The pit never stopped screaming.

Above, the Eternal Pit shook with violence – brutes and monsters locked in blood combat, their pain rising like incense to a hungering god. Steel tore flesh. Bone shattered. The crowd's roars were waves crashing against the world's end.

But beneath that savage cathedral – beneath blood, earth, and centuries of sacrifice – something older stirred.

A temple carved before language. A throne chamber not built, but grown from will and hatred. The walls were black stone veined with gold; the floor, a mosaic of extinguished suns. No flame burned, yet everything glowed. There was no wind, but shadows moved.

Ten thrones waited in a crescent. Each was a god's wound in reality.

…

Asmodeus lounged upon a throne spun from dreams stolen at the moment of death. It wept smoke and bled memory – wisps of forgotten lovers, last breaths, abandoned hopes drifting like silk torn from the mind's eye. No stone anchored his seat. No iron. No bone. Only illusion, wrapped so tightly it became real.

His form shimmered, unable to settle. A young god crowned in flame. A weeping bride, face shifting with sorrow. A wounded child clutching broken toys.

His skin gleamed like moonlit water. When he smiled, it was as if the world remembered something it had tried to forget.

Asmodeus did not sit upon his throne. He dreamed it into being. And the dream could betray itself at any moment.

His laughter was a sound only the guilty could hear. His gaze did not see the body – only the shape of your nightmares. Around him, time slept uneasily.

…

Zagan reclined upon a throne that changed with every breath. Obsidian. Molten brass. Red coral. Flesh shaped like iron. Glass filled with whispering smoke. No shape endured. No state survived. Her throne was not a seat – it was an experiment in progress.

It whispered secrets as it shifted: equations, screams, songs sung backward, and names of saints unmade.

Zagan shimmered with feminine elegance, but it was elegance undone. Her skin bore no colour – it shifted to the gaze. Her fingers ended in quills, in claws, in mercury-tipped needles. Her smile was alchemical: sweet as nectar, sharp as blades, hungry as fire.

She wore the face of her former vessel, a brilliant alchemist who sacrificed everything in pursuit of gold. Now gold was the least of what she could make.

Zagan was not beautiful. She was becoming.

Around her, nothing remained stable. Not even truth.

…

Belphegor slouched upon a throne of flesh that no longer knew what it used to be. It pulsed like a stillborn heart – wet, uneven, wrong. Veins slithered like worms seeking exit. Mouths opened beneath the seat, moaning in sleep. It was not a chair. It was a memory, stitched into form.

Upon it sat his flesh puppet – a crude assemblage of stolen skin, childlike in size, adult in gesture.

Its eyes came from priests. Its lips from widows. Its spine never stopped twitching.

It whispered, always whispering – fractured scripture, obscene mathematics, prayers misremembered by the damned. Each blink echoed with the sound of flies.

Belphegor never revealed his true form – only this molested echo of something once sacred. He liked being less than seen.

His presence didn't fill the room. It crawled inside it.

Around him, reality didn't bend. It recoiled.

…

Verrine drifted behind a veil of lightless mist, her silhouette elegant, poisoned by intent.

Her throne pulsed like submerged despair – shaped from drowned confessions and broken oaths, crafted by the hands of those she once promised to save. It looked like marble in moonlight. Beneath, it bled.

She never touched the throne. She hovered, suspended by strands of invisible silk, as if the world itself feared what contact would mean.

Her voice was a whisper only the desperate could hear.

Her eyes – when glimpsed – were mirrors soaked in venom. One reflected what you longed for. The other, what it would cost.

She smelled like crushed jasmine. Her hands glowed with healing light—until you noticed the bone beneath, and the worms that stirred just under her skin.

Verrine did not offer salvation. She offered relief – the kind that rots.

To some, she was mercy. To others, a midwife of suffering. To all, she was the answer whispered when prayers began to wither.

Around her, hope was not born. It decayed.

…

Lilith sat upon a tree of eternal death and rebirth, its branches forged from white bone and stillborn fate.

It grew from the floor like a tumour – roots piercing stone, pulsing with embryonic heartbeat. It never stopped growing. New limbs curled around old ones, bearing not fruit, but faces – twisted, half-formed, wailing in silence.

She did not command the throne. She birthed it.

Her hair flowed like spilled ink, coiling across her body like serpents denied flesh. Her eyes – black, ancient, unblinking – had watched civilizations crawl from swamps and return to dust. Her presence was the moment between inhale and scream.

She was barefoot, her ankles wrapped in twitching veins. And her fingers… always wet - with milk, or blood, or both.

Around her, the air tasted like afterbirth and prophecy.

…

Belail reclined upon a throne sculpted from mirrors that reflected no one but himself.

Each pane was flawless – framed in feathered gold, etched with prayers he had once answered, and others he had destroyed. The throne did not support him. It adored him.

Wings of obsidian light fanned out behind him – motionless. Perfect. His robes fell in impossible symmetry. His beauty was so complete, so violently precise, that to look at him too long stirred shame in the soul.

He did not sit. He reigned.

His presence smelled of altars and perfumed graves. His words landed like silk-wrapped blades.

Around him, light did not shine. It asked permission.

…

Agrath sat upon a throne of living bone and blackened veins – a parasitic altar that pulsed with stolen heartbeats. Each rib had once belonged to a queen or a goddess—or so the legend said – and each beat echoed the moment of their deaths.

Her presence was not loud.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Nor large. It was hungered stillness.

Her skin shimmered like dried blood beneath moonlight. Her lips were stained with memory. She did not blink. She had forgotten how.

Around her, shadows did not fall. They bled.

…

Orobas sat at the centre – unmoving, forged from stone and wrath, his arms layered with rings of burned brass. The air bent around him.

His throne rose like a mountain of conquest – built from crushed altars, shattered weapons, and the bones of those who once dared to pray for peace. It was not decorated. It was final.

He did not rest upon it. He anchored it.

He wore no robes. No crown. Only chains coiled around his fists and ankles – not to bind him, but to remind others what he had already broken.

His eyes held no flame. No madness. Only judgment.

His voice rumbled deep as tectonic grief.

When he looked at the others, it was not with awe. It was with calculation.

Second to only one. Stronger than all.

Around him, the room did not quake. It endured.

…

Mammon's throne sat vacant – collapsed into slag and gold-ash, warped beyond recognition.

It would never be used again.

Its power had been devoured, not forgotten – claimed by another seated here, though none spoke of it aloud.

Only one throne remained truly empty.

The Lords glanced toward it.

None spoke its name.

Until Belphegor did.

…………………

"Where is Moloch?"

His meat-puppet's voice rasped hollow and layered, like ten mouths stitched into one – echoing in disharmony, reciting syllables they did not believe.

"Why does he not sit among us?"

A silence fell.

Not the silence of peace, but the silence that follows a prophecy unspoken. The silence that bleeds into old tombs still listening for screams.

Verrine moved first.

"Perhaps he tires of pretence," she said, voice like crushed velvet steeped in hemlock.

"Perhaps the mortal skin grows itchy. Souls chafe when you wear them too long."

She did not laugh.

She never laughed.

Orobas stood.

The weight of his movement cracked stone.

The chains at his wrists rattled once – then stilled.

His voice rolled through the chamber like judgment cast in thunder.

"One of us," he said, "has devoured Mammon."

The walls groaned in answer.

Ancient stone remembered Mammon's name and did not like how it was spoken.

Orobas's mouth curled into a grin carved from murder.

"I approve."

He let the word echo, let it settle like ash on altars too long abandoned.

"Mammon was a glutton. A bloated banker sucking marrow from men. Let his empire rot with him. This is not a kingdom for the slow. The gods that will come… have no room for the old."

Belail rose.

He moved like a painting in motion – robes immaculate, posture balletic, disdain dripping like perfume.

A single wing unfurled behind him, not to threaten, but to remind.

"Savage brute," he said, voice coiled with silk and contempt.

"You cheer barbarity while ignoring the system it upheld. Mammon was Greed. He was the furnace beneath the Contract Fields. Without him… who feeds the hunger of men?"

He gestured toward the air as if expecting the world itself to answer.

"What happens when desire dries up?"

Verrine's veil rustled, slow as rot.

"You'll have to soil your princely hands again, Belail," she murmured.

"How tragic. A lord of pride, reduced to door-to-door demon work."

Belail sneered, but said nothing.

His reflection trembled once, then corrected itself.

Lilith's breath drifted across the room, slow and fetid, curling like smoke from dying embers.

"This is Aamon's scent," she said, voice brittle and immense.

"The Chaosbringer has cracked the veil. Hellfire walks where it should not. The air tastes of kindling. Of rebellion."

Orobas nodded, slow and certain.

"Agreed."

And then—

A whisper.

Not a voice. Not sound.

It was instinct. It was sleep unravelling. It was name-as-curse.

"The Contractor."

Asmodeus sighed.

The sound was like glass breaking underwater. Like violins dying in a cathedral with no roof.

"How quaint," he said, reclining as if dreaming the moment into being.

"One mortal soul, burning through systems written in blood and demon fire."

Belphegor's flesh puppet twitched.

"You speak like cravens," it spat.

"He is a man. Fragile. Finite. All fire dies in the end."

Asmodeus tilted his head back. His pupils vanished. His lips parted, but no breath followed.

"Mortals made gods once," he said.

"Perhaps they'll do it again."

The chamber stilled.

Even the shadows seemed to pause.

Then Verrine spoke again, her tone soft as a scalpel pressed to throat.

"You're brave, Belphegor. Because Lord Moloch is not here."

Belphegor's meat-puppet froze.

It did not reply.

It did not need to.

Orobas raised his hand.

His palm bore a mark – a brand, black and smoking, shaped like an open gate.

"Listen well."

His voice was command. Not threat. Not suggestion. Law.

"Lord Moloch requires two things: the Contractor... and the Fragment of Aamon."

"They are keys. Without both, the chain holds. The gate stays shut. The light sleeps."

He turned, gaze like mountain-fire, falling on each Lord in turn.

"Assemble your legions. Unleash your agents, your sleepers, your hounds and hybrids. Bring me the Contractor. Bring me the girl."

A smile split his face – red and ruinous.

"And if they resist?"

The room shook. The pit above thundered. Stone wept blood.

Something broke.

"Then we burn their world down."

…………………

The elevator descended without a sound.

There was no music. No buttons. Just the hum of descent and the quiet weight of classified oxygen. The Director stood alone, briefcase in one hand, biometric ring glowing faintly on the other.

Sublevel Omega-4.

Few in Langley knew it existed. Fewer still had ever seen it. Even the architects were executed after its completion – standard practice for containment-level zero.

The doors opened into silence. Not quiet – silence, engineered and complete.

The Director stepped into the corridor. It was long, narrow, lit by vertical red slats of inactive status lighting. No guards. No cameras. No security.

There was no need.

At the end of the hallway stood a single black door. No handle. No hinges. No keycode. Only a vein-thin slit the exact width of the Director's hand.

He pressed his palm against it. The slit drank his heat, his blood, his identity. Something purred on the other side.

The door opened.

Inside: a white room. Featureless. No table. No light source. No scent.

In the centre, resting on a black pedestal, sat a rotary phone. No dial. No cable. No markings. It had rung only four times in the Director's career.

It did not ring now.

The Director approached, lifted the receiver, and placed it to his ear.

He did not speak.

A moment passed.

Then— the voice came.

Smooth. Genderless. Impossibly articulate. Every syllable cut from polished glass.

"Instrument."

The Director nodded once, though the voice could not see.

"You are required."

The Director waited.

"Authorization is granted. You will release the chamber."

His mouth was dry. "Target?"

The voice flowed like silk over a blade.

"One anomaly. One asset. The anomaly must be contained. The asset must be retrieved. The flame cannot be allowed to spread."

The Director opened his briefcase. Inside, nestled in obsidian foam, was a thumb-sized black drive labeled Θ-7. A separate compartment held a flat silver key and a badge bearing an inverted eagle—no stars. No flag. Just the eye.

He spoke with protocol clarity.

"Requesting unit confirmation."

"Deploy: Reverb. Splice. Crux. Rewind. Stonewall. Gallows. The chamber, fully formed. No deviation. No survivors."

The Director paused.

A question surfaced – uninvited, but familiar.

"And if they are protected? Institute assets. Grimm?"

A silence deeper than silence.

Then:

"Then Langley will burn second."

A drop of sweat fell down the Director's neck. He wiped it with a handkerchief as if correcting posture.

He placed the receiver back on the cradle.

As it touched the base, a pulse radiated through the floor. Not felt – registered. As if something buried far below had opened one golden eye.

…………………

The other Lords had gone.

Their echoes still clung to the stone. Their absence smelled like burnt silk and judgment withheld. But Orobas remained – as he always did.

He turned from the circle of thrones, toward the wall behind his seat – a curve of black stone no other Lord had ever touched. It was not a passage. It was a fracture.

Not downward. Inward.

Past the mortal geometry of the Pit. Past structure. Past design. Into something older than place. There was no door. No passageway. Just the pull. A direction the world did not chart – only obeyed. Orobas followed it.

He always had.

The air grew heavier. The walls narrowed. The black stone under his feet grew warm – then hot – then wet. Blood oozed from invisible seams. His chains jingled once, like wind chimes in a tomb.

Then he arrived.

The chamber was breathless.

Its walls were carved from fused bone and obsidian, slick with age. In the centre stood a monolith altar, taller than any man, forged in blood and bound with seven rings of broken iron. Each was cracked. Each ring hummed with a different curse.

The altar pulsed. Slowly. Like something inside it was dreaming of breath.

Upon its face, two markings had been etched:

The sigil of Aamon, broken and inverted.

And below it - something else. A name not written, but implied.

A shape no mouth could speak.

Moloch

Orobas approached.

His face did not change.

He did not kneel out of reverence. He knelt because that was the price.

He reached into his cloak. Pulled forth the limp body of a child – barely six. The daughter of a pit fighter, taken hours earlier. Still warm.

Orobas held her in one hand.

And with the other, he crushed her into the altar.

There was no scream.

Only pulp. And silence.

The blood soaked into the stone before it fell. The sigils ignited – not with flame, but with absence.

Orobas whispered:

"The Lords have moved. The field is set. Speak, if you will."

A pause.

Long.

Then—

The altar cracked.

A line split down the centre. Not just stone – space. Sound. Meaning.

And then— A voice.

A child's voice.

But not quite.

It wobbled in pitch. Glitched in tone. It sounded like someone remembering how to sound human.

"Find me the key…"

The room darkened. Not the light – but the memory of light – was drained.

"Find me the flame…"

Orobas did not breathe.

"Break the girl. Bring me the man."

Then— silence.

The altar resealed. Slowly. Like a mouth closing over a forbidden truth.

Orobas rose.

His eyes smoked.

His voice was gone – stolen, or shattered, or offered.

He said nothing.

He turned.

And walked away.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.