It was dark. And the darkness to her left was no different from the darkness to her right. There was darkness behind her, and if you guessed it, yes. Darkness in front of her too.
A perfect void. A simple, empty nothingness.
Enochia floated through that nothingness, suspended in a place without ground nor sky. She couldn't tell if she was falling, rising, or simply stuck in a single moment stretched into eternity. Time refused to exist here. Minutes felt like hours; hours felt like millennia, and a thousand years felt like a second.
Though make no mistake, even through that feeling, she was conscious, very much so. She felt her limbs and she was aware of them, but they refused to move. They hung weightless, unresponsive, as if her soul had hands she couldn't command.
And oh, she wanted to move.
She wanted to move so badly her very being shook. She wanted to lunge, to fight, to tear that cowardly, opportunistic creature apart with her bare hands. The one who ambushed her in her one, single moment of weakness.
The one who thought he had won. Her hatred flared so violently that even the void around her seemed to recoil.
Then, just as her rage was reaching its peak… Light.
A thin, distant glimmer… The so-called light at the end of the tunnel.
Anyone else might have drifted toward it, might have reached for it, might have embraced it with trembling fingers and tearful relief as they entered the kingdom of God.
But Enochia Adams was not "anyone."
She refused.
She did not swim toward the light. She twisted in the void, fighting with limbs that didn't obey, screaming with a throat she no longer had. Rage poured through her, replacing every atom of her being with refusal.
She would not go. She would not follow. She would not surrender her story here. She would not give a demon the satisfaction. Even dead, no, especially dead, she resisted.
Her entire essence pushed back, clawing at the void, wrenching herself away from the light with a fury so unfiltered it burned through the darkness like a second sun.
Enochia didn't know how long she fought. Yet when the darkness finally shifted, it happened so suddenly that even her rage paused for a heartbeat. The faint light in the distance flickered, as if startled by her refusal, then slowly evaporated.
For the briefest moment everything went black again, as if the void itself was holding its breath… before two new lights appeared where the first had been. One white. One red.
She had no time to process them. The lights darted toward her with the speed of falling stars, slamming into her vision before she could recoil. They replaced her sight entirely, sinking into her eyes.
And in that moment, for the first time in either seconds or thousands of years, she genuinely couldn't tell, Enochia felt something other than numb, drifting nothingness. She felt heat. She felt frost. She felt warmth that cradled her and cold that gnawed into her. Opposites surged through her like dueling waves, clashing and spiraling until her vision blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again as she struggled to comprehend what was happening.
Slowly, agonizingly, her surroundings began to take shape. Her body, though no less weightless, now had definition. Her senses, though fogged, began to awaken. It was only when the world finally settled into something resembling clarity that she realized she was suspended in midair, stuck inside a strange-looking wall made of gray sand.
And floating directly in front of her was a notification, one she recognized instantly, one she had grown accustomed to over the last two and a half years. The system interface. It was familiar in shape… yet not familiar at all in tone. Because the words didn't appear with their usual emotionless tone.
No, they drifted onto the screen slowly, almost tenderly, as if being written by an unseen hand.
[Hello, dear Enochia]
Enochia shook her head, and the motion sent sheets of sand sliding away from her face and shoulders, scattering into the air like dust. Her voice followed right after, rougher than she expected, deeper and steadier, sounding like someone older than she remembered being.
"What… what the hell is this?" she muttered, surprised at hearing herself sound more like a grown woman than a seventeen-year-old girl. She caught a falling strand of her hair in her peripheral vision, and it was still perfectly white, thank God… But in that exact second, she swore faint red streaks laced through it before disappearing again. She frowned, unsettled, but before she could examine it further, another notification appeared in front of her eyes.
[Do not panic. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Roo, your guardian angel.]
"Roo?" she repeated, her brow knitting as she pressed her palm harder into the sandy wall. "What kind of name is that?" She coughed, irritation and confusion twisting together as she tried to move forward. Her limbs responded, but the wall held her in place, some unseen force reinforcing it, preventing her from bursting through. "Okay, no. Seriously, what the hell happened to me?"
[You died, Enochia.]
Her breath left her in a sharp, involuntary exhale, her chest tightening as though she'd been struck again. She had known. It had been obvious in the void, in the light she refused, but seeing it written, seeing it confirmed in cold, undeniable letters, made her heart skip painfully. "I… died," she whispered, tasting bitterness on her tongue. "I actually—"
A new message formed, gentler than the last.
[Do not let fear take hold. There is much you do not yet understand.]
"Oh, don't you dare," Enochia snapped, her voice reverberating with fury. "Don't tell me not to fear—don't tell me to be calm—after I was stabbed, after someone wore my brother's face, after everything—after dying—you expect me to just breathe and nod?! How the hell am I supposed to—"
Her voice cut off as a surge of energy tore out of her body, radiating in violent waves. Heat and frost collided around her, spiraling outward, and the gray sand wall began to crack under the force.
The hallway, because she could now see she was in one, shook violently from the sheer pressure of her rebirth. She paid no attention to the environment, caring nothing for where she was or how she'd arrived here, because the only thing she felt was rage. Pure, spiraling rage that made her vision flicker between white and red as her soul burst with enough power to shatter the space imprisoning her.
The sand finally erupted around her, the wall collapsing in a violent shower of grains that evaporated before they even touched the floor. Enochia dropped with them, her body falling before slamming into the ground hard enough to crack the stone beneath her, yet she felt no pain.
Her limbs were numb, heavy, detached from her like they belonged to someone else entirely. Her stomach twisted and lurched, a sickness rising in her chest so sharp it nearly stole her breath, and cold seeped bone-deep until her entire body trembled uncontrollably. She felt terrible… As if a train had plowed through her, reversed, and gone back over her again just to make sure she stayed down. Every emotion she had ever felt seemed to be crashing through her at once: confusion, fear, anger, grief, exhaustion, and a hollow ache so deep she thought she might vomit.
But despite how she looked and felt, the next explanation from the system slipped into her mind with an unexpected warmth that soothed something inside her.
[You are special, Enochia.]
The message said, and she narrowed her eyes as she pushed herself slowly off the ground. Only now did she notice the strange black armor coating her forearms and hands, faintly shifting like smoke trapped in steel.
"What… is this?" she muttered.
[Your purpose cannot end here, Enochia. Your existence holds more weight than your circumstances, and it is far from finished.]
Another message appeared, this one slightly firmer.
[You already know Heaven and Hell are real. Thus, you must have realized your current location, if not Earth, does not resemble Heaven.]
Enochia paused, confused, but the message continued, detailed and calm. It wasn't until the exact words finally manifested that her mind froze.
[You are in Hell.]
For a heartbeat, she did nothing. Then everything inside her shattered.
A broken, hysterical sound tore from her throat as she doubled over. "HA… HAHAHAHAHA—HA—HA—HAHAHAHA—WHAT—?!" She threw her head back, laughter exploding out of her so violently that blood sprayed from her mouth and hit the ground in dark splatters. She laughed until her voice cracked, until her throat burned. "HELL?! HELL?!" she shrieked, laughing and crying and gasping all at once. "A-AFTER EVERYTHING—AFTER SAVING PEOPLE—AFTER BEING A SAINT—AFTER DYING TO A—TO A—WHATEVER THAT THING WAS—YOU'RE TELLING ME I GOT SENT TO HELL?!?!"
Her laughter spiraled into something feral, something desperate, and she slammed her fist against the stone hard enough to crack it even further. "OF COURSE—OF COURSE—OF COURSE THIS WOULD HAPPEN—HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—OF COURSE—OF COURSE—"
Her voice rose into a high, choking scream as her laughter collapsed into sobs, but before she could spiral any further, her vision snapped white. Roo had cast something, and suddenly her mind numbed, her breath steadied, and a suffocating veil of calm forced itself over her emotions. She gasped sharply, her hysterics collapsing as her muscles went slack, and her eyes dragged back toward the notification against her will.
[Good. Now read.]
Her body obeyed even if her mind screamed.
[A soul in Heaven cannot return to Earth, but a soul in Hell, however, can.]
Enochia exhaled shakily, her voice barely more than a whisper as she read on.
[You must listen, Enochia. Unlike the sinners you imagine littering this realm, you are spared. For now. You will not be tormented. You will not be bound. Instead, you are given a chance few ever receive: the chance to escape Hell. And if you grow strong enough, the chance to return to Earth.]
Enochia's lips parted. "Why the hell am I even in Hell?" she demanded. "I didn't deserve this! I wasn't supposed to die like that… That wasn't how it was meant to go!" She slammed her palm against the broken floor, resentment twisting her features. "I saved people. I fought for them. I became a Saint. And you're telling me this is where I end up?!"
Her voice cracked through the hallway like a whip, pride forcing itself forward even when her body barely held together. She glared at the floating notifications, as though daring them to contradict her.
[You were permitted entry into Heaven, Enochia.]
"What?"
[But you refused.]
Enochia's breath hitched. "I… What do you mean, I refused? Why the hell would I—"
[Ask yourself if this is what you truly wanted.]
Roo's next messages confirmed it.
[Your dying wish was vengeance. Your final desire was to cause harm. It was pure wrath, and while unshakably purposeful, it is still a sin.]
Enochia forced air into her lungs, her jaw clenching so hard her teeth ached. Roo continued before she could speak again.
[As for why I followed you, and why I aid you still, I cannot reveal that yet. But calm yourself, Enochia. As things stand now, you are very much able to leave this place, and you are, in every definition that matters… still alive. For lack of a better term, you have only changed locations.]
The spell Roo had cast earlier tightened again, soothing the sharpest edges of her fury, dampening the storm inside her just enough for her to breathe without shaking
"…Alright," she muttered, the word strained. "Fine. I don't have much of a choice, do I?" She pushed her hair back, ignoring the faint streaks of red she thought she saw again. "If I'm stuck here… then show me what I'm working with."
She lifted her hand toward the system window.
"Status."