text: [Themes: grimdark fantasy, family friendly, socially important, horror, anti-hero, spiritual]
  
  True to the shade's word, the dark shores lay adorned with a million stones. They ranged from fine grains to boulders no man should carry, all dispersed until they formed a petric forest stretching as far as my newborn eyes could see. Countless corpses roamed among them, and, as I looked upon those wretched souls, I saw the obliviousness of their misdeeds made clear by hollow orbs, blood flowing from their sockets until it reached the ground like teardrops of rain, nurturing the vicious plants that had tortured me so before.
  
  Their anguish filled the sky with a bitter flavor that rivaled poisonous berries. Blood and decay spread and overtook that base, blending a sweet and metallic taste into a stench that struck every one present. I felt the cold winds that wailed through the trees envelop me with these fumes, reducing my thoughts to the sluggish pace of these souls.
  
  Some picked at random; others turned every rock; fewer dared approach the river that reeked of bile and vomit, totally unreflective of whoever entered; they all lacked the light I was given. I heeded its whispers to search further downstream, granting me some relief, and sensing a particular slab shattered in two perfectly fitting halves, each telling a different story. One half was cracked and was jagged at its edges, a weakness stemming from within, cutting deep into the flesh of any who touched it. The other felt smoothed and almost withered by eternities of unrelenting forces that battered it and forced it ever onwards.
  
  Carrying both, I waded towards the water's border, where I steeled my resolve before breaching the foul surface, for I saw the water spread like a grand ocean and could barely make out the other side. This initiative alarmed the shades around me, and each perked up to show their empty stare and sutured mouth, much like the muzzle of a tortured and twisted dog. Then, as my foot broke through the uppermost layer, and I felt the acid below seep in through my wounds, they all dashed towards me, agitated by an unknown force.
  
  So I braced myself and jumped into the Styx. Immediately my arms singed and melted with the two stones. But fearing the warning I'd been given, I dared not let go. The weight pulled me down to the dark deeps, and the thick embrace of something so wicked it should not be named wrapped itself around me. I sensed its vast consciousness measure my resolve against my sins.
  
  The alien experience filled me with dread, forced my mouth open in a futile scream of terror, letting the rancid river into my stomach. I heaved and grieved, but it was all for naught, sinking deeper, where the water became clear. There I saw the hands of a thousand doomed grasping helplessly above the sand, like small hairs waving above wrinkled skin, some straining themselves against their neighbors, others, arms seemingly broken, digging at their own base. Behind me, I saw the pursuing wretched sink further to the ground. Those without a stone dissolved to join the river itself. Those that picked their burden unwisely were swallowed by the bark, adding only further to the tortured cilia preserving its prison. Finally, the river itself spoke to me, a chorus of voices booming all around me.
  
  "Welcome back, young one. Some of us are pleased, others frustrated, to find you among us, only to once again elude our grasp. We all can taste your oblivion. And some of us, battered by a constant corrosive tide biting through our pitiful minds, are frenzied by it, trying to swallow you whole as we speak. Yet the majority of us remain bound to our mission.
  
  She who you seek is not here. Only a few of us can remember her last passing. She secreted much of the same delightful longing and dutiful purpose in her bid across the river, carrying the two slabs you now bear. We could not take her as much as we shall not take you.
  
  A few of us feel something we haven't felt in a long while. Many of us sense your light, a gift none of us recognize, unique among the shades that pass, and numerous of us are willing to help, even if for our curiosity. We shall ask you one question and one question only. Where does your light embed itself?"
  
  > Your mind jumped to a higher pace, ready to use logic to understand this world.
  I came to in a tight underground pit. Steaming hot walls formed the enclosure, entrapping me from all sides, only letting muffled cries of labor and torture pass through, wicked sounds that reverberated their pain into my very soul. The ground itself felt damp and caked, although the total darkness obfuscated its precise nature.
  
  Eventually, my knees gave out, and yet I couldn't fall. With not enough space to sit, I was stuck leaning on the walls that scraped and burned my back, injecting fell poison that fired the nerve and weakened all muscle. The longer I let my weakness prevail, the stronger its bounds wrapped around me to hold me in this state. It wasn't long before my cries joined the countless others. My only escape was detachment.
  
  An eternity must have had passed when the walls cracked open. Pure light blinded my eyes and cast long shadows into my personal piece of Dis. A moan escaped my lips, shocking my mind in its exhaustion. I couldn't handle anything more than a mindless cry for help, let alone defend myself against the rope now firmly stuck around my neck.
  
  Then I was roughly pulled out of the crack, causing a stream of pain to breathe life in me once again. I tried to struggle, but it was helpless, sparking a sound like a saw cutting through wood to voice its displeasure. A few others imitated the sound, and shortly thereafter, fists battered into my ribs until they cracked and gave way. I screamed.
  
  In response, they only pulled at the rope, and my roar was stopped in my throat, blocking any air from entering. So I was dragged out of my chamber, into the unknown, my arms weakly grasping, and my burnt skin flayed over the floor. I was dragged through long corridors differing only in the wails that arose from the walls. Some sections were fresh; others sounded as battered as I felt.
  
  I felt the ground slope further down, easing the strain on my neck. It allowed me to take a better look at my captors, three of them. Build like a centaur, they had eight fast-moving and hairy legs, traversing the slope with ease. Their torso was rugged, almost red, and their eyes blazed their superiority onto any lost soul found within these dregs. One stood distinctly larger than the others, and his head, elongated with two horns curved backward across the length, flickered a forked tongue as if to relish the stench of fear that was increasingly present in the air.
  
  He commanded us to a chasm, a place where the ceiling was as distant as the sky, and with me, a hundred more wretched shades were led, kicked, and beaten to that single tormented place. We were spat on by the crowd present, humiliated and laughed at, treated worse than the captives that were dragged across the roman pavement into the Tulianum.
  
  At the eye of it stood an altar. Vile corruption spread from it and rippled through the demonic crowd, arousing them, promising sinful delights. My group then halted.
  
  > Were at the back of a long row of souls. Their burnt and flayed skin was as red as a demon's.
  I watched the terrible sights before me. One by one were the souls submerged into a cauldron. They fruitlessly struggled, cried for redemption, begged their captors for mercy, and finally turned to the Lord himself to aim his merciful eye towards these abandoned lands, before they all disappeared, burned to ash like the sacrifices of old.
  
  Ahead of me, they all quaked in fear. Like a rotten disease that spread from man to man, I felt its grasp on my throat, its shock on my legs. The anticipation was grueling, and with every sacrifice, the overwhelming roar of the crowd pushed its will against my drums. Obscenities of a thousand languages were hurled against us, and, as I arrived at the altar, I was covered in black phlegm, which covered the bleeding from my many open wounds.
  
  My captors knelt and left me prone on the ground. It allowed me to look up to the most terrifying sight. A black demon, twice the size of any present, with huge leathery wings folded at his back, looked down and turned his sadistic gaze towards us. It pinned me in place, the force behind it paralyzing my heart. So he stood, waited until its silence overtook the crowd.
  
  "Damned souls, exiled nobles, citizens of Dis! This moment marks providence promised us from the first primes! This occasion offers us the first of the lost, untouchable in their eternal cycles. They eluded us, tempted us, and spurned us from the start!
  
  Now stay silent, and turn all your eyes towards the pool below me. Do you see the color of its blood? The way it holds itself even in these circumstances? How many of you have stood there in that same spot, begging us for mercy? Now listen, what do you hear now?"
  
  I remained silent. A most oppressive force dictated that any words now spoken held no meaning. The rope around my neck tightened with every attempt.
  
  "It remains as silent as it always has, treating us with the same disdain as those above us. It has always known it's been spoken for, caressed by the threads of fate. Now those have broken, and, citizens of Dis, see how our own threads bite themselves into its flesh!"
  
  I tried to scream out; cold pain overflooded all my senses. My body shrieked for release, and yet my muscles were held in place. I vaguely felt a dozen claws lifting me up, holding me high as to present it to God for appeasement. Then I came crashing down, submerged within the heart of corruption.