I rose above it.
Weightless.
Drifting.
The screams below dulled, fading into something almost holy in its horror. I floated above them, beyond the furnace, beyond the stench, beyond the skin that no longer belonged to me.
Men’s bodies writhed below—skin blistering open like sunbaked clay. Their flesh slid from bone in soft folds, pooling beneath them.
I knew I was one of them.
Knew my back was nothing but ribbons of meat and blood.
Yet the knowledge no longer reached me.
Something colder had taken hold—detachment, or death.
I hovered there, hollow, watching the remnants of what once was human.
For a breath, I thought I saw the fire watching back—faces forming inside the smoke, shifting like spirits carved from heat.
“Salvatore… we have to get out,” I rasped.
The sound that left me wasn’t a voice. It was air scraping through a ruined windpipe, the whisper of a corpse trying to speak.
He groaned beside me—faint, brittle, more breath than sound.
“Salvatore,” I hissed, forcing flame into my throat. “Move.”
I rolled onto my side, dragging us both with me. The chain cinched tight, digging deeper into the raw flesh of my neck. He didn’t answer. His body hung against mine, heavy with surrender.
Agony bloomed again—sharp, white, searing. Still, I pushed.
Chests scraped limestone. Knees slid through bone paste and the thick stew of blood.
Every motion tore something loose.
We moved like beasts—broken, bent, half-melted humans. Grunting. Crawling. Shoulder to shoulder. Wound to wound.
Together, we forced ourselves upright with the grace of corpses.
The chain jerked again, dragging our heads down until our foreheads nearly touched—a cruel closeness born of survival.
The iron refused to yield. It knew no mercy.
Every inch upward was war.
A scream without breath.
A prayer unanswered.
Yet somehow—by will or madness—we stood.
Our legs trembled, carved down to bone.
Skin hung in strips, wet and shining, like flesh flayed for an offering.
His blood soaked into my chest; mine smeared across his.
