Chapter 156 Screams of Hell
(Apollo)
The soul screamed like metal being torn in half.
The sound wasn’t just noise; it was vibration. It punched through the cavern walls, rattled ancient runes carved into stone, and made loose pebbles skitter across the iron walkways like fleeing insects. Even the lava seemed to flinch, its surface breaking into frantic ripples as if the river itself recoiled from the agony.
Apollo watched the sound rattle through what was left of the creature’s body, enjoyed the way it shuddered on the hooks. The echo bounced around the cavern—high, jagged, eager—picked up and warped by the stone until it sounded less like a single throat and more like a chorus of agony answering itself. The reverberation crawled along the ceiling and down the pillars like a living thing, a wail that got thinner and sharper the further it travelled, until it came back to him as a thin, hysterical keening.
It reminded him of cathedral bells, warped through hellfire. The same kind of summons. A call to witness. A reminder that suffering was this realm’s only prayer.
The chamber was vast, a gouged wound in Hell’s belly. Stalactites of obsidian fangs hung from the ceiling, dripping molten fire in slow, incandescent beads. Rivers of lava sliced through the floor in jagged veins, casting a restless red glow, painting everything in blood and coal. Iron walkways latticed over the pits, slick with heat and centuries of wear. Some creaked faintly under the weight of demons allowed back inside the palace after his decree. The air was furnace-breath, thick as gruel; every inhale stung of scorched copper, sulphur, and the cloying sweetness of fear baked into rock.
Heat crawled across his skin like a second hide. It kissed the underside of his wings, slid along the curve of his horns, sank into his bones. This place had baptised him in flame long before crowns or titles ever mattered. Hell had been his first altar.
No one will touch her.
The vow rang in his skull like scripture. Not prayer. Law. Commandment. He had etched it into the palace itself, carved it into shadow and flame. Even the walls knew her name now.
They’d obeyed, mostly. They always obeyed when he made his voice a blade. But tonight, with the mortal locked safely in her chamber and his shadow on her door, he’d permitted the court a different kind of proximity. Not to her. To him. To the reminder of what he was before a human heartbeat began to thread through his temper. Before mercy had ever tasted like a woman’s mouth.
They lined the walkways now, a jeering ring of teeth and claws and hunger. Horns gleamed in the ruddy light. Wings twitched. Tails lashed. Some held chains that ended in their own prizes—twisted, half-demon remnants of once-human souls, their bodies warped beyond recognition. Horn buds where brows had been. Too-long fingers tipped in claws. Eyes glazed milky white from too much screaming. Some knelt at the edges, tongues lolling, drinking in the pain like incense; others lounged with cruel ease, idly tugging on their chains to draw out fresh cries whenever the cavern’s chorus lulled.
It looked like a congregation. A black mass of devotion. If Hell had a church, this would be it. Their god stood at the centre, wings spread, hands wrapped in chains born of pain and torment.
The soul in front of him had once been one of the gentler ones. Apollo could still see glimpses of its former self when he exerted too much force: remnants of a human jawline, the memory of hands that once looked normal. But Hell had stripped away that shape quickly. Now, its limbs were stretched, jointed in unnatural places, and it hung from the ceiling by hooks embedded deep into tendon and misshapen muscle. Its skin bore scars of old burns and cracks glowing with recent, healed-over iron. Each ragged breath rattled through a chest distorted beyond earthly anatomy, the ribs arched outward like failed bars trying to contain a faint ember within.
Somewhere, long ago, it had knelt in a real church. It had probably whispered prayers once. Apollo liked to imagine which god had failed it first.
Apollo flexed his hand.
Power rolled through his fingers like a living thing. Eager. Obedient. Ancient.
Chains threaded from his fingers to the hooks. They were made entirely of his magic—black flame shaped into links that sizzled where they bit into corrupted flesh. Each small movement of his wrist made the soul’s body jerk, the hooks grinding bone. The creature’s voice climbed from strangled whimpers to raw, broken shrieks. The chain-links glowed faintly at the edges, veins of molten gold running through obsidian. They responded to every twitch in his tendons as if they were extensions of his nerves.
He felt every tremor. Pain climbed his arm like lightning, settled under his skin in bright needles of sensation. This was his type of communion.
That was the point. His power wrapped around the soul’s nerve endings, amplifying each twitch of agony and feeding it back to him. Most demons liked to watch pain. Apollo preferred to feel it. It had been his favourite purge for centuries—a way to scrub the restless hunger out of himself on other people’s screams. The pain came as pulses of heat and static, each convulsion a bright pin under his skin. It reminded him that everything here—stone, fire, flesh—answered to him first.
Tonight, it tasted dull. Flat. Like ash left too long in the mouth.
The creature convulsed as he twisted his hand, bones popping in their sockets. Its head lolled, horn-nubs scraping the air. Drool and ash dripped from its cracked lips onto the stone below, hissing when it met the heat. Once, that wet sizzle of saliva and suffering would have been enough to unknot his temper. Now it was background noise—a rhythm he knew too well.
“Louder,” Apollo said, almost bored.
The chains obeyed, tightening, lifting the soul higher. Its spine bowed in an impossible arc. A chorus of cheers went up from the walkways.
“Pull it apart, my king!”
“Crack it open!”
“Let us see the ember!”
They sounded like a choir, both discordant and devout. Their chanting and laughter mingled with the clang of tails hitting iron and the heavy stomp of feet in an unrestrained, savage rhythm. Some, moving in sync with the others, yanked at their chains and unleashed howls that joined into an off-key, ragged orchestra. The cavern was thick with the smell of scorched flesh, brimstone, and an ancient fear—a scent that once stirred Apollo's anticipation. The crowd’s fervour pressed in on him, hot and greedy, as if the whole court leaned forward, hungry to be part of the cruelty.
Now he found himself comparing it to the scent of Adelaide’s skin. A sacrilege, some ancient part of him whispered. Comparing worship to a woman. But he did it anyway.
Not the same, he thought irritably. Even as the soul on his hooks gave a gurgling protest, the thought echoed. Her scent: warmer. Cleaner. Smoke threaded with something bright—citrus on the tongue. This was stale. Bitter. Familiar to the point of tedium. Her fear had tasted different—sharp but alive. Laced with defiance, and that stubborn sweetness that refused to sour, even in Hell. There was nothing alive about this thing. Only residue.
He flicked his fingers.
Fire surged along the chains, rippling across the soul’s body in a wave of black-gold flame. It convulsed, mouth stretching in a soundless scream as fire ate into it—not burning skin, but memory. Every illusion it had clung to, every lie about what it deserved, burned away. Images burst and crumbled in its mind: a life once lived, faces long forgotten, little cruelties it thought inconsequential. He watched its pupils blow wide with recognition as each selfish or violent moment was set ablaze and forced back into its awareness.
He felt the moment it lost the last one. A hollow snap. Like a candle being blown out inside a skull.
The creature shuddered and went limp, suspended between hooks and chains, every nerve ending screaming even as its limbs dangled like charred thread.
“That’s better,” Apollo murmured.