Hell's Redeemer

Chapter 58

As Lute made her way through the shimmering corridors of Heaven, her once-bright armor now dulled and singed, every angel she passed looked on in shock. She rarely returned from missions in Hell looking anything less than poised, yet now she looked shaken to her very core.

When she entered the chamber, she found Sera waiting. Her presence radiated an intense, near-blinding light that seemed to make even the grand hall itself shrink in awe. Six wings folded around her like a mantle of pure energy, and a halo encircled her.

Lute knelt before Sera, her voice barely steady. “Sera, I… I bring troubling news.”

Sera’s eyes softened slightly, but there was a fierce, almost inscrutable focus in them. “Rise, Lute,” she intoned, her voice carrying a resonance that seemed to echo through every corner of Heaven. “Speak of what you have seen.”

Lute rose, her heart pounding as she recalled the details of her encounter. “We tracked the divine energy, just as you instructed. And… we found something. A sinner, but with power—power that felt… divine.”

Sera’s brows furrowed, though her expression remained controlled. “A sinner wielding divine power?” she repeated, her voice now carrying an edge of concern.

“He’s called… Spawn,” Lute whispered, the name foreign yet almost profane to utter in Heaven’s hallowed halls. “This creature… he annihilated my Exorcists. His strength, his chains… Sera, they’re deadly beyond anything I’ve encountered.”

Sera’s six wings flared outward, a bright ripple of power filling the room. “He defeated your Exorcists?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous.

Lute nodded, struggling to keep her composure. “Yes, Sera. I felt as if he could see through me… he fought with ease, using weapons I can only describe as… formidable. It was almost as though he had once known divinity—only to be torn from it.”

Sera’s face darkened, and her wings shifted restlessly. She stepped closer, the radiant heat from her aura causing Lute to shiver despite herself. “Then he may well be a danger to all of us. If Heaven’s power rests within a sinner…” Her voice trailed, but the threat was clear.

“What should we do?” Lute asked, looking up at Sera, her voice subdued with worry.

Sera regarded her for a moment, then spoke with absolute finality. “We prepare, Lute. We must know if he is indeed a fragment of divine cast adrift or something darker still. If this Spawn becomes a threat beyond Hell, we will descend upon him with all the might of Heaven.”

With that, Sera dismissed her, though her piercing gaze followed Lute as she retreated from the chamber. As Lute departed, she could feel the weight of Sera’s resolve, and the promise that Heaven would not stand idly by.
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Spawn lingered in the slum for a moment, his eyes narrowed as he scanned the scene, the lingering remnants of the fight still vivid in his mind. Heaven knew he was here. The implications of that twisted through his thoughts. It meant that his past—those tangled, unresolved pieces of it that he’d hoped were buried—might be far closer to the surface than he had expected. He could almost feel those old adversaries in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to reemerge. Maybe not literally, but certainly as ghosts of his past.

But he couldn’t afford to dwell. He needed to get back to the hotel. If he was going to survive this new, hellish version of an afterlife, he needed more knowledge. His arrival had clearly shaken up more than just Hell’s denizens, and the heavens seemed to have a few concerns of their own. Whatever role Heaven played here, it wasn't like the world he knew before, and it might be more twisted than he could predict.