Hell was quiet yet so loud. The air was thick and hot, tasting of ash and endings. My chains, born from a century of stolen peace, felt heavy around my arms. Across from me, Kephriel didn't look like a glorious god anymore. He looked… tired.
I lunged at him, a scream of raw grief tearing from my throat. My power, the Mindbreaker wave of my loss, hit him like a strong tsunami.
It did nothing.
He absorbed it. His chains glowed brighter, and he let out a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of eons.
"STOP!"
he said, and his voice wasn't a command. It was a plea. He didn't block my next swing; he just let my fist connect with his chest. It was like punching a mountain.
"You can't hurt me with that. I am that."
I stumbled back, chest heaving.
"Why?!"
The word was a broken thing.
"Why me?!"
"Because you're the only one,"
he said, his voice hollow. All the mockery was gone.
"There are no other contracts. No other 'hollow children'. There is only you, Rafael."
He gestured around us, at the desolate, awful landscape.
"All of this… the crash, the chains, the nightmares… it was a curriculum. A crucible. The other versions you saw in the void? Illusions. Possibilities. Tests. They were all weak. Their sadness was a flavor. A snack. Yours…"
He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something in his eyes that wasn't amusement or anger. It was sadness.
"…yours is a feast. Your loneliness is absolute. It is the foundation stone of my power. I made you stronger not to torment you, but to make you last. To make you… sustainable."
The truth landed on me like a physical blow. I wasn't a victim. I was a crop. He wasn't my damnation. He was my farmer.
"Everything I have done,"
he whispered, the sound carrying across the dead plains,
"was to make you the perfect source. To make you strong enough to never break. To never… run out.
That was the contract."
The scope of it was too vast to comprehend. My entire life, my suffering, was a carefully managed project.
A flicker of movement caught my eye. A door. A simple, familiar white door, standing impossibly in the middle of the hellscape, untouched by the ash and fire. It was the door from the void.
We both stared at it, our confrontation forgotten. It hadn't been there a second ago.
Driven by a compulsion I didn't understand, I walked toward it. Kephriel followed, a strange tension in his posture.
I slowly pushed the door open.
Cold air washed over us. We were back in the endless black space where I'd met the other versions of myself.
But it wasn't empty.
In the center of the void sat Gluttony. My face, rounder, flushed, with a vacant, contented smile. And he was not alone.
The other Rafs—Arrogance, Wrath, Envy, the others—were there. But they weren't standing. They were… contained. Trapped in translucent, glowing jars that pulsed with a faint light. Their forms were still, frozen in expressions of silent agony.
And Gluttony was holding one of the jars—the one that held the Envious version of me. He brought it to his lips and tipped it back. A stream of glowing, green-tinged energy—the essence of that other Raf—flowed into his mouth. He swallowed, and his own aura flared brighter for a second.
He noticed us. His vacant eyes suddenly focused. He lowered the jar and smiled, a wide, terrible thing.
In his hand, he held out another jar. This one pulsed with a furious red light. Inside, I could see the Wrathful version of me screaming soundlessly.
Gluttony gestured with the jar toward me, his voice a wet, contented rumble that echoed in the silent void.
"Hey..."
He chuckled.
"You came back just in time for a snack."