The rain stopped, but the jungle continued to bleed droplets onto the blood-muddled clay. Harten was panting, his voice emerging as a rasp from a bottomless well. He spat out dark blood and looked at the carcasses of the lion and the buffalo. "Ah... damn it, it doesn't matter!" he whispered with a manic edge, battling unconsciousness. "I kept my word... I killed everyone who stood in my way... and the whole world is next!"
He began the bitter journey of crawling toward the cave, dragging his shattered limbs like a wounded animal that refuses to surrender. He tried to stand, leaning on a broken branch; he fell once, twice, three times... until the darkness swallowed him. When he awoke, he found his limbs bound by primitive splints and ropes. He screamed with every ounce of strength: "Joe! Did you do this? Are you here?!" But silence was his only reply, and he erupted in fury: "Damn you! I don't need your help, you old bastard! I'll come out of here stronger than you can imagine... I'll tear lions apart with my bare hands!"
Directly above the cave's roof, Joe stood in his imposing shadow, wearing that cryptic smile that hid horrors behind it. He held an axe dripping with fresh blood, and behind him lay an entire pride of slaughtered lions.
It became clear now: everything Harten had endured was no coincidence. Joe was the one who lured the dogs with blood; he was the one who blocked the escape routes with fallen trees; he was the one who set the "illusionary rope" and drove the wounded buffalo to Harten's doom. Joe wasn't just a survivor... he was the "Architect" crafting a human beast from the womb of suffering.
Hours, days, and months passed... until three and a half years had vanished at the base of that forgotten cliff. Inside the cave, no trace of the child "Ahmed" remained. The place was littered with the bones of massive prey, and in a dark corner, He emerged.
A man (or what resembled a man) whose body was a map of scars, his hair long and thick, wearing nothing but the pelt of the very lion that had once tried to kill him. The scar stretching across his face had become his personal medal of honor. Innocence had vanished, and half of his emotions had been erased, replaced by a lethal coldness and a gaze that could pierce stone. Harten had grown taller, more massive, and far more silent... Today was the day of departure.
Harten stood atop the highest tree with a litheness possessed only by leopards, looking toward the top of the cliff for the first time in years. "Damn it... it seems the time for reckoning with old man Joe has arrived." In the blink of an eye, he glimpsed Joe standing at the edge waiting for him, as if he had never left his post.
Joe approached, looking at the new version of Harten, and said with a terrifying solemnity: "From the Womb of Suffering?"
Harten was puzzled by the phrase, so Joe continued in a tone of dark pride: "That is the name of the Fourth Level of the ways of fear... the level reached only by those who have died and returned fr.om hell."