Gun of Ashes

The man was keenly aware of the unease in his heart, yet as if bewitched, he could no longer stop himself from moving forward.

Something was waiting for his arrival. The man did not know what it was, but he was certain that the moment he saw it, every desire in his heart would be fulfilled.

He stopped thinking it through. Bracing himself against the damp, moss-slick wall, he advanced along the dark, stinking path. He could hear the surging of the tide, the splash of water battering the reefs, like flesh slamming against the ground and shattering into uncountable motes of dust.

This was a road known to very few, one the man had learned of from the mouth of a Believer. Back when Orthodoxy was not yet so powerful, its Believers would follow this hidden passage to reach the underground beneath Hearn Cathedral, where they held their secret gatherings. Above them, the Believers of the Evangelical Church stood.

Hiding in the enemy’s shadow.

After Orthodoxy’s rise, the Believers no longer needed to skulk and conceal themselves. With Hearn Cathedral sealed, no one passed through this secret way anymore—until the man’s arrival.

As the man advanced, the darkness was disturbed; swarms of rats burst from the cracks with a clatter, skimming past him.

The man stomped in panic, but the rats did not linger by his side. It was as though something was chasing them, something that made them utterly indifferent to the man’s existence.

He drew a deep breath. In the sudden stillness, his heartbeat became unnaturally clear; he could hear the fine sound of sweat trickling, even the rushing of blood through his veins.

He knew the rumors might be true: beneath Hearn Cathedral, a hideous and fearsome Devil might truly be sealed away, and its evil aura, long beyond the Priests’ ability to suppress, had begun to spread.

After days of wandering, the man was already deeply entangled in it. He understood all this, yet did not dare think it through, like a patient deceiving himself who has long since passed the point of cure.

There was no turning back for him. His footsteps went on over the muddy ground, crushing foul soil and rat corpses. He entered the tunnel, and the light around him dimmed at once. In the boundless dark, only a faint glow remained to guide his way.

Keep going.

He heard singing.

A majestic pipe organ accompanied a woman’s soft chant. The man thought it must be a perfect and holy piece of music. Yet in this deep, lightless underground, even the most radiant hymn was smothered by layers of earth and stone; by the time it reached his ears, only a low murmur remained, as if someone were whispering deliriously beside him.

The temperature gradually grew scorching. As he went deeper, the damp of his body seemed to be baked dry, and with it came intermittent roars like those of beasts.

It was like standing in a savage jungle: once night fell, the dreadful predators emerged from their lairs, bloodthirsty, slaughtering life; carcasses torn open, filthy blood and mangled flesh strewn everywhere.

The man did not even notice that his breathing had become labored. Uneasy, he wanted to stop, but to his shock he found he no longer had the strength to control his legs—nor even his own consciousness.

It was as though some evil spirit had taken up residence in him, cackling in rasping fits, driving the man’s steps onward toward the end of the Abyss.

“No, no, no…”

The man moaned in agony. Under the threat of death, the instinct to survive finally managed to slightly overpower that eerie Magic Power.

His steps faltered, and at last he stopped. He gulped for air, feeling a fleeting sense of relief—yet at that moment, a scarlet firelight spilled down over him.

The man tilted his head back. He saw it, and was seized by a deeper despair.

It was not his will that had triumphed over the unknown Magic Power; it was simply that its purpose was already fulfilled, and it had let him go.

A vast furnace of flesh and blood blazed furiously. Its outer wall of flesh was studded with limbs and faces, one human face after another embedded within. They should have been dead, yet their eyes were open, their mouths agape. As the fire roared and the flames flickered in flight, they joined in howling and wailing in misery, together composing this symphony of annihilation.

At the same time, countless chains bound it all together. They dropped from the crimson above, stretching down into a deeper darkness below. From within that dark came renewed unrest, as if some incomprehensible monster were bearing the furnace upon its back, imprisoned in the black.

It was it. It was that Devil—the imprisoned Devil!

The man could no longer speak. He dropped to his knees and snatched up his camera, trying to take a picture, but in the dimness he could not manage to grasp it. It rolled across the ground and then tumbled into the darkness below.

He struck the ground in fury. Instinct told him that he had reached the end of the road. All he could do now was try his utmost to leave behind more records—records of all the hideous horrors beneath this darkness.

The man picked up his notebook, clumsily wrapped his fingers around the pen. He bowed his head, trying to write something, but what met his eyes was a scene like a painting gone mad with mutation.

It was his own scrawled handwriting. Yet that scrawl seemed to come alive, twisting together to sketch a face that could only be glimpsed in nightmares. Through the man’s writing it had appeared upon the paper; now it was alive, smiling at him.

The smile stiffened, then shattered.

The man retched, his guts feeling as if they were knotting themselves together, sending waves of tearing pain—yet he was oddly delighted. The notebook had returned to normal, showing only his messy script, and that mad face was nothing but a hallucination.