Hell looked much the same as Eri remembered.A jagged tear split the space before him, smelling of scorched copper and stinging sulfur. It was tiny, especially when compared to the enormous breadth of the cavern — merely about twice Eri’s height and just big enough for him to squeeze through if he entered sideways.Deep, crimson light pulsed from the edges of the wound. Eri could see no sun before the narrow rift, only a swirling firmament of choked ochre and charcoal clouds. Orbs of fire — hell’s meteors, he remembered — streaked across the bruised horizon, trailing smoke and raining chunks of flaming rocks.The land was in no better shape. An endless plain of blasted craters filled what little he could see of the earth, broken up by the occasional jagged obsidian spires clawing from the ground.There were no demons he could spot moving beyond the rift. A small blessing, though it would not last long. The Damned would notice the wound in their reality soon enough. They would come to investigate.Amber cleared her throat. “So, just to be clear, none of us are stepping through that, right?”“There’s no need for that,” Deyara assured her. “You can’t step through even if you want to. The portal isn’t technically open yet. This is just a visual window of the other side.”“But not for long!” Kalisa cheered. “Eri here is about to use himself as a conduit to create a direct link to the deepest depths of the underworld. A place where only the nastiest demons are born.”The Primordial Pool of Hell. One of the most potent sources of mana in the world. It was the energies of creation liquefied (...)