as it suddenly spiked and formed an almost skeletal frame that projected astral slicing to the enclosed hand around me.

With a sudden shockwave, the mana cloak began to subside after the hand of the dark being was now suspended from me. This occurrence alone shocked me, but it also reminded me of something very similar I must have seen before, but I couldn't remember.

I managed to land on the other side of the canyon, but upon landing, I felt a sudden shift in the environment around me, making this segment of the hall even more narrow and dark to the point where I couldn't see through it well, and the only nearly visible source of light I could make out was the light from the gate, which seemed relatively closer than before.

I tried to rise and take another step, but I felt a sudden fatigue that flowed through my body like a stream of adrenaline but quite the opposite.

'could it have been that mana effect from early…?'I managed to lean my side to the wall close to me to find support… but to my surprise, the moment I rested on it, I started to hear a voice close by… a very, very familiar voice.

"h-help… me… please… it hurts; help me." I tried to squirt my eyes to find the voice through the darkness, then started to trace the voice to the very wall I was leaning on… having my footing to an extent, I managed to conjure up a flame from my right hand, needing a light source to view the source of the sound…

"what could be that sound, and why does it sound so familiar?" I choked on the spit gathered in my mouth as I tried to keep my composure still, but my eyes widened to the point they might have fallen from my head due to the shock of seeing what was in front of me. and there was a face on the wall with a painful expression on its face. But what was even more shocking and now had me trembling was who that face belonged to… I might have stayed in this limbo for centuries. but I can never forget the face I stood right before... the feeling of pain, hurt, guilt, anger, and sorrow all went through my head at once.

"It can't be...

… bao"