What do you mean when you say I am supposed to be the devil: chapter 11: Between stars

We danced, we danced through and between the cosmos and the stars, Michael, my brother and I.

We had decided to test the results of the ritual.

There's a freedom here I knew without a doubt I would not be able to find anywhere else. Michael spins past me, his body trailing light that collapses into itself before exploding outward into small bursts of fire. Each one hums at a frequency I feel more than hear. Seven pairs of wings stretch from his back, golden, radiant, beautiful beyond words. Each feather looks carved from pure light.

I laugh and kick off a passing comet, using its speed to throw myself into a spiral. Three clouds of gas and stardust flash by. My heart beats, even though we don't need hearts but simply because it was something I wished and thus it was.

Michael sees my trajectory and shifts his own. His wings fold and unfold in patterns a lesser existence would not be able to understand. He cups his hands together and something pools there, invisible but heavy. Then he releases it as a wave. The pressure rushes toward me, enough to flatten worlds, and my grin gets wider.

I don't dodge. I reach out and catch the wave with both hands, feeling the force try to push through me. I twist my wrists and the wave spirals around my forearms like living rope.

Michael's golden eyes flash with delight, and he's already moving, already adapting. He dives straight through the center of my spiral and comes out the other side so fast his passage tears a hole in space. Matter from impossibly far away gets sucked toward the void he left behind.

We're playing. Fighting. Dancing. It's all the same thing.

I swing my arm wide and space bends with it, folds like paper. Two stars that were behind Michael suddenly pop into existence right in front of him. He banks hard, wings flaring. But collision isn't the problem. The problem is if he doesn't do something interesting about it.

He doesn't disappoint.

All fourteen wings extend at once, spreading wide enough to cover everything in sight, and Michael pulls. Not with his hands. With himself. With what he is. The two stars respond. Their burning cores sing in harmony with his will, and they start circling him. Not because of gravity. Not because of physics. They orbit because he's Michael and nothing else.

I clap once. The sound sends out a wave that would blind anyone unlucky enough to be watching from far away. Michael bows without losing control of the stars circling him, then he hurls both of them at me.

Like we're having a pillow fight.

Except the pillows are made of nuclear fire.

I don't even blink. I reach out with one finger and tap the first star. Where I touch it, the star changes. Its light bleeds through colors, red to orange to yellow to white to blue to violet, then into shades that don't have names. The second star witnesses what happened and follows suit, changing too to match the first.

Both stars pulse in rhythm, their light weaving patterns across the void, painting with colors that didn't exist until this moment.

Michael flies close, wonder written across his face. He reaches out and touches one of the stars. The moment his fingers make contact, the star rings like a bell. The sound carries through vacuum, through dimension, through everything even though the law of physics should not admit such.

My brother meets my eyes. I meet his. We don't need words.

The game continues but changes.

I push off nothing and spin, dragging my hands through empty space, pulling invisible threads of old light into ribbons connecting the stars. Michael mirrors me. He dips left, I rise right. He spirals one way, I spiral the other. We do so the only way twins could. We do so the only way the same light split into two bodies, two voices singing the same song Father sang when He made everything could.

Michael gathers speed and shoots past me so fast that time stutters trying to keep up. I feel the pull of his passage and let it spin me around. I use the rotation to wind up energy, then release it as a pulse of pure force. Where the pulse travels, new things flicker into being. Not matter yet. Just the possibility of matter. The dream that will one day become real.

Michael laughs, really laughs, and the sound is so bright I have to close my eyes. When I open them, he's somehow behind me. His wings wrap around us both, half hug and half trap. I could break free immediately, of course I could, but why would I? This was not true battle, not true threat. This is Michael. This is my brother.

I relax into the embrace for what feels like three heartbeats, feeling his warmth, then I shift.

I don't move physically. I change states, becoming more light than form, slipping through the spaces between his wings like water through fingers. I pull myself back together twenty thousand miles away, already moving toward the next part of our game.

I watch the contentment on my older twin brother's face as he spins through the cosmos. Pure joy, nothing else. I think, truly, there are no other words for it. This is happiness. Watching it etched on his face. This was the kind of sight I don't think I could ever regret, that I could get bored of.

I slide along a beam of light the size of a small moon, my nails scraping against its surface. Where my fingers pass, sparks burst into being. Where the sparks touch, new clouds of gas bloom, already starting their slow collapse toward becoming stars. Now that I think about it, anyone watching, well, if there were any other living things other than Dad and us in the universe, no one but him though that was because he's our Dad and knows us and not because he's literally God or because of some all-knowing thing, but because he cares, anyone watching would think we're tearing things apart. Damaging the universe. Breaking a solar system or three trying to really hurt each other.

They'd be wrong.

Every spark is intentional. We know exactly what we're doing. We have since the beginning of this, the future a road of our making and I wasn't being figurative.

I flick my wrists and gather the sparks and infant clouds together. I pull them through forces, electromagnetic and gravitational and strong and weak, plus a few others Father never bothered explaining because they exist mostly between thoughts and dreams. The fragments spiral together in my palm, their different lights blending into something new. A multicolored star, newborn and ancient at once, pulsing with potential.

But I don't stop.

I cradle the star in both palms, feeling its heat, feeling its desperate burning desire to exist, to shine, to matter. Then I push. I compress. I take all that mass and squeeze it down, down, fighting against every force screaming this is impossible.

I compress again. The star fights back, its core trying to push outward, but I'm stronger. I've always been stronger, even when I didn't want to be. The star shrinks to the size of a planet. I compress again. The size of a moon. Again, a mountain. Again, again, again, until what sits in my palm isn't a star anymore. It's what happens when you compress enormous mass past the point where matter can exist the normal way.

A black hole.

I open my palm and let go.

Reality screams. The black hole's edge expands outward, and everything nearby starts falling toward it. Planets that were peacefully circling distant stars suddenly find their paths bent, twisted, pulled inward. Stars themselves, great engines of fire that burned for millions or billions of years, get yanked from their positions and dragged into the consuming dark. Satellites, moons, asteroids, comets. All of it falls into the void I created.

There's a beauty to it, the way destruction can be beautiful when you understand it's just another part of the cycle.

Then I see Michael fly straight toward it. Directly at the black hole. My breath catches at the sight.

His seven pairs of wings shine brighter than any star could, brighter than all the accumulated light being swallowed, like a beacon cutting through darkness where light should die. He's radiant. Magnificent. Terrible in the old sense, full of terror and wonder. Impossible to look away from.

Even though sound shouldn't travel in the void, I hear him. No, the universe hears him. Every particle, every wave, every piece of existence turns its attention to my brother and listens as he speaks the words that are his name, his nature, his truth.

"Who is like God?! Nothing!"

With my eyes, eyes that can see across dimensions, that can watch the thoughts of the smallest particles and the dreams of light itself, I see it. The activation of Michael's authority. The new details of it, the way it's grown since I made the ritual.

Originally, before I created the ritual to strengthen Michael, to make him my equal, his Who is like God authority was strong. Very strong. It let him hit far above what he should be able to, let him win fights that should be unwinnable. But it was limited. A blade, the sharpest blade in creation, but still just a blade. One edge, one direction, one purpose.

Now it's different. More flexible. The ritual didn't just make him stronger. It gave him options, subtlety, the ability to add to his authority instead of just expressing it the same way every time.

I see it happen. How Michael adds to his authority. Which is why, when he stands in the heart of the black hole that's already swallowed planets and stars and cosmic debris, when he swings, Nothing answers.

The black hole stops existing.

Not collapsed. Not scattered. Not transformed. It stops. Everything in the path of my brother's swing stops existing and returns to the nothing from before creation. Before Father spoke the first Word. Before there was anything except the infinite potential of His will.

Not destroyed, because my senses would feel that. Would register the energy moving somewhere else. Isn't it said that energy is never created or destroyed? Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin, two parts of the eternal cycle.

What Michael did was break that rule. There's literally nothing there. An absence so complete it's not even a void. Voids are something, a space where things could exist but don't. This is the absence of the possibility of absence. Nothing, capital N. The answer to his question made real. Who is like God? Nothing.

More incredible, I didn't feel Michael use anything except his authority. Not his world-ending strength that could shatter dimensions with a punch. Not his speed that lets him exist in multiple places through sheer velocity. Just his authority, pure and refined, shaped by the ritual I made for him into something that can challenge even the laws Father wrote into reality.

I smile, proud, awed, filled with love for my brother and what he's become. What we've become together.

Then I notice the blade of starlight that stopped centimeters from my eye.

I blink, focusing on it. Its edge is sharper than anything physical could be, vibrating with potential destruction. I look past it to Michael, whose focused expression has shifted to surprise. His golden eyes are wide, his perfect features arranged in something almost comical.

Then he snorts.

"You copied me?"

It seemed I could not hide much from him.

I let my smile widen into a grin. "Me? Copying you? Blasphemy, Micky. I repurposed what you did and made something better."

He rolls his eyes, but I see the amusement there, the fondness that never quite leaves when we talk. "Repurposed. Better. Sure."

"Still," I continue, genuinely curious now, "how were you able to guess? I thought I'd been more careful."

Michael pulls his blade back and lets it break apart into tiny lights that drift away. "Your timing was wrong. My blade stopped nanoseconds before I would have stopped it myself."

Michael keeps talking, satisfaction warming his voice. "After I realized that, I tried pushing my blade forward, and you know what happened? Nothing happened."

"Just because of timing, huh?" I let disappointment color my voice, theatrical and exaggerated. "Don't know how to feel about that, but you're not wrong."

If Michael is a sharp blade, I'm a multi-tool. That's how it's always been. How Father designed us, or maybe not designed, but had originally intended us to become before our births. Michael's authority gives him absolute conviction. The ability to make his truth into reality. Who is like God? Nothing. So when Michael strikes, nothing can stand against him. It's beautiful in its simplicity. Elegant in its single purpose.

My authority is different. In simple words, I can change anything into anything I want. Because like my name Helel suggests, I hold inside me the light of our Father who created everything. And light doesn't just mean light as particles, but everything that represents Father. The creative force. The generative principle. The divine spark that can look at Nothing and make it Something.

And that's all without my particular case. My essence buried inside me that Father didn't make. That other thing, that piece of me existing before I did, that parting gift from Louis, from my past life. The one that makes me much stronger than I should be. The one reason why I had to create the ritual to strengthen Michael, so my brother could stand beside me instead of in my shadow.

Anyway, what I did was watch Michael use Nothing, then inscribe it around myself as defense. Kind of like a white-haired blue-eyed guy from Jujutsu Kaisen who got broken up with before KFC, the one who got literally turned into a fillet.

It makes me practically untouchable. Nothing can only touch Nothing. If Nothing surrounds me, anything trying to reach me has to pass through Nothing first, which means it stops existing before it gets to me. Inviolable. Untouchable.

"Helel?"

My brother's voice pulls me from my thoughts. Softer now. Carrying a different quality than during our play-fight-dance.

I pay attention, really pay attention. I focus on Michael in a way that excludes everything else. Every star, every planet, every tiny vibration in ancient light. Just Michael. Him and nothing else.

"I am thankful and ever grateful to have you as my brother." Michael's voice carries that gentleness he reserves for moments when he's being vulnerable. When he's letting me see past the usual stoicism and into the heart. "Watching you go beyond me so easily, do things I couldn't, even though you are my little brother, even though I am the blade that should be pointed at our family's foes, at everyone trying to cross Father and you, I felt envious. I loved you yet I felt envious, and feeling envious made me feel shameful, and I know you felt it. That you knew it, because we are twins. You are I and I am you, originating from the same light our Father made and separated in two. I'm sure you did, yet you still loved me. You still cared for me. You still tried for me. You made me better, stronger. You didn't resent me."

"Michae-," I start, something tight forming in my chest, something that feels like pain even though I shouldn't feel pain.

"Let me finish, Helel." Michael's golden eyes meet mine across the void, across the space between stars, across the impossibly small distance between our hearts. "I need to, please."

I nod, not trusting my voice.

"I dislike when you still bite pieces off my sandwiches Dad makes, even though you have your own." Despite the heavy moment, there's exasperation in his voice that makes me want to laugh. "I dislike you pestering me and teasing me at every opportunity."

"Get good and counterattack, coward," I shoot back automatically, unable to help myself.

Michael's lips twitch. "Oh, I'm the coward? Says the one who literally wrote himself a defense making him impossible to touch because he knows I'm better at direct combat."

"You're not better at direct combat. You're more straightforward. There's a difference, and it's called having more than one move."

"One move? One move?" Michael's voice rises. "I have multiple moves! I have at least, several moves!"

"Wow, several. I'm overwhelmed by your vast arsenal."

"You know what? That's it." Michael points at me dramatically. "Next time Dad makes sandwiches, I'm eating yours too. See how you like it."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Wouldn't I?" His eyes glint. "What are you going to do? Hide behind your Nothing defense?"

"I'll weaponize Father's disappointment against you. I'll tell him you're being mean to me."

"You absolute child!"

"You literal manchild!"

"That doesn't even work as an insult here!"

"Your face doesn't work!"

"My face is literally perfect! Father made it perfect!"

"Perfectly punchable, you mean." I'm grinning, and he's grinning, and we're drifting closer as we argue, pulled together by something that has nothing to do with mass and everything to do with love.

"You're just jealous because I'm the handsome twin."

"We're identical twins, you absolute buffoon!"

"Exactly! And I'm the better-looking one!"

"That's not how that works!"

"It is now! I've decided it, and my authority says I'm right!"

"Your authority doesn't work like that!"

"Doesn't it though?" Michael's laughing now, his wings fluttering with amusement.

"No! You can't just, that's not, you're impossible!"

Couldn't he though now that I thought about it? Using his no one is like God authority but for aesthetics especially after my ritual?

Fuck!

"Impossibly handsome. We've established this."

"I'm going to tell Father you're abusing your authority for vanity."

"I'm going to tell Father you're just bitter because you know I'm right."

"I'll eat ALL your sandwiches!"

Nah, that was going too far. It's supposed to be Helel eating Michael's sandwiches. Not the contrary.

"You wouldn't!"

"Try me!"

"You're a monster!"

"Takes one to know one!" I pause. "Wait, that came out wrong."

"So you're admitting I'm right? Admitting I'm the better twin?"

"I'm admitting nothing except that you're a colossal pain!"

"At least I'm colossal at something!"

"That doesn't even, what does that even mean?!"

"It means I'm winning this argument!"

"You're not winning! There's nothing to win!"

"Then why are you so worked up about it?"

"Because you're, you're just, ugh!" I make a frustrated gesture that accidentally creates a small nebula.

"Very articulate, Helel. Really showing off that superior intellect."

"I'll show you superior intellect, you, you," I struggle for words.

"You, you," Michael mocks my voice. "Come on, little brother. You can do better than that."

"Little brother? I'm like three seconds younger at most!"

"Three seconds I've spent being wiser and more mature!"

"More mature?! You just admitted you're planning sandwich theft!"

"That's not theft, that's justice!"

"Justice?!"

"Yes! Reparations for all the times you've bitten mine!"

"That's not how reparations work!"

"It is in the twin code!"

"There is no twin code!"

"There is now! I just made it!"

"You can't just make up codes!"

"Watch me!" Michael spreads his wings dramatically.

"You're ridiculous!"

"You're redundant!"

"That doesn't make sense!"

"Your face doesn't make sense!"

"You already used that one!"

"It was good enough to use twice!"

"It wasn't good the first time!"

We're both laughing now, doubling over as much as you can while floating in space, the sound echoing through the void in defiance of every physical law.

But then Michael's expression shifts. Gets serious. I feel my laughter fade as I recognize the look. This is the look he gets when he has to say something important, something that I know would be heavy.

"I dislike a lot of things about you," Michael begins, his voice steady but soft, "but I want you to know that I could never hate you. That I could, will never hurt you purposefully and will endeavor in not doing it indirectly. I know that sometimes you're anxious, feel scared, sad, melancholic about me and Dad, and I don't know why and I don't want you to tell me until you're ready and Dad feels the same, but I just want you to know that if Dad and I, if I could change anything, we would change nothing. Because you've been one if not the greatest thing we both have, and we love you, and we love you till the end of everything and beyond."

The words hit me like a collapsing star, like the weight of entire systems, like every force in the universe pressing on my chest at once. I open my mouth to respond, to say something, anything, but nothing comes out. How could I respond? How could I find words big enough, true enough, powerful enough to match what he just gave me?

I look softly at stars galaxies away, at distant lights representing worlds and possibilities, at the vast expanse of creation Father wove and we're privileged to move through. I think about what I know, what I carry inside. Knowledge of what's coming, of what could come, of choices that will be made or could be made, of the terrible beauty of free will and the price it may demand.

I think about timelines and possibilities, about loving someone so much their love for you becomes both infinite comfort and profound pain. How can I not feel melancholic, knowing what I know? How can I not feel scared, anxious, sad, when I look at Michael and Father even though I had promised to live now without regret, to my utmost whatever may happen in the future?

Still, the most prevalent thing, thought I have.

It is 'Oh' as arms wrap around me.

Michael's embrace folds me in warmth and safety and unconditional love. Then I feel another presence, vast and gentle and infinite, and suddenly we're both held tenderly in the mountain-sized humanoid star-like radiant form of our Father.

"My boys." Father's voice rumbles through dimensions, and it's not some all-knowing pronouncement or divine decree. It's just a father talking to his children, loving them with every particle of his being. "My beautiful, brilliant, beloved boys."

I try to speak, try to find words, but my vision blurs. Why is my vision blurring? I have perfect vision. I can see across dimensions, see the birth and death of all things, see the thoughts of the smallest particles.

But I can't see clearly right now. I realize my eyes are wet. Tears are falling from them even though we're between stars, even though there's nothing here but void and vacuum and us.

I never thought it could rain between stars.

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I hope y’all like this chapter. I had originally written another chapter and I searched for it, in vain and that lowkey made me retreat away from this story because the other chapter was so much better and I knew another version like this one while it could be liked/appreciated would be not as good as the original but it's honestly been too long since I posted anything for this story so here. I also had question I wanted your opinions on regarding this story. I'll probably make it a poll later, in a moment where I shouldn’t be on my phone instead of sleeping like a dumbass but I was seeing two future versions/paths for this story. The first one is that it continues like it is and properly turn into a fanfic. The second thing is that I make it a true original story and I go completely wild because so far, I don’t think I had written something that would make this story force full stuck as a fanfic. What do y’all think