The sky was never meant to burn. There should never have been ruins, nor the smell of something burning—much less screams dragging on like echoes without origin. And yet, there I was, walking among the wreckage of the Kingdom once called eternal.
I am Siddhartha. The Enlightened One. The one who broke the cycle of death and rebirth, who abandoned everything to find the truth. But the truth I sought had never prepared me for this.
Heaven was no longer what had been promised.
I walked through crumbling towers and clouds stained with ash, feeling the weight of the shattered divine beneath my feet. The celestial choirs had fallen silent; in their place, distorted screams and endless wails echoed through the firmament. The golden streets looked like shards of a world that had broken apart. The angels, once majestic, now wandered like specters—lost, disoriented, gazing upward as if searching for a God who no longer saw them.
Something was wrong. Something terrible had happened.
I knew Heaven was not an absolute paradise, but what I saw now was an apocalypse. Fallen bodies lay on the avenues of light, yet they were not dead—because death had refused them. Men who had been condemned, sinners, criminals, unworthy souls… they were all here. Not because they had been forgiven, but because there was nowhere else for them to go. Hell had been destroyed.
Angels wandered aimlessly. Their wings were stained with ash, and their expressions no longer bore the glory of divinity—only a desperate exhaustion. They murmured prayers without a recipient, as if even the heavens no longer answered their pleas.
This was no longer Paradise.
And then, amid the chaos, I saw a man.
He stood atop the wreckage of a ruined basilica. His robe was heavy, dark as the shadow of time. The laurel crown that once adorned his head was dirtied, broken. His eyes, two abysses filled with knowledge and pain, turned toward me.
He did not need to speak his name.
I already knew him.
— Dante.
He lifted his gaze, and in the weariness of his expression, I saw something few ever know—the awareness of true despair.
— Siddhartha. You are late.
The wind carried with it the ashes of a world that should never have fallen. Thunder rumbled without clouds to justify it. The very fabric of creation was unraveling.
— What happened here? — I asked.
Dante turned away, his expression that of someone who already knew the answer but refused to say it aloud. Then, he pointed toward the horizon.
And I saw it.
The battlefield.
It was an impossible sight. Heaven—this eternal and divine realm—bore the scars of a war that no one should have been able to wage. The ground was cracked, as if something had pierced reality itself. Signs of battle were everywhere—wounds in the firmament, remnants of torn wings. Time itself seemed hesitant there, as if past and present blurred into echoes of screams and blows that never ceased.
And at the center of it all, a void.
An absolute absence, a scar left by something—or someone—capable of destroying even eternal punishment.
Hell had not been erased out of mercy. It had been annihilated.
— How? — I pressed.
— We don't know, — he admitted. — We only know that something… or someone… destroyed it before it could fully cease to exist. Hell was erased, but the souls that should have vanished were denied.
I frowned.
— Death did not accept them?
Dante laughed, but there was no humor in his voice.
— No. They cannot die. They cannot disappear. And with no Hell, no Purgatory… there was only one place left for them to go.
Heaven.
But they did not belong in Heaven.
— Who did this? — I asked, unable to tear my gaze away from the wound in the sky.
Dante did not answer immediately. He walked, his eyes fixed on something no one else seemed to notice—a prison.
It was a structure that should not exist there. Towering, imposing, built not of stone but of crystallized light and golden veils. Chains of divine fire wrapped around it, as if Heaven itself feared what lay within.
Dante looked at me, and in his voice, there was something beyond understanding. There was fear.
— They are here.
Silence fell between us. I knew what he meant. The Seven Deadly Sins.
They were here. Not dead, not judged—but purified. There was no longer a Hell to hold them, so Heaven had sealed them away, hidden them in the same place where they had imprisoned Naka—the one who had stood beside the Destroyer of Hell.
They were not as we knew them from legends or religion. They were not mere ideas or concepts. They were beings. Living entities that embodied all that was impure in human nature.
But something felt wrong.
They bore no chains.
They did not appear as rampaging beasts, nor were they consumed by the weight of sin.
They were… pure.
Their eyes, which once may have burned with purpose, now carried a silence I could not comprehend.
— What… happened to you? — I asked.
It was one of the Sins who answered.
— We were purified.
The word cut into my mind like a blade.
Purified? The Seven Deadly Sins themselves… purified?
It made no sense.
Dante narrowed his eyes.
— How?
Naka averted her gaze, as if the words were forbidden to be spoken.
But another Sin answered.
— He purified us.
The wind fell silent.
Dante frowned.
— He? Who?
None of them answered immediately.
Then, one of them broke the silence.
— The man who destroyed Hell.
My heart grew heavy.
— Who was he?
Naka raised her eyes to me.
And then, she spoke a name.
A name no one dared to utter.
But they knew. The Sins knew.
The being who walked through Hell and unmade it. The one who belonged to nothing. The one who left not a legacy, but an absence.
Void.
The one who was no longer there… and yet, his presence was an impossible shadow.
Heaven, broken and in ruins, still trembled with what he had left behind.
— Void.
The name drifted through the wind like a forgotten curse.
I felt something stir deep within my soul.
Void.
The one no one knew.
The one who destroyed Hell.
The one who freed the sinners—but made them into something new.
And now, with no Hell, no Purgatory… with nowhere left for souls to go…
Heaven, once a symbol of peace and divinity, was consumed by chaos, becoming a distorted reflection of Hell itself. From the shadows rose a profane Messiah, a herald of destruction, whose presence stained celestial purity with the corruption of the abyss. The place once known as the realm of the righteous and the blessed had now become the ultimate battlefield, where opposing forces would fight the final war, sealing the fate of creation.
Heaven was dead.
Not in the sense of absence, but of contradiction. It was not a place of glory, nor of redemption. It was a tomb of absolute truths, a testament that eternity is not a gift, but a sentence.
I walked through a paradise collapsing under its own weight. The celestial palaces, once immortal, were cracked. The voices of angels had fallen silent. On the horizon, a multitude—not of the blessed, but of the condemned.
117 billion.
Every soul that had ever lived, every murderer, every saint, every lost one. All who should have been in hell were now here, and they had not found heaven, but a battlefield.
They screamed, they fought, they tore each other apart as if they could devour eternity and reshape it into something they could understand. But it was useless. They were trapped in their own nature. Even here, with all doors open, they still sought the punishment they believed they deserved.
And me? I was just a man.
But they did not see me as such.
The moment they laid eyes on me, they became a tide. The sky trembled as they surged forward—a storm of souls corroded by guilt, despair, and rage at a fate they could not comprehend.
And then, they stopped.
Not because of me.
Because of her.
Naka stood still before us, her presence as absolute as death. Beside her, the Sins. Not as enemies. Not as forces to be subdued. They were there as protectors.
The sinners hesitated. Why?
Fear? No. They had already defied gods, kings, and the very order of the universe.
Respect? Impossible. They had spat in the face of the divine.
Then… why?
I looked at Naka, at the serene ferocity in her eyes. She was not a warrior. Not a deity. But something in her held them at bay.
And for the first time since it all began, a thought gripped me.
How long will God interfere with free will?
If hell was destroyed, if there was no more punishment, if all were free… why were they still imprisoned within themselves?
Perhaps Void had understood something we had yet to grasp.
And I feared the answer.