The stage collapsed into chaos.
Those who leapt into the Void's mouths didn't gain peace. Instead, they erupted back out as broken souls—splattered across the arena like paint flung from a blender.
Eyes floated. Laughter snapped in half. Hands tore through the air, clawing for bodies but finding only scraps.Someone jammed half a skull onto their shoulders—wrong ear attached.Another grabbed legs but ended up with a horse hoof and a table leg.
The battlefield of souls looked both grotesque and absurd.
"Jesus, it's like a thrift store puzzle fair," the accountant muttered—dead serious while wading through bones and screams.
The Void didn't stop it. It delighted in it.Its broadcast voice boomed gleefully:"Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the Ultimate Soul Arena! No rules, no referees—just despair and fun!"
And so, the carnage began.
Souls mauled each other, merging and tearing apart again.One fused into a giant face with twenty mouths, all arguing about who was the "real me."Another became an army of arms, wielding imaginary weapons against a rival army made entirely of teeth.
"This isn't war," Ethan rasped."This is one sick social experiment."
A "soul bomb" exploded nearby—not shrapnel, but a giant heart cobbled from spirits. It burst, raining math problems and nursery rhymes on their heads.
"Report! I've been hit by a third-grade math test!" the captain yelled, absurdly like a sitcom character in hell.
Then came the real nightmare: a horde of sacrificed souls targeted Ethan."You!" they roared. "You made us jump! You're the real director!"
For a second, Ethan almost believed it. After all, he was alive—while they weren't.
The swarm surged, a wall of screaming flesh.He fought back—but not with weapons. His arsenal was memories: his mother's warnings, comrades' laughter, every bitter failure.
Each memory he hurled burned the souls back—they recoiled from the rawness of having lived.
"Unbelievable," Ethan laughed bitterly. "I'm fighting with nostalgia. What's next, nuking them with my first crush?"
The Void roared with laughter, applauding like thunder."Magnificent! Humanity—you've turned even death into a comedy war! I knew I chose right!"
The battlefield mutated further.Souls fused into bizarre war machines:
A "Crying Tank," cannons firing sobs.
A "Tower of Regrets," each floor an unfinished mistake.
A "Philosophy Bird," dive-bombing while shrieking: "Existence is absurd!"
Ethan dragged his dwindling allies forward. The ground itself clutched at their ankles with fragments of lost lives.
"This isn't war," the accountant said coldly. "It's the Void's joke. Our fear, our stupidity—turned into circus tricks."
"Then let's finish the joke ourselves."Ethan's eyes blazed with madness.
He flung open his soul, spilling everything—pain, hope, fear, memory. His essence surged across the arena as the horde lunged.
And he laughed.A laugh full of irony, defiance, even cruelty.
A message to the Void:
"You want comedy? Fine. I'll play.But the punchline won't be yours."
The battlefield quaked with his laughter.Souls wailed, applause crashed, and together it became a grotesque symphony echoing through the collapsing world.