Tower of Heaven

Atlas’ world became more and more corrupted with the passage of time.

He was freed from the torture of hunger and thirst after two days and sent to a new location, but hunger and thirst still plagued him so.

He was chained to a rock and unable to move in the slightest. He was inside of a ravine with massive cliffs on both sides of him. The sun peeked through the slit between them, blinding him if he tried to look into the sky.

This kind of existence was tortuous enough, but it was only the setting. The true torture had yet to appear.

It was only that evening when Atlas first experienced it.

Caw! Caw! Caw!

The sound of three birds awoke him from a delirious state. When he looked up, he saw their shadows blanketing the sky.

Caw! Caw!

They circled him for about an hour before descending. They looked like vultures more than three times the size of the ordinary birds. They poked at his body, questioning whether he was alive or dead.

They feasted on his flesh and blood. As they gouged out his organs and had a feast, he was forced to silently endure. He couldn’t scream as his throat had already been ripped apart. He no longer had eyes as they’d been swallowed up already.

However, he could still see. He could still vividly perceive his own body being turned into a pile of scraps.

Naturally, as it happened in the other three realms, his body was brought back to peak condition soon after.

A new day arose, and the vultures returned again.

And again.

And again.

In this realm, Atlas spent a little more than a week. The vultures came sixteen times and devoured his body just as many times. Sometimes they made his execution fast and painless, while other times they took their time and spent hours keeping him alive and picking away at him.

In every way he could possibly imagine, Atlas was devoured. He was kept in a starved state as food for others for so long that he forgot what it was like to be whole.

Perhaps that was a good thing.

At the end of the week, he was transported to a new space.

For another hundred kilometers, he experienced a new kind of torture that he couldn’t understand or comprehend.

Four hundred kilometers…five hundred kilometers…six hundred kilometers…

With every passing step that his physical body took, his soul was degraded to another level. He lost any sort of pride and dignity. He was forced to drop it all as he faced death and its ugliest faces.

Yet, somehow, even when he was forced to throw everything into an imaginary box to keep his ego safe, he managed to persevere. He kept himself at the very edge of sanity and never lost who he was.

Seven hundred kilometers…eight hundred kilometers…nine hundred kilometers…

His physical body trudged through the mulch pathway without pause. It was determined to save its soul from torture even if it didn’t have any sort of complex thought of its own.

If Atlas ever lost himself, his body would stop moving as well. If he didn’t still have the will to walk that pathway in the back of his mind, his body would have been stuck, trapping him in the punishment that broke him for eternity.

He wasn’t lucky that such a punishment didn’t exist. He used every possible strand of will in his body and soul to make it so. Stay updated through

And even if he felt like he would break at any moment…

One thousand kilometers.

His body reached that mark.

His soul was In the midst of a storm of qi when it happened. He was turned into a conduit for energy and overloaded until his body exploded into minced meat. He felt his systems fill up with so much energy that even his soul screamed in pain, and when he turned into a million pieces once more–

"Huuup…!"

A deep breath.

A single deep breath signified the reconnection of his soul and body.

The scene in front of his eyes changed. He saw a bright light for only a moment before he stumbled into it.

He couldn’t control his body properly. Despite being connected, there was still a sense of dissociation between them. The world was moving strangely and overlapping on itself, making it hard to distinguish what was happening.

Atlas remained in a delirious state.

In his mind, he swam through a world of destruction in search of a single small box. It was shining brightly as the only piece of light remaining, so it wasn’t hard to find. It was only hard to reach.

In the outside world, he stumbled through another world of blackness. All Underworlds carried similar atmospheres, after all. The ground was rocky but mostly flat. There wasn’t anything in Atlas’ way to impede him, so he was able to stumble unimpeded.

And when he finally did manage to grab hold of that box…

Thud!

His eyes shot open once more. This time, he could truly see.

"Haa…haa…haa…"

He breathed heavily without a word as he assessed his situation. He stood halfway over the banks of a massive river of murky black water. His one leg was still on the shore while the other was planted inside of a skiff. His left side was being supported by a figure cloaked in a black hood. If it weren’t for that being, he would have fallen into the river.

"A living soul…"

That being spoke in a low, hoarse voice. Atlas processed it, but he only took his foot out of the boat. He sat down and took a meditative stance. He couldn’t cultivate, but he could circulate qi to calm his body and mind.

His soul was excited by its anguish. His body was exhausted by its journey. Feeling the juxtaposition, Atlas found himself almost succumbing entirely to fatigue.

He had to sit down and focus on himself if he wanted to keep going without passing out.

’This is it.’

He had reached the end of the pathway. The presence of another being meant he was no longer on the path Hel made for him. He was on the other side.

’I am safe.’

His journey was over. The hardest parts were over. This was where he needed to be. Now, he only needed to find his friends and find a way to take them out of the Underworld.

’Very well.’

"Huu…"

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Standing up, he addressed the person who saved him.

"Thank you. If not for your aid, I would have fallen into the river."

He didn’t know what the river was, but if it belonged to the Underworld, it was deadly to a living soul.

"You are a living soul…"

The cloaked being ignored his words entirely.

"Have you come to offer your soul to the Lord, or have you come for an audience?"

Atlas raised his brow.

"I have come for…an audience?"

Surely, it wasn’t the first option, so he went with the second.

"If you wish to cross the River Styx, you must offer a tribute."

That was when Atlas froze.

"Ah…"

He had a moment of sudden realization. It came much slower than it should have.

This encounter…

This encounter was not random.

This was a part of the Legend of this Underworld, a voyage with a price that those meant for it were already prepared to pay.

Only, Atlas was not one of those people.

And let alone being able to pay it, he wasn’t even aware of what the price was.

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