CHAPTER 21: CHAPTER NO.21 NINE LEVELS OF HELL (3)

[Location: Wrath’s Palace, Wrath Circle, Seventh Hell]

[Amon Baelgorath’s POV]

I... I loved—infatuated—with her, yes. The realisation struck me like an earthquake ripping through the foundations of my being. Wrath had no place for attachments, for weakness, for sentiment. And yet, there it was, coiled deep inside my molten chest, a spark of desire buried beneath centuries of rage and dominion.

Flames around me faltered, stuttering, as if sensing the unfamiliar tremor. My claws itched to strike, to destroy, to punish, yet another part of me—an irrational, abhorrent part—burned with something else entirely. Protective. Obsessive. Devouring.

The Witch noticed, of course. Her pale eyes flickered with the faintest hint of satisfaction, though she didn’t dare smile fully. Only fools or mortals dared mock Wrath openly, but she... she merely watched, steady, patient, calculating.

"You feel it, don’t you?" she whispered, though her voice barely rose above the hiss of my burning hall. "That name... it pierces more than flesh. It stirs... things you’ve buried under rivers of fire and bone."

I snarled, and the roar tore itself from my throat. The hall quaked violently, molten stone spitting upwards in protest. "Silence!" I bellowed, every syllable dripping with fury and shame. "I feel nothing but rage! Nothing!"

But my mind betrayed me. Images of her—Grayfia—seared into my perception. The way she moved through fire and frost alike, silent, inexorable.

I even asked for her hand from Lilith herself... but I was... beaten... cast aside like a child whose pride was a toy broken too easily. The memory clawed at me, sharper than any blade, colder than the brimstone that licked my halls. I had sworn never to kneel, never to beg, never to admit weakness. And yet, here it was—folded into the ash of my thoughts like a secret wound that would not close.

The Witch tilted her head, sensing the fracture in my composure. "You are... distracted, Lord Wrath," she said softly, venom masked as observation. "Even now, your flames falter. Even now, your focus wavers."

I lunged again, claws ripping through the air, magma exploding with each strike. Her barrier held, unshaken, and for the first time in centuries, I felt frustration—not for her, not for the insult, not for the presence of Sloth—but for the intrusion of memory.

Grayfia.

She... she chose him. HIM.

A brat. A husk. A whimp.

Instead of me. Instead of the fire and fury that had molded me, tempered me, claimed me as its own, she had chosen him. That name—Dominic—burned hotter than any molten river beneath my claws. It wasn’t mere jealousy. It was a violation, a wound pressed raw into the sinew of my pride, my dominion, my essence.

I roared again, and this time the sound was more than fury—it was a fracturing of centuries of self-control, a volcano long sealed finally rupturing. Pillars of fire slammed into the ceiling, molten stone cracked into chasms, and the heat alone would have liquefied the flesh of any lesser demon foolish enough to stand near me. My wrath became a storm, whipping, lashing, devouring everything that dared acknowledge the intrusion of memory into my Circle.

The Witch remained unshaken, her sigils glimmering with each pulse of my rage. Her calm was deliberate—provocative. She knew exactly what she had done by speaking that name, and I hated her for it as much as I hated the boy himself.

"Silence!" I bellowed, but my claws trembled—not with hesitation, but with something stranger. Something I had not felt in millennia: the itch of loss, the pull of obsession, the ache of desire.

The wound in the air—the jagged tear Sloth had formed—wavered. Green flames licked its edges, dripping corruption into the hall, and I sensed the rot of Sloth’s presence pressing against my senses. But my focus did not lie with him. It could not. All of my attention, all of my fury, all of my burning core, had been stolen by a single name, a single memory.

Grayfia.

I saw her in the mind’s eye: the way her silver hair caught the dim inferno light, the way her movements were precise and terrifyingly beautiful, the way she had devoted herself to him. To Dominic. My flames flared higher in spite, in rage, in twisted envy. How dare she.

The Witch’s voice slithered across the molten air. "You fight phantoms, Lord Wrath. You burn at shadows. Yet even in this chaos, even in this fury... you are not free of her. You would follow her if you could."

She pressed. "You did everything for her... and the prince didn’t, but still she chose him... instead of him, do you know why?"

I ground my teeth until sparks flew from the tips of my fangs. My flames roared, pillars splitting the hall into molten rivers that clawed at the ceiling. Yet her words—her insolent, probing words—slithered beneath my skin like vipers, burrowing past muscle and bone straight into my core.

"You speak as if you understand me, witch," I growled, claws scraping against the basalt floor, fissures branching outward with each syllable. "As if you can name the fires that burn inside me! You do not—cannot—know the weight of centuries, the fury of Wrath itself!"

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. Only her sigils shimmered faintly, faint but unyielding, as though mocking my infernal pride.

"I know enough," she said softly, her voice gliding over the molten air like silk over iron. "Enough to see that the fire you wield is not for vengeance today. Not for Sloth. Not for dominion. It is for her. Grayfia Lucifuge. And you burn... because she walks with another."

I recoiled, though I didn’t mean to. My body moved of its own accord, like molten metal resisting a shaping hammer. "Lies! I burn because Wrath demands it! I burn because Sloth’s filth mocks me! I burn because—because—" My voice cracked under the weight of my own confession. Rage and desire tangled together, an impossible, searing coil. "Because... she is... his! That name... that boy..."

The Witch tilted her head, faint amusement flickering at the edges of her hidden lips. "Yes. Him. That husk. That lamb led to slaughter. And yet he stands. Alive. Strong. Perhaps stronger than you ever were for her. Perhaps stronger than you ever could be."

Every word she spat felt like molten knives driving into my ribs. My flames stuttered, faltered—an unfamiliar, infuriating weakness. My hands clenched so tight that magma oozed from the cracks in the floor beneath my claws. "Do you mock me? Do you dare—?"

"I do not mock, Lord Wrath," she said, voice silk and steel entwined. "I observe. I record. I see the truth you refuse to admit even to yourself. You are not burning for vengeance. Not entirely. You are burning for her. For what you cannot claim. For the choice she made, that he enjoys. That she... worships... in ways that will forever be denied to you."

Silence followed. Not the silence of absence, but the crushing pause before an eruption. The Wrath inside me, the eternal furnace that consumed all, strained against the revelation. My mind clawed, recoiling against the unbearable truth, yet every fiber of my being acknowledged it.

Grayfia.

The name burned hotter than any flame I had ever wielded, brighter than molten rivers, sharper than obsidian shards. And yet beneath it, beneath the pain, something darker stirred: obsession, a need to reclaim, to dominate, to possess—not for love, not for companionship, but because the fire demanded it.

I roared, a sound that split the obsidian sky above, a hurricane of molten fury, yet even that eruption did not cleanse the poison she had pressed into my mind. Flames tore through the hall, lava rivers erupted, and the Witch’s barrier quivered faintly—but she did not flee.

"You cannot claim her," she whispered, almost casually. "Not now. Not ever. And yet you will try. Oh, yes, Lord Wrath... you will try, because nothing burns inside you stronger than desire denied."

I halted mid-step. My claws trembled, molten rock pooling beneath my feet. Desire denied. A concept I had long buried beneath centuries of fire and bone, but now resurfacing with terrifying clarity. She had not just named her; she had unmasked the truth I refused to see.

I bared my fangs. "I... will not..." My voice was hoarse, molten tears of rage and obsession mingling with the infernal heat. "I am Wrath. I am eternal. I am the furnace that consumes all... and yet—yet—I will not allow him—no, them—to hold what should have been mine!"

The Witch’s sigils pulsed. "Careful, Lord Wrath. The fire that consumes everything can also consume you. And even you... are mortal, when it comes to her."

I hate to admit it... I hated to remember that the first to fall before her in the battle to kill that whimp was... me.

She destroyed me... Utterly. Absolutely. The mocking that followed was unrelenting. The memory seared my mind with the precision of a scalpel, reopening wounds that centuries of rage had never fully cauterised. I had come to Wrath Circle, a god of fury, unchallenged, unshakable. And yet, she had reduced me to ash and still walked away, untouched, unbroken, her silver hair catching firelight even as it mocked me.

My fellow satans had to band together to even restrain me. I remember the haze of molten fury, the blood-red rivers of my own making, the walls trembling as I struck without thought, without reason, and yet she moved like shadow, untouchable, precise. Every strike I threw, every eruption of my wrath, met nothing but air, or worse—a mirrored reflection of my own failure, a reminder that power alone could not claim what she willed to protect.

I had fallen, utterly, completely, and the realisation clawed at my pride as though it were a living thing. Grayfia Lucifuge. The name whispered through the molten corridors of my mind, a siren pulling me into madness. Every instinct in me—the furnace of Wrath that had sundered mountains and devoured armies—was now at war with itself. Not against an enemy, not against a rival... but against a memory, against a choice.

And the Witch watched. Silent. Patient. Knowing. Her sigils pulsed faintly as though mocking my inability to reconcile the fire and the desire, the fury and the longing.

"So? Ready to make a deal? The general location is already on the ’market’."

***

Stone me, I can take it!

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