Chapter 65 Chapter Twelve

Chapter 65 Chapter Twelve
They gathered at the long obsidian table beneath the Chapel of Teeth.
A room lies deep beneath the Earth's surface, behind iron gates and forgotten tombs. It has long halls lined with the skulls of saints who dared to scream. The walls are decayed and filled with memories, made from the bones of martyrs and traitors. Red candles light the arches, their flames never melt or die. The air is thick and heavy with blood, incense, and the sour smell of sweat absorbed into centuries of stone. This is home.
No one bowed. They never did. Not to each other. Not to the gods they’d dethroned. Not to the world that buried them.
Reuben—Gluttony—sat at the head. Silent. Fork in hand. The tines sank slowly and steadily into the meat sprawled across the altar-shaped table in front of him. A man’s body, twitching still. The left eye blinked once before Reuben carved it out and popped it into his mouth. He chewed with reverence, like it was communion.
He’d been a surgeon once. Then a butcher. Now? Now he preferred his food still weeping. Still aware. “I like the taste of hope,” he muttered, voice thick and wet. “Right before it dies.”
In the realm of hell, a true Gluttony wouldn't just overeat pastries or steal wine. That’s mortal vice. That’s surface-level. A true embodiment of Gluttony would feast on the living to feel the panic in their meat. Gnaw on screaming throats, because silence is boring.
Savor pain like wine, because flavor isn't enough anymore—it needs suffering.
Prefer flesh warm, twitching, begging, because he doesn’t just want food—he wants dominion over life itself.
He doesn't eat because he’s hungry. He eats because he can. Because it proves something. Power. Decay. The death of restraint.
Across from him, Malachi—Greed—sorted rings.
Not just any rings—wedding bands, blood-slick signets, heirlooms torn from the cold fingers of kings, priests, and prophets. Some still had skin clinging to the inside. Others were engraved with symbols long erased from the surface world. He laid them out in meticulous rows, fingers slow and reverent, his eyes gleaming with possession.
Enoch—Wrath watched, lip curled, his boot tapping with a violent rhythm. “All that shine, and not a single drop of meaning.”
Malachi didn’t look up. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he murmured. “Meaning is for the poor. Ownership is what matters.”
The air snapped.
Enoch went still.
Then the sound—metal screeching against stone—as his chair scraped back and he stood, teeth bared, eyes darkening like thunderclouds. His fists clenched so tight blood leaked from the seams.
“What did you just say to me?”
Malachi lifted his gaze—slowly. Calmly. His mouth curled into a near-smile.
“You heard me.”
The table groaned as Enoch slammed his fists down, shattering the obsidian surface with a thunderous crack. “Say it again, and I’ll tear out your fucking spine and wear it like a belt.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Malachi said, voice smooth as silk stretched over a knife.
Energy surged—the kind that made rooms choke and tremble. Enoch’s wrath rippled through the ground, through bone and stone and blood. Flames licked the edges of his breath. His aura didn’t burn—it scorched.
Across the table, Benedict—sloth—sighed and leaned back. “Here we go again.”
“Can we skip the part where you two measure dicks and get to the bloodletting?” Reuben muttered, still chewing Go—the devil knows what.
But Ezra—pride only watched, amused, stroking the limp hair of the girl across his lap, “We can’t keep replacing the table,” he said unbothered.
Enoch’s voice was low now, deadly. “Call me poor again.”
Malachi returned to polishing the ring in his hand, as the other rings lay scattered on the floor along with countless shards of obsidian.
“I don’t need to. You wear it like a scent.”
Enoch moved. A blur of rage and body and fire and then stopped. Frozen mid-lunge.
Ezra had raised a single finger.
Not in warning. In command.
The chapel pulsed.
And for one breathless second, even Wrath obeyed.
And then Ezra cracked the silence like thunder. “You hear about Vale?”
The name shivered through the room like a curse.
“Gone soft,” Rueben spat, stabbing his fork deep into the body again. “Fucking disgrace.”
Ciel scoffed. She was cleaning her nails with a needle tipped in silver. “He picked the girl. Again. Left the Order. Broke the rites. Burned the sigil.”
“Didn’t even skin her first,” Enoch muttered, licking his lips. “Pathetic.”
Ezra chuckled, low and venomous. He brushed the girl’s matted hair from her eyes. “He always had a weakness for softness. For beauty. For flesh. He was never one of us. Not really.”
“He was Lust,” Ciel said flatly. “He was the Lust. Best we ever had.”
The very day Vale left the Order, they convened a meeting before the blood dried on the altar. By the end of the week, they were meeting four times, frantic and infuriated. They needed someone to take his place.
Not out of longing—but out of necessity.
Because without Lust, the symmetry of sin was broken. The chain of damnation loosened. And in Hell, imbalance was a threat. The selection process was cruel.
Candidates were lined up like sinners—dozens, then hundreds. Some were former cult enforcers turned bitter. Others were monsters wearing human skin. All were tested.
The tasks?
They weren’t tricks or trials.
They were earth-bound assignments, carried out by the original Seven when they walked among mortals. Each sin had their signature—a wound they left on the world.
Vale once made a married queen to poison her husband and stab her own father in exchange for a night of pleasure—because she dared to call the Sins weak.
She stood in her gilded court, drunk on power and purity, and declared before her priests: “Let the Sins rot in their shadows. We are the new gods now. Desire, wrath, greed—these are chains for lesser beings.”
She renamed each Sin. Mocked them. Burned their symbols. Declared her kingdom “purified” of their influence.
Vale heard first and answered.
Then Vale started a war between two peaceful nations by whispering lust into the ears of their kings for the same servant boy.
He did this for no particular reason. He was just curious to see how it would turn out.
Another is turning a city’s water supply into an aphrodisiac, just to watch a holy festival end in a mass orgy and fire.
All because he found their worship and praises annoying, which hurt his head. It made him and the rest of the order feel sick.
Vale had done each of these. And more. Without ever lifting a blade.
He didn’t take.
He made mortals give themselves up willingly. Eagerly. Obediently.
He turned desire into damnation.
Fifty-six candidates were tested.
None passed.
Every one present died screaming. They tried. Failed. Bled. Burned.
Because Lust wasn't a role to fill.
It was a curse.
And Vale had worn it like a crown.
So when he left? They didn’t just lose a brother.
They lost their foothold on Earth.
And that made the rest of them—especially Pride and Wrath—very angry.
Benedict opened one eye—just one. It glowed faintly in the dark. “We need balance.”
“Balance is a noose,” Ezra snapped. “Let mortals worry about balance. We’re gods. We’re ruin.”
Silence fell again, heavy and thick. Only Reuben's chewing broke it, the sound wet and obscene.
Then Enoch leaned forward, the light catching the cruel gleam of his blade, "Let’s vote," He purred. "Strip him of his name. Burn it from the altar. Or better yet…"
His grin stretched—Feral, "Send the girl to us. If he loves her that much… let’s see what kind of love survives the Order."
“Not yet.”
Ciel’s voice stopped the room cold. She circled the center of the chamber, slow and elegant, dragging her finger across the stone table as if to write his name in dust.
“He said—”
She paused, letting the tension stretch.
“Touch her,” she finally murmured, mimicking his voice, low and razor-sharp, “And I will unmake you. All of you.”
A beat.
Silence.
Then she laughed softly, dark and delighted.
“He wasn’t bluffing.” Her eyes gleamed. “I’ve seen that look before. Not when we fought wars. Not when he slit throats. But when he buried his last love.”
Ciel's smile was thin, “He didn’t sound scared. He sounded... still.”
Ezra leaned back in his chair, unamused, “Then he’s forgotten what fear is.”
“No.” Ciel’s voice turned sharp, “He’s remembered what love is. And for Lucian Vale? That makes him unpredictable.”
She glanced around the table, her tone silk and threat.
“You want to kill his girl? Go ahead. Just be ready for what comes next.” She smiled, slow and cold, “Because this time... he won’t run and my hands are completely clean from all of these.”
Ezra was the next to speak, tapping a single finger against the edge of his throne, “So he threatens us. Over a girl.” His lip curled. “How... mortal.”
Enoch's boot slammed against the stone floor, impatience rumbling off him like heat.
“He abandoned the seat. Broke the covenant. That’s treason. I don’t care if he’s in love with the moon—we end it.”
Benedict yawned from his chair, propped lazily on one arm, “Can’t we just kill the girl quietly and be done with it?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “He’ll come running. And when he does… we take him down.”
Malachi chuckled low. “Why kill the girl?” he mused, fingers adorned in gold. “Let’s take her. Use her. Break her. Make him watch. That’ll draw him out faster.”
“I say we don't kill her" Ciel said and they all turned to her in surprise.
“The girl…” Ciel’s voice softened into something almost reverent as she slid back into her seat, swinging her legs like a child on the edge of a well. Her smile spread slow and wicked, the tips of her fangs catching the light. “She’s not like that woman—Maureen, or was it Mary? Whatever. She’s different.”
Her eyes gleamed, catching the firelight like twin shards of gemstone dipped in something unholy.
“She puts on a face. Innocent. Soft. The kind that gets men like Lucian bleeding at the altar. But underneath?” She leaned forward, voice thick with something between hunger and delight. “She’s crawling with it. Envy. Greed. Pride. Lust. Name them all.”
Ciel inhaled slowly, nostrils flaring like she could taste it, “I can smell it on her skin.”
Her grin widened, teeth flushed red as if she’d just fed, “She isn’t some pure-hearted lamb sent here to redeem him. She’s not mercy. She’s not light. She’s not the cure.”
She giggled then, a sound too sharp to be sweet.
“She’s the infection. And that’s what makes her perfect.”
Ciel tilted her head toward the others, “The first one—whatever her name was—she begged for salvation. She prayed. She wanted to save him. This one?” She hissed between her teeth, eyes glowing, “She’d bite into the forbidden fruit even if it was rotten and dripping with blood.”
She leaned forward again, the light catching the edge of her blade.
Enoch made a sound deep in his throat.
Malachi shifted in his chair, the leather creaking.
Reuben murmured, “Delicious.”
Even Benedict cracked one eye open.
Ezra said nothing, but his fingers drummed once. Twice.
“We won’t need to touch her,” Ciel added softly. “Not yet.”
The chamber stilled.
“We just wait. And when he falls…” Her hands came together like a child in prayer, voice hushed with anticipation. “We’ll see if she follows him down—or drags him deeper.”