The sky's landscape was a bad joke.
The golden streets had become cracked and stained with crimson, the temples had collapsed upon themselves, and the sacred air, once filled with angelic chants, now smelled of rotting flesh. Every step we took made the ground groan, as if heaven itself was crying for its ruin.
And I smiled.
Because it wasn't ruin. It was liberation.
— Have you ever stopped to think that we have the greatest power? Not the fantasy powers, or anything like that.
The Sins, who walked with me, stared at me.
— What do you mean? — asked Gluttony, licking his bloodied lips.
— We have the power to change destiny.
Silence.
Sin after sin absorbed my words, each in their own way.
Greed picked up a piece of gold fallen among the rubble and looked at it with disdain.
— They sold their souls for promises of paradise. And now? What remains but ruins and despair?
— The illusion that virtue can exist alone — said Sloth, yawning as he kicked the corpse of a former saint. — But virtue never existed. It was always just fear disguised.
— They wanted a heaven without sin — added Envy. — But what did they find? 117 billion sinners.
— And now only two thousand remain — I finished. — Two thousand survivors, hidden among ruins and corpses, waiting for a God who will never return.
Wrath snapped his fingers. His eyes glowed with the fury of a forgotten time.
— He was never here.
— And if he was, why did he let us leave? — whispered Lust, a languid smile on her lips. — Why did he let Void fall? Why did he abandon heaven?
— Maybe because there was never a heaven to be abandoned — I replied.
Our path was marked by shattered bodies, by faces frozen in expressions of horror or ecstasy. It didn't matter. Their fate had already been decided.
We were that fate.
The sky bowed before us.
Not by force, but by inevitability.
At every corner, at every ruin, the last survivors of heaven stared at us with eyes that no longer carried faith, only fear. Some tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. Others knelt and prayed, begging for us to spare them.
Silence was the only miracle they received.
But I was no longer interested in them.
I already knew what they were.
And I knew what I was.
— Tell me, Naka — Sloth murmured, walking beside me as if the weight of eternity was crushing him —, why immorality? Why choose a path where no one can follow you?
I laughed. A short, humorless laugh.
— Because I was never enough.
My feet stepped on a shattered skull.
And then, for an instant, everything disappeared.
The present dissolved in the mist of the past.
Before I was the destruction of heaven, before I became the shadow of a broken world.
I was born to be forgotten.
I was never anyone's first choice. I wasn't the child who brought pride to my parents, nor the friend anyone would choose to share secrets with. I wasn't the name that came to mind when help was needed. I was what remained.
And when you're the second choice long enough, you start to believe you should never have existed.
The world pushed me to the bottom without even noticing. I was ignored not out of hate, but out of indifference. And that indifference ate at me more than any disdain ever could. Because being hated means that, at least, you made an impact. But being ignored… that's being nothing.
I remember school, the teachers who glanced at me without ever asking me anything. The classmates who only remembered my name when they needed a favor. I remember how my own family spoke of me as if I were a piece of furniture, something present, but irrelevant.
My older and brighter brother was always the center of attention. He was intelligent, charismatic, determined. I was just a shapeless shadow beside him.
A shadow cannot complain about being ignored. A shadow cannot demand attention.
But a shadow can learn to swallow the light.
The first time I thought about killing someone, it wasn't out of anger.
It was out of curiosity.
I wanted to know if, by taking another person's life, I would feel something. If, for an instant, I would stop being a ghost and become real.
But I hesitated.
Not because I cared about morality. But because I knew no one would notice. If I killed a stranger, no one would care. If I disappeared a homeless person, the world would go on as it always had.
So, I chose a target that mattered.
A politician.
Candidates lie with such cynicism that they almost seem truthful.
Where misery is truth, and promise is the lie.
Someone whose name was in the newspapers, someone whose absence would be felt, whose death would cause waves.
I wanted to see if, by killing someone important, I would become important.
And so, for the first time, the world looked at me.
The murder was news. My name didn't appear, but my existence was felt. People talked about me without knowing who I was. Politicians feared for the next target. The government promised to find the culprit.
I had become an idea.
And ideas are immortal.
I killed again. And again.
Not out of revenge, not out of ideology. But because I wanted to keep existing.
With every body that fell, I felt like I was stealing a piece of the world for myself.
But no matter how many I killed.
I kept being the second choice.
Because even when they searched for me, they were more concerned with protecting the living than finding the one responsible for the dead.
I was still a detail.
Still nothing.
And that's when I realized.
The problem wasn't the world.
It was morality.
It was this collective illusion that made people believe life had meaning, that right and wrong existed.
If I wanted to stop being forgotten, I didn't just need to kill people.
I needed to kill morality itself.
And that's how my philosophy was born.
I had people who shared blood with me, but there were never any bonds. There was only convenience.
My mother saw me as a mistake. An unwanted pregnancy that ruined her plans for social ascension. My father was nothing more than a ghost in the house, a man who resigned himself to mediocrity and never looked at me for more than a few seconds. But my brother...
He was everything I wasn't.
The pride of the family, a bright future, the center of attention. Since childhood, he knew how to manipulate people, pulling exactly what he wanted from them. But his ambition was never big enough. He wanted status, power, a high position within the system.
I wanted to break the system itself.
— You should stop trying to be someone, Naka — he told me once. — Some people just aren't born for that.
It was that day that I decided I wouldn't just be someone.
I would destroy everyone who thought they could tell me otherwise.
My first strike wasn't with a weapon. It was with the truth.
People believe lies because they're comfortable. I learned I didn't need to create a better lie. I just needed to tear the veil away and show the reality.
I started with information. Small leaks. Corruption schemes, embezzlement, internal betrayals. Each fact was true, but I released them in a calculated way, steering the narrative.
The government started to tremble.
People saw only fragments. Loose pieces of a puzzle. But then, when chaos became inevitable, I put the pieces together and gave them to the world.
The country discovered it was governed by murderers, thieves, and parasites.
And me?
I just had to wait.
The citizens, who once accepted their servitude, began to ask why they were obeying. Why did they pay taxes to fund the luxuries of a few? Why did they die in wars created to fill the pockets of others?
It was a fire I didn't need to ignite.
I just needed to show that the fire had always been there.
My brother tried to negotiate. He didn't know I was behind it all. He thought I was still the insignificant shadow I had always been.
— Naka, you don't understand. If the government falls, what comes after? Do you think it will be better?
— No.
He fell silent.
— Then why are you doing this?
— Because the world needs to remember what it really is.
He laughed. A nervous, broken laugh. For the first time, he was afraid.
— You don't have a plan. You just want to destroy everything.
— Yes.
— You're a monster.
— You are too. Only I don't pretend to be something else.
The revolution was already in the streets when he understood.
I wasn't trying to take power. I was throwing away the very idea of power.
And when the government's headquarters caught fire, when the leaders tried to flee, when the people turned against their own idols, I just watched.
Because what I wanted had already been done.
The truth had been set free.
And there was no turning back.
The government was falling, but the world doesn't become free just because its chains were broken. The weak don't want freedom. They want a new master.
And I was never a savior.
The streets were an abyss. Chaos wasn't just a consequence of my strike. It was the raw truth of what we had always been. When there is no order to restrain, men show their true nature.
The first victims were the symbols of the old regime. Politicians were ripped from their homes and hanged from posts. The rich had their mansions set on fire, dragged out while screaming for mercy.
But mercy had died with the government.
The city, once an icon of civilization, now throbbed like a hungry creature, devouring itself.
And I walked among the wreckage.
The first blow came from a piece of iron. A woman, covered in ashes, with a face twisted in hatred, struck my leg hard enough to make me fall.
— YOU DID THIS TO US!
Others came. Kicks, punches, rocks.
They didn't know who I was. But they knew I was part of it. And that was enough.
— My son is dead because of you!
— My husband was burned alive!
— You destroyed everything!
I laughed. A dry, humorless laugh.
— I didn't do any of this. You did.
The crowd hesitated.
— I only showed the truth. You decided what to do with it.
They hated me because they could no longer hide behind excuses. Because, for the first time, they were free to act as they wanted.
And what they wanted was to kill, steal, and destroy.
The streets were an open book of the oldest prophecies.
The sky turned red with the flames of collapsing buildings. People fled like desperate animals, while the strongest became predators.
Parents ate their own children, for hunger no longer knew limits. Pregnant women opened their own bellies to prevent new life from being born into this hell.
The rivers' waters turned purple, mixed with the blood of the innocent and the guilty.
Children who once played in the squares now tore the flesh of strangers with bare hands, laughing as if it were a game.
The plague came soon after. Decomposition began before death itself.
Corpses walked, not because they were alive, but because they were still looted, raped, profaned.
The wolves returned to the cities. Not the ones of flesh and bone, but the ones within.
And above all, the silence of God.
Nothing interrupted the collapse. No miracle, no angel, no heavenly voice.
I sat in the middle of it all, feeling every broken bone in my body, every cut, every bruise.
And I smiled.
Because that was Immorality.
Not a mistake, not a failure of humanity. But its purest form.
They could hate me as much as they wanted. But deep down, they knew I was right.
I no longer felt my body. The cold had disappeared, so had the heat. There was no pain, no relief. Just the feeling of an absolute emptiness that didn't come from outside, but from within.
The world rejected me. Morality spat me out as something impure, something that shouldn't exist. And now, there was no more ground beneath my feet. No more direction.
I was falling.
And Hell swallowed me.
What happens when you cross the boundary of existence?
Eternal fire? The screams of damned souls? Endless chains of torture?
None of that.
Hell was silence.
I opened my eyes—or maybe I had never closed them. Before me, a desert of shadows stretched as far as perception could reach. The horizon didn't exist. Time didn't exist. Space itself seemed to be a cruel joke, folding upon itself as if mocking my attempt to understand it.
And then, the darkness moved.
Not like something physical, but like a thought that suddenly becomes real. Forms without form appeared around me, blurs of something that once had meaning, but now were merely echoes of what once existed.
They whispered.
I didn't understand the words, but I understood what they meant.
"Another one." "Another wanderer." "Another who believed there was something beyond."
And I laughed.
Because, for the first time, they were right.
I didn't seek redemption.
I didn't seek punishment.
I didn't seek answers.
I sought the truth.
And the truth was here.
My feet touched a ground that shouldn't exist. A ground that trembled like water, but stood firm like stone. The air was dense, but not suffocating. Each step echoed in my mind, as if the space itself was paying attention to me.
Distant sounds merged on the formless horizon. The cry of a child. The roar of an animal. The echo of forgotten prayers.
I kept walking.
The shadows bent around me, trying to engulf me, trying to make me part of them. But I didn't fight. I didn't resist.
I let myself be engulfed.
And then, I saw.
I saw kings kneeling before empty thrones. I saw prophets erasing their own words, terrified by the weight of the lie they had spread. I saw men and women trying to climb walls that led to nowhere, their hands bleeding against the cold rock.
And then, I saw those who had given up.
They didn't scream. They didn't cry.
They simply existed.
There was no punishment here.
There was only the realization of what had always been.
Hell was a field of destruction, where human flesh no longer mattered. The air was saturated with the smell of decay, of broken bones, and dried blood. There were no skies, no ground, no boundaries. The earth trembled under the weight of pain, and the fallen bodies mixed, crushed together in a pile of despair and madness. Life no longer had meaning, not even survival. The only instinct left was hunger — an insatiable hunger, that couldn't be satisfied with flesh, but with the total destruction of the other.
Men, women, and children were all reduced to the same monstrosity. Their hands, once capable of creating and embracing, were now claws, tearing pieces of flesh and entrails from the bodies around them. There was no humanity left. There was no compassion, only the wild scream and the urgency to consume, to feed on the pain of the next, because pain was the only real thing here. The empty eyes watched, without understanding, without feeling — only hunger, only emptiness. The wounds on the bodies were no longer wounds, but scars that spoke of the loss of any dignity, of any trace of a soul. Suffering was the only link between the ones who remained.
The children, those creatures who should represent purity, were now stained by the same pain, the same depravity. They saw their own bodies being violated, mutilated, in a macabre dance of pleasure and suffering. What should have been innocent became carnage. They were no longer children, but only meat in pieces, used and discarded with an empty look devoid of any remorse. Their eyes no longer saw the future, but only the reflection of a reality where time did not pass, because suffering was eternal. The child no longer existed; only endless pain remained.
Women — or what was left of them — treated their children as nothing more than toys, pieces of meat at their disposal. Their bodies were torn apart, deformed by hunger, pain, and time. There was no more love, only desire. They used their children to satisfy their own animal instincts, without a trace of humanity, without a trace of affection. Their eyes, a mixture of despair and pleasure, reflected a madness so deep that there was no longer any difference between the victims and the perpetrators. The cruelest act, the most monstrous, was the most intimate: blood shared with what should have been the refuge, with what should have been the only comfort. But here, in Hell, nothing made sense anymore. Nothing was wrong. Because the only rule was survival — and survival has no morals, no mercy.
And me? I was there, lost among them. Chaos was not something separate. It was me. Every fragment of pain, every piece of flesh torn, every sigh of despair, I was that. Hell was not something imposed on me. It was what I am. Suffering, brutality, destruction — all of it was an extension of my own existence. There was no distinction. I was no longer a woman. There was no humanity left in me. Hell was just the raw reality of what we have always been: monsters, all of us, disguised with masks of civilization, waiting only for the right moment to tear the skin and show what we truly are.
There is no redemption here. There is no salvation. Because, in the end, Hell is not in the fire, nor in the flames. Hell is inside us, in the moment we realize we are the pain. We are the sin, the destruction, the lie. Hell begins when you understand that life was never about what you did, but about what you are. Because we are all capable of the same monstrosity, the same brutality. The real prison is knowing you never escaped from yourself.
Humankind is the only creature that needs to convince itself that it is different from the beast, when, in fact, its morality is just a fragile varnish over an abyss of desire, violence, and chaos. We are not civilized — we are just monsters who have learned to lie to ourselves.