Lilith waited just inside the arch like a ma?tre d’ for perdition, headset mic dimmed, gown of contracts shedding a faint papercut glow. Glenn watched as Deathnibbles and the others all exited through their own tunnels.

  “Glenn,” she said brightly, as if greeting a VIP client. “With me.”

  The roar of the PITT diluted into the low mechanical hum of the service tunnel. A moment ago, Glenn had stood beside legends; now the concrete swallowed the sound of their footsteps and the smell of ozone and sweat.

  Lilith’s own smile never faltered. “We’re on a timetable. Come along.”

  Glenn didn’t move. “Why is Anubis sponsoring Deathnibbles and not me? And why did Lucifer pick me?”

  “For Anubis?” Lilith lifted one shoulder. “I’m as surprised as you. But he always has a reason. His wit is as sharp as his teeth. As for Lucifer…” Her eyes glittered, “he’ll tell you himself.”

  Glenn blinked. “He wants to speak to me? Personally?”

  “Of course,” she said, as if it were obvious. “He’s been watching you since the day memos crossed his desk that a human soul joined the Reapers. You’re an anomaly. Lucifer loves anomalies, at least the clever ones.”

  She pivoted, contracts rustling, and the tunnel opened into a loading bay where a sleek black town car idled, its license plate a tasteful H0T$TUFF. A demon valet held the back door open with reverent fingertips.

  Glenn lingered at the threshold, pulse spiking, breath catching against a question that had burned in his chest since he laid eyes on her in the PITT..

  “Before I get in,” he said, “did you know Mictlāntēcutli was planning to kill my friends?” He bit his lip trying to hold back rage. “Were you part of it?”

  The smile fell off Lilith’s face like a mask slipping. What remained wasn’t guilt or apology; it was the bored candor of HR.

  “Of course I knew,” she said.

  Glenn’s jaw tightened. His grip on the door threatened to bend it.

  “But as HR,” Lilith continued, “my hands were tied. Jurisdiction, sponsor compacts, the usual nonsense.” She leaned close enough that the amber of her perfume warmed the air. “You want that to never happen again? To make sure no god weaponizes policy to slaughter your team? Then you’re going to like what Lucifer has to offer. If you get in the car.”

  His anger flared, then guttered under the pragmatic chill of reality. He slid inside.

  The leather seat sighed around him. Outside, the city’s neon jittered across the window glass as the town car eased into traffic. The driver, a demon with immaculate sideburns and an ID badge that actually read Tim, merged between a motorcade of jade-green sedans and a flotilla of hovering longboats crewed by Vikings with coffee cups.

  Lower Management was the most diverse thing Glenn had ever seen. They passed a basalt tower shaped like a serpent devouring itself, a Aztec building, scrolling recruitment ads: JOIN A TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE IN BLOOD. A pagoda of impossible geometry turned itself inside out and back again, a East Asian department. A cliff-front complex of obsidian terraces glowed from within, one of the Sumerian quarters, Ereshkigal’s sigil like an ember on black glass.

  At an intersection, Glenn’s gaze caught on a pyramid whose mirrored faces caught every light in the city and smelted them into gold. At its base, Anubis strode through the doors with Deathnibbles trotting at his heel and a Sphinx in a blazer scanning visitors with a placid, murderous stare.

  The town car accelerated. The skyline pivoted. The tallest building swallowed the horizon.

  It shouldn’t have looked like that. Not with that word ten meters high over its revolving doors in precise, backlit serif:

  HELL.

  “It’s all about branding,” Lilith said cheerfully.

  They glided to the awning. Inside, a lobby spread as broad as a terminal concourse and only this one wore the aesthetic of a cathedral married to a government office. Stained glass windows depicted ledger lines and balance sheets. The marble floor mapped a labyrinth of velvet ropes leading to intake desks where gray-suited functionaries stamped papers, offered tissues, and directed weeping souls into elevators.

  Over the welcome desk, a brass placard: LIMBO — FLOOR 0.

  “Think of Limbo as the lobby here,” Lilith narrated as if giving a museum tour. “Administrative triage. Then eight floors up, eight floors down.”

  “Lobby plus eight sub-levels gives us nine depths of punishment. Upstairs you’ll find their managers. Each upper floor represents who rules over their corresponding sub floor. Symmetrical. Elegant. Actionable.” She ushered him into an elevator whose car had no buttons, only a single key slot and an embossed plate: ACCESS BY AUTHORIZATION ONLY.

  She drew a key from nowhere, slid it home.

  “Sub-level two,” she said.

  The car dropped as if an angel had cut the wire. Glenn swallowed. The doors slid open on a corridor so clean it sterilized your thoughts. Door after door lined the walls, each labeled with a small engraved placard of a sin of Christianity:

  Adultery.

  Luxuria.

  Homosexuality.

  Masterbation.

  At the midpoint, a door read BREAKING THE 10TH in crisp black letters.

  Lilith tapped the clipboard in her arm, pages fluttering. “We rotate punishments annually. A good manager never lets a process get stale.”

  She pushed the door.

  The room beyond barely qualified as a room. It was an absence made visible, an endless gray expanse in which dim shapes wandered, arms folded over nakedness, eyes vacant, never touching, never speaking. They did not see one another. When one brushed the other, both flinched with an animal panic and veered away.

  “They coveted,” Lilith said, almost clinically. “So we took everything away. No objects. No voices. No sex. No food that tastes like anything. The mind starves. The body numbs. We keep their hunger intact and remove everything it could cling to. Alone with want.”

  Glenn stared. One soul knelt, sobbed, stood, walked, forgot why, knelt again. He shut the door.

  “Is that sin,” he asked, “worth this?”

  Lilith’s eyebrows arched. “We don’t define sin, Glenn. We assign consequences. That’s the contract. The definitions come from upstairs or sideways, depending on the pantheon. We’re just doing our job.”

  “Then who decided this?” His voice was quiet, not for their sake but because he heard the weight of it.

  “Let’s ask,” she said, already moving.

  They took the elevator up to floor two. The doors opened onto an open-plan office with viewlines like a call center and the decor of a hedge fund. Fallen angels and demons in suits perched on ergonomic chairs, arguing about throughput and inefficiency; someone heated tuna in a breakroom microwave just to see immortal beings winced as one.

  Lilith drifted through with predator grace. At a corner workstation, a luminous man in a silk tie lounged with his brogues crossed on the desk. He had a bunch of demons laughing hysterically. Gold coin cufflinks winked in the lamplight. His nametag read MAMMON.

  “Mammon,” Lilith sang. “Show-and-tell. We just toured your sub-two.”

  Mammon glanced up. “Lilith.” His smile oiled the air. “Scenic this time of year.”

  “And what,” she said, “are you all laughing about?”

  “Nothing,” he said quickly. “Nothing at all.”

  From the next cube over, a demon named Dave rocked in the fetal position on an executive chair, eyes enormous, whispering to himself. “It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere. They never stop. It’s…oh no… oh no…It’s so gross”

  Lilith’s smile sharpened. “Mammon. Did you change Dave’s assignments again?”

  A chorus of chuckles rippled across the floor. Someone choked on a donut hole.

  Glenn frowned. “Assignments?”

  Lilith raised her voice so the floor could hear. “Dave manages the largest single cohort in the building, the Masturbation of Sin Rooms.”

  Glenn blinked. “That’s a… sin?”

  “Yeah as much as homosexuality in Christianity’s eyes,” Lilith said briskly. “Mammon likes to change their punishments to something gross so when Dave walks in the room, he is in for a…well sticky surprise.”

  Dave wailed. “Humans are so gross!” He clapped both hands over his eyes. “Please my laundry bill is costing a fortune!”

  The floor roared with more laughter.

  Mammon steepled his fingers. “It’s good to laugh at work.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Glenn stared at him. “This is so wrong on so many levels.”

  Mammon stopped laughing for a second at Glenn’s words. Then he erupted himself. “On so many levels! This kid is a riot!”

  “No. I mean these sins are dumb.” Glenn quickly killed the mood.

  Mammon’s smile faded. He fixed Glenn with a gaze like a vault door. “I think morale in my department is my responsibility. It’s definitely not the same as you go up. Up there,” he jabbed a finger toward the ceiling, “they pay for different results. Down there,” he mimed the opposite,“we deliver what they want. If we don’t, they change managers. You’re were a Reaper right? You know quotas.”

  Glenn turned away before he said something that would get him thrown out a window. Lilith took his elbow, light but firm.

  “Enough middle management,” she said. “Let’s see the top.”

  The elevator sighed upward for what felt like a eternity. When the doors opened, it was as if the whole city had been put on a plate.

  Lucifer’s office occupied the crown of the tower. The far wall was glass, the kind that was tinted so pure light didn’t get in the room. Sunless light laid its hands on the city and smoothed it. The desk was a continent of dark wood. The man behind it signed something with a pen sharp enough to be considered a weapon.

  “Sir,” Lilith said, voice calibrated to a frequency between reverent and intimate. She guided Glenn in.

  Lucifer looked up.

  He was not horns and pitchfork. He was clean cut and easy on the eyes. His outfit was tailored and cleaned to perfection, a suit so black it seemed he stole the color from the night sky. THe only abnormal thing was his wings that folded in behind him so tight as if he hasn’t used them in a eternity.

  “Glenn.” He smiled. It was odd to Glenn. It wasn’t cruel. It was possibly, kind? “Welcome. Can I get you anything? We keep a bar of memory flavors, ambrosia approximations. Your favorite meal just how your brain remembers it.”

  “No,” Glenn said. “Thank you. I just want to know why you chose me. I wasn’t what you would call, a good Christian.”

  “Nor was I,” Lucifer chuckled “And yet here we are. Please, let me show you what we do.”

  He went over to his computer fiddling away with the mouse. He leaned closer squinting at the computer. “Where did I put that file?” He said to himself. “Shit. Hmmm.”

  He called Litlith over. “Lilith where is the onboarding powerpoint?”

  Lilith went over. He stood up and Lilith took over his chair while he stood over her shoulder watching what she did.”

  “Did you upload it to the clouds?” Asked Lilith.

  “No. I hate the clouds. You know what? Forget it. Glenn come join me.” Lucifer walker over to the huge open window that overlooked the city.

  He gestured to the glass. Glenn joined him. The city breathed.

  “Tell me. Now that you’ve seen Lower Management. What do you see?” Lucifer asked.

  “A city,” Glenn said. “Or more like a machine shaped like one.”

  “Good.” Satisfaction threaded Lucifer’s voice. “So you know what we do here. We process what you Reapers deliver to us. We punish. We repurpose. We power the doors you walked through and the coffee that keeps the auditors from sobbing at their desks. THe only thing we do not touch are the rules. We don’t write those.”

  His finger traced the skyline over the jade pagoda that never stopped unfolding, over the obsidian steps where a dull ember burned. “What is sin in my house is not sin in theirs. These souls’ fate depends on where they choose land. Allegiance is their destiny.”

  “What? How is that fair?” Glenn asked.

  Lucifer lifted his gaze upward as if we was staring at something physically there. But there was nothing. “It is not. Upper management,” the word was glass in his mouth,“makes rules. Gods of death enforce them. Our power is to make forms neat, cruelty efficient. Their power is to make cruelty necessary.”

  He smiled without warmth. “Did you know I was once in Upper Management? But I got demoted to here for my sins. Do you know what my sin was?”

  Glenn stayed quiet.

  “I was a perfect employee,” Lucifer said. “Obedient. Brilliant. I delivered. And then,” he spread both hands, “I asked why. Why was he,” he did not say the name, “promoted over me? Why were souls allocated by decree rather than merit? I asked questions. They call that treason in nice offices.”

  He turned away from the window and sank back into his chair, hands tented under his chin. “They dressed it up as reward. ‘Rule the underworld,’ they said, like offering a manager a new floor after firing him from the company. The Jailor’s crown. You know what that does to a man.”

  Glenn looked at him and for a heartbeat, he did not see a villain from his Church days. He saw a resentful employee who had composed his grievances into a theology.

  “I choose you because I want to hear from you directly. What do you want, Glenn?” Lucifer asked softly.

  Glenn surprised himself. He just blurted out a answer. “For it to stop. The scheming. The metrics that hurt people. The secrets. There’s one clear rule: do not do wrong to others, even if wrong was done to you. That should be for gods and humans both. I want a just afterlife. Transparent. Honest. No more slaughter disguised as policy.”

  Lucifer’s mouth curved. “Then you and I want the same thing.” He spread his hands. “First, I need you to understand I am not a bad man. Think. They put me here. If you owned a prison, would you hire a criminal to run it? If you ran a rehab, would you ask an addict to sell product? They call me Adversary. Satan. ‘Opponent.’ What is an opponent for, if not to challenge the corrupt and childish order above?”

  Glenn’s doubt tightened like a belt. “I guess… But then why me?”

  “Because you,” Lucifer said, and there was genuine pleasure in saying it, “remind me of the era before this administrative comedy. Before jurisdictions, before KPIs. There was Life and there was Death. And because,” he added, casual as a knife, “I know who your mother is.”

  Glenn felt the room lean. He crossed to the guest chair without meaning to; it received him with warmth.

  “Do you know what happened to her?” he asked.

  “I hear things,” Lucifer said. “Not all of us are happy where we sit. We talk. Secrets buy favors; favors buy silence. I don’t care who killed her,” he lifted a palm as Glenn bristled, “but I care that you care. Help me win this tournament, and doors open. Files open. Lips open. They are afraid of you, Glenn. Not of your scythe but of your lineage. Of what that blood means if it remembers itself.”

  Silence settled. Glenn heard the faint thud of his heart.

  “So just win? And what would you have me do after?” he asked finally.

  Lucifer smiled like a contract clicking shut. “Nothing. I wouldn’t need anything.”

  He pressed a button on his desk. The office door opened and Lilith slipped in with the smoothness of a thought.

  “Show our new hire to his quarters,” Lucifer said. “And the briefing materials. I expect he’ll want to study.”

  Lilith handed Glenn a black folio embossed with the ouroboros and THE PITT in tasteful silver. “Competitor profiles, sponsor patterns, last cycles’ rulings, actuarial odds.” She winked. “Do not worry, there’s a picture section.”

  Glenn stood. “If I… wanted to walk the city.”

  “You’re not a prisoner,” Lilith said. “Explore. Eat the bad spectral food. See the worse art. But be back for the first trial.”

  As they walked away she produced, with a flourish, a second folder thick with paperwork. LOWER MANAGEMENT EMPLOYMENT PACKET. A pen appeared between her fingers. “Initial here for weapons storage, here for emotional audits, here to consent to emergency termination clauses, don’t make that face, legal makes me. And,” she slid out one more sheet,“sign here to acknowledge receipt of your official welcome—”

  She handed him a card hand-lettered in impeccable copperplate:

  WELCOME TO MANAGEMENT: We’re thrilled you’re here. We’re terrified of what you’ll do.

  He almost smiled despite himself. “You knew Mictlāntēcutli would kill them,” he said, because the anger had to touch air or it would rot him.

  Lilith tucked a strand of hair behind one horn. “I knew,” she said. “And I’m still here. That’s hell, Glenn. Not fire. Apathetic employment.”

  She led him down the hall, past a meditation room where a fallen angel stared at a fish tank; past a kitchenette with a hand-lettered sign that read PLEASE STOP STEALING DAVE”S LUNCHES; past a glass wall opening on a terrace that looked down over the stadium where the city beat like a patient heart.

  His suite was nice enough to be insulting: soft bed, desk with an inkwell of memory-tinged black, a shower that misted eucalyptus and guilt. A window framed the skyline. The PITT bloomed out there, impossible and backwards and correct.

  Lilith set the portfolio on the desk, tapped it twice.

  “Study,” she said softly. “Win. And if you get lost, try to remember why you started climbing.”

  The door hissed shut behind her.

  Glenn stood very still. On the desk, the portfolio waited. He opened it. Faces looked back: Gilgamesh, bored and dangerous; Karna, bright as a small sun; Andromache, grief made blade; Oba Ifekudu with a smile that wasn’t honest; Atsumori, a boy dressed as history; Deathnibbles, a joke sharpened to a point.

  On top of the stack lay one last file. SPONSOR: LUCIFER. The bullet points were sanitized. The margins had no notes.

  He crossed to the glass and pressed his palm to the city. Far below, limos drew lines of light across the avenues. On a balcony of the pyramid, he wondered what Anubis was planning. Maybe ANubis is afraid of what Glenn became.

  Glenn leaned his forehead to the glass until it cooled the heat behind his eyes.

  He whispered to no one: “I won’t lose to you.”

  The city didn’t answer. Cities rarely do. But somewhere in its gears, schemes were being made.

  Behind him, the door chimed, three polite notes. He turned.

  A bellhop demon in a vest stood in the threshold with a tray. On it, a glass that looked like water and tasted like an orange he had once eaten on a curb as a child. It wrecked him for a second and then gave the grief back, folded small enough to fit in a pocket.

  “Compliments of management,” the bellhop said.

  Glenn nodded, drank, set the glass down.

  Then he pulled the chair to the desk and began to read.

  He lost track of time in the case files. The prose was narcotizing: dates, rulings, exhibits, memos. Between the lines, though, the story kept writing itself. The gods didn’t compete to guide souls to wisdom. They competed to own guidance. The PITT was a marketing pitch with collateral damage.

  A knock. He looked up. Lilith again, head tipped against the doorway.

  “I forgot one thing,” she said, and her tone was almost… gentle. “When you go back down there, the crowd will love you or hate you. Don’t mistake either for truth. Crowds are just mirrors pointed at themselves.”

  Glenn closed the folder. “Then where is truth?”

  She smiled sadly. “That’s why there are tournaments.”

  He wanted to ask her if she ever believed any of this nonsense, if she had ever been young in a way that meant hope instead of skill. But the door had already whispered shut.

  He turned back to the window. Night didn’t fall here so much as agree to rotate. The city shifted into its evening skin; signs went neon, sky went indigo, the PITT pulsed.

  His comm panel glowed on the desk, a small red dot blinking: FIRST TRIAL. REPORT AT 0900.

  Glenn put a hand on Mora’s scythe where it leaned against the desk. He felt the thrum that meant he was not alone. In the glass, his reflection wore a cloak that belonged to someone he wished he knew longer. Sisters he never had. And because of this system destroyed at his own hands.

  “Easy,” he told the room. “We’re going to make this hurt the right people.”

  From somewhere far below and far away, a voice he could almost name laughed, not unkindly, not kindly either.

  The elevator chimed again in the hallway. This time it was no one, just the building coughing up a schedule.

  Glenn pretended to sleep even though he couldn’t anymore. But he could still day dream. He closed his eyes and day dreamed of childhood where Mora, Nyra, and Lytha were all together in his home. No powers just a family. A voice from the kitchen spoke, “cookies are ready!”

  Dream Glenn rose up. “Mom?” He ran into the kitchen, but no one was there.

  He jolted awake from that state. The city had the same number of lights. He showered in eucalyptus and guilt, strapped on the scythe, lifted the lantern, and tucked the welcome card into his breast pocket like armor.

  On his way out, he paused at the threshold, hand on the door sensor.

  “Lucifer,” he said to the empty room, as if the walls reported upward. “I’ll listen. But I’m not yours.”

  The door sighed open.

  Down the hall, past the fish tank and the sign about lunches, the elevator waited like he was the only one in the building. Glenn stepped in.

  “Limbo,” he said.

  The car fell. He held the railing as if the elevator was going to crash and go straight to the bottom.

  He smiled, a thin, unlovely thing.

  “Win,” he said aloud, to test the shape of the word in his mouth.

  The doors opened on the light of the lobby.

  And the city roared.