The sound of fracturing ice followed Zeke as he stepped into the cavern. All around him, the wails of the damned – each one encased in ice – joined the cracking ice to form a discordant chorus of horror. But those sounds were nothing compared to the memories assaulting his mind.

  With every step, the snakes reared up, flaring their hoods and attacking him with his own memories. Most were benign – small betrayals where he told white lies or disobeyed his mother back on Earth – but many were far more serious. Most of the latter centered around the friends he’d left behind in the tower. About how he’d abandoned them when they needed him most.

  Then there were the ones concerning Abby.

  For the longest time, Zeke had felt secure in his judgement concerning her. Much of that was due to her actions since. After all, she’d joined Lady Constance, then the Radiant Host. She had knowingly allied herself with evil forces, cementing herself – at least in Zeke’s mind – as an immoral person. After all, if she surrounded herself with evil, then it wasn’t difficult to label her that way as well.

  However, the memories slamming into his mind made him falter. The little moments they’d shared. The times they’d fallen asleep in one another’s arms. The good times, the bad, and everything in between. It picture they painted of their relationship was much more beautiful than he’d previously remembered.

  And then came the betrayal.

  Abandonment, and when she so clearly needed him. He’d cut ties even before leaving the Mortal Realm, but he’d finalized it by deactivating [Mark of Companionship]. He’d never wanted to see her again.

  But was that because of what she had done? Or because he knew that he had overreacted? He thought he knew. He thought he was in the right, and that he’d put such doubts to bed. However, the memories repeatedly ramming into his mind made it absolutely clear that he had not.

  Then there were his more questionable battle tactics. How many people had he killed? Thousands, certainly. Perhaps even millions. He definitely hadn’t bothered to keep count, but with images of their deaths replaying in his mind, he found himself horrified that he had divorced himself so completely from their suffering.

  Killing a man was a terrible thing. And yet, he’d let himself forget that. He’d forced himself to ignore his own humanity, embracing something far more callous. More demonic.

  He was a monster.

  He’d known that for some time, and yet, he’d convinced himself that his flimsy excuses were valid. He continuously told himself that his actions were justified, but in his heart, he’d always known that he simply did not care about his enemies. To Zeke, the Radiant Host was an obstacle. He’d barely even considered that they were composed of human beings, each with hopes and dreams and families. Mothers and daughters, sons and fathers.

  Each memory forced himself to confront that. They made his betrayal of his own humanity abundantly clear.

  But he couldn’t allow his steps to falter. If he did, the snakes would strike. The only way through was to keep going, to measure his steps and continue on, heedless of the images in his mind.

  It made him sick, seeing the accusation in the eyes of his friends and enemies alike. They knew what he was. They saw it. How he’d missed it in reality was a mystery, but it was there, all the same.

  He continued forward, tears streaming down his face until, at last, he reached the other side of the cavern. He didn’t stop until he stepped into the next tunnel. Only then did he sink to his haunches and clutch the sides of his head. He let out a primal scream of mental anguish.

  The memories didn’t continue, but the doubts they’d fostered refused to fade. Were they realistic expressions of reality? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. He had no way of knowing until he left Hell behind and reunited with his friends and family. Only then could he ask and discover the truth.

  He let the screams die away, and he stared at the icy ground, his breath coming hard and fast. Slowly, he took hold of it, then reclaimed control.

  For now, he needed to keep going.

  So, even with the doubts casting echoes through his mind, he pushed himself to his feet and continued down the tunnel. Much like the others, it was populated by the icebound damned, each of them reaching out to stop him. They begged for his attention, pleading for his help. He ignored them.

  Even if he could have freed them, he could see in their ravaged eyes that they would turn on him in a second. It was the Circle of Treachery, after all. Those damned creatures would never let him proceed unmolested. They would betray him at the first opportunity.

  Knowing that, he kept going for dozens more miles. Perhaps even hundreds. Time was irrelevant. There was no way to mark night and day, but judging by his normal pace, he knew that weeks passed. He lost count of how many, though. Ever since entering Hell, the notion of time had lost all meaning. By his count, he’d been there for decades. Perhaps centuries. With that knowledge encapsulating his mind, what did a few weeks matter?

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  So, on he went, following the twisting caverns ever deeper. At times, the damned remained silent, limp and hanging suspended from the cave’s icy walls. However, at other times, they hurled insults at him when they realized he had no intention of helping them. When that didn’t work, they returned to pleading.

  Ignoring it was a chore, but one Zeke shouldered as the cost of progression.

  Along the way, the temperature continued to drop, and he was forced to periodically pulse [Hand of Divinity]. It kept him from freezing to death, but it didn’t make the descent comfortable.

  Not that Zeke would let a little pain stop him.

  He let out a chuckle at that notion. After everything he’d been through, the notion of letting pain even slow him down was ridiculous.

  That broke some of the tension he’d felt since the snake room. That made the next few days’ worth of travel a little easier to endure. However, the foreboding atmosphere eventually wore that done, so when he finally reached the end of the tunnel weeks later, he was once again a nervous wreck.

  He hid it behind a stoic fa?ade, but after everything he’d been through, his mind – and probably his soul – was a fractured mess. He didn’t dare think about what he’d do when he finally completed his journey, but he knew he would need quite a while to recover.

  Zeke couldn’t get ahead of himself, though. Not with another obstacle in his way.

  In this case, a large chasm stretched before him. When he looked down, he saw nothing but blackness. He couldn’t be certain, but he suspected that if he fell, he might never find the bottom. The notion of endlessly falling through a black abyss was not a pleasant one, but given his present location, he couldn’t help but think that would probably be a best-case scenario.

  The alternatives were much worse.

  He ran his hand through his hair, then took in the rest of the cavern’s details. The other side of the chasm wasn’t that far away. Maybe a quarter of a mile at most. With his stats, he could cover that ground in a few seconds – and that was if he didn’t push himself. There was a good chance that he could leap the distance.

  The only reason he didn’t consider it was because he wasn’t willing to risk the fall that came with failure.

  That, and there was a ready-made option to cross it without any such heroics. A stone bridge stretched from one side of the chasm to the other. Narrow and crumbling in places, it still looked sturdy enough to bear his weight.

  So, after a little more observation, Zeke decided that he was best served pushing ahead. However, when he took his first step onto the bridge, he found himself beset by a thousand whispers. At first, he couldn’t understand them, but it was only after a few more steps that they began to distinguish themselves.

  And their message was clear.

  “They have already moved on,” one hissed.

  Another added, “No one is waiting for you.”

  “They are dead.”

  Those statements were nothing new. Zeke had had those thoughts a thousand times before, which was probably one of the reasons he was so vulnerable to them. He immediately found himself dwelling on the first. The notion that his friends and family had forgotten him, that they’d moved on with their lives. Pudge would have married and gone back to that beastkin village. Talia would have settled somewhere with the rest of the undead. Abby was already gone. And his relationship with Adara had been too new to expect her to wait on him.

  Then there were the kobolds. They could have gone two different ways. With one, they might have continued to progress toward species-wide sapience. If they did, it didn’t take a genius to expect they’d abandon the protector they no longer needed. What use was Ak-toh when they could write their own story? When they needed no savior?

  Or without his hand on the tiller, they might have descended back into monsterhood. Even now, they could have been rampaging across the country, slaughtering any who stood in their way. Sure, Zeke had put them on the path to sapience, but with it had come extraordinary collective power. They might have abandoned his edicts and decided to get back to their roots.

  Even as those scenarios raced through his mind, building upon one another until he began to lose hope, the bridge started to crumble. At first, it was only a few bricks, but the longer he dwelled on those thoughts, the more widespread the deterioration was.

  He snapped to attention, making that connection.

  With a force of willpower, he shoved his doubts aside and resolved to ignore the whispers.

  It wasn’t easy, though. Every step brought more. And if he hurried, they became a cacophony that wrapped his mind in the pressures of doubt and pessimism so dense that he couldn’t even begin to ignore it. So, he moderated his gait and deliberately placed his steps.

  Like that, he crossed the bridge, but not without a few close calls. When one of the whispers touched on Abby, describing how she had tried to wait for him, how she had died of old age without even knowing his fate, he nearly sank to his knees in despair. It was only through a pulse of divine energy that he managed to keep his feet.

  He staggered forward, his mind stoic but battered. His resolve eroded with every passing second.

  Then, he reached the other side, and he was rewarded with blessed silence.

  To himself, he mumbled, “I preferred being ripped apart by crows.”

  And it was true. Physical pain was much easier to endure than psychological torment. There was just something about the latter that cut through any defenses he might have raised. And the last couple of circles had truly pushed him to the limits of what he could take, laying his entire psyche bare.

  But he kept telling himself that he only had to reach the end of the Circle of Treachery, and then his journey would be complete. Just a few more steps, and he would have completed the challenges associated with all nine circles of hell. He didn’t even want to think about some of the unimaginable things he’d gone through. Instead, he focused his gaze forward.

  The end was in sight. He only needed to keep going.

  With that in mind, he collected his wits, shoving the mental anguish aside and left the bridge behind. Once again, he found himself in the same tunnels of black ice, but the damned were far less constrained. Some only had a single foot encased in ice, and they were more than willing to attack him when it became clear he wouldn’t – or couldn’t – help them.

  They weren’t difficult to fend off. A single punch, and most of them were dead. However, each kill brought with it the weight of additional guilt. Zeke had just been forced to confront the consequences of his actions. Adding more was the last thing he needed.

  Perhaps that was the point, though.

  In any case, he stoically endured what he needed to endure, making his way steadily down the tunnel. It twisted back and forth in a rough corkscrew pattern, and the damned became even rowdier along the way. Zeke ignored them when he could, but put them down when necessary.

  And then, at last, he reached the end.

  However, there was no relief in his heart as he looked at the figure in the center of the room. Still, he knew precisely what he had to do, so he stepped forward and prepared himself for battle.