Haswalth’s stern, mellow voice faded from her consciousness. So did her vision, receding from the peripheries of her sight, the world blotted out inch by inch from exterior to interior, ‘till but a spark of light remained in the everlasting darkness that surrounded her.

Until even that was gone.

Everie breathed laboriously, before realizing that she couldn’t feel her body - she couldn’t feel or hear or see anything, actually.

For a frigid eternity, Everie shivered, suspended in this all- encompassing void. The naming-ceremony felt like such a faraway thing now; an event long since past or had yet to pass.

Then there was that sense of perpetual loneliness. There was so much to think about; yet at the same time, there was so little. Both Everie and the void she had been ensconced in knew this.

Loss was something she was accustomed to. But this feeling of having been rent from the rest of reality? That was something Everie had not felt since her first death.

The very thought brought back memories she did not want to remember.

Then, from that primordial darkness, a spark appeared. If the void was the absence, then the flame that now appeared before her and her ward represented the fullness of life.

All Loss had wanted was a companion. And to this, the void had answered.

Everie watched, transfixed; she still had yet to develop a body in this mysterious space, but that hardly mattered. All that did was already a part of her cognizance.

Eons passed, stretching through that thin veil of infinity, until the flame burned that veil away and established the fickle order of time unto the world and all that was.

And then, there was life. A being of white.

Everie’s eyes widened. She pinballed backwards, fear filling her nonexistent heart. But it ignored her. Because it, like her, was fixated on Loss.

On the Root.

The Root fed it. It nurtured it. But in the end, Loss - the Root - rejected it. The reason for which Everie could not comprehend.

After all, the being was perfect. Beautiful. Unapproachable. But regardless, the Root of all things rejected it.

So the being grew wrathful. Locked from what it viewed as its birthright, the angel fled from the fundamental plane - into the layer of soul - and through it to the next. And with it came its brethren.

The rest, as is oft said, is history.

----------------------------------------

When Everie awoke for the second time, she was a soul again. Unlike before, though, she was no longer floating in a silver stream; rather, she hung stagnant mid-air.

What was that? She thought. Had she possessed her body at that moment, her chest would be heaving. I-

She paused. What was I doing again?

Everie hummed. Right. The Ceremony. And then-

She paused, ‘looking’ down into her spiritual body. Unlike before, the thing was no longer just that.

Whatever this place was, it offered Everie a full view of her metaphysical self.

Which meant that, for the first time, Everie could truly see her core - not just the vague spiritual makeup of it she observed using her Inner Eye.

Everie frowned.

Based on how Daphne had described it, Everie had imagined her spiritual core to be a spherical object. Only instead, it looked more like a lattice composed of dozens of dozens of empty faces, almost like a skeletal polyhedron.

Dozens of tiny windows - Everie didn’t know how many, exactly - offering a pathway straight into her soul.

And within, lay the Well.

Her eyes would have widened had she still had any. The Well was no longer a simple aperture. Now, it was a full tear - a rift. It was still too miniscule - microscopic, even - for her to accurately see, but enough for her to sense it.

The energy within.

Cautiously, reverently, she reached into the rift with her mental feelers, and withdrew a mote of energy. The once-fragment supported her, guiding her actions. And when she finally reached it, the energy was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It felt… impossibly pure.

Of course, being exposed to an unstable environment as it was, the mote almost immediately vanished, but enough remained for Everie to see.

It felt like ether. No, she thought to herself. It was ether, only... purer. More fundamental. And there was much, much more of it - an almost bottomless amount, from what she could sense - hidden within the aperture that was now being supported by the two fused fragments.

Excitement welled up within her. This was perfect. This was everything Everie had been working towards. Magic - or at least, the energies that fundamentally composed it - was quite literally in the caress of her soul. For the first time, she felt unstoppable. For the first time since her incarnation, she felt hope. For the first time-

She paused.

Where is this, anyway?

Her gaze flickered three-hundred-sixty degrees around the planar space. She had been so preoccupied with her new transformation that she had been neglecting more pressing matters.

Realization set in Everie.

Shit.

Everie was in hell.

Well. She wasn’t really in it, Everie supposed, as she was not in possession of a physical body at that exact moment in time. And much like the timeless span she had spent in the soulstream prior to her rebirth, she could feel herself drifting towards something. Only this time, her soul was nearly corporealized, meaning though she could not physically interact with the environment.

As she zoomed through the magma ridden caverns, dodging ossified rock before realizing that she could simply phase through it, Everie came to a sudden, grinding halt.

Shit!

There was something in front of her. A massive creature, the size of a mountain range. It was completely obsidian-black, and moved at a slow, lumbering pace.

It… also completely ignored her obvious presence. Everie blinked, before zooming around it.

It showed no reaction. Huh, Everie thought. Guess I really aren’t ‘here’ after all.

The beast bellowed. Everie jolted, spiraling backwards, but to her utmost relief, the thing hadn’t noticed her. It had simply turned slightly, but that slight action alone had been enough to send cataclysmic tremors all across this Hellspace.

Everie’s senses flickered to assess the direction in which the beast was heading, and her heart plummeted.

Oh no.

She would have thought shit a third time, but even that would have been an understatement for what she saw before her.

Hell was not simply fire and brimstone and purgatory. Everie had little knowledge of how this place functioned, but she did know that the rivers of soul ran through the place. That meant it was connected to that in-between realm she had passed and had been chased through upon her death.

Everie had been summoned by the Crying Demon upon her first death, and she had been largely immobile then. That meant she only got to see what the Crying Demon had called the Soul Confluence, and not the rest of hell. Back then, there hadn’t been any demon-like creatures other than the Crying-Demon itself. Everie could only assume two things from that: either the Crying-Demon was the only denizen of this realm, or that it had somehow been isolated.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Everie now knew which of those hypotheses rang true.

For before her lay an entire wasteland of demons. A infinitely-spanning mass of black, gray, and other vile colors, roiling and scrabbling upon the rocky surface below. Everie was actually pretty jarred by the fact that she hadn’t heard or even sensed them at all in the first place. She was pretty far up, but that didn’t explain her inability to even detect the glut of life below her.

Ah, Everie thought, shuddering mid-air. So that’s it.

Demons did not possess Ether.

Everie didn’t know why. Maybe it’s because they don’t have souls? But that was just a legend from my old world.

She had not yet grasped what ether truly was in the first place - only that it was some form of energy that permeated all of reality. It had only been her inability to sense it before her reincarnation that had made her blind to it.

Now that she could see at all, it was obviously all the more disturbing that she once again could not see.

Focus, she told herself, steeling her will. They can’t see me. Get out of here first, and...

She would have sighed had she had lungs. But- Whatever. Act now, think later.

Everie willed herself to accelerate… and to her surprise, her soul responded, tracing the path that the Demons were following. There were many, many variations of them, so many that there really wasn’t any point in classifying them. It was different from the Behemoths - they, at least, had similar features. There were scant few similarities if any between the Demons that Everie now observed.

Her eyes widened as she saw one of the many silver streams snaking through Hell. It was exactly the same as hers had been, except now it was stained with splotches of black and red - like pustules or tumors, only shivering atop a liquid surface.

As she watched, one of the blisters popped, releasing a scrabbling infant monster onto the riverbanks. It was quickly subsumed by the greater mass of Demons, borne aloft by the endless tide-

Focus! Everie thought.

She marveled at just how large this place was. Everie was flying at a pace that far outstripped what she could have achieved with her physical body, but the plane seemed to stretch endlessly. The tide of Demons below her seemed to blur.

Until, finally, she felt something resonate with her Well.

Here, came the thought, however faint as it was. Everie jolted. It was coming from the direction that the Demons had been traveling in.

Needless to say, Everie only sped up further. That had been the Crying- Demon’s voice. She remembered it clearly from when the Demon-thing had spoken to her.

Everie instinctively knew the distance between where she’d been cast to and the location from which the Crying-Demon had broadcasted her plea might as well have been infinite. But she accelerated anyway, knowing that if the Crying-Demon wanted her to reach the Soul Confluence once more, she would do so.

Her hypothesis was rewarded with the sudden warping of space. It was different from the rifts - more like she had passed through an infinity than torn through it. It was difficult to accurately grasp; all it told her of was the Crying-Demon’s vast power.

And even that wasn’t enough to trump those two beings, Everie realized, shuddering. She flew continuously, and now that she had, she was finally making progress, having been allowed through the magic preventing the Demon tide from entering the Soul Confluence.

The landscape grew familiar. The ossification of rock grew more subtle; the pillars of stone less rugged. This was a place that had been touched by intelligent design, and not the bestial throes of the lesser-minded Demons.

And then, just like that, she was there.

The Soul-Confluence was the same as it appeared in her memory. The silver rivers converged into a delta, then into a stream. Beyond this point would be to travel through a rift into void, into incarnation.

Which, Everie realized, was what the Crying-Demon had been guarding.

The one-eyed Demon - if that was even an accurate moniker - stared at her patiently. It, too, was the same as before. Muscled, sinewy limbs. Pitch-black skin. A positively gargantuan size. It stood next to the Soul Confluence, stabbed with chains that led into rifts. Those rifts, Everie now realized, sealed by the very presence of the Crying-Demon.

The reason for which was something Everie was only beginning to guess. And she didn’t like the answer she suspected.

It drew calm, ceaseless breath. If Everie didn’t know better, she would have thought it was dead. Her non-heartbeat quickened; no, she realized. It’s injured. Either from that time when it protected me, or...

Her gaze fixated upon the various lacerations that scarred the Crying-Demon’s body.

Is it just my imagination, or have its wounds gotten worse?

“Hello, Everie.” boomed a voice in her mind.

It was softer than before. “I see you’ve made your way back here, once more.”

Everie felt something inside her contort.

“I don’t understand,” Everie said, quietly. There’s… there’s just too much to say, to ask.

“You pick me out of all people out of the throes of death. You- you give me this thing. Then it fuses to me, and I learn that it’s got something to do with magic, which you didn’t even explain-”

Everie sighed. “I just need an explanation. I know those... things are hunting me.” She shivered at the mere thought. The sheer power they - that white being - had displayed boggled the mind. “And they want whatever you’ve given me.”

The Crying Demon stared at her. Everie shifted midair - could this even really be called air? - uncomfortably. It was only after a second of deliberation that she was looking into her, at the Well hidden within her soul.

“At least tell me something,” Everie pleaded. “Anything. You said you were fighting something? Fine. But I’m not going to do things for you blind.”

“At least give me a name.”

Hell trembled. Everie zipped backwards, alarmed, but the Crying

Demon raised hand as if to placate her.

“Calm yourself,” she intoned. When Everie continued to fritter, the Crying Demon sighed, in an oddly humanlike manner. “This is the world of your mind. A place where only your soul exists. Nothing else - not even me - is real. What I am right now to you is… something similar to a prerecorded message. A last will and testament, if you shall. For that reason, nothing here can hurt you. At the very least, not physically.”

“I see,” she said, quietly. “Then... none of this is real?”

“No, this is not Truehell,” the Crying Demon said. “If it was, your infant soul would have been devoured hours ago by one of Zabaniya’s abominations.”

Everie froze.

“...Zabaniya?” she whispered. Immediately, the reddish-gray skies seemed to shadow a tinge darker.

Memories. A thousand-thousand-thousand iterations of utter horror, and despair. A Name long since abandoned, fostered by only the most deranged.

A cause the desperate shackled themselves to... and one that Everie had been enslaved by from birth.

The Crying Demon seemed to reappraise her. “Yes, Everie,” she said, gently. “Zabaniya. The Demon King. Truehell is his domain.”

Everie was quiet. The demon withdrew, taking a step back, seeming to want to give her the courtesy of solitude as she gathered her thoughts.

Finally, she let out a murmur. “So he’s real.”

“As real as can be,” the Crying Demon said, quietly. “I’m sorry. I should have realized his presence would be disturbing to you.”

Everie jolted. “What? He’s here?”

“This is Truehell,” the Crying Demon responded. “Zabaniya has near-complete control over this place, except for this tiny corner I have carved out for myself.”

“The Demon King,” Everie whispered.

“And...” the Crying Demon said, hesitantly. “My half-brother.”

Everie snapped up to look at her. The Crying Demon blinked. “Ah.”

“...What?” she said.

“Are you not upset?”

Everie would have blinked, had she had eyes.

A thousand-thousand-thousand emotions warred within her. A part of her wanted to run immediately, but to where? Even if this was ‘the world of her mind’, it wasn’t as if Everie knew how to control it. She’d just barely awakened - she wasn’t going to be manipulating her soul from the inside out anytime soon.

Zabaniya, she thought, and Everie shuddered. The name of my torturer.

Except... it wasn’t really the Demon King himself that hurt me, was it? Everie thought, bitterly. It was those who followed his will. If anything, he’s just one of the gods that left my world scorched and burnt, long ago, taking magic with them.

It was the people, in the end, that did this to themselves. And I was probably the worst one of them all.

So Everie simply stayed silent. To which the Crying Demon blinked.

“I presupposed you would be more upset at this revelation,” she said. “I am impressed.”

“Whatever,” Everie said, quietly. “None of it matters. My past is dead to me.”

She looked up at the great beast, who stared right back with her single, monocular eye. Everie felt her ether spark in determination.

“So. Tell me what I have to do,” Everie said. “What is it I need to kill?”

Who is the enemy?

She half-hoped the answer would be Zabaniya. But that was likely moreso the last vestige of irrationality, railing out against the world from within her heart, than anything else.

No, she thought, darkly. I am a Sister. Not a child. I’ll do what I have to do.

Selena’s face flashed in her thoughts, but Everie repressed the vision.

“Who is the enemy?” Everie whispered. “Give me a name.”

I’ve never failed before. When I put my mind to it, there were only two things I could never bring myself to kill.

My hate, and her.

The Crying Demon opened her mouth. Everie waited.

“Heed this carefully, Everie,” she said at last. “You are probably aware by now that names are important. This one is particularly so. Once you return to the mortal realm, you must never speak it, for it may draw their attention.”

“...Who are they?” Everie said, carefully.

“Interlopers,” the Crying Demon replied. Her voice was as weary as always, but a sharp undertone of manic hatred filled her voice.

She fixed her eye on Everie. “In legend, your world knew them as gods,” she said. “But that is a misleading term. They are beyond the simple divinity you may have learned of.”

Her pupils flared open.

“The Sereph,” the Crying Demon whispered. “That is the name they took, once they descended upon this reality. That is what they are called.”