Hell’s Envoys

Rain battered the city, a ceaseless percussion that fused sirens, wails, and thunder into one endless dirge. Shane and Mara sat close in the dark kitchen, steam curling from trembling mugs of tea that neither of them touched. The candlelight carved harsh planes on Mara’s face, shadows lingering in the bruises below her eyes. She wiped dried blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, jaw clenched against whatever trembled just beneath speech.

Shane broke the silence, voice brittle as old bone. “You said we could find the next piece—something to fight back. Where?”

Mara’s hand hovered at her chest, pressing fingertips over her racing heart. “There’s an old temple. Not a church, not as most would know it. Below the city, close to the original riverbed. A sanctuary built over the first breach.”

Shane’s memory flickered with the remnants of last night’s vision: vaulted stone swallowing all light, doors etched in languages the world forgot. Hell squatting beneath everyday pavement, patient and hungry. “Why haven’t we gone already?”

She looked at him, pupils twin pits. “I thought I could hold the line here. I was wrong. Someone—something—is actively attacking the Soulward. If we don’t get there tonight, the cult will finish the rite. The last ward will fail.”

The city bellowed from the street. Distant glass shattered. Shane rose, gathering battered courage and a change of shirt to hide the latest blood. “Lead the way.”

---

The city had become a gash, veins exposed. They made their way south, taking back alleys that gasped steam, every shadow writhing with predatory intent. At one corner, a trio of men dragged a body through the gutter, heads lolling at impossible angles. Shane stared too long—the men looked back, their faces thick and rubbery, eyes clustered like spider eggs. Mara seized his wrist, dragging him onward.

No words. No time for them.

At City Market Station—a shuddering, half-condemned pit—Mara led Shane through a rusted maintenance door pried loose with a pry bar and a short prayer. The corridor inside ran hot and rank. Graffiti swirled in languages both modern and older, often over scarred patches where symbols etched in blood refused to fade.

They moved fast. Shane fought to keep the blades of vision at bay—sometimes the walls stretched, curled, breathed with slick, stinking mouths; sometimes Mara shimmered at the edge of his vision, a beacon or a snare, he couldn’t tell.

Down four stories of broken stairs, into the maintenance subbasement, through a hatch so old even mold retreated from its iron stink. Their cellphones flickered, screens pulsing with static glyphs; Mara’s compass spun, nudged by some animal memory.

They reached a dead-end wall crowned with a bas relief: two figures, faceless, holding a gate with hands wrapped in barbed cord. Mara inhaled, knelt, and pressed a small copper coin into a groove below the carving. For a moment, nothing—then the wall groaned, bricks parting with the slow, sentient ache of rotten bone.

Beyond was pure darkness. Mara stoked a magnesium flare—its hard blue glare cutting through stone lined with sigils and chains, past shapes that slithered into cracks as they passed. Shane’s glyphs pulsed at his wrist, throbbing like a siren.

“Do you feel that?” Mara asked, voice gone hollow.

He nodded, swearing the air flowed around his skin like hands seeking a wound.

They crept on, into the heart of the earth.

---

At the end of the tunnel, wider space loomed—the remains of a small, ancient sanctuary, stonework slick with centuries of sweat and sacrifice. Pillars carved with predatory angels reared from the flagstones. In the gloom, a low altar stood upon a dais. Chains hung from the ceiling, their ends caked with centuries of red.

A single figure waited at the altar. Human, at first glance—broad shouldered, trench coat soaked black, hat pulled low. Shane’s nerves rang with dread. Mara inclined her head, pulling him back by his arm.

“Don’t talk unless I say,” she whispered. “It isn’t… human.”

The man’s head rose. His mouth was too wide; his teeth, too long. “Bastion. Witch. I figured you’d crawl here eventually.”

His voice had a drone, two-layered, one slick and mocking, one underneath—rumbling, hollow, older than language. He raised a hand. The skin was gray, goose-fleshed, mottled with whorls of black beneath the surface. Each of his fingers ended not in a nail, but in hooked points like a hangman’s sickle.

Mara stepped between them, voice calm but laced with venom. “The envoy can speak, but not hold. Not while the Sigil is intact.”

The demon-in-disguise grinned, exposing gums that writhed over something maggot-pale. “Ah, but the Sigil weakens. Even now the last ward splinters. You two are late. The others come.”

Shane’s glyphs burned. He stared the thing down, summoning what defiance he could. “If you’re so sure, why are you alone?”

It shrugged, slow, like dragging iron through honey. “Not alone. Just first. My kin follow. Some above, some below.”

A pounding echoed from the tunnel behind them—boots, then voices chanting in tongues Shane’s blood remembered. Cultists, drawn by scent, by prophecy. The demon licked its lips and stepped from behind the altar, approaching Shane and Mara with slow, hungry relish.

“Do you know what it means to be the Bastion?” the envoy crooned, circling. “It means you die first. But you die loud enough to amuse us a little while.”

Mara produced a small dagger, bone hilted and crusted with wax. “Keep him back,” she hissed—and began inscribing a symbol on the altar’s marble, whispering in the old tongue.

Shane faced the thing. Fear pooled in his neck, thick and hot. He forced himself to speak, voice a snarl. “You want me? Come get me.” He slashed at it with the iron blade Father Callahan had pressed into his palm weeks ago. The metal gleamed, hungry for anything unnatural.

The thing laughed—a sound that made the walls drip with grease—and darted at him, preternaturally fast. Shane’s blade nicked its forearm, and black ichor sprayed the stone. It recoiled, hissing, steam rolling off the wound.

“Blood answers blood, Bastion. It always calls back.”

Behind him, cultists poured into the room—half a dozen at first, faces painted with blood and gouges, mouths bristling with broken glass. One rushed Mara; she darted aside, slicing his wrist, hurling salt in his face. He shrieked, voice no longer human.

Another cultist swung a length of chain at Shane. He ducked, planting his blade through the man’s thigh. The cultist howled, spasmed, then stilled—a puppet with its string cut. The demon envoy grinned with every fresh death, feeding on the violence.

At the altar, Mara’s inscription glowed a feverish red. The room shook, a deep vibration worming up Shane’s legs. The demon screamed—not pain, but hunger—a thin, eager sound. “You cannot seal what is already open! Azazel will feast!”

Shane rammed the blade home as the thing lunged. Iron met demonic flesh, sizzling, a stench like burning roses and scorched pork. The envoy buckled, hissing, before collapsing in on itself, mouth distending, new glyphs sprouting along its jaw. It spat a final curse:

“Blood for blood, door for door! Only the Bastion’s marrow can turn the key!”

Then it burst, flesh sluicing into a heap of smoking filth, glyphs writhing in the mess like dying worms. Shane staggered back, heaving, bile stinging his throat.

Mara finished her mark, gasping, hands bloodied from the carving. Bandages and salt charred her palms. The cultists left standing backed away, eyes wild.

Mara croaked, “The key—get it. Now!”

Shane scrambled to the altar. Below a panel inset with ivory, he found a small chest: stone, banded in lead, sealed with a lock slick with centuries of dried gore and proof against ordinary tampering. He hoisted it up, every instinct screaming that within was something eager to be free, or at least, to break the world trying.

Atop the altar, Mara ran her hand along the inscription. A new line of text burned into visibility—a prophecy unfinished, only half revealed:

When the Bastion’s blood stains the Temple’s heart, the watchers at the gate may sleep. But if the marrow goes to rot, devourers will walk at noon and judgment is ash.

Shane stared at the chest, hands trembling. Somewhere, far above, the world howled as new sirens rose—demonic, human, all blurred together now. More cultists, more monsters, more blood yet to spill.

But he still stood. The key was his. The fight wasn’t over. Not yet.

---

They bolted back through the tunnels with the chest clasped in Shane’s arms, retching at each threshold where demon blood steamed from stone. At every corner, shadows watched, patient. Mara’s chant—an old guardian’s dirge—tangled with Shane’s own blood rhythm. The old world stirred, hungry.

When they emerged aboveground, morning was just twisting out of the sky, sickly and jaundiced. The city was wailing, furious, alive. Shane’s wounds smarted, but the sigils on his skin glowed a hot, dangerous red.

Mara gripped his shoulder. “We bought ourselves a night. No more. They’ll come—worse, and soon. We need to decipher the rest of the prophecy. And you… you’ll need to bleed for this city. Again.”

Shane looked at the battered chest, the half-visible glyphs drifting over its surface, and realized how little hope there was left. Yet it was more than there had been the night before. He wiped blood and sweat from his brow, nodded, and followed Mara up into the burning day.

One battle survived. One secret kept. The threshold awaited them, pulsing beneath their feet: patient, predatory. And somewhere, Azazel, watching, hungry for the Bastion’s marrow.