’What an idiot.’

Uriel sighed, the breath quickly turning into a hollow chuckle.

He kept his eyes closed as he shook his head.

Miquella looked up at him with a radiant smile, as if she were aware that he finally understood. "You’re the kindest of them all."

Uriel ran a hand through his flaming hair. "I am also the most foolish."

"Synonyms."

Uriel flashed the barest hint of a smile at her words and reopened his eyes. ’So that was why Mariah didn’t want me to go...’

’How kind of her.’

"Is it going to hurt?" he asked Miquella.

Miquella’s smile widened. "More than anything. Your Will may collapse in on itself from the agony."

"But you’ll come out strong."

The weight on Uriel’s chest didn’t diminish, but it didn’t increase either. He stared at the flames that roared for his embrace with a steady gaze.

As steady as it seemed, though, Miquella could see flickers in their depth. Flickers of doubt.

"Are you afraid? Of pain?"

Uriel didn’t immediately answer, his ivory gaze standing as a mirror that reflected all the colours of the world. It was particularly dark at the moment.

"Yes."

He stepped forward. His wings flapped, and he soared toward the burning dark flames.

"But there isn’t much else to do. All I can do is hope it’ll be quick."

...

Uriel reached the center of the brazier in no time, his body drowned in flames and his vision reduced to a field of darkness, blinded by the somber hue of the fire.

’It’s cold.’

At first, it didn’t burn. In fact, he’d noticed that as he got closer to the flames, it only grew colder and colder, until it was nigh deathly—an abyss of pure chill.

When he let himself be submerged in the flickering tongues of darkness, he felt the cold even more intimately.

He felt it seep into his gigantic body, snuffing out the white flame that consumed him, then freezing the butterflies that had been eating at his flesh all the while.

The butterflies shattered into frozen dust just as his flesh began to turn an ugly shade of blue, and the eye in the center of his chest shrank until it, too, shattered into frozen dust.

The dust burned to nothing under the might of the flames.

Uriel couldn’t move anymore, and he couldn’t feel anything, whether it be aether, his cores, his talents, his Will, his rings, or anything else.

It was all frozen and locked out of his reach.

He stood as a tall statue of frozen flesh in the brazier, as menacing and horrifying as he was out of place.

"..."

But then, shockingly, the chill of the dark flames bypassed the physical and reached his mind. Yet it didn’t slow his thoughts as mortals would assume.

No, instead, Uriel began to see his memories replay across his mind—but only specific ones.

’...’

Memories of the endless nights in the prison, in particular.

’...’

As much as he tried to forget those days, they had been agony beyond words. He’d been stripped of all his senses, pushed to madness, and forced to feed on nothing but spit-filled slush the guards fed him through a tube.

And every day, the guards would come. Sometimes, they simply beat him. At times, under orders, they mutilated his body, and at others, they got creative.

Boiling water, acid, feces, piss, animal remains—anything, really. Ithuril’s advancements in bodily enhancement were such that there wasn’t much they couldn’t cover up.

After turning him into a horrifying mess of flesh, all they needed to do was pass him through the ’cube,’ as they called it, and he’d come out brand new.

Back then, unlike now, his body could still be healed to a certain extent.

And so, the agony had been unending. As his mind was pushed to madness, his body was broken again and again.

It was a miracle Uriel hadn’t gone mad. Or perhaps it was simply the result of him forgetting most of his memories at the time, a self-defense mechanism his soul had put in place.

Or perhaps he had gone mad, then forgotten. It was hard to tell.

’...’

Uriel relived those days as he stood frozen in the flames.

And as he did, his runic scar grew, extending from a ghastly burn on his chest, its crimson veins snaking around his left arm.

Like a feedback loop, his memories fed into his runic scar, deepening its power, and his runic scar made the effect of the memories more potent, thus perpetuating the cycle.

It went on for a long time, and the silence was heavy.

WHOOOSH!

Suddenly, after an untold amount of time—

"ARGHHHH!"

—Uriel shrieked in pain, the sound so sharp it was akin to a banshee’s call, so deep it directly imploded all flows of energy in the surroundings.

Uriel’s Will reflected such agony that the runic fabrics around him shook, then twisted under the weight of his rings, shattering to flood him with void flames and shards of space.

But he didn’t stop screaming.

His hands moved to tear at his own flesh as he sobbed and screamed, his face becoming covered in tears of blood.

He tried to rip his flesh off, but he couldn’t. So he reached out, awkwardly bending his body, and grabbed his mighty, dark-feathered wings.

SHURRR!

The sound was violent and inhuman—bone shattering, flesh tearing—as he ripped one of his wings off his back, sending his blood spraying into the air.

He screamed even louder, discarding the wing, then reaching for another. And then another, and another.

He ripped all his wings off.

And as that happened, the chill of the flames faded, giving way to infernal heat. The fire bubbled with endless ferocity, burning his flesh and grinding him down.

The wings he had discarded caught fire and turned to ash—and so did he, his screams devolving into pathetic whimpers rather than mighty roars.

But he didn’t stop.

When he had no more wings to tear off, he reached for his eyes. And when he had no more eyes to tear, he reached for his organs.

Then his flesh again. And his bones.

But it wasn’t enough. He had to remove it. He had to tear it off himself. So, through the madness of Heartless Vessel, he reached into his own mind.

He tore it apart.

With his bare hands, Uriel tore his soul and mind to shreds.

[...]

The system seemed... speechless.