Chapter One - The Labyrinth of Lost Desires
The air was thick with the scent of age and rot. As soon as you stepped inside the labyrinth, a low, oppressive silence smothered the world. There was no hum of machinery, no distant echoes of footsteps. Only the faint rustle of something unseen brushing against the cold, stone walls.
You didn't need to wonder where you were; the labyrinth had a way of revealing itself without saying a word. It had existed before you, and it would endure long after you were gone. Its purpose was inscrutable, its presence suffocating.
The labyrinth was not just a maze of stone and corridors—it was a place where time and space collapsed, where memories twisted into shadows, and where the things you desired most could pull you into the deepest corners of your mind. Every turn was a door to something new, but there was nothing here that you had ever seen before. The walls themselves seemed to breathe, exhaling a dry, ancient wind that carried faint whispers—voices that could not be placed, yet sounded strangely familiar.
Your footsteps echoed unnervingly, the sound too sharp, too perfect. You were alone. And yet, in a place like this, you knew loneliness was the least of your worries.
You didn't feel fear. You didn't feel anything, but there was a strange weight pressing against your chest. The labyrinth wasn't designed to torment emotions. It was designed to provoke desires—longings buried so deep, they were almost forgotten. And in that sense, it was far more dangerous than fear. Desire could blind you, could warp everything around you until nothing was real.
At the first intersection, you hesitated. You didn't know why. Your instincts were useless here, guided by nothing but an empty, mechanical need to move forward. You didn't want to, but you had no choice.
A single lamp flickered to life ahead, casting a dim, sickly light on the stone floor. It was then you realized something. The labyrinth was responding to you.
You continued walking, each step heavy as if the labyrinth itself was shifting beneath your feet. Suddenly, a sound, so faint you could hardly place it, broke the silence—a low chuckle that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Do you know why you're here?" The voice was smooth, almost too familiar. It was a voice that didn't require an answer. It already knew the truth.
You stopped. The walls around you seemed to pulse. Your mind stirred, though it wasn't a feeling you could label. It was as though the labyrinth had dug into your thoughts, prodding at the void within you that you couldn't name.
"I don't need your pity," you said, your voice calm despite the tension in your chest.
A laugh echoed again, now from the shadows ahead. "Pity? No. This isn't about pity. This is about what you want."
And there, standing in front of you, was a figure cloaked in shadows, its face hidden, its presence suffocating. The figure seemed to stretch the space around it, warping the air itself.
"I am Greed," the voice said, now more solid, but still not fully from the figure before you. It came from everywhere and nowhere. "And I am the one who gives you what you desire most. But first, you must accept it. You must claim it."
You felt something stir inside you. A flicker of recognition, of something long buried. Greed wasn't here for the things you might want in a typical sense. It was here to offer you the only thing that could hurt you in this place: the promise of something you couldn't even name, something you didn't truly want but couldn't let go of.
"I'm not here to make deals," you said, not with defiance, but with an eerie calm. You were used to not wanting anything. Used to not feeling. Used to being nothing.
Greed tilted its head, and the labyrinth shifted with it. The walls stretched, pulling you in closer, as if the very space was alive, holding its breath.
"Oh, but you're already making one," Greed replied, its voice now more insistent. "The desire for power, for control. The desire to understand what lies beneath the surface. You crave it. You crave more."
You shook your head. The words didn't reach you in the way they would have reached someone else. You didn't feel the pull of hunger or ambition. But Greed knew this. Greed understood the emptiness that was all you had ever known.
"You're wrong," you said, though it didn't feel like you were speaking to Greed anymore. It felt like you were speaking to the very space that surrounded you. "I don't want anything."
Greed's laugh resonated deep within the labyrinth, the sound twisting through the air. "Everyone wants something. Even you. Especially you."
There was a brief, eerie silence as the figure's shadowed form leaned closer. A heavy, almost tangible weight pressed down on you, as though every word Greed spoke was a thread pulling you in.
The air shimmered, and in the distance, the faint outline of a door appeared, its edges glowing with an ethereal light. It beckoned you.
Greed's voice, now soft and dangerous, whispered, "You want to understand. You want to know why this place exists, why you exist. Come, take it. Take the answer."
You didn't move, not at first. You didn't need to. Greed wasn't offering you anything you didn't already have.
The door remained. You didn't feel a pull toward it, but you knew you couldn't ignore it. You had to open it. You had to know what waited on the other side. Whether you wanted it or not, the labyrinth had already decided your path.
When you stepped toward the door, it opened before you, the air inside swirling with an unknown power. Greed's figure vanished into the shadows as if it had never been there. But the promise lingered.
The labyrinth had made its choice.
And you were now bound to it.
Chapter 2: The World Beneath (Expanded with Sin of Greed)
After the MC escaped the labyrinth, the stillness of the land around him seemed almost suffocating, as if the very air was thick with some unspoken weight. His breath came in uneven bursts, but it wasn't just the escape that left him shaken—it was the palpable sense that something sinister was lurking just beyond his sight.
The silence was unnerving, but then... he heard it.
A wail.
A sound so agonizing, so raw, that it seemed to tear through the very fabric of the world itself. The MC froze in place, his heart thudding in his chest, his mind reeling from the sensation of being watched. He tried to ignore it, but it came again—closer this time. The shriek of a soul in torment.
He turned toward the source of the sound, his body stiff with dread. From the distance, he saw them: figures, emerging from the ground like ghosts, dragged from the earth itself.
But these were no ordinary souls.
The first one he saw was a man—ragged clothes clinging to his frame, his face contorted in agony. His eyes, wide with terror, scanned the horizon, but his body was rigid, unable to move. His mouth opened in a silent scream, the kind that cut deeper than any noise could. He reached out toward the MC, but his hands were shaking violently, as if the very act of extending them was a battle.
"Help... me…" the man gasped, his voice a fragile whisper.
But the MC couldn't help him. No one could.
And then, as though some invisible hand had snatched the man away, the earth split open beneath him, and he vanished. Gone in an instant, leaving only the echo of his desperate plea in the still air.
It wasn't an accident. This was part of the cycle.
The MC's skin crawled as more souls began to rise from the earth. One after another, they were summoned—dragged from the ground like marionettes whose strings had been yanked. These souls weren't innocent. They weren't victims of circumstance. They had sinned.
The man who had reached out to the MC? He had been one of the wealthiest merchants in the city, a man who had ruthlessly betrayed his closest friends, stolen their fortunes, and allowed them to perish in his pursuit of wealth. He had watched them die, knowing he could have helped, but had chosen to let them suffer so he could live in comfort. Greed.
The next soul was a woman—beautiful, her face a mask of perfect grace. But her eyes, wide with terror, told a different story. She had betrayed her own sister for a piece of land, even going so far as to murder her in cold blood, all for the promise of power. She had sold her soul for a future that was never truly hers. Greed.
The MC could see it in their eyes. They knew why they were here.
The people summoned to this place weren't here by accident. Their punishment was a direct consequence of the sin they had committed—their greed. They had taken something from someone, or destroyed a life to gain an advantage, and now they were forced to endure the consequences of their actions.
Each soul was dragged from the earth with intense agony. Some had betrayed, stealing the futures of others for their own gain. Some had killed, seeking to prolong their own lives by taking another's. Others had stolen, tearing apart the world to satisfy their hunger for more, even when they had enough. And now, they paid the price. Every week, they were summoned to face their torment.
The suffering was the price of greed.
The MC couldn't tear his eyes away from the display. The screams of the people were more than just noise—they were the sound of their very souls being torn apart, their sins coming to collect the debt. The earth cracked open beneath them as they were dragged down, forced to face the consequences of their greed. Each soul was a piece of the puzzle, a small shard in the vast mosaic of endless torment.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
They knew this was their fate. And they knew it would never end. Every time they were summoned, every week, they were reminded of the choices they had made in their lives—choices driven by greed. They had stolen lives, they had betrayed trust, they had killed and broken. And now, they were trapped in a cycle, forced to face the consequences forever.
But it wasn't just physical pain. The worst part was the constant reminder that they had chosen this for themselves. Every scream, every cry for help, was a reflection of the hunger that had driven them to destroy others, to sacrifice their morals, and to live in selfishness.
And the MC realized something chilling—he was no different.
He had been given a choice, a path to follow. But as he had stepped into this place, he began to wonder if his own actions—his own greed—had led him here. Could he escape? Or was he, too, doomed to the same fate?
As the people around him screamed in agony, dragged down by the earth's relentless pull, the MC couldn't help but feel the weight of their despair. Greed had brought them here. And it would keep them here.