Down and down Silas went with his hand tracing the wall, the only anchor to guide him.

When he reached the bottom, his eyes were almost fully adjusted. Before him, another long hall led him forward into the dark towards another row of half a dozen cells.

While where he had been kept on the first floor looked like a hospital, the basement looked like a zoo exhibition of insanity. Each cell was open to full view by giant pieces of glass. What remained different here than any prison, hospital or zoo was that that it was tortured madness on display.

Silas' slippered feet shuffled forward, the first inmates on his left and right came into view. A woman was on his right, blindfolded with her arms and legs restrained to the floor beneath her, while her neck had been locked with a collar and chain. hung from the ceiling to keep her standing erect. Wires had been attached to a band around her head and chest, as a piece of wood remained tightly clamped between her jaws. 

There was a man on his left, his palms nailed to two standing planks of wood, keeping him standing. A leather mask covered his face. Blood had pooled from his hands to the ground where it was forming a small stream that carved its way to a grate in the floor. 

The third prisoner, another blindfolded man. He was lying strapped to a table with medical instruments on display at his side. Ready for surgery.

All were silent and it was the silence that struck Silas as so unnerving. They weren't dead, yet they didn't move or  make any sound whatsoever.

Silas turned to look at his surroundings.

In the dark basement, as he looked the length of that dungeon's long hall, past the other cells, it was what lay directly forward at the very end of the hall that ensnared his attention. 

The dungeon's greatest display, a tank, the size of the entire end wall and it was filled with water.

An aquarium of horrors. Floating at the very center of a bare tank with chains anchored into its concrete floor was Sky. 

There had never been any doubt in Silas' mind that his truth was real yet when he saw her there, his thoughts froze. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Forward to the end of the hall of madness, Silas ignored the rest of the cells filled with those special few, chosen to live in a suspended existence of torture. 

The Youth had amassed his very own collection of souls to play with. To dissect and torment. 

Silas pressed himself against the glass.

Sky eyes were rolled back into her head, her body convulsing, sometimes thrashing against her bonds as she floated in the tank's water. Her mouth gaped wide in a silent scream. The chains were there, but attached directly into the floor. She was drowning, yet unable to die because she was already dead. Forced to remain in the throes of death, Sky was left suspended in the water. She had been suffering that terrible sentence since Silas had heard her scream through his cell door. 

Every failed attempt by Silas to get to her only meant even longer she had to endure her suffering in the water.

"No," Silas murmured, unable to fully understand what was before him. "No, no, no,"

Looking down at his own clenched hand, he was filled with a widening realization. He had never let go. The other hand still bore Lucifer's sigil, an infected red on his palm. There was a reason it wouldn't heal. 

It was a dream. 

It was all just a dream. 

Heaves he couldn't hold back were rising and falling in his chest. Madness swept away the last of the patience he held in that world. They had taken his Sky and done this to her. He shook his head, trying to focus his thoughts.  

His Sky was not to be treated in such a way.

His marked palm forward, Silas pushed it against the glass.

"My Sky," He said with eyes wide. He could not comprehend the rushing feeling of his disbelief and anger. No one was to touch her. She was his Sky and no one else's. With narrowing black eyes came a black corruption that once more stained his features with shadows. 

He would kill them all for what they had done. 

Seething, the storm stirring on the still ocean of his being. No one could suppress Lucifer. 

With his gaze on the ghost woman, Silas placed the marked palm upon the glass. 

"MY SKY!" He shouted and in an instant, the surge of a shockwave erupted forth. The rush of force pushed into the tank's glass. The sigil of Lucifer burned through the scarred skin, appearing in burning flame. In turn, the cold surface beneath Silas' touch cracked and a pushing force shot into the glass from his palm.

From beneath Silas' hand a cracking web appeared, shooting across the glass. There was a split second outward bulge in the shattering glass, before water was sent flowing from the tank in one all consuming wave. The water hit him and the world spun. Within the sudden torrent of water and against his blasted focus, Silas was thrown to the stone floor where all the air was knocked from his lungs. 

The water dissipated, leaving a soaked Silas coughing for air with a mind still reeling from the wave. Rolling to his side as he tried to clear his lungs from the unexpected force from which the water hit him, he gathered his scattered thoughts. The sense of urgency never fading, he pushed his soaked body forward.

His Sky was there, left crumpled, and half floating on the floor as a ragged doll.

The Soul Collector stepped through the now broken glass wall of the tank towards the miasma that was Sky. The release of the torrent of water was deafening, filling the basement dungeon with the thunder from the crashing wave. If the nurses hadn't heard him before, they certainly had heard him then. The vibration of the water echoed against the walls was heard through every crack and crevice of the hospital.

The chains connected to Sky were anchored into the floor, yet Silas' hand remained a fist around nothing. He still held them, but that nightmare was trying to trick them otherwise. To his knees at her side, the chains were affixed into the concrete. 

Silas pushed both the burning palm and his fist into the ground at the epicenter of where the chains were trapped. Wisps of smoke rose from beneath his marked hand before the concrete itself began to give way like sand and Silas' closed fist forced its way down.

When Silas lifted his fist back, he did so with chains in tow, wriggling to life like eels in his grasp. The black erupted from him, his shadow wild flames the moment the chains were pulled free.

Pushing back against the nightmare in which they were imprisoned, Silas was himself again. From the corner of his dark eyes, white pupils looked to Sky, her form floating pitifully near the ground at his feet. Like drifting seaweed, Sky had been thrown deeper into her subconscious. 

The black tower that was the Soul Collector was seething with living darkness. Black arms and chains slid beneath Sky and lifting her ghost to eye level, Silas inspected the damage done.

"My Sky, your Silas is here. Awaken."

Nothing.

Voices rose in the distance. Coming from the staircase and nearing. Footsteps descending in a hurry. The rush of dozens of nurses sent to subdue Silas before he could do anything else. 

It was only beginning as the nurses were about to find out. With his marked hand, he touched her face. Her head hung to the side, while his fingertips traced her transparent cheeks. Bringing himself closer, his voice was straining against the fire in his chest, pushing him to destroy the ones that had done this to his Sky.

"Awaken."

Again nothing. His fingertips continued caressing down across her face, lips, chin and neck. She had the power to break that world but she had been thrown in deeper than he into that dream.  Drowned in the depths of her mind. They had tried to break her. An attempt to make her useless to their entire cause.

All would pay, but he needed Sky. There was little choice then but to take control.

Drawing closer so that they were face to face, if Sky would not wake on her own, Silas would force her awake. Pulling her from the depths of her mind by a string given to him by Lucifer. It would not be gentle. He cupped her cheek against his hand.

"Forgive your Silas for he must take control in order to break this nightmare." Silas whispered. "Hear your Silas' voice and follow it."

Some piece of her could hear him at all times. And he knew she would object to the part that was to come. The sign of Lucifer on his palm burned as he placed it against his chest. He didn't want to do what was to come next but it had to be done.

Forming the words in his head gave him a headache.

"Weep and moan. Roll in the dust, leaders of the flock." muttering on his breath, the reaction was instant. It began as a sour taste rising in the back of his throat. The words came from his lips  were the beginnings of a spell, conjuring something dark within. "The time of slaughter has arrived; fall and shatter like fragile glass."

He coughed again, the marked hand grasping the shirt on his chest. Something black sputtering past his lips. Taking a gasping deep breath, he continued,

"No place to hide. No escape. Listen to the frantic cries and shouts of despair. The Devil comes." The ink like liquid rising in his mouth began to drip forth in a stream. Breathing in through his nose, Silas head rolled to the side, dizziness pulling down on him, the tendrils bringing Sky's face to his. The words were turning to poison in his throat. A poison meant for Sky. The voices of those sent to stop him were growing closer. "Meadows turn to wasteland." 

The Collector shut his black eyes, black tears falling, staining his cheeks. Thin streams of a black ink trickled through his clenching teeth, over his lips and chin. Burning his skin like acid. Curling over her, Silas spat a mouthful of the black to the ground. It burst into a sizzle of bubbles and smoke when it hit the concrete, wafting upwards for the pair to inhale.

"A lion seeks its prey in the lands made desolate by the sword of the enemy."

His fingers gripped tighter into fabric, knowing what was about to come. He stood straight, his head tipping back on his shoulders before letting out a wail. It burned. Snakes. The wisps of smoke circled him and circled Sky. By every open crevice; her ears, nose and mouth were the doorway to which Silas' spell entered. The chains were alive, their ends lifting, pulling with them the limp body of the ghost girl to the watchful eyes of the Collector.

The nurses were close now. Their hands reaching in through the broken tank

This time, Silas welcomed it.

They were all about to die.

"The slaughtered will fill the earth from one end to the other." With those final words, Sky's head stirred to life, mirroring the movements of Silas'. Her consciousness pulled forward to the surface by her Collector, she twitched. Rising as a broken marionette on living strings from his arms. Her eyes snapped open. Wide and round like full moons of emptiness. They were glowing, staring forward disjointedly at the nurses that were stepping over the wet, broken glass, towards them.

Her mouth was curled into a sinister grin and a wicked cackle bubbled up from her core, chilling the air. The nurses slowed their approach, cautious in creating a reluctant line before the Collector and his Sky. Her head rolling, her hair flowing, hiding her face when the cackle suddenly fell to silence. Looking on with fatal curiosity, they had been unable to break the Collector and now he was about to break free.

With little warning, Sky form heaved into a scream. It was an ear splitting scream of horror. The storm of her sound swirled the air. It had been torture. Tears streamed down her cheeks. 

Silas wasted no time as there was none. With the wave of his hand, Sky was forced into a motion towards the nurses. 

Kill them. Devour them. Devour this dream.

And by his force, she obeyed. 

Flying forward, her motions mirroring those of her Keeper, Sky ripped the lives from every nurse that threatened him. She consumed them and even when they tried to run, she took them swiftly into the abyss. Screams to match her own, the ringing in Silas' ears was breaking the boundaries of his sanity but he pushed forward against the nightmare that ensnared them. Ripping at the seams of the illusion, the ghost woman turned her fury against the dream itself.

Through the basement's darkness to the staircase, Sky's ghostly apparition raced forward and like an anchor thrown over the side of a ship at sea, the chains followed at speed. Looking at the chains and the slack that was quickly disappearing, Silas gave chase.

Up its length in a blur of movement, Sky swam with Silas' fury focused on the center of it all.

 Down the hall, with the Collector behind her, the ghost killed and devoured the souls of whatever soul stood in her way. The Doctor. The Specialist. Nurses. Patients. Their bodies disappearing to nothing by her attack. She flew through the doors of the common room. Devouring everyone. Even Maddy.

When no one remained, the entire world around them began to break apart, shattering like a smashed mirror. The pieces faded and a hole, torn in the black fabric of the dream by Sky's own hand, opened up to the roof of the construction platform where they had been before they were caught in the Youth's snare. There, the Youth was still standing, wide eyed now as Sky and Silas tore through the murder of crows that had enveloped them. They fell away as torn pieces of black cloth.

Reaching out, Silas grabbed the Youth's arm, the sigil of Lucifer burning into his flesh while Sky sprang at him like a carnivorous predator that had been starved for years.

The Youth was unable to move fast enough to evade her. Shrieking, she pushed into him, tearing his soul from its shell.

His body dropped dead. The sigil glowing, from Silas' shadow raised hungering arms of darkness that writhed in wait for the ghost woman to deliver the prey that they would pull to Hell.

She didn't. 

Still screaming with a frenzied stare, Sky made the mistake of turning her hunger on the Youth's soul. She hungered endlessly, and no matter how much she fed, she wanted more. Bringing his essence closer, she tasted the Youth with a shudder.

"No!" the reaction was immediate from the Collector. Roaring, Silas pulled on the chains as hard as he could. Sky was whipped back with the Youth's soul in her hold. "Give the Collection to your Silas!'

The Collector grasped the chains of his ghost close to her wrists, hissing through his clenched teeth. Holding her in place, he would not be distracted from the task at hand by Sky's unending hunger. The ferocious writhing shadows grasped the soul of the Collection when it came into reach, pulling it from Sky's grasp. A living quicksand; it swallowed the Youth whole, pulling him back to Hell before he could beg for his Master's help to empty air.

Once fed, the living shadows instantaneous calmed. The Youth was collected. 

But Sky continued to struggle.