It took me a second to understand that Belphegor was referring to me. Lucifer’s golden gaze slid over me again and gestured rather casually. "What do you want? Why don’t you show us?"
The world cracked. The sigils beneath my feet ignited, light searing upward. And suddenly I was elsewhere, walking the broken halls of my own memory.
Ten, a child at the altar, fists clenched until they bled, whispering into cupped palms beneath the towering crucifix. "Take it. Please take it. I do not want to feel this." I begged God to strip the desire from me, to hollow me out and make me clean. I believed then that if I prayed hard enough, I could kill the part of me that made me unworthy.
Seventeen, wrapped in robes too large for me, drowning in fabric and shame. Kneeling in the chapel’s confessional and lying to my confessor once again. "I have been clean, Father. Ihave been good." But my hands still smelled of my own release.
Twenty, at the bedside of a dying boy in the town where I had been preaching. A boy I had never dared to touch, but whom I had loved in silence for nearly a year. I think, in the way he smiled at me in those final days, he knew. Perhaps he had always known. I never kissed him. I never dared. Instead, I sat at his side and held his hand until the last breath left his chest.
A lifetime of this. A lifetime spent at war with myself, despising what I was, fearing that love itself was a kind of curse I had been born to carry.
And then I was back, kneeling in the red circle, but something inside me had broken open.
"To be what I am without shame," I said. "To give myself to what calls me. To belong to something that does not ask me to carve myself down to be worthy of it." My voice grew stronger. "I wish to be by Asmodeus’ side forever."
Lucifer's mouth curved, though whether in amusement or contempt, I could not say.
"Forever," he repeated, his voice colder now. "You cannot comprehend the vastness of forever, boy."
The sigils beneath me flared brighter. My veins burned. My spine arched. Something loosened inside my chest as the words spilled free. "Perhaps not. But I want to be remade. Claimed."
Lucifer said nothing for a long moment, but the light in his eyes flared, brighter, hungrier. The weight of him pressed against the chamber like a gathering storm.
Asmodeus stepped forward, voice calm but certain. "He makes this choice."
Lucifer tilted his head the barest fraction. "Then let him burn."
And the court fell silent again.
7
There was no time to learn what would become of me, no time for comfort or sweet nothings from the creature I had given my eternity to. The sigils beneath my feet flared, alive with ancient heat, and I knew—just as I had known each time I’d stumbled upon a sigil in Asmodeus’ domain—exactly what was required of me.
"Knife?" I asked, holding out my hand.
Asmodeus answered without a word, offering no knife but one long, sharpened claw instead. The moment it touched my palm, it split the skin cleanly. I gasped at the sudden bite of pain, meeting Asmodeus’s burning gaze, and gave a small nod of consent. It cut deeper, one long strike. My warm blood flowed freely, and I pressed my hand into the heart of the sigil below.
I did not know what would follow. Would I be made a consecrated consort, a living relic of Lust, a vessel marked by Hell yet still retaining some piece of what made me mortal? Would I be transformed beyond recognition? Would I still know myself when it was over?
I should have been afraid. I should have braced for agony. But instead, I thought of rebirth. If this body changed, I would be free of my past in a way more tangible than memory. I could cast off the life that had once chained me and step into something new, something that was truly mine. It thrilled me to think that.
And yet, somewhere deep inside, I found an unexpected resistance. A part of me—a surprisingly large part—did not want to forget I had been human once. Why should I lose the memories that had led me here?
Rapidly, a ring of flame erupted around me, and at once, fear returned. My flesh caught like dry parchment, and in seconds I was alight.
What can I tell of these long and agonising minutes? The pain was exquisite. Blinding. I screamed until my throat tore raw, until my very vocal cords seared beneath the heat. My body convulsed, but I could not fall. Death wasn’t coming for me, so I existed in that torment for what felt like eternity, hovering in perpetual limbo, unable to escape.
In the heart of this agony, the visions began.
Whether they were real or just fever-dreams dragged out of my mind by the fire, I couldn’t say. Maybe it was all born from the pain, from the state of being held there, alive but unable to die. A mortal mind isn’t meant to endure that kind of endless suffering. The pain strips everything down until only instinct and fire remain.
I saw bodies moving in the flames. Men, women, and figures that didn’t fit either word. Some were writhing in pleasure beneath demonic forms. Others walked alone through Hell’s domain, the way I had—silent, watching, unsure as they picked their way through toward a distant end. And I realised what I was seeing. These were the ones who came before me! Past lovers. Failed consorts. People who had knelt before the Lord of Lust and offered themselves up.
They approached Asmodeus in all kinds of ways. Some wept. Some grinned with desperation. Some were calm, others shaking. I saw blood offerings, flesh torn willingly, words of devotion spoken in gasps. Many accepted Asmodeus’s first touch and took no more. For some, that one moment of pleasure was all they’d ever hoped for. For others, that was as far as they could go before shame pulled them back. Some left changed. Some left untouched. And some never left at all, confined to Hell in a permanent limbo state.
But there were a handful as wilful as I had been. I felt those familiar warring emotions stir within me. I knew I was nothing special—not in the vast sweep of humanity, not among the thousands upon thousands who had lived and desired in history before me. I was just another man, surrendering to want. And yet, it still hurt to know that others had come before me.
Until I realised that none of these followers had made it as far as I had.
