The chamber was as grand as it was grotesque: a hundred-mile-high cathedral of bleeding obsidian, its pillars etched with the writhing faces of those who spoke during my speeches.
They were still speaking, technically. Forever. One was currently muttering something about the economy. I tuned him out, as was tradition.
The chandeliers were made of ribcages, naturally—ripped from politicians who had claimed they had "backbone." I like to think of it as ironic interior design. The floor was a checkerboard of skulls and molten tears. Every time you stepped, something whimpered.
It was cute at first.
Now it was just loud.
I briefly considered soundproofing the floor with heretic spleens.
My generals stood before me—towering beasts of shadow and brass, muscle and malice, wings like scythes, each of them looking like they'd been generated by a metal band's worst fever dream. They argued in seven languages at once: Infernal, Classical Infernal, Screaming, Middle Screaming, Legalese, High Whispers, and Budgetary Cantonese.
"—the Third Legion was promised extra brimstone and ceremonial entrails—"
"—those entrails were allocated to the Pit Feast of Woe last cycle—"
"—if you'd read the Torture Forecast, you'd know entrail reserves are down 17%—"
"LIES!"
"Numbers!"
Clawed hands gestured, teeth snapped, wings slapped against one another like a violent flamenco.
And me?
I stared at them and wondered—not for the first time—what it might feel like to be not me.
To be… mortal.
Soft.
Stupid.
Fragile.
But also—free.
Free to stub your toe and curse without summoning actual curses.
Free to eat things with sugar in them instead of sin content.
Free to die of embarrassment instead of eternal damnation.
Free to fall in love and stumble in the dark and write bad poetry about it.
I was mortal once.
Some eons before.
Now I forget.
I remember rain. I think.
Or maybe it was just ash falling upwards. Romantic either way.
"Your Majesty," General Hekazhul interrupted my daydream, "we await your command on the East Hellgate dispute."
I blinked.
"What dispute?"
"Whether to build a second Gate of Gnashing Teeth or to reroute the damned tide through the Fields of Filth."
Dear Infernal Mother.
I should have vaporized the entire council.
Instead, I smiled—and that alone made half of them flinch. My smile was said to have withered twelve planets during the Second Nether War.
"My fellow demons and devils," I said, spreading my wings dramatically. "I have come to a decision far greater than where to reroute sewage."
They leaned in. Hekazhul's wings twitched. Vorkul dropped his scroll.
I rose to my feet, the room dimming as I towered above them, crimson light pouring from my eyes. My voice shook the foundations of damnation itself.
"I am bored."
The silence afterward was deafening.
"Forgive me, My Lord?" Vorkul asked meekly.
"I said," I declared, now floating a few feet in the air, "I. Am. Bored. This"—I gestured to everything—"this loop of paperwork and demonic HOA meetings—is a purgatory worse than anything I've ever assigned to mortals!"
Hekazhul stepped back. "You… you are not pleased with our management?"
I descended slowly. "Hekazhul, do you know how many reincarnations I've personally denied this week?"
"Seventy-six thousand."
"And how many have I denied every week for the past ten millennia?"
"Roughly the same."
"Exactly." I threw my arms up. "Nothing changes. There's no challenge. No excitement. No—philosophy."
"My Lord," whispered Vorkul, clutching his scroll, "you are the Sovereign. You are the change."
"No," I said softly. "No. I was the change. Now I'm just the bureaucracy."
And that's when the idea came to me.
Like a fallen star through the rotting sky of my soul.
What if…
What if I sacrificed everything—my immortal devil core, my infernal mana wellspring—and flung myself through the Cycle?
To be born again. Fresh. Weak. Human.
To start from scratch.
To taste the world as one of its insignificant mortals.
It would cost me everything, of course. My powers. My legacy. My terrifyingly good cheekbones.
But it would be worth it—for a taste of uncertainty.
I raised my right hand. The entire room dimmed.
"My subjects," I said, "prepare the Circle of Causality."
Vorkul gasped. "But—but that spell requires the Sovereign's Core—!"
"Exactly," I smiled. "It's a sacrifice."
"You'll lose everything."
"Not everything," I murmured, as the floor cracked beneath my feet and the symbols began to glow with ancient fire. "I'll keep my name."
That's the one thing I wouldn't give up.
They begged. Of course they did.
Kneeled. Wailed. Threatened to stab themselves to death out of loyalty.
But I wasn't moved.
Not anymore.
I stood in the center of the summoning ring, tore my mana core from my chest—a throbbing obsidian orb of malevolent power—and raised it to the bleeding heavens.
"My soul for chaos.
My body for fate.
Let me burn and bloom anew—
as the world's fool!"
And I cast it.
The core shattered.
The flames consumed me.
And darkness followed.
When I opened my eyes, I expected pain.
But what I felt was…
Warm.
Soft.
Smothering?
"WAAAAAAAAAAH!"