The path to Heaven wasn't made of light or gold. It was made of memory.
Every step Lucifer took up the Stairway of Radiance echoed with things he'd rather forget. The silver steps hummed beneath his boots, each one singing a different fragment of creation's first chorus. The air itself was thick with perfection, so clean it felt sterile in his lungs. Clouds swirled away from him not in welcome, but in revulsion, as if the realm itself remembered the stain of his presence.
He reached the gates. They weren't just closed; they were a solid wall of crystallized judgment, blazing with a light that would have blinded any mortal. Lucifer didn't blink. He just stood there, his dark coat a stark tear in the seamless brilliance, and looked up at the impossible spires and floating gardens. Nothing had changed. It was all just as suffocatingly flawless as the day he'd left.
"Still trying too hard," he muttered to himself, the words swallowed by the immense silence.
