Time.
The greatest witness to the rise and fall of kings, heroes, and villains. The cruelest of lovers. Master of life and death for those unfortunate enough to walk under its judgment. Only gods and other Eternals have become immune to its influence.
No number can count the number of events of which time has been a witness. Every story that is worthy of being told exists only with the permission of time. Some of these, however, accompany time on its endless journey through eternity.
Nevertheless, even these stories have a beginning, a point in time where the chain of events worthy of being called a singularity originated. And this is one of those stories...
I remember the exact moment of the singularity that gave rise to this particular story. A prison, but not one of marble, granite, and steel like the ones we know, but rather an ancient prison, buried deep in the world, between fire and ashes, magma, and sulfur.
Descending little by little into this realm of depravity, violence, cruelty, and sin only intensifies with each circle descended. Little red imps scream and torture the newborns, the first circle is their fate. Six-armed aberrations fight and flagellate in eternal chaos in the second circle. Increasingly powerful and wicked demons can be found in the descent, reigning over their small pieces of hell, their tiny paradise of perversion from which they cannot escape.
Nine circles, nine worlds of pain and agony, each more twisted than the previous one. All of their inhabitants are prisoners, and all are sinners, but nothing compares to the end of the road. Our story does not begin here, what we seek is in the deepest part, beyond the nine circles, in the core of all this chaos. That prison I spoke to you about, a place reserved for eight prisoners, just eight and nothing more. A place made by God himself to imprison eight beings of unmatched power and evil.
There wasn't much to notice about this prison, it was nothing more than a cave filled with fire and sulfur. It wasn't really much different from the rest of hell; except that prisons need ways to keep their prisoners inside. The only noticeable difference at first glance was the golden chains that filled the cave and while the prison originally housed eight prisoners, now there was only one left. The only living being; if this can be considered life, is still bound by the golden chains.
Among the chains and stones; its figure could be distinguished, a vaguely human silhouette that lay kneeling on the magma, indifferent to its heat: the aura of defeat around it was almost palpable. Its gaze lowered and lost in the molten stone beneath its feet. Inert. Helpless. Nonexistent. Its mind had long lost sanity. Its hair, red as blood, made it blend in with the surroundings, almost as if it could belong nowhere else. The limbs and torso of this being had been impaled by the golden chains, keeping it firmly restrained.
How many years had passed? The creature couldn't remember. So immersed in darkness and surrounded only by its solitude, keeping count of time seemed increasingly useless. When had it stopped fighting to free itself from these chains? Even desperate actions did not alter its situation, even tearing off its limbs had not worked. How did it end up here? This being, much older than the prison that houses it, older than humanity itself, had been reduced to a prisoner. The only thing the creature ever wanted was its freedom, but that same search led it to this confinement.
Growls and screams occasionally filled the cave, the sound of chains being shaken, and flesh being torn. Anger had gotten it nowhere, this being knew, but it couldn't avoid it, sometimes simply filling the eternal silence was enough.
In its brief moments of lucidity, small traces of what this entity once was could be seen. A penetrating gaze, with a hypnotizing glow that could steal your soul. Its purple eyes, a beautiful yet exotic color. A face marked with two black lines fell from its eyes like tears, defining the frame of its face, like a painting that could not be corrupted. Its skin was gray as ash, almost like the residue left by the burning of its mane. Residue marked by effort and madness. Of almost human appearance, a temptation both aberrant and mesmerizing, if it weren't for the horns protruding from its forehead and the black wings on its back. But, when its mind descended into madness again, all that beauty was lost. You know upon seeing it that releasing it would unleash delicious chaos.
The hoarse voice, filled with an ancient and depressing feeling, its owner used it to fill the silence that had been prolonged for thousands of years. It had forgotten what it looked like, it no longer remembered its original form, and even more so, the twisted form it had become, but it had not forgotten how it ended up alone.
To survive, it resorted to the greatest atrocity imaginable, it had fed on the other prisoners, suffering the infernal corruption. Those evil beings that shared this prison with it, of which no trace remains.
It wasn't until it went mad that all the other beings in the prison remembered one detail about this being, but it was already too late. Most of the powers they could use while remaining chained were useless against it.
The massacre was brief, the evil beings died one by one, being consumed by this being. Only two of them managed to avoid this terrible fate, although it is difficult to discern whether the result was better or worse.
The first was once quite a peculiar existence, a being who did not commit enough evil to deserve this prison. Its greatest sin was its presence, simply existing as a source of death and decay. This being died as it lived, too lazy to do anything to resist its fate. The first to perish and the only one who chose death over restraint, scattered into ashes by its own will.
The second chose a similar path but for completely different reasons. Seeing how the other prisoners were devoured, and how the perpetrator seemed to be taking everything they were, this prisoner went insane.
"What is mine will never belong to anyone else." Those were the last words of that ancient evil. Gathering all the infernal essence within itself, the prisoner lashed out with all its power, creating a storm of annihilating energy with which it planned to self-destruct and take its adversary with it in its desperation.
The rest of the prisoners fought or begged, only to eventually be devoured. Perhaps, the greatest sin of the eighth prisoner was not wanting its freedom, perhaps, its true sin was clinging to life at any cost. There was nothing in this prison that allowed it to see its current appearance, but it knew the kind of abomination it had become.
Just like its eyes, the very form of this is altered by its mental state. The vision of its figure blended well with the madness unleashed after so many years of solitude and confinement. Its soft grayish skin seemed to turn into molten rock, breaking and splitting; as if magma itself emerged from it. But you wouldn't see lava flowing, instead, serpentine-looking scales formed around its arms. Its horns grew, twisted, and curled; at first glance, it seemed like an immense effort to carry them, but the being barely noticed them.
Bone spines broke through its back, coming from the spine, tearing and ripping its skin and flesh. The other parts of its skeleton seemed to follow the example, engaging in a chaotic and grotesque dance with the scales that embraced it. Few things remained unchanged, its face deformed by rage and dementia into a more beast-like expression, its vague humanoid shape, and the pair of black wings that somehow still clung to its back.
"I just want to be free." The being murmured in a few seconds of lucidity while its mind slowly slipped back into madness, an interval of clarity and insanity as constant as day and night.
"Azmodiel?" The silence of the cave had been broken, but not by its own voice or the clanking of chains. It was a slightly fearful voice, tinged with supplication, that manifested seemingly out of nowhere, interrupting the cycle of madness Azmodiel had become accustomed to. The beautiful voice calling a name lost in time.
"Azmodiel." For the second time, a beautiful voice materialized in the empty echo of the prison. The chained being's body trembled. It had forgotten many things, but it still remembered its name. The stillness had not been broken by a hallucination born of madness. It was a voice that did not belong to this hell, a voice filled with sweet longing, a sincere plea, and pure need.
The purple returned to its eyes. The mere notion that something or someone could enter this place was enough to ignite the spark of hope in the being's heart, a spark it was sure had been extinguished.
It raised its face to look around, searching for the source of this voice. This voice that should not exist in this place called it a third time with greater urgency.
"Azmodiel, help."
It wasn't until the third call that something changed, allowing it to see the origin of the voice, a white page materializing in the middle of the infernal prison, floating a few inches from its face. The nature of the page; so radiant, full of purity and a suppressive force against evil, put Azmodiel on the defensive, nevertheless, it clenched its sharp teeth and tried to look more closely at the page that at first glance seemed empty.
Strangely, surprise was one of the first emotions it regained, despite never having seen one up close, it knew exactly what floated before its captive being and also knew exactly where it came from. After all, it had been there when its mother granted mortals the ability to connect with one of the fundamental magical forces present in the universe; the Akash. Azmodiel witnessed both the birth of the first mage, as well as the first Grimoire, and with it the rise of related knowledge, as well as the first spell.
It could still remember the moment when its mother was unable to continue watching the suffering of mortals, her face full of affliction and pity for them. It remembers that it was then that she placed a spark in the heart of all mortals at birth; seeds of magic full of potential given to them for their survival. It always thought its mother was too kind to give such a gift to mortals.
Nevertheless, despite its experience during those events, Azmodiel was not very familiar with mortal magic, nor with the understanding and study of it, which they called Arkana, an archaic and mundane name in the eyes of this being. As its gifts were something it was born with, an innate spark, it never cared to understand or delve into it, unlike mortals, though it understood that in essence, it was different from the spark that gave rise to Grimoires.
At that moment it remembered a particularity of every grimoire, something that marked the difference in how each human cultivated their magic. Every grimoire contained a spell from the moment of birth, a unique spell for each mortal, something they could not share or learn from another. "A gift of fate," its mother called it.
What now floated in the middle of the air, was precisely the first page of a grimoire, that first spell. Azmodiel was witnessing a gift of fate accompanied by a sweet voice that knew of its existence.
Almost as if understanding was the command that activated the spell, chaos erupted within the cave, and it barely understood what that page was. The golden chains that bound it were ripped from the walls. What it had dreamed of doing for what seemed like an eternity happened before its eyes, as easy and instant as if it were the will of the chains. But they did not fall to the ground; the sensation of freedom and relaxation lasted only a breath.
The tips of the chains entered a frenzied whirlpool into the small rectangle of light, slowly being absorbed by the numerous symbols, diagrams, and runes on the white page. Merging little by little with the lines and dragging it into what seemed like a new captivity.
Azmodiel, who was still fused with the opposite end of said chains, was dragged without having a say in its own destiny. Barely assimilating what was happening, it tried to fight, and resist, using every fiber of strength within it, but all was in vain; the chains became increasingly resistant as the white page absorbed it.
And so the last prisoner of this prison forgotten by the world disappeared. The cave began to crumble after its departure as if its purpose had finally been fulfilled. The remaining golden chains that once chained other beings dissolved into traces of golden light before vanishing. And without any other demon in the nine circles of hell being aware, the tenth circle ceased to exist.