Death is immortality.
Death is your second chance.
Velian Terrashine belongs to a classless society of equality, art and democracy; a land full of creativity and mindfulness. It is in that perfect political system that one wrong movement, one carele...
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IT SEEMED MERCILESS.
Dust covered every corner of that building while the floor was carpeted with vomits and broken bottles of ale and wine. The water here was limited, Ian had informed me when I'd asked him if I could wash the blood off my face somewhere. Food was limited as well, and their meals mainly consisted of bread and stew. Every other day the corridor of this floor was packed with queues of people waiting for food supplies and water. But from everything Ian had told me over the past hour, there was one thing that had made the hairs on my arms rise. Every day there was a longer queue of sinners on the fifth floor of this building, of this prison, waiting to take three or four full bottles of ale each.
When I'd first heard of that, I'd laughed. I'd never thought that Hell would be a dirty bar of drunk people tripping, shouting and fighting. But the reason behind their daily dose of ale ran deeper than a sickening addiction to self-destruction.
"There are tortures every day that no one can walk away from. When---when they are finally over, you want to forget every moment of them. And a bottle of beer seems like the only salvation you are allowed to have here," he'd said, his words still echoing in my mind, daring to penetrate my heart and generate emotions of fear for whatever terrible fate awaited for me here.
I didn't let something like that happen. Instead, I focused on the black-haired guy that walked next to me. Ian was showing me around the place, welcoming me to my new and eternal home---if someone could call it that way. He didn't say a word unless I asked him something, which happened quite often. His voice was low and deep, his always alarmed eyes wandering around the rooms.
The place was enormous, and my feet had started to hurt from the endless walking around the titanic rooms, long corridors and floors. Taking spiral stair after spiral stair, even though it was my first day here, I could sense the exhaustion flying toward me in the fastest speed possible, ready to destroy me, knock me off my feet and break me into a million pieces.
I'd seen some other people here as well---awake, not eternally sleeping like the ones I'd first met. Though we hadn't exchanged a word, it was comforting to know that there wasn't only me and Ian in a place like this.
Entering a bigger chamber with many torches hung on the walls, my eyes fell on a group of people sitting with their legs crossed on the floor. All four of them were laughing, like there wasn't a single concern in their minds, like Hell was a eulogy for them. The three men seemed to be about forty and their tattered clothes suggested that they had been here for decades. The young woman, who had stopped laughing the moment her stare had found Ian, was ethereal. With her long, night-black hair and a face that many would be jealous of, I was sure that no man---or woman---could take his eyes off her.
Saluting Ian, a small grin decorated her full lips, and Ian saluted her as well. But he didn't stop walking to talk to her, and she didn't stand up to initiate a conversation either. Instead, he dashed toward his room again. And I followed him trudging, too tired to keep up with his fast pace.
