The rain clung to the world like a burial shroud, streaking down slate rooftops and hissing against the broken stones of old roads. Above it all, Samael watched.
Perched on a ruined archway of the mortal city, his silhouette was a wound against the trembling sky — a figure in midnight robes, crowned by wet curls of crimson hair that clung to his pale, sharp-boned face. Blue eyes, ancient and glacial, studied the flickering lights below as though weighing souls like grains of salt upon a scale.
The city slept uneasily. Somewhere below, a boy's heart broke, a grandmother's breath stuttered, and a guardian angel stood at the threshold of despair. Samael smiled.
The rain made no sound where he sat. Even the wind curled away from him.
A pulse from the deep summoned him — a call from the throne he had forged beneath dying stars. With a last, lingering glance at the mortal coil, Samael let himself fall. The world stretched and tore around him, and in a blink of storm and shadow, he was gone.
Hell was a kingdom of cold fire and ruined light.
A throne of jagged onyx rose at its center, carved with symbols older than language. Shadows hung in great tattered banners from the high vaults, where fallen angels lingered like smoke, their faces sharp with cruelty, their eyes hollowed by longing for a heaven they could no longer name.
Samael entered the chamber like a storm cloaked in a man's form.
Around him, the diablos gathered — his loyal and damned, remnants of celestial legions long unmade. They knelt in his presence, though mockery danced in their eyes.
One of them — slender, with curling black horns and a voice like rusted silk — spoke first.
"Lord Samael," the diablos murmured, "you are the devilest of all from us. You alone went to the human world, walking beneath God's open sky, to spread death. Your very name in our tongue is death incarnate, the Angel of the End."
Laughter, thin and sharp, echoed through the hall.
Samael smiled faintly, settling upon his jagged throne. He leaned forward, hands steepled. The rain that still clung to his hair steamed in the cold firelight.
"Even I," Samael murmured, "with dominion over death, cannot claim a soul that does not belong to me. It is not my hand that seals their fate, but the choices of men — and the designs of their God. And so," his smile curved, "to take a life without consequence, I must first bind a mortal to their undoing. Let them cast the stone, and heaven's wrath will fall upon them, not me."
The diablos hissed in delight, faces alight with vicious admiration.
"Lord Samael," another rasped, "you are more wicked than we dared imagine. How did you conceive such a plan?"
"Without your help," Samael purred, "without the venom in your tongues and the whispers you plant in men's dreams, it could not be done. But now — listen well, my diablos. I have marked a boy, Zyrán, whose heart is fragile as spun glass, yet bound in threads of light. He was meant for the heavens, but I will make him mine."
The chamber darkened, the fire dimmed to bloodied embers.
"I will unmake his faith," Samael whispered, "crush his love beneath grief's heel, and hollow him until only despair remains. And in his ruin, he will call for death… and it will be I who answers."
A murmuring of cruel assent rippled through the diablos, their wings unfurling like dead leaves caught in a windless night.
"So it begins," Samael said, rising from his throne. The crown of ash that circled his brow smoldered faintly, shedding no heat.
And somewhere far above, the rain continued to fall.