Rules of Hell
When I opened my eyes, the red sky was the same as before, but my body was less shattered than when I'd first fallen.
"How's the body feel?"
Red hair tilted into my field of vision. It was El.
The girl soaked in the air of hell, the scent of blood and ash.
"......I'm alive."
The words rolled out a bit.
"Can't quite believe it yet, though."
El gave a small laugh.
"Doesn't matter if you can't believe it. As long as you're alive."
"This place won't even let you die if you want to."
A tone impossible to tell where the joke ended and the truth began. I slowly raised my upper body. The cracked bones were roughly set, and the charred flesh was stitched back like poorly mended cloth. Not fully healed, but shifted from "it'll break again if I move" to "might hold if I'm careful."
El tapped my forehead lightly with the back of her hand.
"Rak told me. Take you around once you're up."
"...Around where?"
"Here." El nodded toward the inside of the fortress.
"The base Rak made. Where you fell."
Hell. Even without saying it, I already knew. The red sky smeared thin like blood. Hell and a base. The sermons never mentioned bases in hell.
I nodded.
"...Got it. Mind showing me around, then?"
El helped me to my feet.
"Don't break again while walking. You're the only human here."
My breath caught for a moment. As we stepped into the corridor, the smell changed first. Blood and ash remained, but layered over them were iron, sweat, and heated stone.
"This is the treatment area." Inside the ruined fortress. A space roughly walled off where the walls had crumbled less. On the stone walls, someone had deeply carved letters.
'Do not die.'
'If you're going to kill, do it outside.'
'No fighting while receiving treatment.'
El shrugged.
"Rak said to carve them. Dying inside here means double the work."
"......Double?"
"Once to clear the corpse. Once to fill the empty spot."
El said it like it was nothing.
"Rak hates that kind of waste. Extra hands for no reason."
What would have been prayers on earth were carved here as rules.
A wide empty lot inside the fortress gates. Shattered stones. Torn armor. Dried bloodstains. Amid them stood newly piled stone heaps and sharpened wooden pillars in rows.
"Training ground," El said.
"Teaches the idiots how to throw each other and stay alive."
One side used a half-rebuilt collapsed tower for watch. The empty side on the other bore more rules in the same hand.
'Don't beg to be killed here.'
'If you really want to die, send out the ones who want to live first.'
I stopped in front of them.
"...Isn't it usually the other way around?"
El glanced back briefly.
"Rak says that's how it is. Wanting to die can wait."
"Take care of the ones who want to live now—it's not too late."
Heaven. Railings. Red rifts. Overlapping scenes rose. I shoved them away like fleeing.
At least here wasn't the hell from the sermons.
"That's the warehouse. Over there's weapon repair. That corner... where we stack the dead."
El's finger pointed lightly in directions. Just from the words, it sounded like a small fortress. Order and roles even in the heart of hell.
"...Not like the hell from the sermons."
The words slipped out.
"How'd they describe it?"
"Just pits of fire everywhere, sinners hanging, flames burning not flesh but 'sins.'"
"Regrowing flesh on the burned spots to burn again..."
"Angels descending to mete out punishment, God watching from above..."
As I spoke, El snorted.
"Sounds just like heaven, then."
I was speechless. El's red eyes quietly scanned me.
"No time for that here. The living stick together, fight and endure. The dead rot on their own."
"Doesn't matter if someone's watching from above. We don't have enough hands."
Sermons always had eyes overlooking hell. Counting sins, doling punishment, hearing prayers, tidying up. No such eyes here.
I exhaled quietly.
Next to the training ground. Demons clashed bodies in the center of the stone yard. Blood-soaked forms. Crude armor. Worn steel pipes and broken spear shafts instead of swords.
"That's..."
"Finding openings." A voice from the side. A demon leaning on the fence. Lean but with corded muscle on arms and neck. Short, sharp horns. Ash-gray near-black eyes.
"Morkan," El introduced.
"The one who always sticks his hand in during fights and gets chewed out by Rak."
Morkan twisted his lip up.
"Chewed out? More like educated."
His gray eyes flicked over a staggering demon, then back to me.
"New face."
"......I'm Zan. A human who fell here from the surface."
"Human." Morkan eyed me openly.
"A human falling this far..." Short laugh.
"Must've clung on to the end, determined to live."
El nudged Morkan in the side.
"Don't pick on the newbie. If Rak said not to kill him, we keep him alive."
Morkan shrugged.
"Not killing him. Yet."
I instinctively started to clasp my hands, then stopped. Prayer habit halted at my fingertips. El had seen it. But said nothing.
Full lap around the base, back to treatment area. Someone already lay on an inner cot. Half-torn wing. Gut-piercing hole. Mangled leg. A demon.
Body that takes a lot of hands to keep alive. Obvious at a glance.
El sucked in a breath.
"Went out again and came back like this."
"Who is he?"
El answered shortly.
"The one on watch outside the gate yesterday. Name... Nas'll know."
I looked at the demon's face. Cracked horn tip. Crude scar by the eye. A face that had endured long.
El placed her hand on his chest. Dull red light spread slowly.
"...Can he live?"
El bit her lip briefly.
"Patched him up, so if he wants to live, he will."
Then it happened. The demon's eyes opened on the cot. Ragged breath dragged from deep in his lungs. Red eyes shook. Wet lips parted.
"......Saintess."
My body froze first.
"From the surface... the one we prayed to..."
The words cut off midway. But the end was clear.
Pray for me.
Battlefields. Cathedrals. Valleys. Riverbanks. Pyres. Hands demanding prayer flooded back at once.
"......I, I'm..."
My voice wouldn't come. Hands clasped on instinct. Habit. The moment fingers touched, something not blood trickled faintly. Thin, like shards of broken glass. It dripped between my fingers. Not clean light. Dull, red, darkly sunken. Instead of rising, it seeped quietly downward. Light dust fell into stone cracks below the cot.
And nothing happened. The demon's breath stayed ragged, wounds responding only to El's red glow.
I couldn't clasp my hands anymore. The night the river reversed. The moment dirt piles collapsed. Supply lines ablaze. Wards where patients died in a day. Then Mother's scream. Burn scars resurfaced across my body.
Here too, prayer wasn't power. It was a curse.
"......Sorry."
The demon's hand flailed in the air. Fingertip brushed my hand's back. Neither hot nor cold. Even that temperature made me want to flee.
Then familiar footsteps from the corridor. Neither heavy nor light. Rak.
Rak swept the room once. Cot. El. Demon. Me, frozen with hands clasped. His eyes briefly grazed the light shards at my fingertips.
Rak approached the cot, placed a hand on the demon's forehead.
"Want to live?"
"......Yes."
"Want to die?"
"......No."
"Then that's it."
Rak said. Nodded at El.
"Patch him just this far."
"If he wants to live, he'll endure. If he wants to die later, that's off your hands."
El nodded.
"Yeah."
Rak's gaze returned to me.
"Zan."
I straightened reflexively.
"Yes..."
Hands still clasped.
Rak looked down at them. A brief silence.
"Here."
He said slowly.
"Clasping hands like that? Not your duty."
"If you wanna pray, do it inside. No one's asking."
"But the people who died because of me..."
"Think that's all on you."
Rak cut in.
"And you'll just end up dead."
"You dying alone won't pay back everyone who made you die."
No pity, no comfort in his eyes. Counting numbers like on a battlefield.
"What you need now isn't prayer. It's deciding what to do with the body we kept alive."
Rak turned toward the door, adding,
"Start with the living ones."
Neither high nor soft words. That's why they were easy to understand.
That night. I sat against the wall in a corner of the treatment area. Sleep wouldn't come. Closing my eyes brought Mother's scream first; opening them etched the base's rules under the red sky.
I looked down at my hands. Between fingers, faint light fragments drifted. Unlike the rising beams. Short, broken, circling near me without ascending. Like prayers that never landed, shattered and haunting my side.
Prayer is a curse here.
That much was clear. Prayer killed someone. Refusing prayer killed someone. Yet these light shards hadn't vanished completely. Unreached, they followed me.
I curled my fingers. A few shards collided in my palm, sparking faintly.
Hell nights weren't quiet. Distant training ground noises. Falls. Curses. Breaths. Sounds of those desperate to live.
And remnants of undying prayers hovered faintly just above my shoulder. I felt them like a curse, yet dimly knew someday I'd have to decide where to hurl it.