Jai's townhouse exuded an air of neglect and decay. Cracked steps housing weeds and wild plants led up to the poorly repaired front door, and the railing wobbled precariously.

La'el followed Jai's lead and entered his home. The walls bore the mark of peeling paint, and the air was thick with a musty, stale odor. The floorboards creaked underfoot, and the ceiling showed signs of water damage with sagging patches.

Jai took a seat on a worn couch surrounded by mismatched furniture.

Despite La'el's inability to mask his sheer disgust, he felt compelled to sit next to Jai. "Why have you brought us here?" La'el asked while grimacing at his surroundings.

Jai playfully extended his arms outward. "This is S.O.E.'s base of operations. It's bare at the moment, but things aren't always as they appear."

"Is S.O.E. the name of your cult?"

He lowered his arms, feigning a gasp. "Cult? Please don't take what that man said seriously. He was grieving. S.O.E. doesn't have much in terms of restrictions. We're a group of agnostics founded by yours truly, who believe that the path toward true salvation is found on earth. S.O.E. quite literally stands for Salvation On Earth."

Through his interactions with damned souls, La'el picked up on several forms of worship. One soul in particular shared his belief that rain was actually God's urine. That was just one of many examples, including someone demanding that La'el manifest a wooden statue depicting a man performing suggestive acts with a fish. The fool believed it to be a spiritual idol of some sort. He was so taken aback that abject mockery was the only response he could muster.

La'el also encountered his fair share of agnostics and atheists. They garnered the most of his respect, for they at least had the mental capacity to not fall for Lucius' silly tales.

Despite their varying philosophies, all these souls shared one common trait: stubbornness. They all stood before a being beyond their understanding, in a separate plane of existence, clinging to their beliefs with all their might.

This, on the other hand, was something entirely different.

"I'm lost," La'el said. "You claim to be agnostic, yet you subscribe to a faith, correct?"

"Let's just say I'm open to all possibilities, but for now, I believe that the key to happiness isn't up in the clouds. Everything you need to live a fulfilling life is on Earth, and you acquire this by ditching your reliance on physical pleasures and spending most of your time helping others."

"Ah, I see. Not only are you insane, you're a bore." La'el rose from the couch and adjusted his baseball cap. "I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this nonsense. Once I enact my plan, I'll make sure to kill you first for wasting my time."

Jai sprang up, his mouth agape. "Your plan? Buddy what are you talking about?"

La'el started toward the door. "You'll see soon enough. And you will refer to me as Lord." Jai reached for La'el's arm, missing it by an inch. La'el presented a glare that could have easily stripped the paint off the walls. "How dare you attempt to touch me. I should kill you where you stand."

"You could have killed me a long time ago, but you didn't. Like I said before, you're a good person."

As much as La'el didn't want to admit it, this fool was right. He could have killed him the second he described his nonsensical faith. But the moment he entered this mortal vessel, his calculated desire to rid Earth of humans was replaced with bizarre emotional ebbs and flows.

"Please, just hear my story. All I need is a few extra minutes of your time."

This human's ability to conjure a sense of familiarity baffled La'el. Despite having only met him less than an hour ago, he couldn't deny Jai's warmth and joviality.

He had to focus. Whatever spell this imbecile put him under couldn't erase the fact that Jai was human, meaning he too had a capacity for malevolence. Just like the droves of degenerates and crooks who entered Hell, awaiting judgement for their laundry list of evil acts.

Nevertheless, La'el sat back down with a scowl aimed directly at Jai. "Speak."

Jai sat down, smiling. "Now you're probably wondering why I'm so chipper all the time."

"We've already addressed this. You're insane."

"I very well may be. But that isn't the reason. The 'me' you're currently talking to isn't who I was when I was younger—"

"Isn't that the case for everyone? Hurry up, my attention is waning."

Jai sat up straight, coughing into his hand. "My parents died when I was very young. So young, in fact, that I don't even remember what they looked like. At the ripe old age of four, I was placed into what I like to call the United States adoption apparatus. Don't get me wrong, the actual people in these agencies were amazing, but the process of getting adopted was a pain. I spent many sleepless nights praying for a family. And when I did manage to fall asleep, my dreams were mostly composed of doing mundane activities with my imaginary family members."

Of course. Another sob story. La'el heard his fair share of them throughout the years. As if dealing with past trauma was a sufficient justification for committing atrocities.

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

Still, there was a sincerity to his tone that caused La'el to hold his tongue. Up to that point, people only provided him with information about their past as a means of excusing negative behavior.

"By the time I turned sixteen," Jai continued. "I became so disillusioned by the entire process that I packed by bags and left. It didn't take long for me to come across a bunch of vagrants and panhandlers. Turns out, it's a pretty tight-knit group. And they're willing to help you get started if you promise to share some of what you make with the crew. So my destiny was settled. I was to spend the rest of my days begging for money and eating scraps to survive."

The couch softly creaked as Jai leaned back, his hands resting on his stomach. "One night, after receiving the most money I'd ever gotten in a day, I was on my way to get some food when I noticed an elderly man sitting against a wall in a nearby alley. He wasn't homeless, judging by his well-dressed appearance. If he was, I surely would have seen him around at least once."

I'm actually invested, La'el thought. What has he done to me? "When was this?"

"Three years ago. I had been homeless for two years at that point."

"You're only twenty-one years old? To be the founder of a cult at such a young age is quite interesting, to say the least."

Jai ignored La'el's comment. "He called me over to him. I complied, mainly due to him potentially being an easy mark, but I'd be lying if I wasn't a bit curious. I mean, what is a well-dressed man doing all by himself in an alleyway? Actually, you know what don't answer that."

He laughed. La'el groaned.

"Anyway," Jai said. "His kindness disarmed me. Based on the quality of his clothing and the expensive watch on his wrist, I expected him to be the typical rich asshole I'd see passing me by while I was out working. The type to not even acknowledge my existence. Now the empty fifth of booze on the ground next to him may have been the source of his warmth, but I could tell by just talking to him that he was a genuinely good person." The air around Jai shifted. For the first time since meeting him, he stopped smiling. "He told me that he made a fortune by investing his money when he was young. Most of which came from his successful plumbing company. Did you know plumbers make really good money?"

La'el responded with a flat stare.

"Regardless, he went on to tell me about his family. Or I guess what remained of it. His wife left him a decade prior. He lost his daughter to a rare disease, and he coped by burying himself in his work, leaving his wife to deal with the empty house. Their split was inevitable, and he knew that. The sad part is, he didn't start seeing the return on his investments until a couple of years after losing his family, which meant he had all the money in the world, but no one to share it with. We spent hours just talking, two lost souls sharing a moment of human connection, something I could tell he was in desperate need of. He started shivering violently, so I told him to wait while I ran to the nearby store to buy him a heated blanket."

"With the money you were about to spend on food? This man is wealthy. He could have bought it himself."

"I know, but I was so enthralled by his stories that I didn't care about food at the moment. I just wanted to warm him up so we could keep talking." The air changed again. Jai's aura darkened. "When I came back a few minutes later with the blanket, he was gone."

"Gone? Where did he go?"

Jai smiled sadly. "No, I mean he passed away. I didn't even know his name, so I—"

"You just spent all that time talking, and you didn't even get his name? This story isn't adding up."

"I honestly didn't care. We connected in a way that transcended the exchange of something as surface level as names."

La'el let that response linger. This was a perspective he had never considered. What does it mean to truly know someone?

"As I was saying," Jai said, ending the silence. "I didn't even know his name, so I yelled 'old man' over and over again until I eventually accepted his death. I dropped to my knees and wept, feeling as if I had just lost a childhood friend."

"What does this have to do with your cult?"

Jai raised a finger. "Not done yet."

La'el perked up, internally, of course. He would never give Jai the satisfaction of letting him know how interested he was in his story. "Hurry. I have things to do."

"I covered my friend in the blanket and informed someone in the nearby building of his death. As I was walking toward camp, everything suddenly started to feel hazy. I couldn't focus on anything, and my legs felt like jelly. Eventually, I collapsed onto the cold hard pavement. Exhaustion hit me like an eighteen wheeler, and I accepted the possibility of falling asleep on the sidewalk until something very strange happened." Jai lit up once more, and his ingratiating smile returned. "The next part is kind of hard to explain without coming off as a lunatic."

"Too late for that. Continue... please." La'el immediately cringed. This pathetic human body was making him soft, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"As you wish, my lord," Jai said mockingly.

La'el swallowed the urge to choke him.

"There was a sudden shock to my system. As if I just got struck by a bolt of lightning. My eyes shot open, and I leapt up off the sidewalk. I was brimming with energy, and every nearby source of light became almost blindingly bright. That wasn't even the strangest part." He paused and started scratching his chin with his brows furrowed.

"Why have you stopped?"

"I'm trying to find the best way to explain this. I sort of ceased to exist. There was no 'me'—I blended in with everything and everyone around me. At that moment, I felt a genuine sense of oneness with the world. It was an intoxicating feeling. Imagine all of your troubles and insecurities being ripped away in one moment, like tearing off a weighted vest. But just as I was adjusting to this feeling, it left me. I stood still for a long time, heartbroken twice over. Not only did I lose a new friend, I had nirvana unceremoniously taken away from me."

La'el was aware of the existence of spiritual awakenings. There were a few souls in Hell who told him of similar experiences. All of them were triggered by such vastly different actions that La'el easily dismissed the phenomenon as momentary schizophrenic episodes. As silly of an explanation as that was, it was easier to accept than a spontaneous taste of divinity.

"That's when the obsession started," Jai said.

"Obsession?"

Jai nodded. "I became obsessed with chasing that feeling of 'oneness'. I concluded that my act of charity was the catalyst for my transition into a higher state of being. So from that moment forward, I lived according to one primary tenet: the key to spiritual enlightenment is through devoting your life to helping your fellow human being."

"That sounds rather vague. There are several religions that promote the importance of charity. What makes your belief set so different?"

"Most religions focus on the afterlife, treating our mortal lives as some sort of test to allow for admittance into the spiritual realm. Heaven is a state of being, and I truly believe that we can achieve it while on earth."

La'el gawked at this earnest, smiling idiot.

"There's a lot more to this story, but first," Jai aimed his half-witted grin at La'el. "Tell me a little about yourself."