Time was meaningless in the Abyss.

  Sariel did not count the years.

  She did not mark the centuries.

  She only knew that the weight of eternity pressed heavier upon her shoulders with each passing moment. The screams of the lost had become her lullaby. The chains she carried had become extensions of herself, her body marked with the scars of her servitude.

  She did not resist anymore.

  She did not think anymore.

  She only existed.

  Until the moment the Abyss shook.

  It was subtle at first—a tremor in the ground beneath her feet, a whisper in the endless dark. The chains in her hands rattled with a force she did not recognize.

  And then—

  Light.

  Blinding.

  Impossible.

  Sariel staggered, her breath catching in her throat. The Abyss had never known light. It had never known warmth.

  And yet, it was here.

  The chains around the great horrors trembled. The whispers of the damned grew frantic. The shadows moved, recoiling like wounded beasts.

  Something was coming.

  Something unfathomable.

  The air shifted, thick with an unfamiliar power.

  And for the first time in thousands of years—

  Sariel felt Heaven.

  It was faint. Distant. But unmistakable.

  And it was drawing nearer.

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  She turned, her wings twitching involuntarily. The other prisoners in the Abyss had frozen, their hollow eyes locked onto something beyond the darkness.

  And then—

  The voice rang out.

  Not a shout.

  Not a command.

  But a single, resonant word that tore through the Abyss itself.

  “It is finished.”

  Sariel gasped.

  She did not know why, but her knees buckled, her very soul trembling under the weight of those words.

  Somewhere above—somewhere beyond the depths of Hell itself—He had spoken.

  And Hell knew it.

  The ground screamed.

  Chains snapped. Shadows writhed. The walls of the Abyss, once unbreakable, shuddered as if the very fabric of Hell itself was coming undone.

  Sariel clutched her chest, her mark burning white-hot against her skin. She felt it.

  The weight of an entire kingdom shifting.

  Something had changed.

  Something had broken.

  And then, for the first time in all her years in the Abyss—

  She saw Him.

  ---

  The King Walks Through Hell

  He was nothing like she had imagined.

  No radiance of fire. No blinding golden armor.

  He walked barefoot.

  His robes were torn, blood staining the fabric like ink. Wounds marred His hands and feet, yet they did not bleed. A crown of twisted thorns still sat upon His brow, though it no longer pierced His skin.

  He walked through Hell as if it did not hold Him.

  And it didn’t.

  The Abyss recoiled from Him. The shadows curled away, writhing like living things desperate to escape His presence. Chains that had never broken snapped at the sound of His footsteps.

  And yet—

  He did not raise a hand.

  He did not call forth legions.

  He only walked.

  And where He passed, things changed.

  Sariel could feel it.

  She was still on her knees, her entire body trembling. She had fought Lucifer himself. She had faced horrors older than time.

  But this—

  This was something beyond power.

  This was something other.

  Jesus did not stop for the horrors. He did not stop for the wailing damned, the lost souls screaming for salvation. He did not stop to wage war or break the throne of the Morning Star.

  Because this was not a battle.

  This was a claiming.

  Hell had no power over Him.

  And the deeper He walked—

  The more it knew it.

  Sariel’s breath came in short, uneven gasps. She wanted to look away. She couldn’t.

  And then—

  He turned toward her.

  ---

  The Eyes of the Savior

  Sariel did not know how she expected Him to look at her.

  With wrath?

  With judgment?

  With pity?

  No.

  It was none of those things.

  He looked at her the way the stars looked upon the earth—vast, endless, filled with something she could not comprehend.

  He saw her.

  Not as the thing she had become.

  Not as a servant of Hell.

  Not as an enemy of Heaven.

  He saw her.

  For the first time in thousands of years, Sariel felt small.

  Not in power.

  Not in status.

  But in the way a child feels when they realize they have been lost for too long.

  The way someone feels when they are standing at the threshold of home—

  And they do not know if they are allowed to step inside.

  Jesus did not speak.

  He did not need to.

  He smiled.

  It was small. Subtle. And yet—

  It wrecked her.

  Sariel’s entire body shook. Her chest tightened, something inside her cracking open like an old wound finally exposed to the air.

  It was not mercy.

  It was not forgiveness.

  It was something far deeper.

  It was knowing.

  A single tear slipped down her cheek before she could stop it.

  Jesus did not stop.

  He did not linger.

  His gaze shifted forward once more.

  And then, just like that—

  He was gone.

  Walking further. Deeper.

  To take what He had come for.

  And Sariel—

  For the first time since she had fallen—

  Could not move.

  ---

  The Crumbling Throne

  Something broke that day.

  Not just in Hell.

  Not just in the chains of the Abyss.

  But in her.

  She did not understand it.

  She did not speak of it.

  But from that moment on, nothing felt the same.

  She was still bound to Hell.

  She still carried her chains.

  But something in her knew.

  She had been seen.

  She had been known.

  And somehow—

  Somehow, that mattered.

  Hell screamed for days after.

  Lucifer raged.

  The Maw howled.

  But Sariel?

  She sat in silence.

  And for the first time in all her years in the Abyss—

  She let herself remember what light felt like.

  ---