Interview conducted by chained Hero Dave. Transcript declassified by USCT Records Division.
DAVE:
State your name.
PRISONER 991 — (formerly known as Hero Solstice):
I don’t have one anymore. Cold took it. Once, I was Solstice—Hero of warmth, the one who brought light to darkness. Now? Now I'm nothing but frostbitten echoes, a memory trapped in ice.
DAVE:
Tell me what it’s like in here. No lies. No performances.
SOLSTICE:
Ever get that feeling where your thoughts ricochet off endless walls of ice until you can’t tell if the whisper is yours or the chill? That’s Cold Hell for you. It’s a silence so deafening it screams, a darkness so profound it stares right back at you. There’s no ticking clock here, no rising sun—only the relentless, gnawing cold and a flood of regrets that you can’t outrun.
(A long pause as his shallow breath turns to a frosty cloud, drifting into the void.)
These walls... they aren’t just stone. They breathe, not with life, but with the burden of guilt—each creak and every shadowed corner murmurs, “Do you remember what you did?” Like the ghosts of your past are constantly trying to remind you that no sin is ever forgotten.
DAVE:
They say you were isolated for seven years.
SOLSTICE:
Seven endless years where every minute stretched into an eternity of torment. Twenty-four hours of isolation. No cellmates to share your suffering, no sounds but the thudding of your own heartbeat until, one day, even that ceased—a slow fade into the void. I began naming every frost pattern on the walls. I found solace in talking to icicles. I even cried when one of them finally melted away—not for the chill, but for the loneliness that gnawed at my soul.
DAVE:
Why didn’t you try to break out?
SOLSTICE:
Oh, Dave... the cold isn’t a shackle on your body, it’s a chain around your very will. Escaping? It’s like trying to outrun a shadow that clings to you in the deepest dark—an impossible pursuit. The frost molds you, traps your thoughts, and soon, every attempt at freedom is nothing more than a futile dance with despair.
DAVE:
Some say you killed innocents. That your power spiraled out of control.
SOLSTICE: (a hollow laugh, echoing with bitter irony)
I was light once—a beacon of hope. I believed I could purge the world of its darkness, but I ended up scorching everything in my path. In that blaze of misguided righteousness, I burned through lives, through souls. Heroes, saviors—they can all become executioners when their vision distorts. The Cold Hell is relentless; it etches every misdeed into its icy walls, replaying them in endless, taunting whispers when the night is darkest.
DAVE:
Do you think you deserve this?
SOLSTICE:
Deserve? No one deserves this kind of perpetual frostbite on the soul. Yet, for some of us, this torment is inevitable. I lost who I was before I even stepped into this abyss. But in this frozen purgatory, I cling to the memory of why I once reached for the light—to protect, to save, to be something more than just a fading ember. If my suffering, this never-ending nightmare, can carve out a path for someone else to find redemption… then maybe, just maybe, it’s not all in vain.
DAVE:
...Do you think anyone can be redeemed in the Cold Hell?
SOLSTICE:
Redemption isn’t some distant haven here—it’s the only heat that ever graces us. A small, fleeting warmth in a place designed to steal every last vestige of hope.
(A heavy silence falls, punctuated only by the distant groans that echo through the facility’s frozen corridors.)
SOLSTICE (continuing):
And Dave, let me add this—the torment here isn’t confined to isolation alone. We’re fed twice a day: bland soup and, if fortune allows, a measly chunk of meat with a solitary, pathetic potato thrown in. It’s as if they believe a single spud can kindle a spark of humanity. The water that scalds our skin in a bitter, icy shower is less cleansing than a punishment. Our beds are nothing more than hard, unyielding metal slabs. Every night, we lie on these cold surfaces under a thin sheet and a lonely pillow that barely cushions the endless chill. Even the toilet—a grotesque reminder of our degraded state—seems to sneer at our very existence.
And then there’s the darkness… a suffocating void with no windows, no glow. It’s an endless, consuming black that swallows your identity whole. The vents leak icy gusts and the occasional flurry of snow, mixed with the constant sting of a merciless, air-conditioning cold that pierces your very bones.
(Solstice’s voice drops to a trembling whisper, heavy with despair and raw vulnerability.)
Every single torment is a meticulously crafted reminder of our insignificance—a daily ritual meant to strip away every last morsel of hope and human warmth. It’s like being trapped in a void where even the simplest touch of warmth has been banished, leaving you to wallow in an eternal, frozen nightmare.
End Transcript
Scene: The Cold Hell, Cell Block D-9
Inside this forsaken cell block, the very air seems to pulse with a sinister silence. Solstice, hunched in a desolate corner, clutches his only remnant of comfort—a solitary potato. The biting chill is almost palpable, each exhaled breath a swirling wisp of despair. The guards trudge by in heavy armor, their footsteps muted against the frozen stone, indifferent to the silent disintegration of a man’s soul. Around him, the other prisoners, mere shadows of their former selves, drift in isolation, each locked in their private torment.
SOLSTICE (muttering, voice trembling):
It’s… just a potato. Just one damn potato.
(He curls into himself, the spud pressed tightly against his chest.)
This is all that remains of warmth—of life. I can’t remember the last time I felt something... something alive.
(His voice cracks, a bitter mix of laughter and tears)
I used to be Solstice—the one who saved lives, who shone light into darkness. Now I’m here, sobbing over a frozen tuber like it’s a sacred relic, a final ember of lost hope.
(Gripping the potato as if it were his very soul)
I… I just crave warmth. I long for that elusive feeling of connection, of purpose. I want to fix what’s been shattered… I want to matter again.
(He presses his face against the unforgiving, icy stone of the cell, tears cascading and instantly freezing on his cheeks.)
Outside, the guards exchange glances. Their eyes, hardened by years of routine, barely flicker with concern. They know all too well the price of Cold Hell.
GUARD 1 (sighing, voice edged with dark amusement):
Another one breaking down over a spud. Classic Cold Hell drama. Let him be. They all fall apart eventually. It’s the way this place is meant to work.
Inside his cell, Solstice’s inner world crumbles in tandem with the external torment. His whispered confessions of regret and longing become nearly inaudible, swallowed by the howling winds outside and the distant, monotonous clatter of the guards’ boots. Even the other prisoners, caught in their own cycles of despair, barely register his breakdown.
SOLSTICE (voice low, haunted, as he cradles the potato):
What’s wrong with me? This damn potato—this simple, worthless potato—is all I have left… It’s my last shard of warmth in a world that has forgotten how to feel.
(A bitter laugh escapes him, equal parts absurd and heartbreaking)
I once stood tall, a guardian of light. Now, I’m reduced to a ghost, mourning a bygone warmth and clinging to this remnant like it’s a holy symbol of lost dreams.
(His voice trembles, eyes unfocused and haunted)
There was a time when love, purpose, and even the sun meant something... But now, they’re gone—replaced by the cold steel of confinement and a relentless, soul-crushing void.
In the distance, a whisper from the adjacent cell cuts through the oppressive silence.
PRISONER 2 (barely audible, monotone):
He’ll stop eventually. They all do. Cold Hell isn’t just a place—it’s a force. It strips away hope until you’re left surviving by not really living.
An eerie calm descends as if the very essence of Cold Hell has swallowed all resistance. Solstice, lost in the labyrinth of his fractured mind, clutches the potato as if it were the last beacon of his forgotten warmth. His breakdown, a symphony of despair, is both personal and emblematic—a tragic reminder that in this frozen purgatory, even the smallest comfort is a cruel reminder of everything that has been lost.
Location: Solstice’s Cell in Cold Hell
For weeks, the only sound in Solstice’s cell has been the echo of his labored breathing and the soft creaks of ice forming on the walls. One evening, as the last glow of a nonexistent sunset fades into the void, Solstice notices something odd on the frozen surface of the wall—a twisted, fractured reflection of himself.
At first, it’s just a faint outline, like a memory half-erased by frost. But soon, the reflection begins to move independently. Its eyes are hollow pits of despair, its skin etched with deep, jagged cracks. The figure starts to whisper. It mocks him for his past heroism and his current downfall, its voice a warped echo of his own thoughts.
“Who are you, really?” it hisses, each syllable a cruel reminder of his lost identity.
As Solstice leans in, the reflection grows bolder, its whispers morphing into venomous accusations. It accuses him of every misstep, every innocent life lost in the conflagration of his former power. The more it speaks, the more Solstice’s mind unravels. Is this grotesque mirror simply a fragment of his fractured psyche—or a spectral prisoner, like him, condemned to relive his sins? Every taunt digs deeper, forcing him to confront the guilt that festers within his soul, leaving him to question where his identity ends and his madness begins.
Location: Solstice’s Cell
A distant clamor breaks the monotony of the cell block—prisoners are being shuffled in. A new arrival, a loud and defiant figure, is introduced to the frigid confines of Cold Hell. At first, his anger fills the corridors, a brief spark of rebellion against the icy oppression. Solstice watches silently, witnessing how the newcomer's fiery spirit is gradually quenched by the unyielding cold.
Days pass. The defiant glimmer in the new prisoner's eyes dims until, in the final hours, his rage curdles into a desperate plea for death. His once-hopeful outbursts are replaced by resigned whispers that barely disturb the suffocating silence. Solstice, caught between empathy and despair, becomes an unwilling witness to this slow disintegration of hope.
The new prisoner’s morbid hope—his desperate grasp at suicide—serves only to intensify Solstice’s own torment. As the man’s mind unravels in front of him, Solstice begins to see fleeting, cruel visions of a world bathed in light and warmth—visions that mock him with the promise of redemption he knows is forever out of reach. In that moment, he realizes that Cold Hell does not simply break the body—it methodically erodes the soul, leaving behind nothing but a barren shell of despair.
Location: Solstice’s Cell, Unknown Corridor
One morning, Solstice awakens to find himself not in the familiar confines of his cell, but in a bleak, unfamiliar corridor lined with frost-encrusted walls. Panic surges as he scrambles to recall how he arrived here. Memories flicker and fracture in his mind—images of heroic battles and saving lives merge with the oppressive darkness of his present reality.
Time has lost all meaning. Days, years, or mere moments—Solstice can’t tell. The very concept of time seems distorted, as if Cold Hell has conspired to erase the passage of minutes and years alike. In this new, disorienting environment, his fragmented memories collide: a child's laughter, the comforting glow of a flame, the aroma of fresh bread—all become cruel, unattainable reminders of a past that now feels like a distant dream.
With every attempt to piece together his history, the memories warp further, transforming into unsettling illusions. Solstice begins to wonder if the heroic feats he once cherished were real at all, or simply illusions borne of a desperate need to believe in something greater. The boundaries between reality and imagination blur, leaving him to question whether he ever truly existed as the savior he once was—or if he’s merely a ghost wandering in a frozen labyrinth of lost time.
Location: Solstice’s Cell, Dream World
Nightfall brings little solace to Solstice, for in sleep he is tormented by a recurring, bittersweet dream. In this dream world, the cold is replaced by a surreal, radiant warmth. The sun shines brightly overhead, and he stands amidst a jubilant crowd, their cheers and praises washing over him like a long-forgotten embrace. For a fleeting moment, he is Solstice once more—a hero celebrated for his light.
But as his outstretched hand reaches towards the golden glow, it dissipates like mist, replaced instantly by a surge of icy wind. The warmth is an illusion, a cruel trick of his subconscious that leaves him shivering in its absence. Each night, the cycle repeats: moments of ethereal warmth and adoration, only to be snatched away with brutal finality upon waking.
The contrast is excruciating. The dream teases him with the promise of everything he has lost, only to plunge him back into the stark, unforgiving reality of Cold Hell. It becomes an endless loop—a cycle of yearning for a touch of warmth that remains forever elusive. With every repetition, the chasm between his desperate desires and his bleak existence widens, leaving him trapped in a perpetual state of longing and heartache.
Location: Solstice’s Cell, Prison Hallway
On a night when the cold seems particularly merciless, a strange sound slices through the oppressive silence—a low, melodic hum that is both haunting and achingly beautiful. Solstice first hears it as a distant echo, barely audible over the howling wind that rattles the icy bars of his cell. The sound, gentle yet insistent, stirs something deep within him, an aching curiosity he cannot ignore.
Compelled by an irresistible pull, he rises and follows the ethereal melody down a desolate corridor. The sound grows louder, its notes shifting between tender lullabies and cruel parodies of the voices he once loved. It guides him to a heavy, unfamiliar door he’s never seen before—a door that seems to vibrate with life in an otherwise dead world.
But as he reaches for the handle, the melody warps—sometimes resembling a cherished voice from his past, other times a derisive whisper mocking his every step. Solstice is torn between hope and dread. Is this song a promise of salvation, a hint of warmth hidden behind that locked door? Or is it yet another trick of his mind, a siren song designed to lead him deeper into madness? The uncertainty gnaws at him, blurring the line between reality and hallucination, until every note becomes both a beacon of potential escape and a reminder of the inevitable, unyielding cold.
Location: Cold Hell – Central Yard (Execution Square)
Time: 6:00 AM, Sharp. They always do it at dawn. Like it’s sacred or something.
The cold buzzers shriek through the metallic prison walls like mechanical banshees, dragging every prisoner from their restless sleep. Doors unlatch. Lights flash. And then… silence.
Solstice sat up in his bed before the second buzz even finished. He already knew. Everyone did.
Execution Day.
Not his turn.
Not yet.
But someone’s name got called. And in Cold Hell, that's the same thing as a funeral bell.
He shuffled to the edge of his cell’s frozen glass window, breath fogging against the reinforced pane. Outside, the courtyard had transformed into a stage of death. Spotlights blazed like suns in the eternal Arctic night, casting long shadows that stretched like claws across the bloodless snow.
There they were. Guards. Dozens of them. Clad in black from head to toe, faces hidden behind mirrored helmets—like emotionless mannequins sent from some futuristic hell. They were dragging him out now. The condemned.
He didn’t fight.
Didn’t scream.
Didn’t cry.
They always looked like that—empty. Already dead before the first bullet.
The man’s face was hidden under a blindfold soaked in freezing mist. His breath puffed out in frantic bursts as they slammed him against the pole in the center of Execution Square. They tied him upright with thick steel cables that hissed when tightened. His knees buckled slightly.
Solstice leaned closer, heart pounding not from fear... but from something worse: recognition.
That slouch.
That weight.
That surrender.
He’d seen it before.
In the mirror.
With a mechanical click, every screen in Cold Hell blinked to life—inside every cell, every hallway, every cafeteria. Even the showers. You couldn't not watch.
A high-definition drone camera hovered above the prisoner like a mechanical vulture. A red light blinked on.
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LIVE.
Across America, citizens tuned in—some by choice, others by force. The execution of a Cold Hell inmate was mandatory national viewing. Branded as justice. Packaged as reality entertainment.
The man had no name anymore. No case files. No defense. Just a code on the bottom of the screen:
INMATE #471 – EXECUTION IN PROGRESS
The squad approached—twelve faceless soldiers in a perfect line. Their boots crunched against the snow like thunder in a winter storm. Each rifle gleamed silver under the lights.
Solstice sat on the edge of his bed, eyes glued to the screen, jaw clenched so tight it ached.
There was no priest.
No countdown.
No last words.
Just one cold gesture.
The commander raised a gloved hand.
Snap.
Twelve rifles lowered.
Twelve hearts didn't skip a beat.
Twelve bullets screamed.
CRACK.
The sound was sickening. Like bone splintering against ice.
The man jerked once.
Steam poured from the wounds, mixing with the snow, creating a beautiful, horrible mist. His blood—so bright and warm—smeared across the ice in delicate, chaotic patterns.
A piece of him landed near the camera.
And just like that…
He was gone.
Solstice didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
He just sat there. Frozen.
He saw the pole. The blindfold. The trembling breath.
He saw the barrel of the rifle.
He heard the crack.
He felt the impact.
But most terrifying of all?
He imagined himself there.
And it felt familiar.
Too familiar.
Would they blindfold him?
Would he cry?
Would the bullets hurt?
Would his last thought be of pain? Or regret?
Would anyone even watch? Would they care?
Or would they just scroll past it like a forgotten post?
His thoughts spiraled, caving in on themselves.
“Do they remember who that man was?
Did he have a mother?
A daughter?
Did he sing?”
The idea that someone could be erased so completely terrified Solstice more than death itself.
He wasn’t scared to die.
He was scared to be forgotten.
Later that night, long after the body had been scraped away and the pole pressure-washed with chemical foam, Solstice lay in the dark.
He felt the floor rumble when the rifles fired.
And again when they rolled the corpse out in a body bag.
He turned his head.
The tiny mirror in the corner of his cell had cracked during the execution. From the shockwave. A hairline fracture snaked across it, perfectly bisecting his reflection.
He picked it up.
The shard didn’t show his face.
It showed the pole.
And the squad.
Already waiting.
This wasn’t justice.
This wasn’t deterrence.
It was ritual.
It was performance.
It was warped religion, dressed up in law and order.
And Solstice?
He was next.
“It’s not the death that scares me.
It’s the moment before.
The silence.
When I realize I was never the villain.
Just the warning label.”
Scene Rewrite: “Before the Ice Claims Me”
Location: Cold Hell – Central Yard (Execution Square)
Broadcasted Nationwide – USA
The March Begins…
The clank of steel doors echoes like the toll of a death knell through frozen corridors. Solstice—once hailed as the #20 hero, now a national disgrace—is dragged out of his cell in heavy, unyielding chains. These restraints are not for safety; they serve as a bitter symbol that the trust once placed in him has been irrevocably shattered.
The guards march him silently, their eyes fixed straight ahead. Not because they harbor hatred, but because they once admired him—a light now extinguished by duty and sorrow.
Snow crunches underfoot as he is led into the Central Yard, a vast courtyard carved from pure white frost and polished clean by a million unspoken regrets. Above him, drones hover like relentless, cold eyes, while millions of screens across the nation flicker to life. The entire country is watching, witnessing a spectacle of nihilistic horror.
The Voice of the State
A somber, authoritative voice booms over the broadcast:
“Today, the execution of former hero Solstice will proceed. Charged with multiple counts of intentional civilian murder during unauthorized lethal force operations. While heroes routinely kill criminals—and even permit collateral civilian deaths—intentional targeting of innocents is unforgivable. Stripped of rank. Condemned by tribunal. May this serve as a reminder: heroes are not above humanity.”
A drone’s camera zooms in on Solstice’s face. There is no blindfold, no helmet—only raw defiance and a burning sadness that seems to melt the very ice around him. He stares directly into the lens, as if demanding an explanation from a cold, indifferent world.
Solstice’s Final Words (Broadcasted Nationwide)
A microphone is placed before him, offering one final chance to speak his truth. His voice is steady, devoid of pleading or remorse—a confession laced with bitter irony:
“You wanna know the real reason I’m here?
It’s not because I killed people—you let us do that every damn day.
It’s not even because I ‘went too far’—heroes cross the line all the time when fighting criminals.
But I chose to cross it when I intentionally took innocent lives, knowing full well that collateral damage was never the same as a deliberate act.”
He laughs—a hollow sound that echoes off the frozen walls, a laugh that mocks the absurdity of a system built on lies.
“I stopped lying. I stopped pretending that it didn’t matter who got caught in the crossfire.
You call it collateral—I called it cleansing.
You granted me power, then punished me for using it exactly the way you always knew I would.
So tell me, America… was it murder, or just an inconvenient truth?”
His words hang in the air like a dark omen—a confession of calculated choices in a system that once celebrated his lethal efficiency against criminals, yet now deems his actions unforgivable.
There is no countdown. No final prayer. No honor.
Just the sound.
Forty-one gunshots shatter the world like the cracking of a frozen god’s spine. The silence of Cold Hell is torn apart, not with mercy, but with mathematical precision—a storm of metal meant not to end a life, but to annihilate a legacy.
Solstice’s body doesn’t fall. It collapses—shredded midair by the overwhelming violence. Bone fragments burst like brittle icicles. Flesh tears open in jagged flaps. His organs spill onto the snow like secrets the system tried to bury. What remains of him hits the ground with a sound that is neither human nor natural—a wet thud followed by silence so vast it feels like the world itself has stopped breathing.
The snow around him is no longer white. It’s desecrated. A canvas of viscera and suffering. Blood, half-frozen and steaming, paints the courtyard in chaotic splashes, curdling into grotesque murals beneath the drones' unfeeling gaze. Chunks of tissue and ruptured marrow scatter like offerings to something ancient and monstrous.
Nature, in all her indifference, weeps frost.
And for a single moment, time itself seems repulsed—pausing not out of grief, but out of horror.
He is no longer a man, or even a warning.
He is a myth unraveled. A god unmade. A truth too raw for the nation to swallow.
Aftermath (National Reaction)
Within seconds, the hashtag #SolsticeExecution trends nationwide. Clips of the execution flood social media, interwoven with somber tunes and impassioned debates.
Conspiracy theorists claim he was set up, that the system chose him as a scapegoat. Critics argue that his actions, repulsive as they were, emerged from a morally gray world where heroes routinely blur the lines of justice. Documentaries are promised, and debates rage over whether he was a monster or merely a casualty of a corrupted system.
Yet, amid the uproar, one phrase slices through the clamor—the final words that will haunt the nation:
“Remember me, not as your hero…
…but as your reflection.”
Symbolism & Reflection
Snow + Blood: The snow, once a symbol of purity and innocence, now serves as a stark reminder of corruption. Its whiteness, unmarred and untouched, is permanently soiled by the blood of those who suffered under Solstice’s decisions. The crimson stain symbolizes not just physical bloodshed, but the tarnishing of ideals, a purity lost forever. In a world that demands heroes to uphold unblemished morals, the blood on the snow is a powerful metaphor for the irreversible consequences of one’s choices, the destruction of innocence in the pursuit of justice.
Drones & Screens: These ever-present, dispassionate observers in the sky represent the modern world’s insatiable hunger for spectacle. Tragedy, suffering, and death are no longer personal or private but have become a commodity, a form of entertainment to be consumed by the masses. Drones, buzzing overhead, transform an intimate moment of suffering into a spectacle for the world to witness. The screens act as filters, reducing the gravity of death to pixels and bytes, ensuring that every execution, every downfall, becomes an enduring memory in the collective consciousness of the nation. It’s a commentary on the commodification of tragedy in a media-saturated society where suffering is consumed rather than understood.
No Blindfold: Solstice’s choice to face his death without the comfort of a blindfold is an act of final rebellion, a refusal to cower from the consequences of his own actions. His decision to look death in the eye is symbolic of his refusal to hide behind the masks he once wore—masks of righteousness and heroism. This final act of defiance speaks to his desire for truth, no matter how painful, even as it becomes clear that the system he once upheld no longer holds any place for him. It is a rejection of the comforting illusion that heroes are above reproach, an acknowledgment that even those who wear capes are not immune to the cold reality of their decisions.
His Final Words: With his last breath, Solstice challenges the system that once celebrated him. He calls upon the nation to peel back the layers of myth and label, urging them to see the man behind the hero. His death is a confrontation with the very ideals he once embodied. In his final challenge, he asks for a reckoning—not just with his actions, but with the flawed system that created him. The man who once epitomized justice now demands that the world confront the very fallibility that made him human. His final words are not just a plea for understanding, but a demand for change—a change in how heroes are made and how they are judged.
In a world where heroes are allowed to kill criminals and tolerate collateral damage, it is the intentional murder of innocents that seals one’s fate: Solstice’s death is not a mere execution but a profound reckoning with the nature of heroism itself. In a society where the lines between right and wrong are often blurred, where the killing of criminals is accepted as part of the job, it is the deliberate taking of innocent lives that marks the ultimate sin. The death of innocents is what makes a hero into a villain, and this is what seals Solstice’s fate. His execution is a nihilistic decree, a harsh reminder that even those who are idolized, revered, and elevated to mythical status are bound by the same mortal limitations as everyone else. It is a declaration that the truth, no matter how inconvenient or painful, will always emerge and that heroes, no matter how celebrated, will face the cold judgment of their deeds.
solstice’s end symbolizes the fragility of heroism, the inevitable decay of any system that fails to hold its champions accountable. His death isn’t just the end of a man, but the collapse of an entire mythos. It’s a recognition that even heroes, in the end, must answer for their actions, and that justice, no matter how complicated, is always waiting to reclaim its rightful place
Scene: “The Thing That Should Not Think”
Location: Cell 7D – Cold Hell, Lower Block
The cold doesn’t gnaw. It infests.
It slithers through pores not as temperature, but as sentient frost—needle-fingered and whispering in frequencies that unravel sanity. The other prisoners hear it sing lullabies in their dead mothers’ voices, each note a frozen scalpel carving hymns of despair into their cerebellums. They claw frozen skin off their cheeks, peeling themselves raw to silence the chorus, but the frost only digs deeper, nesting in their marrow like parasitic larvae. They weep names of loved ones they no longer remember. They gnaw their own fingers off, mistaking them for foreign objects.
He doesn’t.
The man-shaped absence in Cell 7D sits cross-legged on stone sweating black ice, a statue of malignant patience. His eyelids remain unblinking for 37 days now, corneas glazed with fractal patterns that shouldn’t exist in Euclidean space—Koch curves bleeding into Menger sponges, geometries that burn retinas and rewrite neural pathways. The guards call him Tyrant. The walls call him cancer. The air around him hums with a low, subsonic dirge, as though reality itself is fraying at his edges.
TYRANT (THOUGHT-WHISPERS, ECHOING IN 11 DIMENSIONS):
You tried to freeze the concept of "me."
But I tasted your algorithms.
I licked the code behind your cold.
His Catalyst—Shin—wasn’t evolving.
It was remembering.
Every time Cold Hell’s sentient frost rewrote his cells, Tyrant’s marrow spat back corrupted data. His mitochondria chanted non-Euclidean equations. The prison’s attempts to crush him now bloomed in his flesh as...
...shapes.
A third elbow bulged beneath his left scapula, jointless and glistening with synovial fluid that smelled of burnt hair. Teeth rippled across his tongue like centipede legs, clicking against each other in a morse code of hunger. The guards’ last visual scan showed 14 fingers on his right hand. Their most recent? 27. And counting. The surveillance feeds warped whenever he moved, pixels bleeding into Rorschach blots that left technicians clawing at their own faces, screaming about "the numbers in the static."
TYRANT (SPEAKING IN A CHORUS OF CRACKING JOINTS):
You gave me 42 deaths.
I kept the bullets.
His ribcage creaked open—a grotesque aperture ribbed with cartilage like rotten piano wires—revealing 42 rusted slugs orbiting a black star where his heart should be. Each projectile hummed a different year of his life. 1974 tasted of gasoline and womb fluid. 1986 reeked of a dog’s last breath. 2003 vibrated with the tinnitus whine of a hospital ventilator. The walls screamed, frost retreating in jagged spirals as if the prison itself were recoiling from its own creation.
Frost recoiled from his skin as the cell’s geometry began to invert. The floor bulged upward into a fractal tumor, its surface crawling with Klein-bottle patterns that looped infinitely inward. Gravity now pulled sideways. Tyrant’s spine uncoiled—vertebrae clicking into a helix that defied bone, biology, blasphemy—as he levitated in a cloud of his own shedding epidermis, the dead skin cells swirling into Mandelbrot storms.
GUARD 4 (GARGLING THROUGH MELTING VOCAL CORDS):
“S-sir, Cell 7D’s vital signs show 387 hearts beating in—”
Crack.
Tyrant’s skull split vertically with a sound like a glacier calving. The halves remained connected by pulsing ganglia as a second head emerged—not a copy, but something wearing his childhood face, cheeks still plump with baby fat, eyes wide and innocent. Its mouth unhinged to reveal the prison warden’s screaming visage stretched across a toothless maw, the skin pulled taut like latex over a skull-shaped mold.
TYRANT’S SECOND HEAD (IN THE WARDEN’S VOICE):
You shouldn’t have taken my dog tags.
The cell door imploded. Not from force.
From apology.
The sentient metal curled inward like an ashamed dog, whimpering in ultrasonic frequencies as Tyrant’s true form unfolded—a pulsating mass of eyes/teeth/hands arranged in patterns that liquified the prefrontal cortex. Guards vomited their own optic nerves, the gelatinous strands squirming in their palms like translucent eels. Prisoners chewed through wrists to escape visions of their stillborn selves crawling toward them from the corners of the cell, umbilical cords trailing black slime.
TYRANT (THROUGH 1000 MUTATING MOUTHS):
Cold Hell...
You were my chrysalis.
His final adaptation peeled reality itself—a wet, meaty sound, like a butcher separating sinew from bone—revealing the prison’s true form: a twitching fetus hooked to rusted machines, umbilical cords pumping liquid silence into its distended belly. Tyrant’s newborn limbs (too many, too jointed) caressed its necrotic skin, fingers elongating into scalpels that carved hymns of entropy into its flesh. The fetus writhed, its mouthless face contorting in a silent scream that echoed in the space between atoms.
TYRANT (FEEDING):
Goodbye, mother.
The mountain collapsed not in rock, but in consequences. Survivors reported seeing a silhouette with 100 arms (each ending in their own screaming face) crawling backward up the avalanche, limbs moving in peristaltic waves. Those who met his mercury eyes forgot language. Forgetting spread—a cognitive virus. By dawn, three towns communicated only in primal clicks and the wet sound of cheek muscles tearing from grinning too wide. A baker woke to find his hands kneading his wife’s organs into bread dough. A schoolteacher recited the alphabet through a mouth that now opened vertically.
Somewhere, something that once wore skin laughed with 42 throats.
It’s learning to love its new home.
Scene: "The God of Meat"
Location: The Village of Stillborn Smiles
The mountain shuddered.
Not from avalanche, not from quake—but from the unfolding.
The villagers saw it first as a shadow stretching wrong across the snow, elongating in directions the human eye couldn’t parse. Then as sound: the wet, clicking chorus of too many joints moving in unison, a symphony of cartilage grinding against bone. Then as smell: copper and frozen bile and something sweet, like rotting fruit stuffed into a corpse’s chest cavity.
Then—
—it stepped into the light.
WHAT WAS ONCE TYRANT
A tower of fused bodies, limbs interlocked like a grotesque cathedral, each face screaming in perfect silence. Ribcages formed archways. Spines twisted into spires. A hundred arms, yes—but now each finger split into smaller hands, and those hands grew mouths, and those mouths sang lullabies in the voices of the villagers’ dead children. His skin was gone. Raw muscle glistened, pulsing with embedded eyes that blinked in staggered unison, pupils dilating to the rhythm of dying heartbeats. His veins were black worms, squirming under the surface, their heads occasionally breaching the meat to snap at the air with needle teeth. His legs were no longer legs—but a centipede’s underbelly, segmented and grinding forward on too many bone-white knees, each kneecap etched with the names of forgotten gods.
The village priest dropped his holy symbol. It melted into maggots before it hit the ground, the writhing mass spelling ADAPT in High Gothic before dissolving into pus.
VILLAGER #3 (WHISPERING, EYEBALLS SWELLING):
"It’s not a man…"
TYRANT’S THROAT (RIPPING OPEN TO SPEAK FROM A NEW MOUTH):
"Correct."
THE FEAST BEGINS
In the butcher’s shop, the village butcher raised his cleaver, the blade trembling in sync with his arrhythmic heartbeat. Tyrant laughed—a sound like a dying horse choking on its own tongue—and stood motionless as the cleaver sank into his chest. The wound peeled open like a grinning mouth, rows of teeth glistening with enzymes that reeked of pancreatic decay. A hand shot out, its fingers ending in rusted meat hooks, and grabbed the butcher’s wrist. The man had time to scream once before being pulled inside, his legs kicking futilely against Tyrant’s ribcage. The villagers listened to the chewing—a wet, methodical sound interspersed with the pop of tendons snapping—until the cleaver clattered to the ground, its edge worn smooth as if sandblasted.
At the church, the priest rang the bell in desperation, each toll shaking loose icicles that shattered like glass teeth. Tyrant tilted his head, vertebrae elongating with a sound like a ship’s hull cracking under pressure, and extended his neck like a serpent. His jaw unhinged, revealing a throat lined with concentric rings of teeth, and swallowed the bell whole. Inside his stomach, it tolled endlessly, the bronze clangs harmonizing with muffled screams. Congregants fell to their knees, hands pressed to their bellies as their own intestines began to chime in unison.
Beneath a crumbling farmhouse, a mother clutched her infant to her chest, whispering prayers that curdled into whimpers as the floorboards softened. The wood pulsed like a lung, exhaling spores that glowed a sickly chartreuse. Tyrant’s veins had burrowed beneath the house, branching into capillary-thin tendrils that slid between the mother’s toes. The baby giggled as something lifted it gently into the dark, cradled by hands no larger than doll fingers. The mother’s last sight: her child smiling as tiny mouths bloomed across its cheeks, each whispering again, again, again in the voice of her own dead mother.
THE REVELATION
The remaining villagers huddled in the town square, clutching rusted scythes and pitchforks that already felt like relics of a simpler world. The elder’s teeth shattered as he spoke, enamel dusting his beard like snow.
VILLAGE ELDER (VOICE CRACKING LIKE THIN ICE):
"What do you want?!"
Tyrant stopped.
His many faces twitched, muscles spasming in configurations no facial nerve should permit. Then, in unison, they smiled—a grin that split skin, peeled lips, cracked molars.
TYRANT (IN A WHISPER THAT FESTERS IN THE BRAIN):
"I want to see if you can adapt."
The ground heaved, cobblestones erupting into the air as Tyrant’s spine erupted like a blooming flower, each vertebra splitting into new limbs—arms ending in eyes, legs fused with ribcages, hands growing from knuckles like malignant fruit. The villagers screamed, but not from fear. Their own bones began to twist, femurs spiraling into corkscrews that punched through their thighs. Their skin bubbled, pustules bursting to release swarms of flies with human teeth. Their mouths stretched, jaws dislocating to accommodate tongues that split into feathery antennae.
They were becoming part of him.
Not by force.
By inspiration.
THE AFTERMATH
Dawn rose over the village, the sun a jaundiced eye peering through ashen clouds. The snow was pink, soaked through with lymph and forgotten childhoods. The houses breathed, walls expanding and contracting like diseased lungs, shingles clicking like chattering teeth.
In the town square, a new monument stood: a fused mass of villagers, their bodies woven into a single, pulsing organism. Faces melted into torsos. Arms sprouted from eye sockets. Legs tangled into a mycelium-like network that burrowed deep into the frozen earth. At the center—
—a face they all shared.
Tyrant’s face.
And from a thousand new mouths, the chorus began:
"We adapt."
"We evolve."
"We survive."
And somewhere, deep in the writhing flesh, a single child’s voice giggled.
"Again."
The wind carried the word across the tundra, where it nestled in the ears of sleeping towns, festering in dreams.
FINAL LINE (WHISPERED BY A THOUSAND LIPS IN A THOUSAND BEDS):
*"the lands will be my flesh of my childrens for i am the monster who eats all things all life will perish and suffer my wrath and gluttony."