Let me tell you a story.
This story is the truth.
Long ago, there was chaos in the mortal realm that you know. The humans that God had created were rampant and wild, without leadership, without order and without law. Despite the beliefs of prophets from old who came down and spoke the word of God, there was very little improvement. Some believed as they should have, that there was a God, that there was a devil and there was a Hell and Heaven and that they would all have a place in the afterlife if they followed the teachings of God in their mortal life.
Eventually God commanded his highest ranking angel, Michael, to create a Scripture that would bring balance upon the world. The Scripture embodied Law through Michael's essence.
But it was stolen from Heaven not to long after by the Rebellious One, Lucifer. Through his essence, the Scripture was jaded and became sentient. The being that the Scripture created was called Dominion and Dominion embodied all.
"Traveler of the free world,
Speak onto me the words of this Scripture and you shall witness.
Speak onto me the word of Heaven and Hell and I will restore peace.
Speak unto me the word of Man and I will bring balance.
For I am all.
I am Law and I am Havoc.
I am Compassion and I am Retribution.
I am Memory and I am Despair.
I am Dominion.
I am All."
Enraged by the betrayal and his Fall from times past, Lucifer used Dominion's power to curse Michael with mortality and forced him to live among mankind as one of them. Lucifer would later hide the Scripture on the mortal plane where it was found by a human and auctioned off as an artifact from times past. Well, he wasn't wrong, at least. The human was unaware of it's true nature at that time.
Before Dominion parted ways with Lucifer, he left with a warning. He spoke of a being of unassuming porportion that would bring doom to Heaven and Hell. Fearing the worst, Lucifer assumed this being would be born of Michael and he stole the child that Michael brought into the world after killing both Michael and the mother that bore the child.
Rather than killing the boy, Lucifer raised this boy as his own, and when he was old enough, he tainted the boy to become one of his own, a demon. The boy would later become King of Hell. The boy was named Dean.
After Lucifer's death, Dean would later find out that the Scripture was hidden on Earth from the words of a captured angel. He learned that Heaven planned on stealing it back and would send a soldier to retrieve it. This soldier was Castiel.
On the eve of the infiltration, Castiel and Dean met for the first time, and upon discovering the Scripture together in the lower levels of the humans mansion, Dominion came before them in the form of a young boy. Smugly, the boy told them that they would know no other fate than death. He pulled memories through time and forced the angel and the demon to see their fates. Enraged by this, the demon plunged his sword into the heart of the Scripture. It was his original intention to destroy it.
But the Scripture was not easily destroyed. Dominion instead broke and it's pieces fragmented into the beings closest to it. Dean became Memory and Law. Castiel embodied Retribution and Compassion and the final two fragments, Havoc and Despair was found in the Fallen Angel, Dante Shadowalker.
Dean would use the control he had over Memory to remove all memories of himself from Castiel and fled back to his underworld kingdom..Dante Shadowalker was overwhelmed by the presence of Havoc and Despair and attempted to plead with the King to aid him...but Dean instead banished Shadowalker into the ninth circle of Hell.
He would later return to find Lucifer's essence and power stored inside of a young boy by the name of Sam where he encountered Castiel once more, with the latter not remembering anything about him. The fragments within remained consistently dormant for most of their time together. Lucifer would later rise again...but his time was shortlived as Dean threw him into the deepest circle of Hell, Treachery, the same place where he had banished Dante in times past.
Dante escaped Treachery prior to the King's arrival and he swore vengeance. Dean spent the next ten years inside of Treachery, locked with no escape while his demon, a human Dean killed on accident was resurrected in his image, tried to keep everything under control in his absence. Dante concocted a plan to "rescue" Dean by imploring Castiel, who had fallen in love with Dean in their time together, to help him. Castiel agreed and as a result, slowly fell into a dark embrace which tainted his celestial presence.
Midst the journey through the nine circles, Dante managed to suppress Compassion inside Castiel and made the angel a shell of his former self...He told Castiel that the final test would entail Castiel would have to kill someone he loved in order to pass the final lock through Treachery. Castiel ruthlessly murdered Sam, the former vessel who had grown close to him and changed him into a demon, bringing him down with him into the depths of Hell to find Dean, taking his old friend, Balthazar and Dean's demon creation, Carmen, along with them.
Michael was later found in Treachery alongside Lucifer and Dean. Dante had no qualms in saying that a death in Treachery was not the same as a simple death. A soul would be destroyed here permanently and it was this that he planned for both Castiel and Dean. Dante was aware of his own true nature in being Havoc and Despair and his belief was that if he killed the other two fragment vessels, he would become Dominion.
His plan proved to be unsuccessful, but he managed to draw the mortality from Michael and force it upon Sam, Balthazar and Dean. Michael returned to full power and he managed to guide Dean and Sam out of Treachery where he used Dean's power over Memory to erase memories of Hell and Dean's time as a demon, implementing false memories of a life with Sam and himself as his two sons.
Castiel was forced to work with Dante Shadowalker to get out of Treachery, seeing that Dante was the only one who had escaped before. He agreed on the term that Castiel, Balthazar and Carmen would owe him a favor and were obligated to do it in the future no matter what. Castiel ended up betraying Dante once the latter managed to open the portal out of Treachery and bound him to the Queen's throne where he became powerless unless invoked.
However, the mortality cursed placed upon Dean, Balthazar and Sam held a stipulation. It would break if the human took the life of a mortal being. An order of demons under the banner name "Tarana"(Light Bringer) searched for their lost king...and after a long search, they found him in Chicago living under the guise of the demon hunter family "Winchester". In place of Dean, Carmen became Queen of Hell, though she exercised no control over the Order of Tarana.
A human, Lisa Braeden, that Dean had wronged in the past managed to find Dean and attempted to kill him, only to lose her life, but not before she killed Sam right before Dean's eyes. The trauma of losing his brother caused a fatal fracture in the demon's psyche...at the same time, the activation sites that the Order of Tarana placed were surging with power. The final site activated when Carmen was killed by the new leader in Heaven, Metatron. Her blood spilled was the blood of Dean himself.
The trigger of the focus site caused all of Dean's memories as a demon to return to him as Dean had a very strong bond with Carmen during his time as a demon and shared the same mind with her. Overwhelmed by his old memories, he collapsed...but Metatron sent a messenger to kill Dean, having the idea to destroy all of Dominion's fragments. She sent Zachariah and the latter did attempt to murder Dean, however he was not successful as the act of killing Lisa had triggered the transition in Dean back to a demon, reinstating the former taint on his soul.
Dean ordered Balthazar, the very human Balthazar, to escort Sam's body away to safety with his former lover, Jessica Moore, before leaving, he managed to steal Zachariah's Grace and force it into the former angel, restoring him to full power as a celestial being.
In order to save Dean, Castiel worked with Dante and invoked him, removing the bind he had around him to combine their efforts against the common enemy...However, he was too late in his efforts.
And now we stand...with Michael captured by Metatron, with the dead Queen, Carmen... and Balthazar rushing away from the city that would soon be in flames.
