A Thousand Screams
The scent of sulfur and iron tainted the air. Even in Hell, where suffering was an art form and agony a currency, something unnatural had taken place.
The Devil stood at the precipice of ruin.
His lover, once a creature of celestial fire, now lay broken before him. Her body, once luminous and filled with the echoes of the divine, had been reduced to something lesser—mortal, fragile, gone. The abyssal torches lining the cavern flickered in sympathy, casting long shadows that crawled like mourning wraiths along the jagged stone.
He knelt beside her, fingers trembling as they traced the once-familiar contours of her face. Her lips, which had whispered his name with reverence and longing, were now silent. Her eyes, which had held defiance against both Heaven and Hell, stared blankly into the void.
The Devil, feared across eternity, felt the unbearable weight of grief.
"Who?" His voice, raw and jagged, broke the silence. "Who dared to take you from me?"
His demons cowered at the edges of the cavern, wings curled inward, eyes averted. Even they, creatures of malice and destruction, knew better than to speak when their king's wrath boiled just beneath the surface.
Only one dared to step forward. A lesser demon, spindly and wretched, its voice a dry whisper. "It was the Watchers, my Lord."
The Watchers.
The exiled soldiers of Heaven who neither pledged fealty to God nor knelt before the Devil. They were lawless, mercenaries in a war as old as time itself, carving their own dominion from the bones of the forsaken. It was they who had torn his beloved from him.
The Devil's wings unfurled, black as the void beyond creation. The force of his fury cracked the ground beneath him.
"Bring me their heads," he commanded.
His demons hesitated.
He turned, his eyes burning pits of torment. "Now."
They scattered like frightened crows, their shrieks lost in the howling winds of the underworld.
The Devil turned back to his fallen love, cradling her body in his arms. He pressed his forehead to hers, whispering words only she would understand, words that no force in the cosmos could steal from them.
"I will tear the heavens apart for you."
The first tear he had shed in eons slipped down his cheek, sizzling against the infernal stone.
Hell would burn for this.
And so would everything elseChapter Two: The Devil's Lament
The cavernous halls of Hell trembled as the Devil screamed. The walls, once carved from molten rock and shadow, cracked and crumbled beneath the weight of his anguish. Rivers of fire swayed violently, casting wild shadows upon the infernal throne where he had once ruled with impassive authority.
But now, he was not a ruler. He was not a god. He was merely a man undone by grief.
Her body lay in his arms—cold, broken, still. Not even the flames of the underworld could warm her now. Not even his power, vast and boundless, could restore the life that had been so cruelly stolen. His hands trembled as he traced her lifeless face, his fingers streaking through blood, her blood, painting his skin in the only proof that she had ever been real.
He had not known he could feel pain like this.
Demons knelt in fearful silence, watching their master unravel. Some clutched their chests as if they could physically hold back the ache of his grief, for his suffering was a living thing, a storm of darkness that twisted the very nature of Hell itself. His agony had turned the infernal sky black. The eternal fires dimmed. The air hung thick with sorrow, suffocating even those born from wickedness itself.
"Who?" The word was a whisper, yet it shook the obsidian pillars of the underworld.
The gathered demons dared not speak. They had seen what happened when the Devil was merely angered—entire legions turned to dust, realms devoured by his fury. But this… this was something far worse than anger. This was grief.
And grief made gods unpredictable.
Azrael, the first of the fallen, stepped forward. Unlike the others, he did not flinch beneath the Devil's gaze, though his own wings trembled in unease.
"It was the Archangels."
The Devil's body tensed, his arms tightening around his beloved's corpse. "Which one?"
Azrael hesitated. "Michael."
The sound that left the Devil's throat was not human. It was not even demonic. It was something older, something primordial, something that had been lost when the cosmos first learned to scream.
Michael.
The name festered like poison in his mouth.
His old enemy. His brother.
He should have known. The archangels had always despised the idea of love in Hell. They had whispered their warnings, called his lover an abomination, a stain upon the heavens. They had threatened, but he had not listened. He had believed his power was enough to keep her safe.
He had been wrong.
The Devil's grip on her body tightened, as if he could hold her together, as if he could force her soul back into the husk it had abandoned. His forehead pressed against hers, and for a moment, there was no Hell, no war, no vengeance—only the ghost of her last breath against his lips.
He closed his eyes. "My love."
A pause. A silence deeper than death.
Then—his whisper became a promise.
"I will burn the heavens for you."
And the underworld roared in agreement.
---
The Devil did not mourn as mortals did. He did not weep, did not pray, did not seek solace in whispered comforts. He grieved through destruction, through fury, through war.
And so Hell prepared.
Legions of the damned sharpened their claws and polished their armor. War horns, long silent, screamed into the abyss. Gates that had been sealed for centuries—gates that led to the celestial realms—began to fracture beneath the sheer force of his rage.
Azrael stood at the Devil's side as he stared into the abyss. "You will burn everything." It was not a question.
The Devil did not turn. "Yes."
Azrael exhaled. "Then there is no turning back."
"There never was."
The sky above them split open. The stars trembled. And the war drums of Hell began to beat.
The Devil lifted his hand. A sword of shadow and flame materialized in his grasp, humming with the power of every soul he had ever claimed. His eyes, once burning embers, were now endless voids, black holes of sorrow and wrath.
"Michael," he whispered, his voice like an omen. "I am coming."
And as Hell's gates shattered, as the legions of the damned screamed their battle cries, the Devil carried his grief into the heavens—
To make them suffer as he had suffered.