I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 73: Saint Hilarius Hospital (5)

"Wh... why did they run?" Eva asked, looking back in shock and disbelief.

I didn’t answer her.

Because my primal senses, and the ghoul blood in my veins, were screaming a cosmic-level warning—an alarm that made the hair stand on end.

The air in the corridor... changed.

The biting cold and the rotten dampness that had been suffocating us... vanished suddenly, as if they had evaporated.

And in their place, the air began to heat up.

Heating up at a terrifying, illogical speed.

The sickly green light in the corridor began to flicker wildly, then went out as the lamps exploded.

In its place, another light began to flood the area.

An orange, reddish, furious light, crawling from the severed side of the corridor.

And from the end of that broken corridor, on the other side of the gap... we began to hear the sound.

Tshhhk... kraaaaaaak... tshhhk...

The sound of chains.

But they weren’t ordinary rusty chains like those that held the cages.

It was an incredibly heavy sound, as if tons of pure steel were being dragged across the metal floor.

And with every pull of the chain, there came a horrifying "hissss," like the sound of flesh being slowly roasted over live embers.

The temperature rose insanely.

Hot sweat began to pour from my forehead, washing the blood off my face.

The metal beneath our feet heated to the point that it nearly burned through the soles of our tactical boots and melted them.

"Kael..." Eva whispered, her eyes widening with indescribable terror as she stared at the other side of the gap.

And from within the glowing darkness... it appeared.

It was not a flayed abomination.

It was a nightmare descended from the deepest circles of hell to guard this purgatory.

The entity—or the monster known in highly classified intelligence files as "The Executioner"—appeared at the far end, standing at the edge of the gap.

It was enormous.

About four meters tall.

Its build was not human; it wore extremely heavy armor, fused and melted directly into its charred black flesh.

The helmet covering its head was a pyramid-shaped iron cage, with no eye holes—only filthy gaps from which a hellish red light emanated, like a volcano on the verge of eruption.

But the true horror that froze the blood in our veins was not its size or its armor.

It was its weapons.

In each of its massive, flayed hands, it held a thick steel chain, over twenty meters long.

These chains were not just metal used for striking. They were "burning."

Fully ablaze chains, pulsing with searing orange and yellow fire, as if they had just been pulled from the heart of a dying star.

The chains dripped molten lava that melted the metal grating it dragged across, leaving behind a trail of inextinguishable fire!

This is S- Rank. The monster of purgatory.

The guardian of tortured souls. The Executioner.

"This... this is impossible..." Eva screamed, retreating backward onto her knees, the heat lashing her face and burning the tips of her black hair.

"We can’t kill this thing! We have no weapons! We have no spells! We’re dead, Kael! Deaaad!"

I wasn’t listening to her.

My mind was in a state of complete biological and psychological shock.

Fire.

The color of fire. The suffocating heat. The smell.

The smell of roasted human flesh.

The Executioner slowly raised one of its burning chains, as if displaying its power.

The air around it rippled from the sheer heat until its image became distorted.

Black smoke billowed from the pyramid-shaped iron cage on its head, as if it were pinpointing our location through the heat radiating from our trembling bodies.

Then...

I felt a sting.

An extremely hot, piercing, painful sting—like a needle of pure embers driven into my right cheek!

I slowly raised my hand to touch my bare cheek, devoid of the Joker mask I had always hidden behind.

It was a spark... just a very small spark that flew from the burning chain, crossed the ten-meter gap, and touched my face, searing it.

The burning sting.

The smell of scorched flesh brushing my nose.

The orange glow illuminating the darkness and dyeing the world in the color of death.

Morphend... Victor...

The dead names echoed in my mind—not as a distant memory, but as a reality happening now.

I saw my father, "Morphend," his charred body before me, embracing me while his blood boiled. I saw my brother, "Victor," melting in blue and orange flames as he screamed my name.

I took a step back.

My crimson eyes, which moments ago had burned with the cold of a demonic killer, were now filled with tears of absolute, childlike, helpless terror. I trembled like a five-year-old child watching his parents burn again.

The world around me vanished. The hanging cages, the collapsed Eva, the metal corridor... all of it disappeared from my perception. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

I saw nothing but fire.

The great, overwhelming fire, preparing to devour me and complete what it had started in the orphanage.

The Executioner let out a deafening metallic roar and raised both hands together, swinging the burning chains in a massive circular motion that created a storm of sparks.

Then... it brought them down!

Fwooooooosh! BOOOOOOOOM!

It was not merely a physical strike of chains shattering metal.

The moment the burning chains struck the edge of the broken walkway on our side, the compressed fire-ether within them exploded with unimaginable pressure!

A magnificent, terrifying, indescribable scene—as if the Day of Judgment had descended into the depths of Elysium.

A complete tsunami of colossal, savage, hellish fire rose into the air like a beast, crossing the entire gap and surging toward us through the narrow corridor!

A wave of pure fire, five meters high and as wide as the corridor, devouring oxygen, melting rusted iron until it dripped like candles, and illuminating the dark sky of purgatory with the glow of the final apocalypse, crawling toward me to swallow me alive!

I stood there, my bare face drenched in tears, my crimson eyes staring at the approaching hell, completely unable to move, unable to think, unable to summon the blade, as the great wave of fire prepared to turn me into ashes beside the ghosts of my family.