Cain, son of Eve.
Aron couldn't help but laugh—a low, dark laugh that echoed through the marble chamber.
Cain. His oh-so-adorable immortal.
"Cain…" Aron said at last, voice dripping with amused disbelief. "My cute nephew."
Cain, who had been leaning lazily against the chained Baal moments before, froze. His eyes darted between the demon and the man before him—the slayer, his so-called uncle—and realization began to dawn.
He understood then. Why Baal had offered him half his territory. Why he'd been called here.
That bastard had lured him right into the lion's den.
"...Aro—"
"Call me Uncle, you rude brat," Aron interrupted, smiling faintly.
Cain frowned, rubbing his neck. "Why are you even here? This place is supposed to be private. Damn it, Baal... you piece of shit, you fucking set me up."
Baal's human facade began to flicker—his pupils slitting, his skin glowing with faint infernal sigils. "I prefer my life over yours, Cain," he said bluntly, standing and walking toward Aron.
He stopped at arm's length, forcing a grin. "I knew you wouldn't stop. You never have. So take this as a gift—a ticket to your trial. And please... please stay the hell out of my life and my territory...."
His tone cracked with exhaustion, not malice. Then, as if shedding his demon self, Baal's form softened again—his coat now shimmering faintly white. Without another word, he stepped out, closing the door behind him with a slow click.
The sound echoed through the room like the toll of judgment.
Aron turned his gaze back to Cain, who stood rooted in place.
"Child," Aron said softly, "I just have a few questions."
Cain gulped. His dark eyes darted toward the locked door. His immortal body was aching again, itching in all the places the curse burned through him. Every scar screamed with memory—thousands of years of punishment that never healed.
He was immortal. That was the curse. The gift of his shitty grandfather.
All because he had killed someone. All because he murdered his pitiful brother.
He exhaled shakily, muttering, "...Fuck you. Get the fuck away from me, Ar—"
"I said call me Uncle, Have some respect and Decency!" Aron's voice cracked through the air like thunder.
Cain flinched, the air itself trembling.
There was silence for a long moment. Only the faint hum of the light above them.
Then, slowly, reluctantly, Cain said, "O..Okay. Uncle."
He swallowed hard. "Uncle, what do you want? What do you want from me?"
"Nothing much," Aron replied, his tone too calm to be comforting. "Just a simple question."
He leaned forward. "Where's. your. mother?"
Cain blinked, confused. "...Mother? You mean Eve? You think I keep tabs on that wh—"
He didn't finish. Aron's knife flashed before the sentence could form.
A single motion—quick, silent. The blade pierced Cain's palm, pinning it to the chair's armrest.
There was no scream. Just a grunt and the soft drip... drip... drip of blood hitting marble.
"Uncle," Cain hissed through clenched teeth. "I swear, I don't know whe—"
The second knife came down—clean through the other hand.
Cain jerked, his breath catching in his throat.
"Pain doesn't bother me anymore, Uncle," he spat. "You of all people should know that...."
Aron said nothing. He simply pulled a chair from the corner, turned it around, and sat—facing his bloodied nephew. His expression was calm, almost tired. The faint ache in his back from obliterating Middle Heaven hadn't yet faded.
He sighed. "Cain, Cain... I always liked you, you know. You're much better than your father. Or your mother, for that matter."
A faint smirk touched his lips. "I never understood why God favored Abel over you."
Cain's eyes narrowed. "...Why..Why are you sympathizing with me...now?"
Aron leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Because I've had a lot of free time lately."
His voice lowered. "And what I'm about to do next... might test that pain tolerance of yours."
Cain's composure cracked. His mouth went dry. A thin line of sweat ran down his temple.
"No... no. Not again. Please..." His voice broke into a whisper. "Not again."
Aron smiled—tired, hollow. "Oh, my dear boy..."
He lifted the blade again, the reflection of his golden eyes glinting off its edge.
"...You really shouldn't have killed your brother....cursing yourself with that nice immortal body...."
"Haaa... HAAAA... HAAAAAAA!"
Cain's screams tore through the walls—raw, animal, echoing across every white surface of Middle Heaven. Even Baal, two corridors away, winced at the sound.
"What the fuck is he doing to make even Cain scream like that?" Baal muttered, rubbing his temple. "Glad I was two steps ahead."
He stepped into the hall, the soles of his shoes pressing into the scorched marble. All around him, dark silhouettes of angels were burned into the floor and walls—ashen outlines where wings had once spread in glory.
That meant only one thing.
Death.
And too much of it.
Their kind was already dwindling. Now, with this slaughter, the balance was collapsing even faster. Some demons would've rejoiced—but not Baal. He understood what few of his kind did: balance kept the realms alive. War only ever made corpses.
"Haaaa, he is not even hesitant on killing his own...that can only mean one thing...It's time to go back to Hell," he murmured.
He stepped over Gabriel's broken form. The once-mighty Messenger was barely conscious, wings twitching like torn fabric.
Baal sighed. "You'll live. Unfortunately."
He kept walking toward the elevator. He liked it here, once. Middle Heaven had been a sanctuary of silence—a place even Lucifer couldn't spy on.
But now? His deal with Gabriel had gone to rot, and he wanted no part in what came next.
He jabbed the elevator button again and again. "Come on... come on, how the fuck is this still running on divine Windows 95—"
The doors slid open.
Uriel stood inside, smiling. But it wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile of judgment.
"You're in my territory now," she said. Then her fist shot forward.
The punch landed square on Baal's nose, shattering cartilage and sending him flying backward into the wall. The impact cracked marble.
He hit the ground with a grunt, clutching his face. "You—you broke my nose!"
Uriel stepped out of the elevator, her expression cold and terrifyingly calm. "We already have enough collateral," she said. "So now, we ask questions—of you... and of him."
She turned toward Gabriel, her burning blue eyes heavy with disappointment. "Michael will be very happy to learn about your little arrangement."
Gabriel forced himself upright, blood dripping from his lip. "Uriel... listen to me. You don't understand. Michael doesn't understand what we're going through—what all of Heaven is losing—"
His voice cracked under the weight of his own desperation.
But Uriel—Fire of God—was not one to be reasoned with. Even Michael struggled to contain her fury, and Gabriel was no Michael. This was exactly why she had been assigned to Aron—the only being chaotic enough to match her.
From thin air, her sword materialized—white fire wrapping around the blade like living wrath. She leveled it at Baal.
Baal's eyes flicked to the glowing steel, and the color drained from his face. He wasn't used to fear, but divinity had a way of humbling even the oldest of demons.
"Uriel," he said quickly, backing up a step, "wait, we can talk about this. I gave your partner what he wanted—a lead on Eve! Think for a second before you burn another damn hole in creation."
Uriel's expression didn't change. She swung.
The blade sliced downward, and Baal barely had time to raise his clawed hands. The claws met the divine fire—then melted, dripping molten black onto the floor.
"AAAAAHHHH!" he screamed, stumbling backward, the scent of scorched flesh filling the air.
"I told you!" he shouted between gasps. "If you won't listen, then—then I'll have to pray!"
Uriel blinked, momentarily thrown. "To whom?"
Baal grinned through the blood. "To the only one who still answers."
He slammed his burning hands together.
"Oh Ruler of Hell," he rasped, "I pray to you and your legions of disgust. In the name of Gluttony—hear me, Lord Beelzebub!"
The temperature dropped instantly.
Lights flickered.
A low hum filled the air—something ancient and alive.
Then came the flies.
One drifted past Gabriel's face. Then another. Then a dozen. Then a thousand.
Wings buzzed like locust storms. The holy air of Middle Heaven filled with decay.
The ceiling lights stuttered, painting everything in bursts of shadow and gold as the swarm thickened. Flies crawled across the marble, over Gabriel's feet, over the walls that had never known corruption.
The scent hit next—rot, sulfur, and the unmistakable stench of Hell.
Gabriel's breath hitched. "No... this shouldn't be possible... this realm is sealed."
Baal laughed—a wet, broken laugh. "You broke the seal when you made the deal, Messenger. You invited me in. And now, I'm just... calling home."
Uriel looked around, eyes wide, her flame flickering against the cloud of wings.
The flies blotted out the white glow of Middle Heaven, turning purity into something suffocating and black.
The scent of Hell had entered middle Heaven.
And the balance between realms had just shattered.
Baal's body began to break.
His spine arched backward with a sound like snapping wood. Skin tore. Bones cracked and stretched, reshaping themselves as gray hair lengthened, spilling like smoke. His pupils bled to sickly green, his scream half-human, half something far older.
The sound of meat rearranging filled the air.
Hands—dozens of them—pushed out from his stomach, from his legs, from beneath his skin. Flies poured toward him, into him, down his throat in a black tide. Their droning filled the hall as Baal's body convulsed, expanding, mutating.
Then silence.
The extra hands sank back into him. His belly swelled grotesquely, skin mottled and split with veins of red and green. His teeth, now rotted and blackened, gleamed in the flicker of failing light.
Gabriel stumbled back. Uriel raised her sword again, but even she hesitated.
Baal had done the unthinkable.
He had offered himself as the vessel.
The air thickened, and the last of Baal's human voice gurgled out—a prayer drowned in his own blood—as his body slumped forward.
Then, from that husk, something crawled up.
A woman.
Or what looked like one.
She was bloated and gray-skinned, her face sagging with decay, her eyes a radiant green burning with hunger. Her teeth—jagged, moss-stained—gleamed in rows that went too deep. She smiled.
"...My, oh my..." Her voice slid across the marble like oil. "Is this truly where I've been summoned?"
She looked around—the pure white halls, the trembling angels, Gabriel on his knees, Uriel burning with restrained wrath. Then she laughed softly.
"Oh, Middle Heaven. Baal, you greedy little worm... you actually did it. Bravo. Bra-fucking-vo."
She waved a hand lazily.
Uriel froze in mid-motion. Her wings locked. Her blade stilled. Her body was yanked forward as though seized by invisible chains until Beelzebub's swollen hand closed around her throat.
The demon leaned in, inhaling deeply. Her long, glistening tongue traced the side of Uriel's face.
"Such purity," she whispered, voice trembling with pleasure. "I could drink it... drown in it..."
Gabriel didn't wait. He turned and ran.
He slammed at the elevator button again and again, muttering prayers that died halfway through his lips.
The doors opened, and he stumbled inside, chest heaving. "Shit, shit, shit... the Prince of Hell... she's here. Why did it come to this? Oh Lord, save me... it's his fault—it's always his fault—if Aron didn't exist—if he just didn't—"
The doors shut.
Silence swallowed his words.
Beelzebub's laughter filled the hall—a wet, echoing, hungry sound. She could have stopped him, but she didn't. Fear was sweeter when it ripened.
"Let him run," she murmured. "I'll feast later."
Her gaze turned back to Uriel. "But first—let's make this place feel... lived in."
She released her. Uriel fell to her knees, gasping.
Before she could rise, Beelzebub vanished—her bloated form moving with impossible speed. She appeared behind a young angel, grinning wide.
Her mouth opened.
Wider.
Wider still—until her jaw split down to her chest, a void of fangs and filth.
CHOMP.
Half the angel disappeared in one bite. The rest hit the floor, still twitching. Blood splashed across the marble like paint.
The others screamed.
They prayed.
No one answered.
Another angel fell. Then another. The pristine white turned crimson, and the buzzing of flies drowned out their hymns.
Beelzebub devoured them laughing—her laughter bubbling with ecstasy. "Your God is dead," she said between gulps. "He's been dead a long time. You're abandoned—just meat waiting to rot."
Her belly swelled with movement. The sound of muffled screaming came from inside it—angels still burning in the bile of Hell.
Uriel could only watch. Tears streaked her face, cutting through the soot and blood. Her hands trembled as her sword dimmed, its fire flickering low.
Oh Lord... why have You forsaken us?
She remembered Aron's words once—his sneer when he asked why she accepted her limits. She had said that strength came from obedience, that her place was not to question.
But now... watching Heaven itself defiled... that obedience felt like cowardice.
The hall fell quiet again. The buzzing dulled to a low hum. Beelzebub's form towered to the ceiling, her gut writhing, her voice low and satisfied.
"Now, for dessert," she whispered, turning her gaze to Uriel.
Her jaw unhinged once more, descending toward the trembling angel of fire—
"...Ohh," came a calm voice from above, steady and unimpressed. "So this is the noise I heard."
Beelzebub froze.
The golden light spilled down the stairs.
Aron stood there—hands in his pockets, eyes glowing like molten glass, his expression unreadable. He looked around at the gore, the blood, the broken wings, and sighed.
"...Damn it," he muttered. "Now I really don't want to walk down those stairs."
The flies stilled.
The air trembled.
And Beelzebub—the Prince of Flies, eater of angels—smiled slowly.
She knew that voice.
She remembered it well.
The one being who had killed her once before.
And had come to.... do it again.
The beast of disgust.
The beast of hunger.
The Beast of Sin—Gluttony.
Beelzebub turned, her monstrous form blotting out the fractured ceiling of Middle Heaven. Her vast belly trembled with every breath, and the stench of death clung to the air like fog.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Aron's footsteps cut through the silence—slow, deliberate, each one sinking into the blood and bone that slicked the marble floor.
He took in the ruin. The angels—his kind, once—now nothing but smears of red. The white stone of Heaven marred beyond repair.
He'd killed plenty of angels before, but this? This was desecration.
He didn't need to speak. His eyes said it all.
Beelzebub hesitated. Her claws flexed, her jaws trembling open like a pit of teeth—but the fear was already there, ancient and instinctive. Somewhere deep inside, her sin remembered him.
She didn't even understand why.
She just knew.
Those golden eyes meant death.
Her voice cracked through the silence. "You... you shouldn't be here."
Aron didn't answer. He just walked closer.
Her aura hit him first—the crushing, sickly gravity of gluttony itself. The air grew heavy. The surviving angels fell dead where they stood, their lungs collapsing under the weight of divine corruption.
Even Uriel, paralyzed and breathless, trembled as the force of it scraped her soul raw.
And yet Aron—barehanded, unarmed, unguarded—kept walking.
When he stopped, he was only a breath away from the great Beast.
He tilted his head up, expression flat, voice cold.
"...Beelzebub," he said softly. "You really made a mess."
She snarled, her throat shaking the room. "S–so what?! What are you gonna do about it?!"
Her jaw split wider, rows of rotating fangs opening like a hellish machine—
"Unlo..." Aron's voice cut through her roar. One unfinished word.
The command hit like a verdict from God Himself.
Beelzebub froze.
Her entire body convulsed.
Then she began to melt.
The grotesque flesh sagged into black sludge. The mountains of her form collapsed inward, shrinking, shrinking—until only a small girl knelt in her place, trembling, skin faintly green, eyes full of tears.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't know you were here!" she cried, her small voice echoing in the silence.
Uriel gasped. The sight—the Prince of Hell, brought to her knees like a terrified child—was beyond reason.
So this is him, she thought numbly. The Slayer. The one even Hell fears.
Aron sighed. His face was calm, but the blood under his fingernails—Cain's blood—had already dried black.
He crouched, grabbed Beelzebub by the hair, and lifted her chin until her wide eyes met his.
"Who invited you here?"
"B–Baal! It was Baal! He summoned me, I swear!"
Aron's eyes flicked to the wrecked hall—the melted marble, the dead angels, Uriel's trembling sword. It was enough to see the whole story.
He let her go.
"Then get out," he said flatly. "Now."
"B–but I'm finally out of Hell! Can't I just—"
"No."
"B–but—"
"NO."
Her lip quivered. For a second, the Prince of Gluttony actually looked human. Then rage overtook her, a boiling tantrum that stank of brimstone.
"Fine! Fuuuckkk! Just wait till I find you, Baal! I'll tear you apart!" she shrieked, glaring at the ceiling as flies poured from her mouth and eyes, forming a whirling storm.
Her body ruptured. The swarm devoured her whole.
And from that chaos—horns twisting, red flesh splitting through white—Baal emerged once more.
He staggered forward, hacking out a last fly, his human form restored—middle-aged, weary, grinning.
"...Damn," he said, stretching his neck. "That was... reviving."
Aron rolled his eyes and shoved him aside.
"...Hmph."
Then he turned to Uriel. She was barely standing, sword dragging on the floor.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
Uriel's knees gave out. He caught her before she fell completely. "No... absolutely not," she rasped, trying to smile.
Aron exhaled. "Told you to get stronger."
"I know..."
THUNDER.
The entire hall shook.
THUNDER.
The ceiling cracked open. A blinding column of light poured through, flooding Middle Heaven.
Aron's expression darkened. "....He's finally coming."
Uriel looked up weakly, her eyes wide with awe and dread. The very air thrummed—the hum of a power older than stars.
Aron turned to Baal. "Get out. Now."
"Oh, I'll gladly," Baal said, already backing away. "I've seen enough family drama for one day." He vanished down the elevator shaft like smoke.
THUNDER.
The light grew unbearable.
Then—silence.
The radiance descended in form.
A figure of burning gold touched the blood-soaked marble. Twelve wings flared open—each one brighter than a sun, their light cutting through corruption itself.
Every remaining angel bowed instinctively. Even the flies disintegrated to ash.
Aron lowered Uriel gently and raised his hands, his voice steady despite the storm of divine energy.
"...Master," he said. "I can... explain."