The first thing I noticed was the cold. Not the kind that made you shiver, but the kind that settled deep into your bones, that gnawed at your skin like frostbite.
The cell was pitch-black, save for a sliver of light that bled through the cracks in the wooden boards above.
Damp stone walls pressed in around me, the stench of mold and rot thick in the air.
I had no idea how long I'd been there. Minutes? Hours? Days?
Time was a blur, broken only by the sound of the guards' boots and the clank of iron.
Then came the torture.
"Let's see how many times you can come back, freak," a guard sneered one day.
They began simple—knives slicing skin, fists pummeling flesh—but it quickly escalated. Fire. Magic. Spears driven through my stomach, my heart, my head.
Every time I screamed.
Every time I died.
And every time, I came back.
"He doesn't even stay dead an hour," one of them muttered. "It's like his soul's cursed."
[Immortality Activated. Resurrection Complete.]
The message became a sick joke. A mantra I dreaded. My body healed just enough to bring me back—never enough to erase the pain.
Eventually, they got bored. That's when they gave me a choice.
"Work or die," Valeria had said, her cold eyes boring into me. "Though we both know how useless the second option is for you."
So, they put me to work.
They handed me a stained, torn jumpsuit that smelled of sweat and blood. I pulled it on in silence.
No one offered help. No one said a word. I was herded into a narrow tunnel carved deep into the earth.
The mines were worse than the cell. Hot, claustrophobic, with air so thick with dust I could barely breathe. The other workers glared at me as I entered.
"New meat," one of them spat.
"Why's he look like he got beat by the gods?"
They didn't need a reason. They just needed a target.
"Hey, freak," a burly miner with a crooked nose growled, slamming a shovel into my back. I fell to the rocky ground.
"Didn't your mama teach you how to stand?" another laughed, kicking me in the ribs.
I didn't respond. I didn't scream. I just got up. Again. And again. And again.
Each night, I collapsed in my cell, sore, bloody, and exhausted. But I couldn't sleep—not really. Not with the whispers in my head.
Then it happened.
On the third night, as I sat curled in the corner of my cell, something shifted.
[Link 48: Darkness of Hades has been unlocked.]
My eyes widened as a new message scrawled itself in my mind.
[Condition Met: More than 24 hours without direct sunlight. You are now able to manipulate darkness and shadows.]
For the first time since this nightmare began, I was able to laugh the sound echo through the cave as an aura of shadows covered my entire body.
I looked at my cell walls. The shadows danced there, curling like smoke. I reached out instinctively. The darkness responded.
A tendril of shadow snaked out from the corner of the cell, wrapping itself around my wrist like a living thing.
I could feel it—cold, smooth, powerful.
The next day in the mines, everything changed.
"Move faster, freak," the same crooked-nose miner barked.
I said nothing. My pickaxe clinked against the stone rhythmically, a calm beat under my racing thoughts.
But when he grabbed me, slamming me into the rock, laughing with his filthy friends, something snapped.
"You want to be useful, worm?" he hissed.
My eyes met his.
"How about I show you" I whispered.
A tendril of darkness lashed out from beneath my feet, wrapping around his neck.
He gasped, clawing at the air, at me—but it was too late. The shadow coiled tighter, crushing his throat. His eyes bulged. Bones cracked.
My smile grew wider, my teeth squeeing to the point my mouth was bleeding. My breathing hard as I made his head explode.
The other miners backed away in horror.
"Come on man please just spare our life?" one stammered.
I turned to them slowly. My voice was cold.
"From now on i own this cave so do as i say and get to work."
They obeyed.
That night, I wasn't dragged back to my cell. I walked. No one dared stop me.
I sat in the corner again, breathing slowly, heart pounding with the rush of power and fear.
I had killed someone. And it felt... right.
The way his head burst in blood. His eyes more red than blood looked at me with some much fear. It was....perfect.
I was the one who own this damn cave.
I stared at the flickering shadows, the darkness swirling gently like smoke at my feet.
"I can do this," I whispered. "I can get out."
Plans began forming in my mind. I'd learn the layout of the mine. The shift changes. The patrol routes. The guards who got lazy.
I wasn't going to die down here.
I had a power they couldn't understand.
And I was going to use it.
No matter what.
Every moment in that mine carved a new line of fury into my soul. My immortality might've been a curse, but it was one I could turn against them.
Every pickaxe swing.
Every insult. Every shadow in that place whispered promises to me.
Revenge. Freedom. Power.
I wasn't the same boy who had stepped through Murstain's gates. I was something else now—something darker.
And they would learn that even in the deepest dark, monsters could rise.
I looked at the other cells as the workers were sleeping with a deadly glare. My hand touched the cold cell bars.
My glare turning to a mouth wide grin, breathing like there's no tomorrow.
"I'll kill em" I whispered
"I will kill these workers like pathetic bugs" my voice turning more sister as I laugh.
"This will be my time to have all the power".....