In a colosseum filled with orcs, goblins, and humans, a heavy, suffocating silence fell over the stands. Thousands of eyes were locked onto the center of the sand, but only one sound had the right to be heard in that arena of death.
"Hahaha... Mom."
As Keirum looked up toward the sky, the sun finally hit his face, and the crowd gasped. His eyes were not black anymore; they were soaked in deep, thick red. His smile was a jagged line of crimson that seemed to split his face in half. His entire body was a mask of gore. Blood dripped from his chin, his hair, and his fingertips, hitting the dust in heavy droplets—yet none of it was his own.
He had killed her. He had slaughtered his own mother. He had stabbed her from head to toe, over and over, until the woman who gave him life was nothing but a heap of ruined flesh.
He laughed, a dry, rattling sound that echoed off the stone walls. "I did it. I finally saved someone. I did it... I did it! Can't you see?!"
Grip. Grip.
His hands tightened around the bone-shard weapon, the sound of his leather grip squeezing against the blood-slicked handle echoing in the silence. The only other sound was the rhythmic splash of his tears hitting the dirt. He was still clutching the weapon, still stabbing at the empty air above her—calling out to the woman he was unmaking.
"Monster... he's a fucking monster! He butchered her without mercy!" a young girl shouted from the stands, her voice cracking as she clutched the rusted bars of her own section.
To her, the woman lying in the dirt had been a saint. This girl had been an orphan her whole life, waiting to die in misery, parched and forgotten like waves hitting a dry, dead shore. No one had adopted her. No one had given her warmth. Then, just when she thought her life was as cursed as it could get, she had woken up in this hell. She had seen things no child should see. So much killing... so much blood. She wouldn't have stayed sane in this colosseum if it wasn't for her.
She was beautiful. She had guided the prisoners, kept them together, and shared her meager scraps of food. She saved them.
To watch every stab enter that beautiful body—to see her struggle to even scream while blood filled her throat—was unbearable. The girl's voice was raw as she wailed, "You monster! How could you! How could you do this to her!"
Keirum stopped. He locked eyes with the girl. There was an infinite emptiness in his gaze, but behind the void, he looked... happy. Truly, terrifyingly happy.
"Butcher?" Keirum whispered, his head tilting at an unnatural angle. "Mom... no... no, I didn't butcher her. I saved her. I saved Mom, hahaha!"
"No!" the girl sobbed, shaking the bars.
"Yes! I did! I saved you, right Mom?" he screamed at the corpse, leaning down until his face was inches from the gore. "You wanted this! You made me do this, Mom! You wanted to be saved from this place! Look, Mom, I'm doing it with a smile, just like you taught me! I'm smiling for you!"
It hurt... a voice seemed to hiss in the wind.
"It hurt? You hurt me! You killed me! You kill, you kill, you killed me first!" Keirum screamed back at the ghost in his head. "No... no, I saved you. I had to."
The crowd stood in a deathly, paralyzed trance, watching a killer argue with a silent body. "He's crazy," someone muttered. "How could a son do this to someone he called mother?"
Keirum let out a final, agonizing yell that tore through his throat. "Mom, I saved you from it all! From the goblins eating you alive! From having to watch me suffer without a smile! I gave you your last moments... and I gave them to you while I was smiling! Mom! Answer me!"
"Mo... mo... mo... Momomomomom!"
He began to chant the name like a dark god, over and over. The crowd looked at his reddish-black hair—stained by the spray of her life—and felt a cold, primitive fear settle in their bones. They all thought the same thing: Will we become maniacs just like him? Is this what this place does to us?
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Back in the cage, Keirum sat in total, oppressive darkness. His eyes were vacant, unable to tell the difference between a dream and the dirt beneath him. His mind was in shards, like a mirror smashed by a hammer. There was food near the bars—scraps of mystery meat—but he didn't even glance at it. He knew it wasn't his. He knew it belonged to the people next to him.
He had been trained like a dog. If he barked, he was beaten. If he didn't sit when the orcs walked by, he was beaten. If he wasn't in his cage like a beast, he would be beaten until he couldn't breathe.
It was an endless cycle of enslavement—enslaved by goblins, enslaved by orcs, and even enslaved by the humans he shared a kinship with. Humans who would steal his bread the moment he closed his eyes.
As he closed his eyes for the second time in this hellhole, trying to find sleep, his second dream began.
He stood back in the colosseum, but he was blind. His eyes remained shut, sealed by some unseen force. He could only hear.
Slic. The sound of a blade entering meat.
"Stop, stop... we can talk about this."
"Mom, it's okay. I will save you."
I've heard that before, Keirum thought in the dream. Of course. I was the one who said it.
Then, other voices erupted in his ears like a sonic wave, growing louder and louder until his brain felt like it was vibrating.
"Can you see, Mom? I'm smiling!"
"Disappointment."
"Monster!"
"Why aren't you helping me?"
"I don't wanna be here, Mom!"
"Your son is going to die, Mom!"
"Do you know where my sister is?"
The voices spiraled, getting faster and faster. They weren't coming from outside; they were right inside his brain. "Stop! Stop! I'm sorry! I couldn't save you!, you were right " he screamed into the darkness.
He begged just as he had to the old man when he first woke up in the cage. He cried just as he had when he saw his mother being eaten. He screamed just as he had when he saw the first life taken in front of his eyes. His will crumbled, snapping just like the iron bars the orcs bent so easily.
"Should I just jump?"
Suddenly, he could see again. He stood before a pit so dark that even the light of a thousand suns could never conquer it.
"Should I just jump?" he asked himself, his voice perfectly in sync with the memory. "Would it be better to join my dead family?"
He took a step forward. "I should just kill myself."
He crossed the point of no return. He started to fall.
Thump. Boom.
The fall was not a quick mercy. It was a slow, agonizing descent through a nightmare. He hit sharp, jagged rocks that jutted from the walls like knives. Thump. A bone collided with a ledge, snapping with a sound like a dry branch.
His hands, feet, and head smashed against the cavern walls as his speed increased. But for some reason, he didn't die. He healed.
His bones knit back together while he was still in the air, only to be shattered again on the next ledge. His fingers, ripped away by the jagged stone, regrew in seconds so he could feel the pain of them being torn off again. His eyes, popped by the pressure, reformed so he could witness the rocks rushing toward his face.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Hands, feet, head. Hands, feet, head. Endless pain began to sew itself into his very being. Over and over and over again. He felt his legs break into a thousand pieces, only to be rebuilt from nothing while he screamed. He felt his organs rupture and reform.
He didn't know how long it lasted. Seconds? Years? He fell for so, so long.
He didn't hit the bottom, but he knew he had stopped.
Keirum couldn't even laugh. He lay there in the faint, dying light of the abyss, his chest heaving. He looked at his body, and his heart sank. It was perfect. Not a single scar was left. There was no mark of the thousand deaths he had just died.
He couldn't laugh. All he could do was stare at his own skin.
I went through all that suffering, he thought to himself, his mind fracturing. All of it, over and over. It was only mere minutes, but it felt like years. Thump. His knees hit the ground as he tried to stand, but his spirit was too heavy. His body had broken so many times. It had hurt so many times. Even now, in the silence, he could still feel it—the phantom sensation of bones snapping and flesh rending. He could still feel the raw, primal urge to kill himself just to make the falling stop.
He remembered the sight of his own fingers hanging onto the bone by a mere sliver of skin, only for the flesh to crawl back and heal again. He remembered the pressure in his skull before his eyes popped from the sheer speed of the descent. His legs had been broken and scraped against the jagged walls thousands of times, leaving trails of blood that should have marked his path.
But now... looking at his body, there were no scars. Nothing at all. It was perfect. Not one single blemish remained to prove he had suffered.
"I can't even remind myself of the torment I faced," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Haha... the scars didn't even want to follow me."
"Why did this happen to me?"
His hands moved toward his face, his fingernails digging into his cheeks as if he wanted to claw the "perfection" away. He didn't know anything. He didn't have answers. Only one thing popped into his mind—one haunting phrase that echoed in the dark:
A body... a body that will never scar.
Author's Note:
this is pretty long you can skip it if you want to
First off, a massive thank you to everyone reading Laughter of the Damned. We just passed the New Book Vetting stage and have officially entered Editorial Evaluation! This means the eyes of the editors are on us, and your support matters more now than ever.
If you enjoyed the visceral chaos of Keirum's "Infinite Fall," please consider supporting the story with Power Stones. Now that we've passed vetting, these stones are the primary way to help us climb the rankings and show the editors that this brand of psychological horror has a home here.
As for Keirum... you've seen the "perfection" of his body, but his mind is a different story. Chapter 9 was just the beginning of his descent. How does a boy stay sane when he is denied the mercy of a scar? How does he keep his humanity when his own flesh refuses to let him die?
The "Saving" of his mother was the spark; the "Perfect Body" is the fuel. Stay tuned as we dive deeper into the madness. The colosseum hasn't finished with him yet, and Keirum hasn't finished smiling.
Vote with your Power Stones if you want to see just how far this "unscarred" monster can go! As we close out this chapter, I have to ask you all a question that's been haunting me while writing: Is Keirum actually in the wrong?
He butchered his mother in front of a horrified crowd, but in his broken mind, he was "saving" her from a fate far worse. He sees himself as a hero of mercy, while the world sees a blood-stained maniac. Now, he's faced with a "perfect" body that refuses to let him die, effectively trapping him in his own trauma.