Elara discovered that Seraphic Power felt like being struck by lightning made of pure moral certainty.
The sensation began as warmth in her chest—not unlike the feeling she'd experienced during her most successful protest rallies, when the crowd's energy aligned with righteous purpose. But as Instructor Zadkiel guided her through the basic exercises, that warmth evolved into something far more intense. It was the feeling of being absolutely, unshakably convinced that your cause was just, amplified to the point where doubt became not just impossible but literally inconceivable.
Which, naturally, made Elara immediately suspicious.
Any power that eliminates doubt, she thought as golden light flickered around her hands, is a power that eliminates critical thinking. And any system that discourages critical thinking is a system with something to hide.
They were training in what the instructors called the Harmony Fields—vast spaces within the Celestial City where the laws of physics seemed more like polite suggestions. Recruits floated in meditation circles, their nascent wings of light growing brighter as they learned to channel their newfound abilities. The scene should have been peaceful, inspiring even.
Instead, it reminded Elara uncomfortably of footage she'd seen from authoritarian youth camps, where children were taught to find joy in unquestioning obedience.
"Focus on the righteousness of your cause," Zadkiel instructed, his own wings—solid, feathered things that gleamed like polished silver—folding against his back as he moved among the recruits. "Let that certainty fill you. Feel how right it is to preserve order, to protect peace, to ensure that chaos cannot corrupt the perfect harmony of creation."
Elara tried to follow the instruction, but her mind kept snagging on inconvenient questions. Who gets to define what constitutes 'perfect harmony'? What happens to people who prefer a little creative chaos in their lives? And why does this power feel like it's designed to override my capacity for moral reasoning?
The Seraphic energy responded to her doubts by flickering uncertainly, drawing Zadkiel's attention.
"Something troubling you, Recruit Elara?" he asked, approaching with the kind of patient concern that suggested he'd dealt with questioning recruits before.
"I'm just wondering about the philosophical implications," Elara said carefully. "On Earth, I learned that the most dangerous ideologies are often the ones that feel most righteous. How do we ensure we're not becoming so convinced of our own moral superiority that we lose the ability to recognize when we might be wrong?"
The other recruits turned to look at her with expressions that ranged from curious to concerned. Zadkiel's smile never wavered, but something shifted in his eyes—a calculation that reminded Elara of her least favorite professors, the ones who treated difficult questions as problems to be managed rather than ideas to be explored.
"An excellent question," Zadkiel said, "and one that demonstrates the sophistication of your moral reasoning. But consider this: doubt serves a purpose in the mortal realm, where information is limited and perspectives are finite. Here, we have access to divine truth. The uncertainty that protected you from error on Earth becomes unnecessary when you can perceive absolute moral reality."
That, Elara realized, is exactly the kind of reasoning that justifies every theocracy in history. 'We have access to ultimate truth, therefore questioning us is not just wrong but impossible.' But she simply nodded and said, "I see. Thank you for the clarification."
Zadkiel moved on, satisfied that he'd addressed her concerns. But Elara's unease only deepened. The other recruits had accepted his explanation without question, their expressions reflecting the kind of serene certainty that, in her experience, preceded the most horrific atrocities.
They're not just training us to fight, she thought as she watched her fellow souls channel their growing power with untroubled dedication. They're training us not to think.
Meanwhile, several dimensional planes away, Kael was learning that Tempestuous Power felt like being struck by lightning made of pure, unfiltered rage.
The sensation was intoxicating in a way that should have been terrifying. It began as heat in his gut—not unlike the anger that had fueled his revolutionary activities on Earth, but concentrated and refined until it became something almost narcotic. When he channeled it properly, the world took on a crystalline clarity where every injustice blazed like a beacon and every compromise felt like betrayal.
"That's it!" Lieutenant Vex called out as Kael's hands erupted in shadows and flame. "Feel that fury! That's your soul recognizing the cosmic injustice of existence itself. The enemy wants to drug the universe into accepting oppression with a smile. We offer the honesty of righteous anger!"
They were training in what Hell called the Crucible Grounds—jagged arenas carved into the mountainsides where recruits learned to harness their power through controlled combat. The philosophy seemed to be that you couldn't truly understand freedom until you were willing to fight and bleed for it. Which, Kael had to admit, aligned pretty well with his own revolutionary experience.
But something about the training nagged at him, the way a poorly constructed analogy nagged at his sense of language. The Tempestuous Power felt amazing, sure, but it also felt... limiting. Like being offered a magnificent sword that could only cut in one direction.
"This whole setup," he said to his training partner, a former corporate whistleblower named Marcus, "is like... like being given the world's most powerful motorcycle, except it doesn't have brakes. And also the road only goes in one direction. And that direction might be off a cliff, but the motorcycle is so cool you don't really care about the cliff situation."
Marcus stared at him. "Dude, that analogy makes no sense."
"Yeah, I know. But you get what I mean, right? This power, it feels incredible, but it also feels like it's... programming us somehow. Like, when I channel it, I can't imagine any solution to problems that doesn't involve fighting. Everything looks like a nail when your hammer is made of concentrated fury."
"Maybe that's because fighting is the solution," Marcus replied, his own wings of shadow and ember flickering with enthusiasm. "Maybe the problem with the mortal world was that we spent too much time trying to compromise with systems that were fundamentally corrupt. Maybe pure, honest conflict is the only way to real change."
Kael wanted to argue, but the Tempestuous Power flowing through him made Marcus's words seem not just reasonable but obviously true. And that, more than anything, made him deeply uncomfortable.
If this power makes every idea seem obviously true, he thought during a brief moment of clarity, then how can I tell the difference between genuine insight and supernatural manipulation?
The question followed him back to his quarters that evening, where he found a message waiting for him—carved into the obsidian wall in letters that glowed with inner fire. It was from someone identifying themselves as "A Friend," and it contained a single, disturbing piece of information:
Ask your instructors what happens to soldiers who are 'killed' in battle. Ask them about the Maw.
Kael stared at the message until the glowing letters faded, leaving only smooth stone. A friend? He didn't have any friends in Hell—he'd barely been here long enough to learn anyone's name. But the message felt important in a way that cut through the narcotic haze of Tempestuous Power.
The Maw. The term meant nothing to him, but something about it made his revolutionary instincts twitch. In his experience, when authority figures avoided discussing certain topics, those topics usually contained the most important truths.
Several dimensions away, Elara was staring at her own anonymous message, this one written in letters of pure light on her crystalline window:
Ask your instructors about the Soulforge. Ask them what happens to the Anima of fallen soldiers.
Like Kael, she had no idea who might be providing this information. Unlike Kael, her overthinking mind immediately began generating theories: Is this a test? A trap designed to identify recruits who might be susceptible to enemy propaganda? Or is this a genuine warning from someone who knows something the instructors don't want us to know?
Both messages faded as their recipients pondered the implications, leaving behind two souls who had arrived in their respective afterlives with different personalities, different skills, and different prejudices—but who now shared a growing certainty that their new commanders were not telling them the whole truth.
The Coin, balanced on its metaphysical fulcrum between the forces of Order and Chaos, trembled almost imperceptibly.
And in the space between dimensions, where neither Seraphic nor Tempestuous power held sway, something that might have been the echo of the Creator's laughter rippled through the void.