The air still smelled of Michael's sanctimony long after he'd vanished. I crushed the lingering scent of heaven from the air with a flick of my wrist, the way one might snuff out a candle.
Asmodeus shifted uneasily beside me. "He wouldn't show himself without reason," he muttered, his beady eyes scanning the throne room as if expecting another unwelcome visitor.
"No," i agreed, my voice low. "He wouldn't."
Michael didn't make social calls. Not to me. Not to Hell. His presence here meant something was coming, something even Heaven feared.
And if Heaven feared it, then Hell had better be ready.
I strode toward the obsidian mirrors lining the far wall, each one a window into different corners of creation. With a gesture, the surfaces rippled, shifting from reflections of my throne room to glimpses of mortal realms, celestial battlefields, and the yawning voids between.
"Call the sins ," I commanded.
Asmodeus hesitated. "All of them?"
I turned just enough to let him see the ember-light burning behind my eyes. "Did I stutter?"
He vanished like a flurry of feathers.
---
They came, one by one.
Mammon slithered in first, his corpulent form draped in gold-stitched shadows, his many rings glinting with stolen souls. "You interrupted a rather lucrative corruption, this better be good," he huffed.
Belphegor arrived draped across a palanquin carried by four damned shades, yawning as if bored already. "Must we?"
Malphas made an entrance, as always—materializing in a burst of perfumed smoke, a wailing mortal clinging to each arm. "Darling," he purred, tossing one of his playthings aside like a discarded coat. "You look positively feral."
Last came Leviathan, rising from the floor in a surge of black water and gnashing teeth, his voice the crushing depths of the ocean. "Speak."
I waited until the throne room doors sealed behind them, until the wards snapped into place, layers of infernal magic designed to keep even archangels from eavesdropping.
Then I let my glamour drop entirely.
The sins went very still.
"Michael paid me a visit," I said, my true voice scraping through the room like a blade dragged over bone. "He came to gloat. To warn." I bared my teeth. "Which means Heaven is preparing for war."
Mammon's jewels rattled as he scoffed. "Heaven is always preparing for war."
"Not like this." I summoned the memory into the air between us, Michael's too-bright smile, the undercurrent of tension in his grace, the way he'd looked at the Ashkenti treaty like it was a piece on a board. "Something has them rattled. And if the angels are afraid..."
Leviathan's many eyes gleamed. "Then we should be too?"
"No." I stepped forward, the ground cracking beneath me. "Then we should be ready."
Malphas twirled a lock of hair around one claw. "For what, exactly?"
I smiled.
"For the end of everything."
---