Heaven was quiet.
Not peaceful — just quiet.
The kind of silence that followed after something too big to understand had already happened.
The light was softer now, pale and trembling, as if even eternity was trying to catch its breath.
Where once stood choirs of endless song, there was only the low hum of what remained — voices unsure if they should still sing without someone listening.
Marble towers leaned toward the sky, cracked but not fallen. The rivers of light ran slower, duller.
The world above the world had survived… but it no longer knew why.
And upon the Throne of Heaven — rebuilt, reshaped, and wrapped in black flame — sat the new god.
Asmodeus.
Morningstar reborn.
God of Sin.
His throne pulsed with shifting color — gold fading into red, white bleeding into shadow — as if the universe couldn't decide what he was supposed to be.
His eyes were half-closed, reflecting not power, but patience.
In his arms, Athena rested, her silver hair brushing against his chest as she slept lightly. One arm looped around his neck, her wings folded tight against her back — a reminder that even divinity could grow tired.
He didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just watched.
Below them stretched the courtyard of Heaven — angels repairing broken spires, tending to the wounded, cleaning away the remnants of divine war.
They no longer prayed while they worked. They didn't know what to say to a god who answered.
Asmodeus finally spoke, his voice low enough to make the world shiver.
> "Quiet," he murmured. "So this is what perfection sounds like when no one's left to worship it."
Athena stirred faintly but didn't wake.
He looked beyond the horizon — to where Heaven touched the void. It flickered there, faint and strange, like something alive.
The borders of creation had always been firm, absolute. Now they looked… uncertain.
He could feel it — something watching. Not from below, not from beyond, but from within.
A ripple brushed across reality, subtle as breath. The golden light around the throne dimmed for half a second, then returned as if nothing had happened.
Asmodeus frowned.
> "The world shouldn't tremble anymore," he whispered. "Not after all this."
He stood, moving carefully so Athena didn't wake. The floor beneath his feet reflected not his face, but his history — every sin, every war, every time he had defied something greater and survived.
He looked down at it, at himself stretched into a thousand distorted memories, and almost smiled.
> "Even gods leave cracks when they walk too loud."
The silence deepened, and the hum of Heaven shifted — lower, almost like a heartbeat.
Somewhere far off, a tower bell rang by itself.
He turned his head toward the sound. The air rippled again, almost invisible, bending the light for an instant.
Athena stirred behind him, eyes half-open. "Did you feel that?" she asked softly.
He didn't answer at first. He was still staring into the distance, where the sky looked too perfect — like a painting painted over something else.
> "Yeah," he said at last. "Heaven's still breathing. But I don't think it's ours anymore."
And as he said it, the halo above his throne flickered once. Just once.
Enough to remind him that silence was never just silence — it was what came right before something tried to speak again.