A violent chorus screeched out and filled the empty void Below, damned souls crawling over each other and digging their clawless paws into the frail stone steps that led up to their god. They hovered in the air, suspended, like a swarm of useless flies above a pool; the pool being an endless abyss underneath their deformed limbs. Akela jerked back as a shadowy corpse was flung over the stair he very nearly died on, a deathly shriek being the creature's final noise as it writhed silently against the cold stone, choking up the dust its fall had flung into the air. The lion lowered his ears uncomfortably, pitying the sight. Its eyes fluttered as he crept past the fading dead, ghostly eyes peering emptily into a world of dust and sin. 'Embrace it, you deserve no more.' Akela muttered firmly, swallowing a lump in his throat as he spoke. It felt so cruel to speak that way, even if what he said it to was so long dead it gripped uselessly onto its last scraps of sanity. The way the creature's eyes seemed to widen as it moved to look at him was a look of fear, scaled body shuddering like a leaf in the wind as it fought to clutch at the little life it had. Father had told him it was what he must say, as his followers here deserved no more than the second fate that befell them. He remembered vividly the burning presence of the ancient god, piled in the centre of the Ruined like a wounded mutt waiting for the inevitable. Apakinti's voice was quiet but firm, false sincerity dripping from his three gaping mouths chained shut by godly binds. 'Pay them no attention. They are but grains of sand in what we shall be. They will embrace the chance to leave my prison, into another. They deserve nothing more.' His scales gleamed when he spoke, drawing the young lion's attention, tails wrapped tightly around Akela's crouched form, the same way they had many times the god had spoken to him in dreams.

And now again. Akela watched as the horrified trembling of the creature came to a sudden stop, its bright eyes going eerily dim as it dissipated and left nothing but dust in its place. He reminded himself they were already dead; their time had passed long ago. It was Apakinti keeping them here, alive, and far away from the Garden they longed for. The scrawny lion avoided the remains, murmuring a hushed prayer for the flaking bits of dust that flicked from the stone, back into the swirling mass of creatures just like it who would soon meet the same fate.

He leapt nimbly onto the plated stone, relieved to find solid ground underneath his paws that didn't tremble or collapse when stepped upon. Etched into the rock were runes scraped by claws, untouched by moss or nature as there was no such here. His amber eyes scanned the shapes out of habit, they still hadn't changed from when he last came here. They likely meant something long ago; now they were merely a reminder of where he was. No, who he was. Akela's whiskers twitched as he pulled his form into a more formal sit, the lion's tail curling around his paws as he kept murmuring the same phrase over and over, 'He won't hurt me.'

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