Darkness.

  It swallowed everything.

  Sariel’s body was weightless, suspended in the void beneath Pandemonium’s throne halls. There was no end to the fall, no beginning—only the cold, unyielding descent into a place where light had never touched.

  This was her punishment.

  Lucifer had not needed to speak it. The smirk on his lips as the ground cracked open beneath her had said enough. The moment she had resisted—however futile—it had sealed her fate.

  Now, she was being sent down.

  Not to the war-torn wastelands of Hell.

  Not to the blood-soaked arenas where demons battled for sport.

  No.

  She was being cast into the Abyss Below.

  Where the lost things dwelled.

  Where even demons feared to tread.

  A place of punishment for the punished.

  The deep, dark pit beneath Hell itself.

  The air grew thick, pressing against her like unseen hands, slowing her descent. She could hear the whispers before she saw anything—hissing voices that slithered over her skin, weaving into her mind.

  New blood.

  A fallen cherubim.

  A gift.

  The darkness pulsed.

  And then—

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  She hit the ground.

  A violent impact. Stone cracked beneath her, but she didn’t shatter. Pain lanced through her body, sharp and unforgiving, but she remained whole. That, perhaps, was the cruelest part.

  She wasn’t allowed to break.

  Sariel coughed, rolling onto her hands and knees. The weight of the place settled over her like chains.

  It was black.

  Not the absence of light.

  But the presence of something else.

  Something thick. Oily. Wrong.

  The air felt like tar in her lungs. The ground beneath her was neither solid nor liquid, shifting with every move she made.

  And the voices…

  They were closer now.

  She forced herself to her feet, fingers twitching toward a weapon she did not have. Her wings, burned and half-formed, twitched weakly at her back.

  From the shadows, something moved.

  Figures emerged slowly, their bodies unraveling and reforming as though they had forgotten what they were supposed to be. Some were tall, their limbs stretched impossibly thin. Others were hunched, broken, their eyes glowing like embers in the dark.

  Sariel had fought demons before.

  These were not demons.

  They were something worse.

  And they were watching her.

  “Welcome,” one of them rasped, its voice like dry paper tearing. “To the Abyss.”

  Sariel straightened, swallowing the bitterness on her tongue.

  So this was where she would serve.

  Not as a warrior.

  Not as a ruler.

  But as a prisoner among prisoners.

  ---

  The Weight of Retribution

  They wasted no time.

  Sariel had no sense of how long she had been there—time did not flow in the Abyss as it did elsewhere. There was only the unrelenting now.

  And the work.

  Her first task was to dig.

  The ground was made of something ancient, something that did not yield. And yet, she and the others were made to carve into it. Some used rusted tools that cracked with every strike. Others used their bare hands, their fingers bleeding, only for the wounds to seal and reopen in an endless cycle.

  “What are we digging for?” she had asked once.

  The only response was laughter.

  Mocking. Hollow.

  Because there was no end. No goal.

  Only the labor.

  The pointless, agonizing labor.

  Her second task was carrying the chains.

  The Abyss was home to things that could not be freed. Not even by Hell’s standards. Massive, writhing horrors lay in the deeper tunnels, their bodies restrained by bindings thicker than Sariel’s entire form.

  It was her job to reinforce them.

  To drag the chains deeper, securing the locks, ensuring that whatever was imprisoned there remained imprisoned.

  Some of the creatures whispered to her.

  You do not belong here.

  You could let us out.

  We would be grateful.

  She ignored them.

  Not out of loyalty to Lucifer.

  Not out of fear.

  But because she could feel the sheer, wrongness of them.

  Even Hell did not want them loose.

  And that alone was enough to make her obey.

  Her third task was watching the lost.

  There were others in the Abyss.

  Fallen things. Not just angels—though some of them had once been—but entities too broken, too unstable, even for Pandemonium.

  Sariel was given no weapon. No authority.

  Only the order to observe.

  If one of them tried to escape, she was to report it.

  If one of them tried to take their own existence, she was to prevent it.

  Because no one left the Abyss.

  Not even by death’s hand.

  She saw them break.

  She saw them fade into the walls, into the darkness itself, until there was nothing left of them but the whispers.

  And she wondered—

  Would she be the same?

  Would she, too, be swallowed by the Abyss?

  Would she forget who she was?

  Or was that the true punishment?

  To remember.

  To be the only one who did.

  She did not speak.

  She did not resist.

  She did only as she was commanded.

  Because there was no other choice.

  Because this was retribution.

  Because she had been cast down.

  And here, in the deepest, darkest part of Hell—

  Sariel served.

  ---