Darkness did not arrive all at once.
It settled.

Dante awoke with no sense of when sleep had taken him, or if it had at all. His back pressed against the cold stone. The air was damp, heavy with a smell he could not place—earth, perhaps, or old water trapped where light had never touched.

He reached out instinctively. Stone. On every side.

No torch. No window. Only a narrow slit high above, too thin to be called mercy, where air crept in reluctantly.

A cell.

His breath quickened. So this was the mission. Five days.

That was what they had said the night before, standing in the torchlit hall with practiced calm. A trial every new hire faced, they claimed. A test of resolve. Of endurance. Of whether a man could be trusted when stripped of comfort and certainty. They had not said where. They had not said how. Only that those who endured would be chosen.

Dante swallowed and forced himself upright. At his side lay the pouch he had chosen—water, and three days’ worth of food. He touched it like a lifeline.

Others had laughed when he chose it. Steel and coin dazzled the rest. Armor. Blades. Symbols of strength.

Dante had chosen survival.

He ate when hunger gnawed. Drank when his throat burned. He told himself to be careful, to measure, to ration—but time had no shape here. No sun to mark it. No bells. No voices.

Only darkness.

So he counted.

Breaths at first. Then heartbeats. Then numbers spoken aloud until his voice sounded wrong in the stillness. He counted until sleep took him, then counted again when he woke, certain hours had passed.

By his reckoning, two days went by. His food was already running low.

Panic crept in slowly, like water seeping through cracks. He realized then that he had misjudged something else too—something shameful, something human. The body did not stop simply because the world was gone. Stone offered no privacy.

He turned his thoughts away from it, jaw clenched, refusing to let humiliation break him.

On what he believed was the second night—though night meant nothing here—his water ran out.

Thirst sharpened the darkness. His limbs felt heavier. His thoughts began to drift, slipping like loose stones down a slope.

He began to hear things.

At first, it was faint. A sound that might have been air moving through the slit above. Then something else. A voice? No—many voices. Low, distant, layered.

Screams.

Dante pressed his hands over his ears. They did not stop.

He stood and paced the cell, counting his steps. Twelve from wall to wall. He walked them again. And again. Faster this time. Anything to stay anchored. Anything to drown out the sound.

The screams rose and fell, sometimes close enough to make his skin prickle, sometimes so far away he wondered if he had imagined them.

Then came footsteps.

Slow. Measured. Heavy.

Hope surged so suddenly it made him dizzy.

“Hello?” His voice cracked. “Is it time? Is it the fifth day?”

The steps slowed. Then passed by.

No answer.

“No—wait!” He staggered forward, slamming his fist against the stone. “Please!”

Silence answered him.

Something changed in the air.

A smell drifted in—sharp, metallic. Smoke, he thought at first. His chest tightened as it thickened, pressing into his lungs. He coughed, staggered back, vision swimming.

The darkness shifted.

For a moment—only a moment—he saw shapes that should not have been there. Piles of bodies. Faces twisted in terror. Mouths open in silent screams.

Then nothing.

Blackness swallowed him whole.

When he woke, he was cold. Colder than before.

The cell felt… different. Not larger. Not smaller. Just wrong.

He was no longer alone.

Someone sat in the far corner, hunched, chained. Dante could not tell if it was a man or a woman. It did not move. Did not breathe.

“Hello?” he whispered.

No response.

He took a step closer.

Then he heard it.

A wet sound. Slow. Methodical.

Chewing.

Dante’s breath hitched. As his eyes adjusted, he saw movement—teeth where teeth should not have been, fingers bent at impossible angles, nails long and darkened. The figure lifted its head.

And lunged.

Dante fell back with a shout—

—and woke up again.

His heart was hammered. His skin was slick with sweat. The cell was empty. No chains. No figure.

Only stone. Only darkness.

But the smell lingered.

Not smoke.

Blood.

He curled in on himself, shaking. Memories flooded in unbidden—his sisters’ laughter, his mother’s hands, his father’s forge glowing warm and alive. Faces he loved. Things worth protecting.

He could not die here. He would not.

When his body refused to move anymore, when his strength was gone and his thoughts threatened to splinter completely, Dante did something desperate.

He sat.

Cross-legged. Back straight. Hands resting on his knees, just as he had once heard old men describe in passing, half-mockery, half-reverence.

He closed his eyes.

He thought of the sea.

Waves rolling endlessly, uncountable, patient. He focused on his breath. In. Out. Again. And again.

Thoughts intruded. Hunger. Pain. Fear.

He let them pass.

Slowly—so slowly he almost didn’t notice—his breathing steadied. His body softened. The screams faded into something distant, unreal.

For the first time since the cell closed around him, Dante felt… still.

And then—

The screams stopped.

All at once.

Not fading.
Not receding.

Gone.

The silence that followed was not empty.