Chapter 158: The Favor Repaid

The Witch’s hand trembled as she gripped the doorframe, her knuckles turning a ghostly white. The color drained from her face, leaving her skin like yellowed parchment pulled tight over bone. "What are you doing here?" she hissed, the words cracking in her dry throat. "I told you never to set foot on this ground again!"

Michael Bennett didn't flinch. He stood on her porch, his clothes caked in the dust of the road and his shoulders hunched with a heavy, stubborn weight. He was a hollowed-out version of the man he used to be, a shadow cast by a dying fire.

Behind her eyes, a phantom ache throbbed in the Witch’s chest. She could still feel the phantom heat of the underworld licking at her heels, the way the very oxygen had turned to bitter ash the last time she had guided him into the depths. The memory of Morgana’s cold, spindly fingers reaching into her ribcage to pluck out her essence tearing away half her soul like a piece of rotted silk made her stomach turn. She remembered the mocking sneers of the other Witches when she crawled back, a powerless shell of a woman.

Only the dark shadow Hades had draped over her shoulders kept her upright now. He had granted her a borrowed, heavy power that tasted of iron and grave dirt, but she knew it wasn't a gift. It was a debt written in blood, ticking like a heartbeat in the back of her mind.

"I know the warning," Michael said. His voice was a low, raspy scrape that sounded like stones grinding together. "I’ve looked into the eyes of the Devil more times than I can count.

I’m done being afraid of the dark. He still has what’s mine."

The Witch let out a sharp, jagged laugh that held no mirth. She narrowed her eyes, focusing her vision until the invisible tethers of fate became visible in the air between them. Where once a shimmering golden thread had pulsed, binding Michael to Selena in a divine mate-bond, there was only a void. The connection wasn't just snapped; it was charred black, dissolved into nothing by a fire far older than man.

"How dare you?" she mocked, stepping across the threshold until she could smell the sour sweat of his desperation. "You call the Queen of Hell 'yours'? You’re a mere mortal, Michael. A blink of an eye in the face of eternity. You had the chance to seal that bond forever, to lock her soul to yours, but you threw it away to play the hero for a dying father."

She jabbed a gnarled finger toward the floorboards, as if pointing straight through the earth to the pits below. "You gave Lucifer the only opening he needed. He didn't just steal her; he unmade what you were. I can feel the pulse of the abyss in her from here. It beats in time with his. She belongs to the throne. She belongs to him."

"She loves me," Michael snapped. He stepped forward, his eyes flashing with a deluded, feverish hope that bordered on insanity. "I am the only one she has ever truly let in. You don't know her."

"The Selena you knew is a corpse in a silk dress," the Witch countered, her voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "She doesn't know what love is anymore. Her heart has been replaced by a stone kept in the dark. I won't gamble my life against Lucifer’s hounds just to lead a ghost-chaser to his grave. The last time I helped you, I lost my soul. I won't lose my head."

"I’ll pay anything," Michael pleaded. He reached out, his fingers twitching to grab her arm, but she recoiled as if his touch were a searing acid. "Gold, ancient relics, my own blood take it. Just get me through the gates. Just once. If she sees me, if she hears my voice, she’ll remember who she is."

The Witch threw her head back and laughed until a fit of coughing seized her, the hollow sound echoing off the peeling wallpaper of her shack.

"Go home, Michael. Find a human girl who breathes air and eats bread, someone whose soul isn't drowning in sulfur," she spat, wiping her mouth. "Don't go picking fights with the Morning Star. To him, you aren't even an enemy. You’re just dust under his boot."

Before the Witch could shove him from her porch, the world lurched on its axis.

The familiar scent of damp wood and dried herbs vanished, replaced instantly by a thin, searing heat that tasted of sulfur and crushed bone. The walls of her shack didn't just disappear; they melted away like wax, giving way to monolithic pillars of jagged obsidian that pierced a ceiling lost in shadow. Beneath her, the splintered floorboards transformed into vast sheets of black marble, polished to a mirror shine and cold enough to burn.

The Witch hit the stone with a sickening thud, her knees barking in protest as they cracked against the unforgiving floor. She didn't dare lift her gaze. The air here was heavy, vibrating with a raw, ancient pressure that threatened to collapse her lungs. She knew this silence. She knew the weight of the darkness pressing against her skin.

"Master," she choked out, her voice a fragile sliver in the vastness. She pressed her forehead against the freezing marble, making herself as small as possible.

"It is time," a voice boomed. It wasn't a human sound; it was the groan of tectonic plates grinding together in the bowels of the earth.

Hades sat upon a throne carved from the ribs of giants, draped in living shadows that bled outward, swallowing what little light flickered in the cavern. His presence felt like a mountain leaning over her. "The debt is due, little bird."

"What is your will, my Lord?" she whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "I am your instrument."

"The human," Hades said. The shadows around his face parted just enough to reveal eyes glowing like dying embers in a wind-swept pit. "Send him to Hell. Grant him exactly what he asked for."

The Witch flinched, her breath hitching in a panicked sob. "Master... Lucifer... if he finds I have meddled again, he will peel the soul from my bones. He will leave nothing left to scream."

"Lucifer will be occupied," Hades replied. A slow, jagged smile spread across his face, sharp as a razor. "The boy is a spark in a powder keg. I need a distraction, and Michael Bennett is the perfect fuse. Soon, the hierarchy will shift. I will take what is mine, and you will be rewarded with power that does not need to be borrowed."

A violent shiver racked the Witch’s frame, the supernatural chill of the underworld sinking past her skin and settling deep into her marrow. She closed her eyes, accepting the nightmare.

"Your wish is my command, Master. Whatever you desire, I will do."