The air in the deeper sewage tunnels was a noxious, heavy sludge of decay and the overwhelming, dull ache of chronic urban sin. It was perfect. The darkness was an absolute shield, the spiritual static a narcotic that deadened the lingering burn of Seraphina's purifying light. Ethan found a dry, forgotten maintenance bunker and collapsed onto the cold concrete floor.
He was alive, thanks to instinct and the sheer, ugly utility of his infernal gifts. But the reality of his predicament was a crushing weight. He had faced down his past, and it wore a silver halo.
His immediate need was logistics. He used a stolen, sealed two-way radio to ping Elias, the leader of the Pale Choir. He didn't trust her; he needed her.
"I need food, water, and deep surveillance. Set up a drop point. No faces. Use dead drops. If either the Angel or the Exorcist tracks you, I burn the network," Ethan transmitted, his voice low and distorted by the close-range radio.
Elias's response was a flurry of reverent, whispered confirmations. His dependence on those who worshipped his damnation was another layer of profound irony he now had to live with.
Once the logistics were handled, Ethan turned to the real enemy: the Celestial Enforcer.
He sat cross-legged, closing his mortal eyes, and focused his entire concentration inward, channelling his Sin Perception not on the surrounding darkness, but on the recent memory of Seraphina's divine presence.
The memory flared in his mind, not as a vision of sin, but as a searing, cold geometric structure. He analysed the power. Her aura was dense, focused, and overwhelming—a terrifying compression of pure divine justice.
The Over-Levelled Angel.
Seraphina's power signature was far too mature, too potent, for an ascent of only days. The sheer quantity of holy fire she commanded suggested decades of purification, not a rapid ascent from mortality.
Why? How was she granted this much power, this fast?
He searched his own core—the pit of Wrath and Gluttony that was his new identity. He searched the raw, unprocessed memory of his death—the last moment of Ethan Vale.
The answer, when it came, wasn't a vision from Lucien. It was a cold, pure spiritual calculation, a law of cosmic physics that his infernal core now understood.
The cold, pure spiritual calculation settled: His act of complete self-sacrifice generated a massive, unmanageable spiritual surge. Heaven, refusing a flawed soul but craving the energy, instantly diverted the power. The surge didn't just save Seraphina; it hyper-purified her soul, accelerating her through the celestial ranks.
His death had been the final, potent catalyst, unlocking her celestial destiny and forging her into a perfect, high-level Enforcer—a weapon tailor-made to hunt infernal anomalies.
He had paid the ultimate price for his single good act, and Heaven had used his sacrifice to sharpen the very blade that would eventually cut him down.
The New War
Ethan laughed, a dry, bitter sound that cracked in the subterranean silence. It was the laugh of a man who finally understood the crushing cruelty of cosmic irony.
The bitter irony combusted his Wrath. The fire didn't ask him to destroy the system; it simply demanded that he keep surviving, keep resisting the cruel order that had made him this way.
He ran a hand over the sigil on his chest. It no longer felt like a brand of shame; it felt like a declaration of war.
"They used me," he whispered, the truth settling deep into his bones. "They used my sacrifice to arm my executioner."
He realised then that his moral centre was gone, replaced by a bitter, consuming desire for balance. His fight was no longer about survival or debt collection; it was about disrupting a system founded on profound, cosmic injustice. If Heaven's justice was rooted in such cruel hypocrisy, then Hell's purpose—the relentless disruption of that lie—was the only moral path left.
He was the Emissary of Hell, armed by the very sacrifice that had condemned him. The hunt was utterly personal now.