4. Chapter 4
Zavian (Milo)
The corridor stretches ahead in jagged stone and flickering torchlight, with screams echoing up from whatever fresh torture is happening two levels down. Hell has been home my entire existence, and I still can’t stand it.
That should bother me less than it does.
Most demons treat the background noise here the way mortals apparently treat traffic.
Unpleasant, constant, and eventually invisible.
I’ve watched colleagues walk past open punishment chambers without breaking stride.
Seen senior brokers take lunch in rooms adjacent to active soul processing, and complain about the temperature but never the sound.
At some point, you’re supposed to stop noticing.
It never faded for me. If anything, it sharpened. The longer I’m here, the more I notice what’s missing.
I don’t know what rain feels like. Only what diagrams of weather systems have taught me, along with memorized mortal vocabulary for different intensities: drizzle, downpour, mist, deluge.
I know that humans complain about it while simultaneously writing poetry about it, which might be their most impressive contradiction.
But I’ve never stood outside with rain falling on my skin.
I think about mortal grocery stores. Entire buildings dedicated to food, organized by category, where humans push carts, squeeze fruit to check if it’s ripe, and argue about which brand of pasta is better.
That’s not the thought process of someone who belongs here.
I told my mother this is all I know. And it’s true. But all I know and all I want have been diverging for so long now that the distance between them could fill a realm.
The thought follows me all the way to The Infernal HR Department.
Every surface is a different charred shade here, from matte black cubicle walls to the glossy obsidian desk, all outlined with veins of molten red threatening to break through.
Behind it, a demon with a nameplate reading THESSARA offers a smile that says, I’m dead inside, but corporate policy requires enthusiasm.
The torches sputter orange, leaking shadows into every corner, and the motivational posters are crisp enough to lacerate your optimism at a glance. SUFFERING STARTS WITH YOU! declares one, featuring a cartoon demon giving two thumbs up. TEAMWORK MAKES THE SCREAM WORK! announces another.
A sourness lingers under the heat, halfway between melted plastic and the air in a crowded elevator. There’s a faint whistling from unseen vents overhead, cycling between breathy sighs and the occasional metallic rattle, giving the whole building an exhausted wheeze.
I already hate it here.
“Welcome to Infernal HR,” Thessara recites the words without a flicker of feeling. “How may I facilitate your eternal employment needs today?”
She’s ancient. Not necessarily in years, but in the way someone becomes after too long doing the same task in the same chair at the same desk. Her skin is black, pulled tight across angular bones, and her eyes are a cloudy yellow that don’t quite land on me. Instead, she looks through me.
I slide the envelope across the desk, trying not to flinch when her long, gnarled fingers reach for it.
She scans the contents, and her smile gets brighter while her eyes get deader. “Congratulations on your reinstatement opportunity. Please complete these forms.”
A stack of paperwork appears, thick enough to kill someone if dropped from a sufficient height.
The first one wants my full designation, rank, division, subdivision, department affiliation, reporting structure, and primary professional competencies.
I stare at that last one. What am I supposed to write?
Soul acquisition, but I’m emotionally compromised by human suffering?
Bargain negotiation, except I keep accidentally talking people out of deals?
I settle for: Soul acquisition. Currently bad at it.
Honesty’s probably the best policy at this point.
I’m reaching for the next form when the alarm starts one department over.
The adjacent door bangs open and an imp barrels through the HR reception area at full sprint.
He’s three feet tall, with ears that point in different directions, and a glass soul vessel clutched close to his chest. The container has a hairline fracture running from the base to the rim, and pale blue light presses against the crack from inside.
Two more imps follow with containment equipment. One is dragging a backup vessel missing its handle. The other is carrying sealant paste. They move with the frantic coordination of a team that has done this too many times and learned nothing from the experience.
“Fracture’s spreading, Dekh.”
“I have EYES!”
The first imp pins the vessel flat on a section of Thessara’s desk, and she moves her stamp two inches to the left without looking up.
The sealant imp runs paste along the fracture in a thick, uneven line.
Before it can set, the tape imp wraps the whole thing, which seems counterproductive, but nobody asks me.
Inside, the light flares. Strains against the seal. Dims. Settles.
All three imps exhale.
The first imp pulls out a clipboard. “Incident report. Vessel 7749-B. Hairline fracture. Contained on-site. No breach.” He looks at the other two. “That’s no paperwork.”
“No paperwork,” they repeat, almost reverently.
They retreat through the adjoining door with their mummified vessel, and the room returns to its previous state of joyless productivity. Thessara huffs and wipes her desk with a cloth.
“Apologies,” she says. “Containment has been understaffed since the third quarter budget reallocations.”
I look at the sealant smear still visible on the stone. Somewhere inside that taped vessel, a soul is sitting in the dark. Its prison held together by paste, tape, and the bureaucratic determination to avoid quarterly paperwork. That’s someone’s whole existence now.
I pick up the second form titled Mortal Realm Disguise Registration. Fifteen blank fields confront me, demanding information about aesthetic goals, cultural presentation strategy, and approximate threat level of appearance.
I glance down at myself. Brown curls that refuse to cooperate. Pale pink skin that burns if I stand too close to torches. Eyes that are more lavender than crimson.
I write: Minimal. Possibly nonexistent.
The third form wants confirmation that I’ve completed Contemporary Mortal Culture Awareness Training.
I haven’t. I was supposed to attend, but got distracted researching human pizza variations and missed it. There’s no box for meant to but didn’t, so I check yes.
It says training. It doesn’t say whose.
I’ve read Cosmopolitan for ten years. That counts.
The fourth form is short, only one paragraph acknowledging that humans now carry devices capable of photographic and video recording.
There’s a note beneath it: Failure to avoid documentation may result in reassignment to the Viral Incident Response Team.
I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds bad. I sign quickly and move on.
The fifth form is three pages of legal torture so dense I have to reread every sentence. Eventually, I realize the whole thing boils down to: Don’t let mortals trick you with clever phrasing.
Oh, perfect. Great advice. I’ll just not get tricked. Why didn’t I think of that?
I sign it even though the guidance is useless.
The sixth form is a waiver. Hell is not responsible for injuries sustained during summoning transport, including but not limited to dimensional vertigo, temporary blindness, whiplash, or landing in inconvenient locations such as bathtubs, chandeliers, or active volcanoes.
Active volcanoes seem oddly specific.
By the time I finish, my hand is cramping, my knee won’t stop bouncing, and I’m pretty sure this entire process is an endurance test disguised as paperwork.
I bring everything back to Thessara, and she accepts the stack without comment, her long fingers pulling the forms toward her with mechanical efficiency. Her milky yellow eyes scan each page, and I swear she’s not reading them so much as absorbing their essence through sheer bureaucratic osmosis.
Stamp. Next page. Stamp. Next page.
The rhythm is relentless.
A smell slips in through the vents. Scorched metal first. Then a sweetness so aggressive it turns hostile. Then a warm copper note underneath both that settles in the back of my throat and refuses to leave.
A few demons in the waiting area adjust in their seats. Nobody says anything. The room collectively upgrades from bored to bored and mildly inconvenienced, which appears to be the maximum emotional response this warrants.
The intercom crackles. “Attention Level Six departments. The Soul Furnace is operating at one hundred and forty-three percent capacity due to the quarterly backlog. Adjacent floors may experience elevated temperatures, odor migration, and minor auditory seepage.”
Minor. Auditory. Seepage.
Three words that should never be arranged in that order.
“The facilities have been notified,” the intercom continues. “Estimated resolution timeline is under review. In the interim, complimentary atmospheric treatment will be distributed to affected areas. Thank you for your continued service.”
A facilities imp arrives with a spray canister labeled MOUNTAIN brIMSTONE: SPRING brEEZE EDITION and mists the nearest vent with a scent that simulates a meadow within a chemical plant.
The floral agent collides with the Furnace stench and produces a third, hybrid smell more offensive than either of its parents.
If I fail this assignment, I won’t be smelling it from up here anymore. I’ll be down there, contributing to the backlog.
Thessara stamps the final page.
“Your reinstatement has been processed.” She doesn’t look up. “You are now eligible for summoning assignments. The system tracks mortal realm ritual activity as it happens and assigns available demons automatically.”
Stamp.
“Average wait for the first summoning is seventy-two hours.”
Seventy-two hours of waiting and dreading and—
The air snaps tight as summoning magic hooks into my chest and pulls.
Thessara’s eyes widen. “Oh. Or immediate assignment. That also happens sometimes.”
The pull tightens and yanks me backward. My shoes scrape across the stone floor.
“Wait, I just registered. I haven’t—”
“Please remember to review your compliance documentation.” She’s back to her script voice. “Have a productive assignment!”
The summoning magic wrenches me out of Hell.