The sky above the world remained still, yet the air around Luca wept ash.
He walked alone through the outer veil of death, a place between judgment and damnation. The soil beneath his feet was soft coal, and every step stirred old embers not hot enough to burn, yet warm enough to remember. Hell, once a tempest of flame and wrath, now lay in ruin. There were no screams, no chains, no devils feasting on agony. Only the silence of extinction.
Luca's robes once white with priesthood dragged behind him like soiled ash rags. His hair, unkempt and grayed, clung to his face like wet thread. He had not eaten. He had not rested. But he was not dying.
He could not die.
Not while the Shepherd's blessing clung to his soul.
But it was more than that.
Deep within his spirit, twin rivers flowed one of serene azure, the Blue Grace that flowed before the Divine Betrayal, calm and steady as the breath of heaven; the other of writhing ink, the Yin Depravity, a grace corrupted and reborn in darkness. Few could wield both and remain whole. Fewer still could survive the judgment of such contradiction.
But Luca was not whole.
He never had been.
He had been fractured by heaven's lies, tempered by earth's hatred, and saved not by divinity, but by the mortal love of his brothers. Mike, whose silence bore truth deeper than words. Simon, the boy who should have hated him, yet carried him out of the flame.
The memory burned him more than Hell ever could.
He paused on a ridge of obsidian. Below him stretched the broken throne fields of Hell where once the arch-devils ruled, now only cindered ruins remained. Mountains of charred bone towered around him. Rivers of obsidian ran dry. A thousand thrones, each carved from agony and authority, lay toppled.
He walked forward, barefoot.
His steps summoned no guardians. Hell had none left.
Before him rose a hollow canyon, at the center of which stood a gate of black iron, melted and warped, yet still sealed. Jagged symbols from the first tongue were etched into its frame language forgotten by even angels.
He knelt.
"This place once feared me."
The words were not a boast. They were a recollection spoken into a void too old to echo.
"I was the Father of Mercy," he said. "And I broke that mercy with my own hand."
He reached into his tattered sleeve and pulled out the last strip of white clean, holy cloth from his days as High Priest. He looked at it one last time.
Then he tossed it into the canyon.
The silence swallowed it like a final sacrament.
Luca bowed low until his forehead touched the black stone. His whisper was soft.
"Forgive me."
He did not speak to God.
He spoke to the damned.
And they listened.
The earth trembled faintly. Ash lifted from the ground like waking breath. From behind the gate, something stirred. Not rage. Not hunger. Memory.
He felt it coil beneath the crust of broken rock ancient recognition. Hell remembered its father.
And so it began.
The canyon wind changed direction. It was no longer cold or dead. It was warm sickly warm, like breath from a fevered beast. The embers that had slept beneath the surface began to pulse, thumping like old hearts.
Luca stood.
He did not light a flame.
He became one.
The blue of his left eye flared pure, sky-lit Grace. The black of his right eye deepened pure Yin, the grace of devouring shadows. From his spine rose a low heat, not wild, not angry controlled.
He stepped toward the gate, and as he did, it began to shiver.
Chains that hadn't moved in centuries groaned.
The wind behind him fled.
"I have come," he said.
The gate didn't open in welcome.
It collapsed in submission.
It shattered into molten shards that flew outward and dissolved into mist. A corridor of bone and fire stretched ahead, lined with extinguished pyres. He entered without hesitation.
The deeper he went, the more his memories pressed against him.
This was where he had condemned the innocent.
This was where he had invented mercy by breaking it.
This was where he had once ruled as a flame-wrapped god.
But he was not that anymore.
He was more and less a vessel carrying contradictions, and now, a guide once again. Not to lead armies, not to judge, but to prepare.
Prepare for Simon.
Because the boy, his boy would soon reshape the world.
And Hell had to be ready.
He reached a stone dais blackened and ringed by seven sealed wells. Around it, the ground formed a spiral of broken prayers. He climbed it slowly, each step sinking slightly beneath his feet.
He placed a hand over the center seal.
It was cold.
He burned it.
Flame surged from his palm not red, but deep blue bordered with flickers of void-black. The Grace of Before, untouched by Divine Betrayal. The Depravity of After, unashamed of what it had become. Twinned in him like opposing lungs.
The seal cracked.
From the pit came a whisper, a thousand voices crushed into one.
"We remember you."
He looked into the dark.
"Then rise."
And the dead flame obeyed.