In my younger years, the human and underborne worlds often interacted. As humans developed language, tools, and logic, they pushed the underborne to the background, or simply murdered them, relegating them to nothing more than bloodthirsty monsters.
The erevald escaped this treatment for obvious reasons.
Because they live immortal lives, they don’t procreate as often, meaning there are significantly fewer underborne. They must either hide in the shadows or masquerade as human.
They didn’t stand a chance.
Telling stories over thousands of years resembles the telephone game that children play, where messages transform as they’re passed along. Human stories from the past may have contained some truth, but today’s folklore and fairytales are largely twisted, exaggerated versions of those original tales.
You can thank the oral tradition and the bards who loved one-upping each other for that.
But one of the most outlandish stories I ever heard, one that I knew without a doubt was pure human bullshit, was the story of Lucifer Morningstar’s descendants.
And this story, like every story ever told, has a bit of truth woven in between the fiction and fantasy. What I know to be true sounds like a load of bollocks to humans, but for the supernatural creatures of the world, it’s merely fact.
Lucifer was one of the oldest and most powerful angels in Heaven, but he was curious, insightful, and kind. A contradiction to the other seraphim, who prized obedience over empathy, and silence over doubt. The bureaucracy created by the angels to run Heaven craved perfection. Well,theirdefinition of perfection.
The increasingly strict rules for entering Heaven troubled Lucifer. He feared kind-hearted humans—good people who simply didn’t pray loud enough—were being condemned to Purgatory for erasure.
That wasn’t the world he wanted.
And when Lucifer looked around, Hell stared back at him. The underworld was never meant to be a place of punishment. It was just … space. Empty. Untended. Full of wandering souls and demons too lazy to do anything about it.
But it was stillsomething.
Lucifer gave up everything to create a better afterlife. He was done watching Heaven turn away the broken, the queer, the defiant, and the kind-hearted souls who didn’t check all the right boxes.
He didn’t fall from grace. He walked away from cruelty.
The rest? Just angelic propaganda wrapped with holy PR.
He built a kingdom, a sanctuary, for those Heaven refused. And for that, they erased him.
But freedom has a price. To escape, he struck a deal, a heavenly pact that banished him from Earth forever. And to reach the underworld, he had to fall. A process that ripped the wings from his back, drained him of his power, and left him nothing but a husk of divinity.
He landed in fire and ruin, his wings nothing but cinders, his magic a hollow echo. He tried to rest, tried to simply exist, to build the refuge he had sacrificed everything for.
But demons aren’t angels. They don’t give a shit how Hell runs, as long as it does. The fallen angel tried holding elections, but he won by a landslide.
Only one idiot voted against him, and I’m fairly certain it was a joke.
In the end, Lucifer Morningstar, fallen dark angel, became the Brenin of Hell, much to the humble angel’s dismay.
After a few thousand years in power, Lucifer became lonely and longed for a partner. He had a slew of lovers, but no one gave him what he truly desired—love.
Frustrated, the Brenin wandered the gates of Purgatory—now entrusted to him—watching the damned shuffle inside. Sometimes they would wail, sometimes they would beg, but most of the time they entered with nothing but pure resignation to their fate.
Thankfully, Purgatory mostly ran itself with only a few demons assigned on a rotating basis for quality assurance checks. Lucifer feared an undeserving soul might end up in Purgatory, but the angels’ new algorithm, implemented after his takeover, was surprisingly precise.
One day, a bored, lonely Lucifer sat just beyond the threshold, watching the souls and humming an ancient tune. When he grew bored and stood to leave, he noticed a beautiful woman waiting to enter. She neither wailed nor begged, nor did she cower like the others. She stood proud, fierce, and unbroken. And that stirred something in the ancient angel’s heart.
Lucifer took a quick look around before he did something he’s never done before. He pulled the tiny woman aside to speak with her.
“Who are you, beautiful woman? And why were you assigned to Purgatory? You seem nothing like the other souls.”
“I am no one, Your Grace. I am the first man’s wife, but I displeased him. I worshipped the plants and animals, instead of him and God. When I would not give my husband a child, he forced me into submission. When I tried to cut out the violent, ugly life growing inside of me, God sent me here to suffer,” the woman replied, never wavering from Lucifer’s piercing glare.
She was either very brave or very stupid.
