What do you mean when you say that I’m supposed to be the devil?!: Chapter 8: Gehenna

The seventh pair of wings still felt like a secret held too long, like an error waiting to be made, Like an unfinished breath trapped in my chest, waiting. It wasn’t pain exactly—but presence. A hidden chamber in a heart I had thought was complete. Another beat, another breath, another space where love and dread could nest side by side.

Time passed—measured not in minutes, but in starlight, in the laughter echoing through stars and the hush that followed it. It had been a while since Father’s examination. Since the talk. Since I had declared with pure certainty that “Nothing will change between Michael and me. I won’t let it.”

I had needed to say it. Like armor, like prayer. Because beneath the brave words, fear lived. It would be a lie to say it wasn’t the case.,Cold and slick and whispering. A serpent of doubt coiled tightly in my chest, one that seemed to whisper What if it does? What if you fail? What if you’re too much? Too bright? Too different? And in that difference, you become what Lucifer, what Helel in all realities is expected to, that you were expected to become?

Louis had made me a deal once—when I was still Allen, when I was still something small and breakable, wandering through the glass-shard ruin of the world I’d tried to save. Find a happy ending, he’d said. Find it, and you’ll get them back. He said probably knowing, probably behind whether it was directly or indirectly my current identity.

I was Helel. The Morning Star. The light-bearing son of a God too vast to be classified. The one prophesied to fall. The one destined—by ink, by scripture, by story and lie—to become the Adversary, the Accuser, the Devil.

I had made one vow upon waking into this new form: Don’t fall. Don’t rebel.

Whatever happens, don’t fall.

Do everything in your power to keep loving Him.

It had seemed monumental then, like standing at the edge of a cliff and promising not to jump. And now… now I lived in the presence of the one who was supposed to banish me from heaven.

And it had been easy, so far

Too easy.

Because—damn me—how could anyone hate a Father like mine?

Father? He wasn’t a tyrant. He wasn’t a distant god of iron laws and thunderous wrath. He was warmth. He was light. He was joy so radiant it made galaxies bloom. He cracked jokes. He ruffled our hair. He cooked meals I swore were stolen from the memories of Earth’s greatest chefs, long before those chefs would even be born. He was kind. And Michael? Michael was still Michael. Steady. Anchoring. Frustrating. Brilliant. Mine.

To lose this—to lose them—was unthinkable.

And yet… the fear remained.

But something wonderful happened in the days, the weeks, the endless celestial pulses that followed.

Nothing changed.

Not in the ways that mattered.

Michael still sought me out when puzzles arose, his brow furrowed in that familiar, endearing way as he turned to me for answers I hadn’t even realized I held. Our roles shifted, subtly. Less him guiding, more us discovering. I explained things that came easily to me, and he listened with the same wonder I used to give him. But the heart of us—us—remained unbroken.

We still raced. Through the stars, through the forming clouds of creation, through playgrounds made of asteroid belts and glowing moons. We played tag with meteor trails and danced along the edges of gravitational storms. We giggled on Father’s shoulders, stealing snacks from platters the size of mountains, food that tasted like joy itself.

Our training sessions remained fierce and playful, our sparring a beautiful blur of sweat and sparks, of light clashing with light. It was all still there. That rhythm. That song. That paradise.

But beneath the gold… silence waited.

Not between us, not really. Not yet. But in him. I saw it in the hesitation that lingered too long before he laughed. In the weight behind his eyes. He was trying—desperately—to keep pace with a new rhythm he hadn’t written. And I hated how easily I fell into the lead.

Then Father left.

It was a brief thing, He’d said. A ripple in His divine schedule. “A quick adjustment,” He promised, brushing our hair with a fingertip the size of a mountain range. “Nothing big. I’ll be back before you miss me too much.”

And He smiled. That genuine, radiating smile.

But the silence He left behind wasn’t small.

It was total or it felt like it at least, like a void inside, a gnawing maddening one. I wonder if that was what the Helel, the Lucifer I had replaced would have felt, if every fallen angels, angels who had lost Father’s love would feel. If that was the case, I could see how they could bathe themselves in sin, in excess, all I guess to feel something worth the hundredth of Dad’s love.

To fill it, Michael suggested we paint.

Not with brushes. With creation. We shaped light itself. Nebulae became our canvas. The dark between stars, our frame. He wove colors with the patience of a saint, teasing meaning from luminescence, crafting spirals of topaz and sapphire, making galaxies sing.

I tried. I truly did. But where his power flowed like a poem—delicate, intentional—mine crashed like a drumbeat. My stars blazed too hot. My strokes were bold, wild, lacking the nuance of his sadness, his precision. His galaxies felt like symphonies. Mine were bright explosions, flashes of feeling, gone too soon.

I realized something then.

In this art, I was the follower.

And it made me ache for him.

Because he needed this. Not for the beauty. For the stillness. For something to do that reminded him he was good. That he could lead. That he was needed. I sat beside him for a while, watching the galaxy unfold beneath his fingertips like a flower, blooming in quiet.

But I couldn’t stay still.

Something in me itched.

Eventually, I rose. Drifted on fourteen wings to the edge of the sky. A plateau of crystal light, cold and humming, waiting just for me. And there, against the expanse of creation, I saw it.

The proto-rainbow was the name I gave it because it reminded me of one.

Father’s work. Of course it was.

Eleven bands of color arched across the cosmos, not the seven Earth would someday know. Opalescent, immense, radiant. A bridge, a monument, a promise. I tilted my head at it, a soft laugh brushing my lips. Why eleven though? Why not twelve? Why not infinite? At that point; why stop at À determined number?

Heh, I guess it was what it was. Dad probably had a reason, a good one, so there was no need to ask. It simply was. And that was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

Because then… something changed.

It began with a flicker.

Not a gentle tremor or the shimmering flutter of celestial wind. No. This was wrong.

One of the bands—deep violet, the color of twilight’s last breath—shuddered. Not aesthetically. But violently, like it was being hurt.

A hiccup.

A single colour-band—third from the left—twitched. Spasmed. Curled in on itself like a wound trying to smile.

And for a heartbeat, it wasn’t colour anymore.

It was pain.

It was screaming.

It was a hue that felt like knives and hospital lights and whispered threats you hear only in dreams.

Like broken glass dragged across the insides of my eyes.

Like the scream of a star swallowed by silence.

No thunder. No roar.

Just… an itch. Behind the eyes. Like memory misfiring.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Then—it was gone.

Back to normal.

Every part of me, every fibre that had tasted Father's light, knew that was wrong.

The flicker was over in a heartbeat. A blink. The violet returned to itself.

But the taste lingered.

A sharp, metal tang beneath my tongue.

A crawling grit beneath my wings.

I knew. I knew.

This wasn’t a trick of the light. This was infection. A ripple of something ancient and vile stretching its fingers through a hole that shouldn’t exist.

If only Father were here…

But He wasn’t.

And doing nothing—doing nothing—felt like watching a wound fester on someone you loved and deciding to wait until it bled.

I was here.

I was me.

And I understood now, better than ever, what lived inside me. That impossible extra. The spark of divergence Father hadn't foreseen. The strange, cheating, paradoxical ability that clung to me like a second skin—the one that let me exceed even Father's expectations. That unknowable strand that made me an anomaly even among perfection. I was not just made—I was more.

And the more you pushed me, the stronger I became.

Resistance fed me. The harder the challenge, the faster I climbed. That… was my nature, at least what i was able to glean from it.

Difficulty? Danger? Complexity?

They were fuel.

I should have told Michael. I should have called him, drawn him close, made a plan. But in that moment, one thought struck harder than caution.

If this touches him, it might hurt him.

And not just physically.

If this was a trap—if this was bait—then so be it. I’d bite.

Better me than Michael.

Better anger than loss.

So I moved.

Wings unfurled like the banners of war. Fourteen pinions alight with the glow of a star-born soul. I pushed forward, gliding toward the corrupted arch. Not with speed, but with purpose. Like a dream stalking an answer.

And as I neared, the air thickened.

Viscosity rose in the space between me and the loop. Like swimming through syrup made of grief and memory. Angles warped subtly. Familiar dimensions bent slightly wrong, like the world itself had sprained a bone and was trying to walk it off.

Tiny fractures flickered into visibility—hairline cracks spidering through the light. Like cosmic mold blooming on the edges of paradise.

My breath slowed.

Even reality seemed to flinch.

Up close, the band was not merely discolored. It had knotted. A Möbius loop of divine essence twisted into grotesque recursion. A serpent devouring its own tail, but without purpose. Without myth. Without meaning. Only rot.

It pulsed like a tumor.

And I reached out.

My fingers—lit with my innate light—brushed its surface.

And it spoke.

Not in words.

In knowing.

Scar tissue.

The term screamed through my mind like a revelation and a curse. This was not just a wound—it was an old one. Cauterized. Warped. Something had left its mark here before we were born. Before light. Before time.

Entities. Monsters.

Not of this world, or any world. Before existence.

The Primordial ones.

I saw them. In flashes, impressions, images that scorched the mind.

A mouth that was not a mouth, devouring concepts.

Chains forged from Father’s stolen essence, twisted into hooks.

A heartbeat—thud-thud-thud—echoing from somewhere beyond. Not sound. Intent. Pulsing with hatred that had no origin, only target.

Wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong.

This was not an accident.

This was infiltration.

A probe.

A seed.

And it had planted itself here, in the center of our sanctuary, in the home Father built for us. For Michael. For me.

A test of boundaries. A challenge whispered through poisoned winds.

They had waited until Father left.

Because Father’s gaze, for all its power, slipped when facing them. His omniscience dimmed, like fog obscuring a mirror. They were the one thing that refused to be known.

And this… this was a cancer.

Spreading.

Growing.

Planning.

A psychic Trojan horse breaching our gates.

I pulled my hand back.

Not in fear.

In calculation.

If I fought it now—alone—I could burn it out. The power in me had already begun to react, to climb, to adapt. That was the nature of my divergence: escalation. Resistance made me evolve. Pain made me stronger. The rot could be cauterized. The loop destroyed.

But I didn’t.

Not this time.

Because this wasn’t just a problem to be solved. This was a message. A threat.

This… demanded Father.

His physical presence might have been absent—but His love was not. It filled every breath, every pulse, every vibration of light. Michael and I were made from His joy. His need to love. That bond? That was older than any scar.

So I called Him.

Not with command.

Not with demand.

A whisper.

A plea.

“Dad,” I breathed, the word riding on light and desperation. “Please. I need you to come.”

He didn’t arrive.

He manifested.

There was no delay. No hesitation. No pause between plea and presence. One moment, I stood alone, wings open to the wounded sky. The next—space tore.

Not like fabric, not like a veil.

Like law itself had been denied.

Existence, causality, identity—split.

And through that rend in the rules, He emerged.

Not stepped. Not strode. Imposed.

The scale of Him was not measurable. Not vast. Not large. Not infinite. But defining. He was the axis around which the cosmos spun. The frame in which everything else was written. The light bent around Him—not in deference, but in surrender.

He did not radiate power.

He was the concept of power.

And His face—my Father’s face, our Father’s—shaped by love, shadowed now by something deeper, something old. Concern, yes. But beyond that: fury.

Michael arrived beside me in a shock of displaced air, breath catching in his throat. His gaze swung from me to the loop, then to Father.

And then he froze.

We both did.

Because Father saw it.

Saw what I saw.

What they had done.

And the stars stopped.

There was no wind, no sound, no time.

Only stillness.

The stillness of before. Before light. Before song. Before choice.

The stillness of uncut marble.

Then—

A wave.

Not of energy.

Not of flame.

Of wrath.

Raw, divine wrath. Not rage. Not anger. Not emotion.

Judgment.

It swept through Michael and me like a tidal wave of molten truth. We were not its targets—we were in its eye. But even that nearness was enough to break the breath from our lungs. Our wings flared wide, our halos sputtered under the pressure.

I had never feared Father.

Not once.

Until then.

Because this was not our Father the storyteller, the baker of impossible sweets, the crafter of games.

This was the Architect of everything.

The God of the gods.

The King of All That Must Be.

And He was furious.

The rot didn’t resist.

It didn’t have time to resist.

A single mote of violet light—no bigger than a closed hand—appeared at Father’s will, spinning within the corrupted loop.

It didn’t explode.

It consumed.

It devoured not just the corrupted knot but the idea of it. The memory. The possibility of its return. Like it had never existed.

The loop healed.

Perfect.

Pure.

Pristine.

But the air remained sharp.

Changed.

And then, Father spoke.

Not with the voice He used for bedtime stories.

This voice… scarred.

It rang like swords being drawn across reality’s spine.

A whisper louder than stars dying.

“They dare.”

The words weren’t said. They were etched. Into space. Into time. rds weren't loud; they were final, etching themselves into the fabric of existence.

A pronouncement.

"To encroach."

The space around the proto-rainbow seemed to flinch.

"To peer."

The word dripped with unspeakable violation.

"At my children."

The universe itself seemed to recoil, stars dimming momentarily in distant galaxies.

"Sealing you… imprisonment…" A pause, heavy with the weight of irrevocable judgment, colder than the void.

"An error."

The admission hung, stark and terrible.

"My gratitude…"

The 'gratitude' was a lash of ice, a caustic burn.

"You make me understand."

He wasn't speaking to us. He was addressing them. Every hidden horror festering in the forgotten corners of creation, every chained abomination dreaming of escape in lightless pits beyond the Veil, every remnant of the Primordial War. His voice, imbued with His will, carried to their buried hearts, their shadowed lairs, vibrating in the marrow of their anti-being.

"What is dead may never die…"

The words rolled out with a chilling, ancient cadence, like a doom-laden prophecy spoken into being.

"But suffer…"

The pause was a yawning chasm of promised agony.

"It can."

The certainty was absolute.

"Until broken."

The word 'broken' echoed with the sound of shattering realities.

"Until trapped."

"By Pain."

Pain was capitalized, personified, made into an eternal jailer.

"By blackened chains and hooks…"

The imagery was visceral, grotesque, promising unending torment.

"For an eternity."

Time itself became a prison sentence.

"Until wrongness…"

The concept given form.

"Yearns…"

A perversion of desire.

"For holiness."

The ultimate, impossible, agonizing aspiration.

The silence that followed this pronouncement was absolute. A vacuum sucking sound, light, even hope from existence. It was the silence of a tomb being sealed. The silence after the last note of a funeral dirge.

"Thank you."

The gratitude was a serrated blade twisted in a wound.

"For pushing me…"

The words ground like tectonic plates.

"To this point."

The point of no return.

"For this…"

The final phrase hung, pregnant with terrifying implication. The promise landed not like a sentence, but like the collapsing of a universe, extinguishing all light.

"I promise you…"

A vow etched in celestial fire.

"Hell."

The echo of that single, shattering word – Hell – spoken with a fury that felt older than time, colder than the absolute zero between galaxies, hung in the suddenly sterile light of the restored proto-rainbow. Paradise remained, visually pristine.

The arch shone, its eleven bands perfect once more. But the air itself tasted different now. Charged. Ozone-sharp after lightning. Brittle. Fragile. Michael stood rigid beside me, his wings held stiffly, his breath shallow and rapid, his knuckles white where he clenched his fists.

His face was pale, eyes wide with a mixture of awe and primal fear. The silence after the divine thunder wasn't peace. It was the stunned, ringing quiet after the first, world-shattering strike of lightning, the air thick with the promise of the storm still to come.

Father’s presence, vast and terrible, remained, a galaxy-sized sentinel radiating cold, righteous, unforgiving fury. The happy ending Louis spoke of, the one I fought for with Michael and Father at its heart, felt suddenly, terrifyingly, infinitely far away.

Hell had my father said.

It hadn’t existed before his words.

But it did now—

it existed. I was sure of it, the place Lucifer, that I was predestined, that it was written that I would go to after being banished for heaven, the one where I would be made to suffer at the end of times after the final battle between good and evil, after evil’s defeat.

It had to because of whom those words came from.

The lights of our home felt colder.