Far away from Adebayo Hills — so far that distance lost all meaning — a throne sat in a place that light had never touched. Not because light couldn't reach it. Because the throne's occupant had extinguished every ray that tried.
The Devil was not red. He had no horns. No tail. No pitchfork.
He looked like a man in the way a sword looks like a piece of metal. Technically accurate. Profoundly incomplete.
His skin was the color of ash after a forest fire — the ash of something that had once burned brightly and had been consumed. His eyes held the patience of something that had watched empires rise and fall without blinking, had watched souls be saved and lost, had watched the battle between light and darkness rage for millennia.
He did not smile often. Smiling suggested emotion, and emotion suggested attachment, and attachment suggested weakness.
But sometimes — when the board was set just right — the corner of his mouth would twitch.
Tonight, it twitched.
"They are being born," he said to no one.
The void around him listened.
"Let them grow strong first," he continued, almost gently. "A weak enemy teaches nothing. A strong enemy... teaches everything."
He raised one finger.
A spark of absolute darkness formed at its tip — the opposite of the light God had spoken into existence. Darkness that had chosen itself, separated itself, made itself into something other than the absence of light.
"Let them believe they are choosing their path."
The spark grew.
"Let them believe they have time."
The spark became a sphere.
"Let them believe in hope."
The sphere pulsed once — like a heartbeat.
"Then I will show them what hope becomes when it meets me."
He closed his hand.
The darkness vanished.
But something else remained.
Something that had just begun to move.
"Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." — 1 Peter 5:8