A violent rush of wind slammed into Azael's face. His eyes snapped open and the world around him tilted.
He was falling.
"WHAAAT—!"
The scream tore out of his throat but was instantly shredded by the rushing air. Below him stretched a churning ocean, its surface a sickly gray, thick and murky like polluted sludge. Even from high above, the sight made his stomach twist with disgust.
Then with impact azael crashed into the water with a heavy splash. The world swallowed him whole.
The ocean's cold wasn't normal, it pierced past his skin, sinking into his bones like needles of ice. Not as brutal as the frost of Satan's Treachery, but cold enough to steal the air from his lungs.
Underwater, his vision blurred in the dim gloom. Strange, twisted silhouettes drifted around him. When they came closer, his eyes widened. Fish. Hundreds of them gnawing on a piece of human skin, drifting like soaked parchment.
Azael kicked upward immediately.
Breaking through the surface, he gasped desperately for air, coughing out bitter mouthfuls of the gray water. The storm howled around him, waves rolling like mountains trying to swallow him whole. Lightning cracked in the distance, illuminating nothing but endless, raging sea.
He spun in a slow circle. No land. No sky color. No horizon. Just water… and chaos.
His clothes had changed, now a ragged, soaked gray tunic clung to him like a dead weight. Then he saw it.
A massive red sun hanging low over the horizon, its light bleeding across the water like spilled blood. The sea rippled under it in shimmering crimson reflections, both beautiful and deeply wrong. "Woww... its beautiful, but kinda scary too, I wonder what it is".
"What you're looking at right now is the Crimson Sun," Satan's voice echoed inside his head. Azael spit out water. "Crimson… sun?" he muttered, accidentally swallowing more as a wave slapped him across the face.
"No time to explain. You need to kill at least a Hellhound creature in this floor to get their invocation." Another wave crashed into him, dragging him several meters before he managed to resurface.
"Okay—okay—" He coughed hard, trying not to choke. "Then how am I supposed to find one?!"
"Everything here is an underwater creature. So naturally, it's in the water." Azael blinked. "…You want me to go underwater? I can't breathe down th—OW!" Something sharp clamped onto his leg.
He plunged his hand into the water and yanked the attacker up. A fish dangled from his fingers. The fish has a black-skinned with a single red eye, only two teeth but both long and needle-sharp, like tiny vampire fangs. Blood still dripped from them.
"You ugly little—"
He squeezed it hard. With no limbs, it could only thrash violently, tail whipping against his arm until finally it went limp. Its single eye glazed over.
A small notification flickered in front of him:
[ Congratulations, you have killed an Imp Creature: Vampire Fish ]
[ Reward: 10 Soul Energy ]
Azael snorted breathlessly. "Yeah… it does look like a vampire." He tossed it back into the sea. "I killed that thing, but it only gave me ten soul energy. And nothing else," he said.
Satan let out an irritated sigh in his mind. "This is why I said to kill a Hellhound creature. Imps aren't worth the effort. They're mindless scavengers."
"So… there's a ranking to these creatures or something?" Azael asked. "Yes. I'll explain when you're not busy drowning."
Azael didn't argue. The waves kept dragging him under, and fear tightened in his chest with every crack of thunder overhead. There was no land. No floating debris. Nothing he could hold on to.
He was trapped in an endless storm—
beneath a bleeding sun,
in a sea that wanted to devour him.
Azael felt the water quiver beneath him, subtle at first, then trembling hard enough to rattle his bones. He kicked his legs desperately just to stay a float. "What… is this?" he managed, breath shaky as he glanced toward Satan.
Satan didn't answer right away. His tone dropped instead.
"…Oh no. Brace yourself."
But before Azael could question him, the water erupted with a deep, monstrous rumble. It rolled through the ocean like thunder trapped under the waves.
Fish exploded out of the surface all around him—silver bodies flapping frantically before vanishing back into the depths, as if fleeing from something far worse than the open air.
Azael's stomach twisted. "That's… not normal." A shadow moved beneath the water, long and bloated.
Then the ocean split.
A massive whale-like creature burst upward, its entire body coated in dark green skin overgrown with mold, barnacles, and long strands of seaweed that hung off it like rotting curtains. It looked ancient, something that had been sleeping for centuries, dragged awake by hunger alone.
The impact of its rise sent out a violent shockwave. The sea reared up, tossing Azael under before he could inhale. Saltwater shoved into his lungs and panic clawed at his chest.
He fought his way back to the surface, gasping just in time to see the creature arc downward, crashing into the water again.
"Oh shi—"
The sea rose all at once behind him. A wall of water, no, a tsunami, slammed into him with brutal force. Azael's world spun. His head cracked against something unseen. Darkness flickered at the edges of his vision.
He didn't know which way was up.
But then there's movement. A flicker of red. A swarm of razor-toothed vampire fish darted straight toward him.
Azael threw his arms over his face. "Seriously—?!" But none of them touched him. They shot past, ignoring him entirely.
"What the hell…"
Azael looked up and froze. A shape. A shadow. Growing larger. Closer. It's the whale.
Its mouth stretched open, so wide Azael felt tiny, like a raindrop swallowed by a storm. Rows of cracked baleen and jagged debris framed its maw.
He tried swimming. He really did. But the current dragged him backward like invisible hands pulling him in.
"No—NO!"
The whale swallowed him whole. His scream vanished into the wet dark.
---
Azael tumbled down a slick, organic tunnel. The walls were soft, pulsing, and covered in layers of flesh that stuck to his clothes as he slid. Bones of creatures he didn't recognize jutted out like broken spikes, fish spines, birdlike ribs, something that looked disturbingly human.
Water poured down with him until he finally hit the bottom.
The floor was… Sticky. Wet. Warm.
Azael's hands sank into a slimy film that clung between his fingers like mucus.
He gagged instantly.
"Ugh—are you kidding me—?! Did I seriously get eaten by an actual whale?" He stood up, shaking slime off his tunic, but it smeared instead of falling. A heavy, corpse-like stench hit him a second later, rotting and sour enough to make his eyes water.
He slapped a hand over his nose. "Oh god, it smells like death in here."
Satan's voice echoed beside him, far too amused for the situation.
"Well, this could be a good thing for you." Azael glared into the fleshy darkness. "Good thing? I'm literally covered in… whatever this is" he flicked his fingers, watching thick chunks slide off, "and the smell is trying to kill me."
Satan chuckled. "Hey, it beats drowning for eternity."
Azael couldn't argue with that. He sighed, defeated, and leaned back against the squishy wall which pulsed faintly under him, like it had its own heartbeat.
"…Gross," he muttered, but he stayed there anyway, letting exhaustion pull at him.
His thoughts drifted, memories blurring together, family, questions, everything he still didn't know.
"Family, huh?"
Satan's voice softened strangely, almost calm. Azael's eyes snapped open. "Wait how do you know what I'm thinking?"
"For some reason, I got dragged with you," Satan replied. "Your memories… they played out for me too." Azael's face flushed with embarrassment. "So you saw everything? Great. That's… amazing."
"That's nothing to be embarrassed over, mortal," Satan said, almost gentle. "Every human carries their own burdens." The sincerity in his tone caught Azael off guard. He let out a quiet laugh. "Wow. Didn't expect that from the literal Satan."
Satan didn't reply. Which made it kinda akward between the two. The silence in the whale's stomach felt huge.