HELL'S ARCHITECT

Chapter 06. Shadows of the Past

The sky was not blue. It was red, the red of flayed, burning flesh.

Elios stood in the middle of hell. Not a metaphorical hell, but Sector 4, five years ago, on the day the world collapsed and his life died along with it.

The air vibrated with heat that melted the asphalt. Skyscrapers collapsed slowly, folding in on themselves like failed concrete origami. The screams of thousands of people merged into a single, ear-splitting high note, an endless symphony of suffering.

“Elios! Help me!”

That voice. The voice that always came whenever he closed his eyes.

Elios ran. His legs felt heavy, as if embedded in boiling tar sludge. He headed toward the ruins of their second-floor apartment, a place that had once been warm, with a pot of lavender on the windowsill. Now, only smoking debris and fire remained.

“Lyra!” he screamed, his voice breaking. “Answer me!”

He saw the hand. A pale hand jutting out from beneath a giant concrete beam. A simple silver ring encircled her ring finger.

Elios fell to his knees. He gripped the concrete, pulling with all the desperate strength of an ordinary man. The veins in his neck bulged, his teeth grinding. He screamed, fighting gravity with rage and love.

The concrete did not move.

“Elios… it hurts…” Lyra whimpered from behind the narrow gap.

“Hold on, Sweetheart,” Elios wept. His tears evaporated before they fell. “I’m going to get you out. Don’t sleep!”

“It’s cold…” Lyra whispered, nonsensically, in the middle of the sea of fire. “Someone is coming…”

“Who? There’s no one! It’s just me!”

Elios tried again. His hands were bleeding, his nails broken from scratching the concrete. Then the sound of footsteps came. Calm. Rhythmic.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

In the midst of the chaos, someone walked closer.

Elios turned, his breath catching.

The figure stood in front of a swirling purple portal that was spewing monsters. He wore a spotless white robe, and a gold, sun-shaped mask covered his face. The emblem of a Church high official.

The figure held no weapon. He held a data tablet.

“Please!” Elios screamed, extending a bloody hand. “Help me! My wife is under there!”

The figure did not move. He merely tilted his head, observing like a scientist looking at an insect.

“Subject 404. Portal interaction confirmed,” the figure’s voice was calm, noting something on his tablet.

“What are you talking about, you bastard!” Elios rose, intending to attack.

Lyra’s scream cut through everything.

“ELIOS!”

Elios turned back to the ruins. The concrete beam lifted, but Lyra was not safe.

From within the ground, hands of black shadow emerged, gripping Lyra’s body, pulling her into the earth’s darkness.

“No… NO!”

Elios leaped, trying to grab Lyra’s hand. Their fingers met for a fleeting moment.

“Elios…”

Lyra was yanked down. The grip slipped. Her face vanished, replaced by a black void that stared back.

The figure in the white robe laughed, not an evil laugh. The laugh of a scientist whose experiment had succeeded.

“Beautiful data,” he said.

“DIE!” Elios screamed.

“HHAH!”

Elios woke with a violent jolt. He fell off the sofa, tumbling onto the floor of his dingy apartment. His chest rose and fell wildly. His lungs tried to suck in as much oxygen as possible, but it felt like breathing underwater.

A panic attack.

“Breathe, you idiot, breathe!!!” he muttered, gripping the musty carpet. “It’s just a dream. It’s just a goddamn dream!”

But the cold sweat was real. The pain in his chest was even more real.

The shadow of the white-robed figure still danced in his retina.

For five years, he had thought his memory was hazy. He believed Lyra’s death was an accident.

Tonight, after the discovery on the train, that memory unlocked. It opened a lost key.

“They watched…” he whispered. “They stood there and watched her die.”

Rage replaced panic. A burning wave of heat rose from his chest to his head. He needed an outlet, now. Or he would explode.

Elios headed to the corner of the room where an old punching bag hung, a relic of his paladin training. Without wrapping his hands, he struck.

THWACK!

“Why did I forget?!” he yelled at the bag.

THWACK!

“Why am I only remembering now?!”

Every punch was a punishment for himself. The skin on his knuckles split. Blood stained the canvas. The pain stung but cleared his mind.

He imagined the punching bag was the face of Kael, Valdos, that gold mask.

“BASTARDS! You are all bastards!”

He delivered a spinning kick that sent the bag swinging wildly, causing the chains to creak loudly, nearly snapping.

Elios stopped. His breath ragged. He rested his forehead against the bag. In this moment, he was not The Butcher. He was not the killer demons feared; he was just a broken man.

“I’m sorry, Ly…” he whispered. “I was always too late.”

BEEP-BEEP!

His PDA notification sounded. The tone was sharp, urgent, the type of Code Red alarm.

Elios roughly wiped his eyes with the back of his bloody hand, leaving a red smear on his cheek like war paint. He walked toward the table where his PDA lay next to the shards of last night’s beer bottle.

He picked up the device. The screen flashed red.

MANDATORY MISSION: PURIFICATION DIVISION

PRIORITY: ALPHA

TARGET: ENERGY ANOMALY INVESTIGATION

Elios was about to refuse, until he saw the location.

LOCATION: SECTOR 4.

COORDINATES: FORMER MEMORIAL PLAZA (GROUND ZERO).

Elios’s world stopped spinning for the second time in 24 hours.

Sector 4. His wife’s grave.

“It’s a trap,” he muttered. “They know I know. They want to finish me off in a quiet place where there are no witnesses.”

He stared at the screen for a long time. If it was a trap, he would walk in with his eyes wide open.

“System,” he called to the half-broken apartment AI. “Open the armory. Protocol ‘Blood Rain’.”

The false wall behind his wardrobe slid open with a hydraulic hiss. Inside, a personal arsenal was neatly arranged: assault rifles, phosphorus grenades, twin silver swords, and modified light armor.

Elios wrapped his hands, grabbed the short double-barreled shotgun 'The Judge', and tucked it into his back.

“You want me back in hell, Valdos?” he said to his reflection. “I’m coming back. But I’m going to be the devil this time.”

Thirty minutes later, Elios sped down the road on his black motorcycle toward the festering wound called Sector 4.

He pressed the communication button. “Doc,” he called through his helmet.

Doc’s voice sounded panicked on the other end. "Elios! Don't contact me on an open channel! The Church is scanning all frequencies!"

"I don’t care. Listen to me," Elios cut him off, his voice overcoming the roar of the wind. "I’m heading to Sector 4."

Silence for a moment. "Are you... are you trying to kill yourself? The Miasma radiation there can turn your lungs to jelly in an hour!"

Doc was openly helping Elios. Not for any reward, but because Doc also hated the Church; a dark past involving the loss of his sister fueled a deep-seated grudge.

"I’m wearing the mask filter you made," Elios said. "I need you to monitor the satellites. If there’s any energy movement like the one on the train yesterday… let me know."

"Elios, listen to me," Doc’s voice turned serious. "If you go there... you might find something that makes you wish you had died five years ago. Sector 4 isn’t just ruins. There are rumors... rumors that the place is ‘alive’."

Elios twisted the throttle deeper. The engine roared, the speedometer surged.

“Good,” he said. “If the place is alive, it means I can kill it.”

Ahead of him, the barricade marked DO NOT ENTER—DEAD ZONE grew closer.

Elios did not slow down.

He was returning to where it all began.

And this time, he would not cry.