Hell does not burn. It laughs. Not the laughter of wit or cruelty sharpened by intent, but a hollow sound that erupts without cause, without rhythm, without memory. It rises from throats that no longer remember why they once spoke, from mouths that grin because they have forgotten every other expression. In this place, laughter is not an emotion; it is a reflex, as meaningless as the twitch of a severed nerve. The first thing Adrian Valor notices is the absence of reason. The second is the blood. It coats the ground in slick, dark sheets, splashed across roots and bark, soaking into soil that never grows anything except violence. A forest stretches endlessly in every direction-trees twisted, blackened, and hollow, their branches clawing at the sky like broken fingers. Between them move figures that look almost human. Almost. They wear familiar shapes-arms, legs, faces-but none of the restraint that once made those shapes recognizable as people. They slash at one another with anything they can grasp: blades, stones, bare hands hardened by repetition. There is no anger in their movements, no hatred, no desperation. Only enthusiasm. Only play. This is the game. They leap from behind trees, tear into one another with ecstatic shrieks, carve bodies apart in sprays of red. When a soul falls-split open, crushed, undone-it does not die. It disappears. No scream. No aftermath. One moment a body exists; the next, it is nothing at all, as if it had never been imagined. The survivors burst into laughter, sharp and uncoordinated, already searching for the next participant. There are no rules. No reward. No end. Time has no posture here. It neither advances nor retreats. It simply coils around the madness and watches. Adrian and Mara do not belong here. They face the chaos, scarred, unclaimed. The slaughter bleeds Adrian only to heal slowly. Souls rush noticing them, blades swing wide without intent, laughter spills into the air and lands on them. Adrian remembers order. Cause and effect. Before and after. Mara remembers something softer-meaning. The fragile idea that actions should point somewhere, that pain should lead to learning, that laughter should answer joy. Here, nothing answers anything. Above them, there is no sky-only a dim, pulsing void, like a bruise that never fades. Beneath their feet, the ground feels alive, warm with old violence. Somewhere in the distance, the laughter swells, collapses, and rises again, an endless chorus of minds freed from thought. This is Hell's true punishment: not suffering, but the erasure of reason itself. And yet Adrian and Mara still think. Still observe. Still feel the quiet terror of being sane in a place where sanity has no meaning-and may be the most dangerous condition of all. Because Hell does not tolerate witnesses. It only laughs.