He burned.

  But he did not waver.

  He refused to give in, and somehow, his pool of divine energy responded. Not all at once, and certainly not quickly. But it answered the call, somehow sustaining him through a level of torture no soul could be expected to endure, and certainly not without grievous consequence.

  He had no more voice to scream. No thoughts to distract him. Instead, he had only suffering. If he’d had the capacity to think, he might have wished for the cessation of that divine energy. Maybe then he would know some measure of peace. Perhaps if he succumbed, surrendering to the cleansing fires, he could be reborn as something else. Something better. A sinless creature of pure vengeance and accusation.

  That was what had happened to the creatures all around him. They looked like people, their eyes sewn shut and their eyes replaced by smooth, maggoty white flesh. Zeke didn’t see them. Not anymore. The flames were too hot, the pain too expansive to overcome.

  And yet, he endured.

  Even when everything else was stripped away, that would always remain. A stubborn refusal to quit. An instinctual aversion to surrender sustained him almost as much as the divine energy.

  When the fires ceased, Zeke’s charred remains sagged in exhaustion. He did not die, though. Perhaps he couldn’t – not in this realm. Maybe that was the whole point. Regardless, he could hear his captors’ frustrations mount via the feverish repetition of their baseless accusations.

  It became a contest of wills. Either Zeke’s ability to endure would succumb to the flames, or his captors’ fervor would dissipate. In the end, they fell, one by one, until only a single accuser remained. He was little different than all the rest – cloaked in black, eyeless, and with his mouth sewn shut – but he radiated more power than any of the others.

  Zeke knew he was important. Somewhere deep down, beneath the pain and the refusal to surrender, he recognized the man before him for what he was – an obstacle to be overcome.

  The flames ceased, and the captor’s shoulders slumped.

  That was when Zeke acted. Entirely on instinct, he channeled [Hand of Divinity], and his body reformed. Ash and charred bone flaked away, revealing a pristine, white skeleton. Then, flesh reformed, growing from nothing. Organs, as well. Then, finally, skin.

  With a roar, Zeke broke the chains binding him to the ashen pillar, and he fell to the ash-strewn ground below. It billowed with the impact, and the accuser shouted something unintelligible. The fires returned, but Zeke had already proven their insufficiency, and that was without [Hand of Divinity] coursing through him.

  He embraced [Shifting Sands], and the difference jarred him from his enduring stupor. There was divine energy in it. Likely, if he’d had access to his status, he might see that it had changed its name and description. Aside from a brief moment of acknowledgement, Zeke had no care for those changes. Instead, he intuitively grasped the differences and harnessed them.

  He darted forward, the entire world frozen in time. Ash hung in the air, and flames glowed behind him, mid-flicker. He slammed into the accuser, intending to level him with a single punch.

  That was not what happened.

  Instead, his fist went through the creature’s chest, erupting from his back in a frozen shower of blood. Then, time resumed, and the man imploded. Flesh rushed in, forming a ball, then expanded rapidly, spraying whatever was left across the room. It happened so quickly that, without [Shifting Sands] enhancing his perception, he could scarcely track what had happened.

  In fact, because he was acting mostly on instinct, Zeke didn’t realize what he’d done until a few seconds later, when his mind finally caught up to his body’s reformation. Until he’d set foot in the Circle of Heresy, he’d thought he knew what pain was.

  He hadn’t.

  Not even close. The level of torture he’d just endured – for how long, he had no idea – was well beyond anything he could have imagined, much less lived through. It brought to mind the stereotypical fire-and-brimstone sermons he’d heard the few times he’d attended church in his youth.

  Perhaps there had been some degree of truth to those preachers’ rants.

  He fell to his knees, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Behind him, the pillar still smoked. How it had remained intact, he had no idea. Magic, obviously. Nothing in Hell worked according to the physical laws he’d once taken for granted. In retrospect, it all seemed so surreal, but having lived through it – having felt it – he knew precisely how real it all had been.

  Finally, he pushed himself to his feet.

  Once again, his clothes were gone. He couldn’t be bothered to care, though. Naked and with his body smeared with ash, he climbed from the pit and found his way to the door. As he did so, he finally took a moment to examine the interior of the building. It resembled a church, though there were elements of pyre-like design of the exterior. Far above, a dense flame danced like the world’s most evil campfire.

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  At first, Zeke had difficulty yanking his eyes away, largely because he felt the divine energy within those flames. They certainly weren’t natural. In fact, the more he looked, the more they offended him.

  Before he knew what he was doing, Zeke found himself climbing the wall. It was simple enough to do so, and it wasn’t long before he hung from the ceiling, only a few feet away from that hungry flame.

  Without thinking, he reached out, thrusting his hand into the fire. Predictably, he was burned. His entire hand turned to ash after only a second. Yet, after what he’d just endured, Zeke barely paid it any mind. Divine energy fueled [Hand of Divinity], reforming his limb as quickly as it was destroyed.

  Then, he felt something solid.

  He wrapped his fingers around it and pulled, but it wouldn’t move. No matter how hard he yanked on it, it refused to dislodge. So, he changed tactics, squeezing instead of pulling.

  At first, nothing happened. Zeke leveraged every ounce of strength he could muster in service of his chosen task, and still, he was unsuccessful. He even harnessed the very concept of strength, but the crystal continued to frustrate him. It was as immovable as reality itself.

  But he refused to give up.

  The flame needed to be doused. The world practically demanded it, and Zeke had taken that quest to heart. He would not move until the fire was no more. That meant the crystal, which he suspected was the source, needed to be destroyed.

  For long hours, he struggled against it until, finally, he stumbled upon an idea. It was divine in nature. He could feel that much. So, what would happen if he used his own divine energy to destroy it?

  Without any other ideas, he committed to that plan. Controlling his own divine energy was nothing new, but forcing it free of his body was something else altogether. It scorched its way through him, emerging from his fingers in an explosion of corrosive energy that far exceeded whatever damage the fire could author.

  Following close on its heels was the healing provided by [Hand of Divinity], reforming his hand and maintaining the conduit through which the divine energy could travel. It slammed into the crystal like a silent hammer, and Zeke could feel the surface spiderweb with a million miniscule cracks.

  But the crystal did not break.

  Neither did the flow of divine energy cease. For long moments, the two forces warred. Divinity versus divinity, with Zeke stuck between them. He did not fare well, but after so long, he’d grown accustomed to the agonizing pain of having his body destroyed and reformed.

  That wasn’t to say that it was pleasant. Little about Zeke’s life was. Once, he’d dreamed of a day he could bask in his power and truly experience the wonder of a world laid bare. But he’d long since realized that the universe in which he’d been reborn was not that sort of place.

  There was no wonder. Not for him. Not in Hell, certainly, and likely never again.

  He’d made amends with that reality. He would suffer to reach his goals, to emerge victorious. To be the best. The strongest. The most powerful. In the back of his mind, there were other considerations – like his companions’ well-being – but at the end of the day, it all fed into his need to reach his potential.

  A simple aim, and yet, it encompassed so much that it could never be regarded as such.

  All that flitted through Zeke’s mind as he channeled more and more divine energy into that crystal. The flames flickered, and he realized he was screaming. It didn’t matter. He pushed harder. He dragged more and more divine energy out of his caged core and pushed it through his repeatedly ravaged hand. Power raged through him, and with every passing second, the crystal’s integrity weakened. The cracks along its surface widened, proliferating at a rapid pace until, at last, it shattered.

  For a second, Zeke felt nothing.

  He no longer existed.

  The resultant explosion had destroyed him entirely. But then, the divine energy that was his core spun back into being, reweaving his body out of nothing. For a few minutes, he floated in mid-air, held aloft by nothing but his will to survive, before, at last, his body reformed.

  He fell, then.

  After hitting the ash-strewn floor with a cloud of dust, he lay there, his mind reeling from what he’d just done. However, he didn’t have time to contemplate his actions. Instead, he had no choice but to focus on the flames that had begun to envelop the building. They were unlike the ones he’d endured for so long. Instead, they were blue in color, and they raged with the power of divine energy.

  Instinctively, he knew that if he let himself succumb to those fires, he would cease to exist.

  With stiff muscles, he forced himself to his feet. He only wavered for a few seconds before staggering toward the door. An accuser barred his way, but Zeke’s one-track mind had thrown itself fully behind the concept of escape. And this creature – as pitiful as it was – could not stop him. He barreled through the thing, his momentum enough to crush bones and rend flesh.

  But there were more crowding the exit.

  With the heat of divine fire billowing in his wake, Zeke embraced [Shifting Sands] – or whatever it was called now – and stepped forward. His footsteps rattled the world like miniature earthquakes, and when he rammed into the clump of accusers, they exploded into a cumulative shower of gore.

  Zeke ignored them.

  In the back of his mind, he catalogued the changes to his ability. He no longer needed to dip into the ground, and what had once been a simple change in his perception of time was now something far different. It was as if he’d infused his every footstep with divine energy, and because of that, he could not be stopped.

  Zeke was used to being a juggernaut, but this was different. It was like he’d briefly channeled the power of a god – a true deity, and not the pretenders of the Ethereal Realm – and the creatures standing before him simply couldn’t endure his touch.

  It only lasted a few subjective seconds, but that was enough to get him well clear of building. Looking back, he saw that the structure – which had been built to mimic the look of a potential pyre – had become a furnace of divine flames. If any accusers remained within, they lacked the ability to even scream in pain.

  Zeke regretted that.

  If anyone deserved to have their deaths stretch out a bit, it was them – especially after what they’d put him through.

  Yet, Zeke knew they’d never had a choice. He’d felt it himself, the pending transformation. If he’d succumbed, he would have become one of them, preying on any newcomers as much as he targeted his fellows.

  For that was the point of the Circle of Heresy. It wasn’t about defying gods. It was about the accusations. The lies. Neighbor turning on neighbor.

  It was disgusting.

  But as had been the case with every other Circle of Hell, Zeke had no choice but to carve a path through it all. Thankfully, he had a new tool at his disposal. Hopefully, he could use it to do what needed to be done.

  Looking around, he saw hundreds more pyre-like pyramids, and he knew his task. He stepped toward one, still bathed in the heat from the divine fire behind him, and prepared to repeat his actions.