The Needle Hell had ended.

After twenty years, it seemed we were transferred to a different hell.

Finally. We were free from that torment.

I had walked.

For twenty long years, I kept walking—

Bleeding, with broken bones, my soul scraped raw—

Yet I walked.

The ground, the sky, even temperature—everything had dulled.

Only a strange sensation remained, like my mind was floating.

"...Is it… over?"

My voice surprised me—it was so hoarse, barely a whisper.

I couldn't even remember the last time I had spoken.

My feet still ached, but the piercing sting of needles was gone.

No mountains of steel in sight.

Everyone must have thought the same thing:

It’s finally over.

But then—

The world ignited.

---

FWOOMMMMMMMMM!!!

It wasn’t a sound—it was a pressure that crushed the ears.

A blast of heat slashed at the skin like blades.

My eyes couldn't stay open.

Even through my eyelids, I could feel them burning.

Skin peeled away like scorched paper.

One breath scorched my throat.

My lungs screamed.

The air itself seared my organs.

“—GAAH—AAAHHHHHH!!”

I writhed.

I dropped to the ground, but it was pointless.

The ground was on fire too.

A burning iron floor.

The moment I touched it, the skin on my palms tore off.

I could hear my flesh sizzling.

“Hiih—AAAAAHH—AAAGHHHHHH!!”

My hands. My arms. My face. My legs. My whole body—

Burning.

The needles were nothing compared to this.

They pierced.

But this—this consumed.

From the outside, from within—I was burning.

The earth held heat like molten lava.

From above, massive fire pillars rained down like solar flares.

There was no dodging them.

Even the air was ablaze.

No human skin could survive this heat.

Even the soul itself began to char.

---

“…Why… why…?”

Even whispering sent smoke from my throat.

Tears tried to fall—

but evaporated instantly.

What remained were just the scorched marks of tears.

“Wasn’t it over…?”

“I… I endured it all, didn’t I?”

“So why…

Why is it hell again…?”

I didn’t even know who I was asking.

No one answered.

Only the sound of burning.

The smell.

The feel.

And the fear.

At my feet, lay someone's charred, blackened bones.

I didn't know who they were.

But I knew—they too had survived some other hell.

Only to be burned to ash here.

> There is no such thing as an end.

This was merely the beginning of another hell.

I thought I had already passed the point of despair.

But this place—

This place burned even that away.

A world where every flicker of hope is reduced to ash.

That is...

Scorching Hell.