The Great Demon's Proposal
I had no idea how much time had passed. Once the shock wore off, I crawled out from under the pile of rubble, caught my breath, and repeated Reinforcement and rest over and over. In the meantime, my broken bones had roughly knit back together.
Body forcibly repaired and strengthened—at the cost of pain and damage.
The bones weren't perfectly aligned, but my ribs no longer caught as sharply when I drew breath. My shoulder and arm were barely usable now.
El was fiddling with her leg beside me.
A faint layer of light wrapped around the broken bone. Not as pure as the angels' healing—slightly murky, tinged with red. Strangely, it felt more suited to hell.
"Feeling better?"
El slowly bent and straightened her leg. A short breath escaped her, but her expression quickly settled.
"...I can walk now. Running's still tough, though."
"Walking's enough."
I said as I pushed myself up. El glanced at me and gave a small smile.
"What about you, Raksha?"
"I'm getting there too."
"Good..."
We headed toward the hunger.
The place we'd just left was unmistakably a battlefield. Crumbled walls. Toppled towers. Bodies of angels and demons.
As we walked farther, the landscape began to change. First, the corpses thinned out. The limbs we'd been stepping over grew sparse, then vanished entirely past a certain point. After the last blood puddle, there was nothing. No blood. No flesh. No shattered weapons.
A zone where the entire battlefield had been erased.
El murmured softly.
"...Nothing left from here on."
The ground was smoothly sheared off. Fissures remained, but everything atop them had been stripped away. The texture felt like it'd been burned once, melted, then reforged. Kicking lightly with my toe sent a thin stream of black ash drifting down.
"If hell ends at the edge of the battlefield... this just feels wiped clean."
She was right. From here, it was as if angels, demons, and war had never existed. Only traces of a single sweeping impact remained.
We walked across the polished floor. No bodies anywhere. No blood lingering. But the hunger thickened instead. Just inhaling made my gut feel hollower.
Tightened my body's edges to keep the hunger from seeping in. The more I clenched, the hungrier I grew again.
El took a short breath and spoke.
"Raksha."
"Yeah."
"It's getting hungrier and hungrier."
"Probably 'cause we're heading straight for the hungry bastard."
El nodded slightly.
"Still, I can endure this much."
The heart of the hunger was a massive black pit. The ground itself sucked inward. Like a giant finger had pressed into hell's surface, gouged, and dragged.
The round depression held no debris. Clean, as if nothing had ever been there. Charred black stone floor, thin layers of ash-like powder, and right in the center—
I stood with El at the pit's edge. Looked down.
The Great Demon of Gluttony sat in the pit's center. Atop rock melted black and reforged. No bodies or weapons around. Just a single suit of black armor resting quietly atop it.
Traces of whatever it had devoured clung hidden in the armor's crevices.
A large gash yawned in the center of its chest. A faint, nauseating oily scent wafted from the wound. It was still pristinely empty there.
Gluttony's untouched void. Around it, something black quietly welled up.
Hunger writhing to devour what it couldn't.
The face atop it was younger than expected. The eyes, ancient. As I watched, those eyes slowly turned my way. Even from afar, our gazes locked.
Two living demons and one Great Demon.
Our eyes met.
El's fingers trembled, then stilled.
"......Bell."
I uttered the name curtly.
"You survived."
A low, raspy voice. Yet it carried clearly. His words rode the air, clinging stickily to my ears.
The Great Demon's gaze weighed us steadily.
"Two."
He held up two gloved fingers. Dried blood crusted over the black leather.
"In this meaningless war..."
He glanced toward the shattered hell we'd crossed, then back down into the empty pit.
"..."
I said nothing.
El steadied her breath and asked, softer than usual.
"Are we... the only demons left alive here?"
Bell's gaze sharpened. Gluttony's hunger swept over us in place of words.
"Come here."
Not a command—arrogant certainty that we would, of course.
El's body reacted first. I glanced at her, then followed the gently sloping floor into the deep pit.
Nothing underfoot. Just smoothly sheared stone.
El's breaths deepened slightly.
"Raksha."
"Yeah."
"...He's really a Great Demon, right?"
"Yeah."
"...Scarier than I thought."
"Obviously."
We descended toward the center.
Up close, Bell was quieter than from afar. The massive hunger made him seem almost still. Even a slight movement would ripple the surrounding air.
"Names."
I caught my breath and spoke.
"Raksha."
El answered a beat later.
"...El."
Bell's gaze flicked between us.
"Names I don't remember."
He muttered. El's fingers clenched then released her hem.
"There wasn't a war this big before."
Cautious words. Bell's lip twitched faintly upward.
Ambiguous—question or retort? But at least not cringing.
Bell didn't press. Instead, another sense probed us. Gluttony sweeping his entire body. My bones, muscles, blood, heart, even the center of my mind. Then to El.
A brief silence.
"Curious why I let you live."
Bell spoke first. I nodded. El nodded faintly.
"One dragged its broken body and fought to the end."
His gaze pointed at me. El inhaled sharply.
Bell narrowed his eyes briefly.
"One watched the war to its end without fleeing. Well, nowhere to flee anyway."
Now at El.
"Some call that loyalty."
He shrugged slightly.
"I just like ones who endure to the end."
Emotionless tone. Not praise or mockery—just a preference.
"Is the war over now?"
I asked.
"Raphael."
Bell's eyes flicked upward. Toward the torn sky over the black pit.
"Raphael lives."
The words hit heavier than the hunger.
"Heaven couldn't kill me. I couldn't eat them all."
Bell tapped the void in his chest. A hollow thud echoed.
"But this remains."
A wound reeking of heaven. A hole Gluttony couldn't touch.
"They won't come down for a while."
"Heaven's got plenty to clean up too, like here."
Bell's gaze lowered.
"That's why."
He continued.
"For hell to rise again, we need the living."
Bell leaned closer.
"Among them, ones who prevent death."
His eyes fixed on El.
"And ones who refuse to die, enduring to the end."
Now on me.
"That's why I spared you."
Simple reason. All the more convincing.
"What do we do?"
I asked first.
Bell paused, then smirked faintly.
"Live."
Short answer.
"Don't die. Don't fall. Don't submit."
He pressed his toe into the charred floor again.
"Don't get wiped clean like this ground."
The hunger writhed in sync.
"Live, and rebuild hell."
He added.
"That's your job, both of you."
I looked at El. She looked at me. Bloodied, staggering bodies—but eyes undimmed.
"......Can we?"
El asked. Voice low, but not broken.
Bell tilted his head slightly, then chuckled leisurely.
"I'd be disappointed if you couldn't, after I spared you."
The leisure of the strong. Certainty in his power.
"An order?"
I asked.
Bell eyed us, then his lip curled.
"A proposal."
"And if we refuse?"
His lip dipped faintly. No verbal answer. Hunger swept from head to toe. Heart, lungs, brain, bones, eyes. Vivid image of being shredded, not a scrap left, tumbling down.
"Then not a proposal—a meal."
Bell said flatly.
El's hand instinctively gripped my wrist.
"...We'll do it."
She spoke first.
"We'll live. Endure without dying, start over."
I exhaled shortly.
"Me too."
Bell spoke again.
"Then live."
He repeated it. Like a curse, or a blessing.
As we left the pit, the hunger had quieted somewhat. Bell still sat on the blackened floor.
No telling how much more he'd devour here, how much stronger he'd grow. I decided to remember just this scene.
The war's end. A massive pit with nothing left after everything was eaten.
The Gluttony Demon at its center.
And the two survivors before him.
El murmured quietly beside me.
"...From now on, we clean up these ruins?"
"Yeah."
I glanced back at the ruined hell.
"Rebuild hell from the ground up."
The hunger still writhed behind us. Even as we turned away, the erased zone and outer ruins were solidifying into Bell's domain, bit by bit.
One thing we could do atop it: survive and stack something new on the wreckage.
For now, that was everything.