The accusers screamed their accusations, but Zeke paid them no heed. They had no more power over him. He’d accepted his sins and atoned for them, so they could no long affect him. Still, he did not feel the peace he’d expected. Instead, he could only think of what was in store for the future.

  Because the gate to the next circle loomed ahead of him, dark and uninviting, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he would be up to overcoming whatever hardships it promised. After all, each circle had grown progressively more difficult. In a few cases, he’d been well-suited to overcoming the challenges they represented, but he knew better than to expect that going forward.

  Not for the first time, he felt the urge to simply give up. Or at least to take some time to rest. A few days – or weeks – in the Circle of Heresy wouldn’t be so bad. There was food. Water. And aside from the constant accusations, it wasn’t so bad.

  But there were too many horrible memories in his wake. Just because he’d accepted that he would one day need to pay for his sins, that the suffering he’d endured was only the beginning, it didn’t mean that he’d enjoyed his time in the Circle of Heresy. He’d spent it being tortured to death, over and over again, only to be reborn so the cycle could continue.

  He couldn’t leave it behind quickly enough.

  So, he continued along his way, ignoring the accusers as his bare feet squished into the muddy terrain. Trees, scraggly and malformed, rose all around him even as a crowd of black-clad men and women followed. They whispered horrible things at him, reminding of all the terrible sins he’d committed. But Zeke refused to be swayed by their constant verbal assault.

  More than once, he considered simply slaughtering them all, but he knew that path was pointless. It wouldn’t help him at all. He had no issues with killing, but he would not do so without purpose. Not even when it might offer him a little peace and quiet.

  The gate was further away than Zeke had first expected, so it took him the better part of a day to reach his destination. By that point, the crowd of accusers had grown to number in the thousands, and their whispered indictments had become a steady roar. Finally, though, he’d arrived, and he didn’t hesitate for even a second before he stepped through the gate.

  The accusers, thankfully, did not follow.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” said Eveline the second he was safely on the other side. “I tried to help, but…”

  “I understand,” Zeke said. He knew that Eveline was limited in how much help she could offer, largely because if she went too far, she would be destroyed by Hell. She was not meant to be there, after all. She lacked the power to survive, and the only reason she hadn’t already succumbed was because she’d hidden herself with Zeke’s fortified mind. If she hadn’t, she would have been obliterated early on.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened?” she asked.

  Zeke shrugged, then slumped to the ground. He’d only taken a couple of steps past the gate, but he knew he was relatively safe. The passage between circles wasn’t as dangerous as the conjured worlds of sin themselves. The fact that Eveline had spoken was proof enough that he was safe.

  Which meant that Zeke could finally let loose with all the emotions that had strangled his mind since entering the Circle of Heresy. He hung his head, his sweaty, greasy hair forming a curtain around his face. Only then did he allow himself to truly feel those emotions.

  And when he did, it felt like iron bands had wrapped around his heart.

  He had died.

  Thousands of times. Over and over, he’d been tortured, and all the while, he’d been forced to listen to people twist his actions into the worst possible interpretation. No one – not even Zeke, with all his divine energy – could endure something like that without consequence.

  And what was worse was that he’d accepted his own guilt. That was the only way he’d freed himself from the cycle. He knew that he’d left a trail of bodies miles long in his wake, and that was an unequivocal sin. No matter that he’d thought it necessary, it was still killing, and it was wrong.

  The weight of that guilt – and his choice to accept it – pressed down on him as he wept. Beside him, Eveline manifested. Without even looking, Zeke knew she’d become more ephemeral, and though she insisted it was fine, he was also well aware that she was lying.

  “Are you dying?” he asked.

  “No. Of course not.”

  Zeke knew that was a lie, too, but he chose not to address it. Because he wasn’t the sort of man who saved other people. He was a killer. A destroyer. He was a herald of obliteration of unequaled power.

  He wasn’t certain how long he sat there, his knees in his chest as he wept for the person he had become. For the person he would evolve into.

  But at some point, his tears dried, and he let his heart harden against the realizations he’d been forced to acknowledge. It was no quick process, but eventually, he felt up to continuing his journey. When that happened, he raised his head and pushed his hair back. With a sniff, he said, “That was…difficult.”

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  In addition to everything else that had happened in the Circle of Heresy, he’d also finally found a foe he could not defeat. The Judge had been so far beyond him that he wasn’t even capable of hurting him. Because of that, some cracks in Zeke’s confidence had begun to appear.

  “Don’t.”

  “What?” he asked, looking up at Eveline.

  “Don’t look down on yourself, Ezekiel. That creature was a god,” she said. “And not a weak one, either. A true god the likes of which would shake the very foundations of the Ethereal Realm. It was also within its own domain, where it held complete dominion. No one could have overcome those odds.”

  That didn’t help him feel any better about his failure. What was all his power worth if he couldn’t fight something like the Judge? As far as he was concerned, the creature was guilty of every sin in the book. If anyone deserved defeat, it was him. And yet, Zeke had failed.

  Taking a deep breath, he tried to push that out of his mind. He’d overcome the Circle. That needed to be enough.

  With that in mind, he rose to his feet and took a look at his surroundings. The hall was not a hall at all. Instead, it looked like a cavern, with uneven walls and irregular dimensions. If it weren’t for the circumstances – and the fact that it was perfectly straight, despite the jagged walls – Zeke would have assumed it was a natural cave. He obviously knew better than that, though.

  “Are you ready for this?” Eveline asked, her illusory form wavering.

  “Not really,” he admitted. “What’s next?”

  “The Circle of Violence,” she answered.

  He sighed. “It feels like a lot of these are connected,” he stated. “Violence isn’t so different from Wrath, right?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Fraud and Treachery – the next two – are related as well. Maybe that’s the point,” she reasoned. “All sin is similar, perhaps? It comes from the same place, doesn’t it?”

  “Selfishness.”

  “No. It’s ego,” she corrected. “Selfishness just flows from that. The same is true of Wrath and Lust and all the rest. That’s ultimately where it all comes from. The belief that what you want – what you desire – is more important than right or wrong. It’s more important than the higher power’s dictates.”

  “Like the tree of knowledge,” Zeke intoned. “You know, Adam and Eve with the apple? Though I read somewhere that it wasn’t really an apple. That was added later. It could have been a fig or a pomegranate. Even grapes. I remember watching a documentary saying that some interpretations claim it was wheat, and it symbolized human civilization and knowledge.”

  “You’re talking about that nonsense from your old world’s religion?”

  “There are a lot of parallels between what it said and what’s going on here,” Zeke maintained. He’d never been entirely religious, but he’d grown up in a part of the world where quite a lot of people were. As a result, he’d picked up a good deal of knowledge.

  “It’s a universal issue that deals with sapient races reaching beyond the scope of their own ability to understand,” she stated. “That’s where ego comes into play. The belief that you’re far more capable than you really are. That’s the root of sin, at least as it’s understood in Hell.”

  “You disagree with its definitions?”

  “I disagree with the notion that sin exists at all. It’s all just animals acting according to their own self-interest. There is no right or wrong. No sins or virtues. We’re all just beasts,” she explained. “This entire thing is no more than a twisted god’s attempt to force people into very specific and well-defined boxes.”

  Zeke frowned.

  “So, you believe someone is in charge of Hell?”

  “Of course. You don’t believe this just sprang from nothing, do you? Someone made it, just as someone created all the other realms. And they did so for a purpose, Ezekiel.”

  Zeke’s expression deepened. They’d discussed the idea that there was someone hovering above it all – the Framework, the realms, everything – but he hadn’t really considered that there was an actual entity who’d created Hell in its current form. Or at least permitted its formation.

  And the second he truly let himself realize the implications of that simple thought, a spark of hatred caught fire in his chest.

  “It’s blatant cruelty.”

  “What?”

  “The whole thing,” Zeke said. “I mean – I get the realms and how all of that is structured to funnel powerful people to the top. But this? It’s just sadistic.”

  “You’ve visited Hell. You have experienced a small taste of what that entails. And you’re just now coming to the realization that it’s cruel?” Eveline asked. “Ezekiel, I thought you were more intelligent than that. Of course it’s cruel. Of course it’s sadistic. That’s something every single demon learns early on, and it’s a lesson that keeps getting hammered home with every step they take in Hell.”

  “But –”

  “Nurture that hatred, Ezekiel. Fan those flames of resentment. You are half demon, but that’s just a line on your status,” she said. “To truly understand what we are, you need to realize that only spite drives us forward. Sure, we have our own egos pushing us to grow more powerful, the same as everyone else, even in Heaven. But it’s mostly hatred for our jailor that keeps us from drowning in our own misery.”

  It was the most venom he’d ever heard in Eveline’s voice, and there was true resentment at its foundation. What’s more, he understood the sentiment. Every demon had been condemned to a life of torture, only to be forced into a world of base sin and told to survive as best they could.

  Of course they’d responded violently. What else was there for them?

  Zeke considered that as he padded down the tunnel, the fingers of one hand trailing along the jagged and rocky wall. Thankfully, Eveline remained silent, giving him the opportunity to digest what he’d learned as well as his conflicting feelings. On the one hand, it would be so easy to simply steer into his anger and embrace the resentment bubbling inside him.

  But on the other?

  He suspected that was the point. The entire situation was meant to engender hatred and incite violence.

  Could he resist it, though? Even after days trekking down that tunnel, he still simmered with fury and hatred. It would only take a single spark, and his rage would ignite. It felt almost inevitable.

  So he wasn’t in the best mindset when he finally caught sight of the next gate, which he knew would lead him into the Circle of Violence. But maybe that was how it was supposed to be. Because what better fuel for violence was there than a simmering rage that could easily explode into an all-consuming fury?

  It didn’t matter.

  He couldn’t hesitate. He couldn’t turn back. The only way forward was through the Circle of Violence, and the sooner he confronted it, the sooner he could overcome whatever obstacles it threw in his path.

  With that in mind, he stepped through the next gate and into a realm of war and blood.