It was impossible for Xotl to track the passage of time while trapped inside of Dan.

Dan the damned.

All Xotl could do was look out through Dan’s eyes at a familiar yet very unfamiliar landscape. It was definitely Hell, but a much higher, harsher, and more deadly layer than his own.

As time passed and Xotl didn’t age, his one real hope of escaping this nightmare seemed less and less likely. He would not grow old and die. He was stuck there, listening to the tormented and tortured screams of Dan and the other damned.

And these screams were much louder and horrifying than those of the damned of his layer.

The screams were too close. Far too close. They were much louder than Chet’s had been when his legs were being roasted by Hector, and much more annoying than that punk-ass bitch Bonnie’s. They were terrible. It was torture.

In his layer, the screams were just far away and comforting background noise. Not these screams. Especially Dan’s own.

And the stupid prude angel was no help at all. She seemed to have gone mad before they even entered Hell. There was no chance of her releasing him.

Since arriving, the prude had only been lucid once. She told him the Shining One had given Dan a false choice. Only God’s judgement allowed a mortal’s soul to enter Heaven.

Since life was a test to determine the worthiness of a soul, children didn’t go to Hell or Heaven. Their souls were always reborn as new mortals.

So, Dan’s daughter and Bonnie couldn’t have been waving him over.

It also took some time for a soul going to Heaven to get there, so if Nick was going to Heaven, he couldn’t have gotten there that quickly.

Like Xotl, the angel didn’t understand the Light Bearer’s game, though she said she did. She claimed the Shining One wanted to prove everyone was as rotten, selfish, and vainglorious as he was, so wanted Dan to choose the fake portal to Heaven.

Xotl wasn’t so certain. He was certain of the futility of begging the angel to release him from inside of Dan. She always just sat there either crying, rocking, saying crazy shit, or some combination of those three things.

He turned to look at her. The dumb bitch was just mumbling nonsense. He listened in.

“I was born into the war. A war we should’ve never been fighting. A war that made us no better than our enemies. We always looked down on mortals. We were made perfect, superior.

“But then we saw mortals as an inconvenience. Those lessers incapable of winning a simple Game. Those fools that made life so much more difficult for us, costing us so much as we fought a war for them, a war meant to fix things. We did it to them, and we hated them for the inconvenience it caused us.

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“Oh, Samael, why did you stay friends with that monster, that adversary of our Lord? I did this to myself. I am at fault. I shall remain in Hell, but you should be right here suffering beside me as I pay the price of betraying our purpose and our Creator.”

Xotl stopped paying attention to that dumb broad’s crazy gibberish.

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The worst part about being damned to Hell wasn’t the agonizing torture, though that was more terrible than Dan could’ve ever imagined. It was knowing it would never end.

Time kept marching onwards. He screamed in endless torment as it did so. And it marched onwards. Never ending. Eternally.

Futilely, he tried fighting his way out of it. Ending it. Fighting free of this tortured existence.

It never worked. But he never stopped trying. He never quit. And he never would. He was nothing if not obstinate.

Time marched onward. Onwards eternally.

Then, part of his soul lit up.

Reckoner: Execute great vengeance upon all those enemies and defiers of God and His will.

He stopped screaming. Something changed.

His days of torment had come to an end. Daniel rose to receive his reward.

His mind burned feverishly. He appeared to have acquired new knowledge, though it didn't seem all that useful. Much of it was about different religions. He also knew languages like Latin now, along with a few others he had never heard of before.

Though he wasn’t redeemed, he was no longer one of the damned.

No, he wasn’t redeemed. But he had accomplished something. Something big.

He didn’t fail. In the end, he hadn’t failed again. He had saved his planet.

He had saved eight billion people.

He prayed that accomplishment was big enough and worthy enough to make up for how badly he had failed his little girl, and that she was now finally proud of her daddy.

And Dan had paid for that. He had known loss. He had suffered. He had paid a thousandfold for all his sins and failures.

He felt light. New. All his sins gone, long ago washed away in rivers of agony. His dues now paid in full.

Though it had taken a very long time and some help from the Trait the archangel Kharahel had given him, a Trait that had never left its spot on his soul, Dan was now free.

He was no longer one of the damned. He was now a wraith.

He wasn’t exactly certain what being a wraith meant, but he knew one thing for certain – he now had an eternity to execute great vengeance upon all those enemies and defiers of God and His will.

Hell was full of them.

And it was about time someone started to regulate.

A new fervor burned brightly within his chest.

With a voice hoarse from endless tortured screams, he knelt, bowed his head, and croaked out, “Lord, you trained my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.

“I will crush Your enemies so that they will not rise. They will fall beneath my feet in scores. Their blood will be the fountain that fills Your cup, and I will be Your hammer that brings this kingdom to ruin.

“This, I swear. Dominus pascit me. In nomine Dei, vincam.”

The Lord is my Shepherd. In His name, I shall conquer.

Most were not baptized in such a fire as that of Hell, but he had not suffered alone. Before he entered the portal to this realm, he had completely submitted to a power far greater than himself.

His voice now clear and steady, filled with a righteous conviction, Dan ended his oath and prayer with two words. Two words that filled him with absolute certainty.

“Deus vult.”

God wills it to be so.

He was exactly where he was supposed to be. Exactly where he needed to be. Since the angels didn’t seem capable of doing so, he’d fix things himself.

Nearly the entirety of Dan’s existence had been one of bleakness and misery. From this point onward, it would be one of conquest and glory.