’’How did you find someone to love you back so quickly?’’

She asked as her hands moved from his face to hold his hands, caressing the markings on them with her thumb.

’’How did I not hear anything about your success and your freedom from your punishment?’’ Lilith’s gaze flickered over to the door leading to the All–Seeing Hall, where the red dragon lies.

She stared away from it and blinked trying to understand what kind of silly move he was making this time again.

’’How come your father was the first person you are running over to see without even passing by my Phoenix Hall first, hmm?’’

She stared up at him again, feigning a hurt and compassionate look as she held on to him tightly.

But Ichor slowly pulled away from her firm hold, earning a faint look of disbelief from his mother as he put the right space between them.

Falak, yet to be eased from his bowing position, could still sense the growing tension between both supreme beings.

Lilith cocked her head a little bit to the side, feeling betrayed by his sudden distance as her two hands were yet to move an inch from where she was holding on to him.

Ichoraisis.

How dare you make a move beyond the places I have marked for you to exist within.

Falak could sense the young prince’s discomfort with his mother and quickly came to his rescue by using his magic to alter the flow of time within the artifact. Then he rose fully to his height and announced, ’’Your Royal Highness,’’

Lilith threw Falak a murderous glare. One the ancient demon ignored and turned to the prince in concern.

’’It is time for your audience with His Divine.’’

Lilith was pained all over because she had no idea why her arrogant son was meeting his father all of a sudden. Something he hardly did and dreaded every time.

He was the only reason she still maintained her position beside the devil and he can become the only reason she loses everything.

Whether they like it or not, their place in Hell is linked to whatever Ichor is and does.

She tried getting rid of him many times but at times she felt like God himself has made this thing hard to kill as a sick form of punishment for her rebellion once.

Grim thankfully allowed himself to be guided by Falak inside the All–Seeing Hall, far away from his second ranked nightmare to meet with his worst.

Lilith watched as Falak turned around to shut the door with his magic.

If looks could kill, Falak would have been reduced to ashes as Lilith tried and failed to intimidate him with her burning look.

The doors paused an inch for Lilith to catch sight of the demon’s dark lips easing to a slight but mocking smirk at her before the two halves of the door merged once more into the single gigantic menacing eyeball.

It was time she accepted that her petty tricks and pitiful attempts to control the young lord were getting boring.

Lilith was getting boring.

And everyone couldn’t wait until the red dragon himself grew tired of her and found them a better queen.

*

*

*

Once he had secured the ancient spell keeping the eye shut forever inside and from outsiders, Falak eased from the door and turned to his young lord, half of the creature’s face now showing under that curtain of its long hair.

’’Follow me, Your Highness,’’ it said respectfully as it turned around and began to take the lead down a frozen hallway with its lantern swaying with every slow step.

Grim followed behind the demon, trying not to respond so much to the numerous nightmares triggered by this hall alone.

’’Try not to breathe too much of the air around here,’’ Falak said to Grim in concern and he nodded at the strange air pockets that gathered ominously at every corner of the irregular ice wall. Each step they took sent slow ripples spreading across the perfectly still water beneath their feet.

’’One demon died just taking too much of the poisonous miasma of His Grace,’’ Falak revealed.

’’He shouldn’t have come here without a guide. But some demons don’t learn until they experience it first hand.’’

They walked past the frozen remains of the body of the demon that ventured into this forbidden place without permission or a guide without Ichor noticing.

As they moved further, things got creepier and tense. The ice around them got scarier and the still, clear water in which they moved on became blood red. Grim could then hear the familiar screams and anguish of the souls that burned forever from the bottomless pit.

Falak then looked over his shoulder at Grim and said, ’’Please dull your sense of hearing and balance as we approached further, Your Highness. One demon ran mad while trying to endure the sound.’’

Ichor nodded, while doing as instructed.

As they moved past several, unending walls and pillars of great ice, large ominous eyeballs living within the ice walls blinked and moved in the direction of the two demons. Their slits a deep red and sharp like the mouth of a blade as they stirred about restlessly before concealing their form within the ice.

Grim stared in the direction of Hades and knew his presence attracted whatever lurked in there as he noticed a thousand eyes on him. His princely robe trailing against the still waters as his heart began to race as they neared where his father was.

After a long quiet walk down the frozen hallways that seemed to go on forever, it opened to a dry and crystal like cave.

A very beautiful cave that was capable of distracting any demon or mortal that survived to this point from the monster that settled within it. Ichor had always been at awe at the water that reflected above them from the high, Ice ceiling. His senses returned and he felt the quaking and distant rumbling of the power and excellence of Sin itself.

A fallen angel that appeared in many forms and decided one third of the divine beings in the heavens to perish.

A being far beyond their understanding, whose depths and height was yet to be measured.

The one whose wickedness could never be avenged by years and years of anguished and eternal torment.

An angel from the sky, a dragon from the seas, sin in the hearts of men.

’’Falak, the demon of Light and Flame greets the Great Sin.’’

Grim moved close enough to stare at his father and....