A novel about Hell - "Sadistic Animals" [Dark Fantasy; Grimdark]

[SwiftQuill]

I'm writing my 4th novel.

Title: Sadistic Animals
Format: Minimum 30 black-and-white anime-style illustrations
Genre: Grimdark Fantasy

Synopsis:

When humans die, they awaken in Naraka, a realm from Buddhist mythology reimagined as a frozen purgatory. It is a vast tundra of perpetual snowfall, where the dead are stripped of memory and reborn in monstrous, bestial forms. Clawed, furred, and unrecognizable, these creatures retain only the vague knowledge that they were once human.

At the heart of this icy world stands a massive coliseum, a grotesque monument where the souls of the dead are forced to fight for survival. The closer one remains to the arena, the more tolerable the cold, but venturing too far means succumbing to the frost, becoming a silent statue of ice. The world outside the coliseum is barren, surreal, and haunted by strange, terrifying beasts.

This is a place where language is harsh, instincts override reason, and violence is the only law. Emotions are heightened, behavior is erratic, and every encounter teeters between brutality and survival. In this chaos, the dead cling to whatever identity they can.

The story follows Malys, a woman who awakens inside a cage beneath the arena stands. She remembers nothing of her life, only a cold certainty that she once lived differently. Thrown into a blood-soaked arena with no explanation, she is forced to fight, and win.

Each battle in Naraka begins with a stark visual: a black-and-white portrait of the two combatants, their names, and a chilling “VS” separating them. With every victory, Malys descends deeper into this nightmarish system, and deeper into herself.

Alongside her, a cast of other damned souls emerges: fighters, monsters, outcasts, and philosophers, each warped by their past and their form. Among them is a silent prisoner who shares her cell, and who may hold answers she doesn’t yet know to seek.

Between the battles, three haunting interludes appear, written as stage plays. These theatrical chapters dramatize moments from Malys’s human life, subtly revealing who she once was and how her choices echo into her afterlife. They serve as emotional counterpoints to the savagery of the present, glimpses of a colder cruelty not born of teeth or claws, but of ambition, ego, and emotional detachment.

Themes:

• Moral ambiguity and karmic consequence
• Guilt, self righteousness, forgiveness
• The fragility of identity
• Ego, power, and the nature of redemption
• The collapse of reason in the face of primal survival, depravity and vilolence

Style:

• Edgy, violent, explicit visually and in terms of dialogue
• Esoteric

Illustrations:

I'm indecisive whether I should draw the illustrations myself or hire an artist. I am a below average artist. Even to draw something simple it can take me many hours. I'm also not good at drawing anime style nor anything supernatural like monsters and claws and wings and shit. The thing is I'm betting it's going to cost me a shit ton of money if I hire someone to produce these illustrations. But I'll focus on the illustrations only after the writing is done, which is going to take a few months.