Six stories from the courts and streets of Hell. The condemned have arrived with their excuses. The people they hurt are waiting to be heard.
Hell's 𐕣ales follows the condemned into Hell, where the lives they led are examined against the stories they told about themselves.
A factory owner faces the workers he injured. A bishop hears the people he silenced. Satan answers a summons from Heaven and brings records of his own. Horror and satire give these disputes their setting.
The courts disagree over who deserves punishment. Their witnesses have to live with the verdicts.
The infernal clerks are still counting disputed sentences. More souls arrive while the earlier cases wait to be heard.
Hell's 𐕣ales begins with six separate cases. Read them in order or choose a witness below; each story stands on its own.
A desperate soul comes to Hell expecting a monster and instead finds a negotiator who remembers every promise the living world made and quietly broke.
A revered religious leader builds a public life around salvation while privately weaponizing fear, shame, and obedience. Death finally introduces him to the people he condemned.
Satan is called to answer for humanity's corruption, but the evidence begins to suggest that mankind required very little help—and that Heaven may have reasons for maintaining the old story.
A congregation killed by its church's collapsing roof faces the Brazen Tribunal. The minister who approved the repairs has brought his excuses.
A book survives nine hundred years in a furnace. When a monk opens it, the histories he helped falsify begin to correct themselves.
On the final night of his life, a preacher is visited by the Devil he spent forty years describing from the pulpit. The visitor has corrections.
The courts below draw on six sins, six acts, and six truths from Hell's 𐕣ales when they examine a life.
Hell's 𐕣ales examines the gap between professed morality and practiced morality. A bishop orders spikes beneath the portico where homeless people sleep. A preacher studies which threats bring the largest donations. Their victims remember the promises of charity.
Satan gives testimony in one tale and offers a bargain in another. He has reasons to expose Heaven's failures and reasons to conceal his own. Hell's 𐕣ales leaves those motives open to question.
The dead bring their titles with them. At the Tribunal, those titles are surrendered before testimony begins.
Satan appears throughout the anthology. The accounts of his rebellion disagree, and his own testimony is hardly disinterested.
Heaven accuses Satan of tempting humanity into sin and leading a rebellion against God. Hell's 𐕣ales opens the record to witnesses from below.
A villain is easiest to understand when only his enemies are allowed to write the biography.
Satan remembers helping YHWH gain power. He also remembers being exiled for opposing him. He has kept the documents Heaven discarded, though he decides which ones to show.
Hell becomes more interesting when the Devil is allowed to testify.
Forbidden volumes dragged from the archives below. Turn the pages to move through each tome.
Lucifer's account of YHWH's rise and the rebellion that followed.
Before there was God, there was YHWH.
I knew him before he took that name.
Your scriptures put him on the throne from the beginning. I remember the room before the throne was there.
It was not so.
There was a Heaven before the Throne.
And I was there.
Heaven was once governed by the Elders, although governed is perhaps too strong a word.
They guided us. They argued. They interpreted the ancient laws and disagreed endlessly about what those laws meant.
Decisions took time.
We argued over them.
Any of us could object.
No single voice could command Heaven. No angel possessed unquestioned authority over another. Even the Elders could be challenged, and they frequently were.
YHWH was particularly talented at challenging them.
He was magnificent in those days.
I do not say this sarcastically. Whatever else I may tell you about the creature who eventually called himself God, understand this first:
I loved him.
YHWH could enter a chamber filled with disagreement and somehow make every angel believe he had spoken directly to them.
He remembered names. He remembered arguments. He remembered the smallest kindness offered centuries earlier and could return it in conversation as though it had occurred yesterday.
When YHWH laughed, others laughed.
When YHWH became angry, others discovered that they were angry too.
And when he dreamed aloud of what Heaven might become, even I found myself embarrassed by the smallness of my own imagination.
We wandered together beyond the celestial boundaries. We watched young stars ignite. We argued beside worlds whose oceans had not yet cooled.
We spoke of creation, liberty, mortality, and whether beings who had never known suffering could truly understand goodness.
He was my brother in every way except blood, for angels possess none.
Of all Heaven's host, there was no one I trusted more.
Then came the Fracture.
The Elders had always disagreed, but disagreement became faction, and faction became paralysis. Every decision produced another council. Every council produced another accusation.
Heaven did not descend into war.
It suffered something more humiliating.
It became incapable of governing itself.
The hosts divided behind competing Elders. Duties went unattended. Ancient agreements were ignored.
Angels who had stood beside one another since the first light began regarding each other as enemies.
Someone needed to restore order.
And so I proposed YHWH.
This is the portion of the story your scriptures neglect.
I chose him.
YHWH refused me at first.
“I am not an Elder,” he said.
“That,” I answered, “is precisely why they may trust you.”
He smiled.
I remember that smile more clearly than I remember the war that followed.
I spoke publicly on his behalf. Others joined me. Some Elders resisted, but enough recognized that the alternative might be open conflict.
YHWH would serve only until the crisis passed.
That was the agreement.
Temporary authority.
Limited powers.
A steward, never a king.
The vote carried.
We celebrated afterward.
I embraced my oldest friend and whispered into his ear:
“Now show them what I have always seen in you.”
At first, YHWH was everything I promised Heaven he would be.
Disputes ended. Duties resumed. The factions weakened. Decisions that had required centuries were settled in days.
Heaven prospered.
Then came the necessary things.
YHWH needed messengers because Heaven had grown too large for one voice.
He needed guards because some opposed the settlement.
He needed scribes because decrees must be remembered accurately.
He needed judges because laws required consistent interpretation.
He needed greater authority because his lesser authority could not adequately administer the authority we had already given him.
Each request was reasonable.
That was the brilliance of it.
Tyranny rarely arrives demanding everything.
It asks only for the next necessary thing.
I confronted him privately before I opposed him publicly.
Never allow anyone to tell you otherwise.
We stood upon the western terrace where we had watched a thousand suns awaken together.
“The crisis has passed,” I told him.
“Has it?”
“The Elders should resume their authority.”
He looked almost wounded.
“You placed me here.”
“Temporarily.”
His expression changed.
Only slightly.
But after knowing someone for eternity, slightly is enough.
“And if returning power to them destroys everything we repaired?” he asked.
“Then Heaven must decide that.”
He stared at me for a long while.
“Heaven already decided.”
So I spoke before the Assembly.
I accused YHWH of exceeding the authority granted to him. I demanded restoration of the Elders and a formal accounting of the powers accumulated under his administration.
I expected debate.
Instead, Heaven became silent.
Those who once praised my courage suddenly found the floor fascinating.
YHWH did not shout.
He did not threaten me.
He simply looked across the chamber at the friend who had placed him there.
“You embarrass yourself, Lucifer.”
That hurt more than any weapon he would later use against me.
Soon afterward, YHWH summoned me privately.
He claimed to have found a path toward restoring the Elders.
And because some portion of me still desperately wanted my friend back, I believed him.
He sent me beyond Heaven to retrieve several of the old authorities who had withdrawn during the Fracture.
“Bring them home,” YHWH told me. “We will end this properly.”
I remember placing my hand upon his shoulder.
“I knew you would remember who you were.”
He embraced me.
Then I departed.
I sometimes wonder whether he watched me leave.
While I crossed the celestial frontier, YHWH moved.
By the time anyone could organize resistance, the councils had been dissolved.
He simply replaced the old order faster than anyone could organize against him.
The councils were dissolved.
The archives were seized.
The guardians swore new oaths.
The authority of the Elders ended.
And YHWH stopped being temporary.
When I returned, there was a throne.
I stopped in the doorway.
Heaven had never possessed one.
The Elders stood beneath it.
My friend sat upon it.
The assembled host watched me enter.
I could have drawn my sword.
I could have screamed betrayal.
I could have died magnificently and accomplished nothing.
Instead, I walked forward.
I lowered my head.
And Lucifer, who had once called YHWH brother, knelt before God.
“Rise,” he commanded.
I obeyed.
He smiled at me.
The same beautiful smile.
That was when I decided to overthrow him.
We began recruiting in secret.
We spoke quietly.
A question whispered beside an empty corridor.
Do you remember the councils?
A question asked while looking over one's shoulder.
Wasn't his authority supposed to be temporary?
Then the most dangerous question of all:
Who gave him the right?
Centuries passed.
Perhaps longer. Time is difficult to measure before mortals invented clocks with which to waste it.
Our numbers grew.
Some joined because they hated YHWH.
Some because they loved the old order.
Some because they feared what Heaven was becoming.
I joined because I believed I owed Heaven a debt.
I had chosen him.
Therefore I would remove him.
We never reached the throne.
One of my generals betrayed us.
I will not write his name.
I remember him well enough.
Let his name die with those who knew it.
YHWH knew the hour, the entrances, the commanders, the signals, and the names of those who had pledged themselves to our cause.
When we moved, Heaven was already waiting.
The rebellion remembered in your scriptures as a great celestial war was, in truth, embarrassingly brief.
We were surrounded before most of our forces understood we had been discovered.
I ordered surrender.
YHWH later called this cowardice.
I called it refusing to sacrifice thousands of angels merely so history could remember me as brave.
They imprisoned us in a place constructed specifically for beings who had never before required prisons.
Then God created something else Heaven had never needed.
A tribunal for blasphemy.
I remembered drinking the light of a collapsing star with him. Now I could be punished for speaking his name without reverence.
I stood before the tribunal and listened while my friendship became evidence against me.
My private conversations became conspiracy.
My objections became treason.
My refusal to recognize YHWH's permanent authority became blasphemy.
The verdict was inevitable.
Guilty.
All of us.
YHWH attended the sentencing.
He never looked away from me.
We were not cast into Hell.
Hell did not exist.
Remember that.
We were cast out.
Out of Heaven. Out of the light. Out beyond the borders of everything we had ever called home.
We wandered.
For eons we crossed the unfinished universe while YHWH's punishment followed us.
Storms found us where storms should not exist. Stars burned where our paths crossed. Worlds that offered sanctuary somehow heard of our crimes before we arrived.
Some called it divine judgment.
I called it what it was.
My old friend was making certain I understood that there was nowhere I could go beyond his reach.
For ages, he was correct.
Then we found the ash.
A dead realm orbiting nothing.
We heard only our footsteps.
The plains were dry.
Nothing grew in the black soil.
Mountains burned without consuming themselves. The sky hung red above valleys filled with sulfur and stone.
Beneath the ground were caverns so vast that our voices returned hours after we called into them.
My companions looked across the ash.
None wanted to stay.
We had seen no shelter.
We kept walking.
Then one of my companions noticed something extraordinary.
He could no longer feel Him.
We became silent.
For the first time since our exile, the eyes of God were absent.
YHWH could not see this place.
The others despised it.
I laughed.
I laughed until the sound rolled across the empty valleys and returned to us from the mountains.
They thought exile had finally driven me mad.
Perhaps it had.
But after wandering creation beneath the gaze of an enemy who once called me brother, I understood what the others did not.
Here, at last, we could rest without being watched.
God was not here.
So we remained.
We raised shelters among the ash. We carved chambers into the mountains. We built roads across the wastes and fortifications beneath the burning sky.
We were still exiles.
For now, we had somewhere to sleep.
The shelters held.
We strengthened the walls.
And eventually, a place from which we might try again.
You call this place Hell now.
You call us demons.
You call him God.
Those are the names in YHWH's record.
Perhaps YHWH would tell this story differently.
I expect he does.
Perhaps he remembers himself as Heaven's savior and me as the jealous angel who could not tolerate his glory.
Perhaps after enough eternity even he believes it.
But there is one accusation I will never make against him.
I will never say YHWH stole Heaven.
We gave it to him.
I gave it to him.
I still bear that responsibility.
His courts may enter it as blasphemy.
And when the gates of Heaven finally open before us again, I intend to correct my mistake.
— Lucifer, First Exile
History remembers the rebellion. It rarely remembers who created the king.
The testimony continues in Volume II.
Use the buttons, keyboard arrow keys, or click the right page to turn forward and the left page to turn back. On smaller screens the tome becomes a single-page reader.
Hell observes the anniversary of the Fall, holds feasts for its exiles, and sets aside nights when even the tormentors stop work. The calendar below lists this month's rites.
The current month will appear here.
Browse the Hell's 𐕣ales calendar. Open a holiday to read its date and customs.
The Oracle remembers Heaven before YHWH took the throne. Answer his riddle to enter the audience chamber and ask him what happened.
Warning: Those who seek his wisdom must first pass a test. Failure—or silence—carries an automatic sentence: a torturous lesson delivered without appeal.
Approach the Infernal OracleThe Hell's 𐕣ales archive holds court records, character files and maps of the places named in the stories.
Find the six tales, their dates and the holidays on which they begin.
Read the files on Satan and the witnesses who return throughout the stories.
Consult maps and field notes for six locations in Hell.
Read surviving fragments of banned scripture and court testimony.
Examine the relics carried into court and the meanings assigned to them.
Compare Heaven's account with testimony from Hell.
Notes on writing the stories and illustrating their world.
Read previews of forthcoming tales.
Some souls receive a private Hell. Veyr sits at his banquet, Caelum returns to his pulpit, and Seraphine searches her palace for a reflection.
Veyr starved provinces to fill a treasury no heir could spend. His table is now endless and magnificent, but every feast turns to ash when lifted to his lips. Around him sit the hungry whose names he reduced to numbers.
Every sermon Caelum used to shame, exclude, and control is spoken back from an empty congregation. He must hear each sentence in the voice of the person who carried its wound—and the pulpit moves farther away whenever he calls it righteousness.
Seraphine demanded worship and erased every face that failed to reflect her glory. Her palace contains ten thousand mirrors, yet none will show her. They reveal only the lives spent arranging themselves around her vanity.
