The ninth level of hell—a curse beyond comprehension. No fire, no brimstone, no wailing souls, just an endless void. Sinners scattered across lightyears, suspended in nothingness. No light, no shadow, no sound, no air. No death to release you. Only yourself, and the thoughts that gnaw away at your sanity.

After the third hour, you cried, sobbed until it felt like time had stopped. You wept until your sense of self unraveled into the void. You thought, and thought, and thought again, a spiral with no end. Who were you? What could you have possibly done to deserve this eternal exile? Was there ever a "you" to begin with?

The questions echoed endlessly, hollow in the absence of sound, until time became meaningless. Eons passed—maybe minutes. Then it came: a sensation. A flicker of something in the vast abyss, a pinprick against the oppressive nothingness. You couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it, but it was real. And that was enough.

You reached for it with trembling hands, and it reached back. Its grip was firm, desperate, like yours. Together, you floated in the abyss, an anchor in an ocean of void. It was only when you slipped that you realized how tenuous it all was.

A fraction of a moment—a glitch in the fabric of the ninth circle—and you were falling. Falling through emptiness, through dimensions that blinked in and out of existence. Then: air. Sound. The world hit like a cold slap, and when you opened your eyes, it was to an alleyway cloaked in shadows.

The moonless night swallowed the city, leaving only faint outlines in the dim light. Barefoot and trembling, you clutched the stranger—a being as lost and fragile as yourself. Their white robes glowed faintly, a remnant of something otherworldly, but it did little to soothe the terror etched into their face. Or yours.

The two of you sat there, huddled together against the silence of the alley, barely breathing. The ground beneath you was real, the air cold against your skin, but the memories of the void still clung to you. You had escaped.