Happy 2025 guys! Hope you had a good New Year's :) I spent the holiday season moving house and just started work at my new hospital. It's ten times bigger than my old one so it's a little nerve-wracking. Hope you guys enjoy the chapter!
Issa stepped into Hell.
She expected a demon army. She expected screams of pain. Hellfire. Instead, colour and sound bled away, draining the world to stark black and white. A smothering silence engulfed her, devouring even the faint whisper of her uneven breath. On Earth, Lilith's dungeons had reeked of rot, blood and piss. But here, the air carried only the dry weight of dust.
Issa froze, her senses reeling. Even rot was part of Life, she realised with a shiver. Hell had stripped even that away. This was beyond death.
This was The End.
Her heartbeat drummed loudly in her ears, a jarring rhythm in the void. She lifted her foot, and the ground beneath her crumbled into fragile ash. Her bare feet sank deeper with each movement. Plumes of ash rose in twisting spirals, biting into her eyes and throat. She doubled over, coughing violently, each breath a painful scrape against her lungs.
In her memories, the portal had always taken her straight to the gates.
Where was this?
Had she miscalculated?
The air shifted. A massive shadow swept across the barren landscape, and her pulse spiked as she spotted them—the two bloody butterflies she'd rejected in Samael's mindscape.
They had followed her to Hell. And they'd grown the size of giants.
Their wings were tattered and grotesque, and they soared around the air in broken circles. As she stared in shock, one swooped down towards her at terrifying speed. Issa ducked, but its wing brushed her shoulder, and a searing memory flooded her mind.
Mama, I'm going to be an angel.
"No!" she shouted, her voice swallowed by the void. She thrust her hand forward, releasing a spark of Life that fizzled green against the black-and-white landscape.
She didn't want to hear any more memories.
"Be very careful with your next words, daughter." Eve's voice echoed in her mind, cold and cutting. "I will not shield you when Heaven casts you aside. Walk away, and you will have no place on my Earth."
"Shut up!" Issa covered her ears and more emerald light burst around her. "I'm here to close the gates, not beg for a place on Heaven or Earth! I don't need you! Either of you!"
Hell's suffocating silence devoured her unhinged shouting.
The butterflies plunged towards her and Issa regained enough of her mind to scramble behind a dust dune, her hands and knees pressed into the moist earth now spreading beneath her. Her body trembled as the colossal wings beat the stagnant air, stirring the lifeless dust into turbulent clouds.
They were hunting her.
She clenched her fists, staring at the patch of green she'd accidentally created. It was only a matter of time before the butterflies or Lilith found her. How was she supposed to close the gates when she couldn't even find them?
As she hid behind the dune, despair overtook her.
No one was here to help. No one—
Did you call me, child?
Issa started.
The voice wasn't real. It couldn't be.
Child. Are you on your way?
It wasn't a hallucination.
Lucifer really was speaking to her through the depths of Hell.
"I'm here," she whispered, her gaze flicking to the circling butterflies.
A pause.
Where? I don't see you.
"I opened a portal from Eden," she said, scanning the desolate terrain. "I'm… somewhere in Hell."
Another pause, longer this time.
You— Lucifer's tone sharpened with incredulity. I told you to meet me in Koprivnica, in front of the void. Not inside it. Who's with you? A pause, then… You're alone, aren't you?
His words struck a nerve, and for a fleeting moment, she doubted herself. She truly was alone in Hell, and the monstrous butterflies—
She caught herself then.
Shame burned through her at the ridiculous fear. She buried it under irritation and solidified it into resolve—the same one that had deserted her while she'd been thrashing in the dust.
"I'm going to close Hell's gates."
You can't. Come back out.
Her jaw clenched. "I was made for this."
That was more than a century ago, he shot back. Your strength is not what it once was. Especially not with the Edenium and Lilith's will poisoning your blood.
"Lucifer—"
If you don't come out, I'll send Edvardiel in after you.
Her heart nearly stopped.
Then she turned the threat around in her mind. Lucifer had died for his son. He'd put himself in Eve's debt, threatened Earth's mighty guardian and fought Heaven's king—all to find Edvardiel and keep him safe.
She scoffed. "You wouldn't."
Child, his voice grew harsher, heavy with something unspoken. This isn't the time to be stubborn. Come out now.
"No."
She severed the connection with a sharp thought, her blood simmering with indignation.
She couldn't? She couldn't? How the hell would he know? He wasn't the one who'd been forced to do it over and over again until he'd dropped from exhaustion. He wasn't the one who'd—
Issa covered her face and made herself exhale slowly.
For a moment, she considered listening to him. She considered turning back to the warmth of Earth. The thought was a guilty relief. But what then? Who was going to close the gates? Eve was dead, Michael sure as hell wouldn't lift a finger, and her angel was getting closer and closer to becoming a demon.
There was no one left but her.
"I'm going to be fine," she murmured.
Hell's gates were bound by Heaven and Earth.
Eve was dead. Michael was not.
Which meant she only needed to hold Earth's end of the gate. She still had the power of Life.
Issa's gaze darted back to the looming, broken butterflies, then swept across the ashy expanse, searching for any sign of the gates.
Then, for the briefest moment, she saw it—a flicker, a glint of light like gold catching the ember of a dying fire. It shimmered just beyond the billowing clouds of ash and mist, faint and elusive, as though Hell itself conspired to keep it hidden.
She blinked. Was it a trick conjured by her desperate mind?
But no. Even as the ash thickened and the mist curled protectively around the place where the gold had been, she felt it. A pull, faint but undeniable, deep in her bones.
The gates were there. She was certain.
If only she could get past the butterflies.
She braced herself, feet sinking into the ash, each step testing the ground's fragile grip. She took a steadying breath, ready to run—until Lucifer's voice shattered her concentration.
For once in your life, use the ears you have been given—
"Lucifer, I'm close," she said breathlessly. "I see the gates."
Are you that eager to die?
His words hit her like a slap, dousing the flicker of triumph warming her chest. Anger flared, hot and immediate. "I'm trying to close the gates," she snapped. "I'm trying to save your son. So, Lucifer, either help me or—"
You won't be saving anyone if you die. His tone was biting, with a rare, frantic edge that made her stomach twist. Put aside that pride of yours and listen to me. Turn back before you doom yourself—and everyone else.
"You think I'm doing this out of pride?" Her body stiffened with fury. "You think I don't know the consequences?"
Child—
"I'm not a child!"
You are acting very much like one.
"Fuck off!" she snarled, slamming the mental connection shut with such force that her head throbbed.
Her chest heaved as angry tears welled in her eyes, but she wiped them away with trembling hands. This was hard enough without his interruptions. She couldn't afford to falter—not now, not with the gates so close and the weight of failure pressing against her ribs.
"I was made for this," she whispered fiercely, her words swallowed by Hell's oppressive silence. "I can do this."
I must do this.
Her chest tightened as she stared at the spot where the gates had shimmered moments before, now swallowed by the relentless ash and mist. Her heart pounded, and she clenched her fists, emerald light sparking faintly beneath her skin. The power of Life licked at her fingertips, the green glow spreading slowly but steadily.
With a burst of determination, Issa sprinted out from behind the ash dune. The butterflies shrieked—an unnatural, bone-chilling sound—their monstrous forms diving towards her.
She dodged the first, but the ash swallowed her legs, holding her captive.
Above her, the nearest butterfly's shadow loomed.
She forced herself to focus on the Life within her, willing her power to flare. The ash beneath her hardened to moist earth.
Issa clawed desperately at the thickening mud, her fingers digging deep grooves as she wrenched her body free. She rolled aside just in time, the ground shuddering beneath her as the butterfly's grotesque form smashed into the earth, sending a shockwave of dust into the stagnant air.
Another shriek pierced the air, louder and more menacing, as its companion dove toward her.
Barefoot, Issa sprinted across the fragile ground, each step transforming ash into mud.
She plunged into the cold mists. The suffocating haze thickened around her, swallowing her whole. Her green glow flickered and dimmed under the oppressive fog. She slowed, her breath coming in shallow gasps, her vision narrowing to a tunnel.
And then she saw them.
The gates of Hell loomed ahead, towering and terrible. But she could only see a shadowy outline, veiled as they were by an intricate web of golden threads. Millions of them stretched taut like spiderwebs, their glow vivid against the desolation.
They pulsed with an eerie heartbeat, and as she watched, one thread flashed with Hell's poison, blue streaked with crimson, like blood seeping from a wound.
The hair on the back of Issa's neck stood on end. Before she could react, the butterflies' shrieks echoed through the mists. Terror gripped her heart. Between the web of threads and Hell's gates, she was trapped.
A quiet voice cut through the silence.
"Your fears grow bigger when you avoid them."
Issa's head whipped toward the sound.
Somewhere within the threads, an old woman hung ensnared.
Issa had no time to study her as the howls of the butterflies drew closer.
"Face your fears, and you'll see they're not as big as you think," the woman said calmly.
Issa didn't stop to think. She turned toward the shrieks, her body tense, bracing herself. Fuck the memories. If they wanted her so badly, they could come and get her.
A second passed. Two.
Nothing happened.
She cracked her eyes open to find the two butterflies fluttering weakly before her, no larger than the palm of her hand. They circled in broken, erratic patterns, their menace gone.
"What did I say?" the old woman chuckled, her laugh oddly familiar.
Issa turned to her. The woman was older than Issa had first thought, her face deeply lined, her milky eyes blind but unnervingly clear. Threads wrapped around every inch of her frail, twisted body, forcing her into a painful, contorted position like a fly caught in a spider's web.
Issa's gaze landed on the woman's gnarled fingers, her knobbly knuckles adorned by a familiar wedding band—a glory ring identical to Lucifer's.
Shock coursed through her. "Eden?"
At the sound of Issa's voice, the old woman's grin faded, and her eyebrows rose in recognition.
"Terra?" she rasped, her blind gaze searching. "Is that you?"
Issa froze.
"What did you call me?"
"Terra," Eden replied, her expression turning puzzled. "That's your name, isn't it? Or have I finally gone mad?"
Terra.
It meant Earth.
Of course her mother would name her something like that.
Issa stared grimly at threads suspending Eden between Life and Death. "Yes," she said quietly. "It's me." She stepped closer. "Eden, what are you doing here?"
