The Devil grew jealous when she entered the room beneath a vault of sable stone, where bishops draped in burial silk recited rites with marrow-tone; the candelabras bent like thorns around a crypt-hewn altar throne, and every shadow crawled like flesh unwilling to remain alone.
I stood among the gathered lords of pestilence and sacrament, whose crowns were forged from rusted nails and ribs from nameless monarchs rent; the air was thick with funeral spice and incense black as judgment spent, while through the hall a choir groaned in tongues no living scripture meant.
Then suddenly the iron doors released a long sepulchral cry, a shriek as though a thousand graves were opening beneath the sky; the braziers spat their crimson sparks, the dead moths stirred, the flames leapt high, and every demon ceased its feast to watch my dark beloved pass by.
Her gown flowed pale as moonlit frost across a battlefield of bone.
Its silver hem collected ash from empires Heaven had disowned.
The jewels upon her throat appeared like captive stars the void had sewn, and all the room grew dim with shame beside the splendor she had shown.
The Devil watched from his obsidian seat of vertebrae and gold.
His fingers drummed on human skulls, impatient, covetous, and cold.
His countless victories and crowns, amassed through ages manifold, seemed suddenly like worthless scraps before the beauty they beheld.
I saw his ancient smile collapse like masonry from ruined keeps.
His eyes, once bright with wicked fire, descend to cavernous dark deeps.
Around his horns the smoke coiled thick as funeral serpents through the eaves, while envy nested in his heart like maggots breeding underneath.
For she possessed a dreadful grace no seraph choir could reproduce.
A splendor born from darker wells than any Heaven could induce.
The roses braided through her hair appeared to blossom from abuse, their petals wet with crimson dew distilled from wounds and ancient truths.
The saints embalmed within the walls began to weep corrupted balm.
Their waxen faces cracked apart, abandoning all sacred calm.
The relics rattled in their shrines, each severed hand and sacred palm, as though creation sensed her step and trembled at its hidden psalm.
The chandeliers released a shower of soot.
The corpses hanging from the beams swayed gently as he slowly stood; his mantle stitched from tyrant skin dragged heavily across the wood, while every beast of Hell grew still and every damned soul understood.
Like famine staring at a feast.
Like plague beholding untouched flesh.
Like wolves observing sleeping beasts.
Yet in his stare I witnessed not possession’s hunger least by least - I witnessed jealousy so vast it made the Prince of Darkness cease.
For she ignored him utterly.
She crossed the hall as calmly as a queen surveying conquered fields; the Devil’s boasts, his wars, his throne, his legions armed with iron shields, were less to her than drifting dust disturbed beneath her polished heels.
The envy in him swelled and swelled.
It festered like a gangrened wound.
Like bloated flesh beneath a shroud.
Like something buried, then exhumed.
The braziers coughed up clouds of ash that spread a premature entombment gloom, and even Hell’s red furnace-heart seemed colder than a winter tomb.
Then from the darkness came a roar that split the stained cathedral glass, a sound that sent the gargoyles crumbling as it thundered through the mass; the Devil crushed a silver goblet fashioned from a martyr’s face and brass, its jagged fragments spraying blood collected from forgotten massacres.
He cursed the living and unborn.
He cursed the day rebellious angels first beneath God’s gaze were torn; he cursed his throne of charred dominion, cursed his black infernal horn, for none of it could earn the glance with which my love adorned the morn.
The room became a slaughtered dream.
The walls exhaled arterial rain.
The paintings bled from every eye.
The bells rang out with fractured pain; the marble saints disgorged black worms that twisted through the crimson stain, while madness blossomed in the hall like flowers nourished by the slain.
Yet still she stood untouched, serene, amidst the carnage and decay, as though catastrophe itself had merely wandered in to pray; the gore that dripped from vaulted beams seemed almost reverent in its way, and every horror bent its knee before the path on which she lay.
Then did I understand at last what poisoned Satan’s withered soul: Not lust. Not hunger. Not desire. Not any dream of dark control.
He envied her because she held the power he could never wholly hold; the power to make Hell feel small, and make its ancient master old.
So now I keep that memory sealed within my heart’s sepulchral room, where echoes of that dreadful night still drift like incense through the gloom; for I alone beheld the hour when envy flowered into doom - The Devil grew jealous when she entered the room.
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
pixelskylines
dededos
blakekathryn
stormborns
