Hell was not still.
It never was.
It was alive—breathing, shifting, whispering with a thousand broken voices that crawled across the air like smoke. The red sky churned, bleeding into itself, while rivers of molten iron snaked between obsidian cliffs that pulsed like veins. Every scream, every echo of pain, was part of its rhythm.
But that rhythm was changing.
Far below the burning sky, in the endless heart of Pandemonium, the Lords of Hell gathered. The throne room was vast, carved from the fossilized bones of dead angels. The pillars that held it up still bore faint halos, corrupted into dim circles of ash.
At the center, upon a throne that breathed like a living wound, sat Mephisto.
His smile was gone.
He leaned forward, resting one clawed hand on his chin, watching the storm of crimson energy crackle across the distant sky. He could feel it—the ripple in the fabric of the underworld. The seal had been broken.
"They're coming," he murmured.
