Author's Note: This is a verse for Supernatural with multiple planned parts — enjoy!

WARNINGS: This story will involve some of the potential things, so keep in mind: child and character death, violence, gore, mental instability, kidnapping.

This is where it starts — the brightly lit ring, the screams, the glinting of knives, the baring of teeth. This, right here, is where it begins. Sam turns to Dean, Metatron just a hero's walk away, and Dean slams his fist into the side of Sam's face. It will bruise, but that's not the point. Sam will not face Metatron's blade and wrath, but that is not the point. The point is, Dean puts Sam's hands on his chest, the action sickly sweet like perfume left on a tacky, bloated corpse — and then he walks away. He leaves Sam, dreaming black dreams on the ground, just outside of the impala. Baby does not protect him when one of Abaddon's followers finds him. Baby does not scream for help or look for Dean when the demons drag Sam's unconscious body away.

When Dean leaves Metatron's burnt-out husk, his bones screaming ecstasy from the kill, he finds Sam gone.

Sam kicks and growls and turns into an animal as they hold him still; there's a demon on every limb, clinging with inhuman strength, and one has him by the collar while another has him by the waistband. They hoist him steady, his body belly-down and hovering diagonal in the yellow light from above, while he thrashes and curses and spits blood. There is a SNICKT SNICKT SNICKT of scissors, as then soft tufts of brown hair snow down, drifts until it rests in piles on the stained cement floor. His stomach is punched for good measure (or perhaps simply because demons can't go long without being fucking assholes) and he's thrown backward into a cage that barely fits his legs, pushed ridiculously up against his chest. He doesn't stop thrashing for a long time — and doesn't bother yelling for help, because he knows there's nobody here who can do anything at all.

He shakily runs his hand over his head, feeling the bristles of his hair, how it nearly sits upright on his scalp, how it's uneven and all foreign ridges, like the high and low points of a heart monitor. Then, though one eye is swollen shut, he surveys his impossible surroundings: the room is dark, just a mass of swirling, nearly invisible colors, but there are moans and growls and inhuman sounds chiming from all around him. His eye adjusts enough that he swears he sees the flash of claws, somewhere close by. His stomach churns at the sound of them scraping up and down metal.

"… Hello?" he tries, swallowing his nausea.

"Oh, lookit here," a sultry male voice drawls. "Looks like we've got fresh blood… Hope you're ready for the party, son."

Before he can ask the detached voice any of his own questions, the lights turn, worthy of a wrestling ring — they're blinding, nearly white at first, and his pupils shrivel into pinpricks before he can adjust his sight properly. When he finally makes out shapes and shadows, he finds himself face-to-face with a half-starved wendigo, sitting impatiently in a cage just beyond his; its long limb is between the bars in a flash, trying to reach the hunter, hunger rampant in its beady eyes. Wants flesh. Needs flesh. Its jaw is clearly broken, swollen around a sewn-up mouth. Sam's heartbeat startles as he sucks in a shocked breath, scrambling in vain against his own bars. The cage is small. The cage is small, and it is in a sea of cages, all thrown haphazardly all over the spacious warehouse like spilt building blocks.

A vampire to his left laughs with his tongue out and his fangs bared. "Winchester!" it cackles. A cage nearby, full of what looks like empty space, slams back and forth as a hell hound howls — not so empty. A naked woman cries in the middle of her small prison, piles of skin shed all around her. He hears a werewolf snarling, smells the burnt flesh of something inhuman touching silver and sizzling in its own skin. Sam couldn't see where the filled cages ended and the walls actually began. He can only grip the bars, his good eye wide and panicked as he stares out at the ocean of danger, he himself afloat in a confining, sinking life raft; surrounded by sharks, with no help for miles and miles. The voices crowd him like nightmares, fill every inch of him with the urge to escape, and he slams his shoulder over and over into the door. Nothing. He jangles the lock violently with his hands, like a man drowning. Nothing.

"Welcome to the jungle, Winchester! Where the fuck did the black-smokes find you? Hmm?" the vampire continues, howling with excitement; Sam tries to block it out, sending the creature a hardened glare, but he continues, "Good luck in the ring, lad! Good fuckin' luck! A hunter in the ring! A hunter in the monster's ring again! How long'll it take for us to rip you apart?"

He laughs and laughs and laughs.

In the distance, beyond the walls of the warehouse he can hear people chanting; Sam has a feeling they're just wearing humanity as a cheap wool blanket, tucked over their heads. He thinks if he looked at them, they'd look back with black eyes. Sweat beads on his face, sliding slippery palms up the bars. Dean, he thinks, desperate. Dean, what the fuck is this place… Where am I? And then, with more determination: Cas? Can you hear me? Cas…!

If he focuses hard enough, he can hear the loudspeaker in the next room, the man's voice rowdy and official, full of pleasure:

"Send out the next bloodbath!"