Alastor's Point of View

She was hiding something again. I could feel it.

No—smell it.

It wasn't blood this time. No, not a single drop on her dainty white dress. Not a hair out of place. But the air around her was wrong. Sweet. Rotten. Laced with something old and forgotten.

A presence that did not belong in the lounge, where she'd arranged another one of her charmingly grotesque little events.

She called it a "Ritual of Red Silk."

Of course she did.

I stood at the edge of the room, observing. Every inch of the space had been carefully decorated with crimson drapes, embroidered gold patterns, and white rose petals strewn across the floor. An antique harp played softly in the corner—self-playing, obviously—and the scent of cinnamon and incense wafted through the air.

She was seated on a velvet pillow, sipping tea with that infuriating smile of hers. Next to her sat a bowl filled with... crushed bones?

Cow bones, I determined. Cheap theatrics.

But the intent wasn't murder.

It was misdirection. And that's what unnerved me more than anything.

Charlie wasn't trying to convince anyone this was real.

She was trying to convince me.

And it was working.

I stormed back to my quarters shortly after the third ceremonial bell rang—a porcelain chime she claimed was "meant to awaken the metaphysical mind."

What utter rot.

Except...

Except the symbols she'd placed on the floor looked familiar. Just familiar enough to itch at the edges of my memory, like a dream I couldn't recall fully. And I hated that. I loathed it.

I dug into my archives. I pulled old tomes from cursed libraries, consulted spirits that spoke in riddles and screams. I traced every symbol she'd used. I even recreated the red silk pattern on my own walls to test for a reaction.

Nothing.

Nothing but the gnawing feeling that she wasn't playing games anymore. Or worse—she was playing a game so far beyond my understanding that I was the one being toyed with.

Which brought me to the second part of my investigation.

Her past.

Her supposed history.

I dug through everything.

Her birth records? Fabricated.

Photographs from her childhood? Staged. Or edited.

There were no witnesses, no diaries, no correspondence.

No childhood friends.

I even found what was supposed to be her baby journal—but all the pages were blank. Except one. A small scrawled line in her mother's handwriting:

"She was never meant to be understood."

What in Hell does that mean?

How does a princess of Hell leave no footprints?

Unless...

No.

No, that's impossible.

I returned to the lounge later that night, watching her from the shadows again. She danced softly in the moonlight to a melody only she could hear. A string of pearls swung in her hand, catching the light like little halos.

She paused, as if sensing me, and turned.

"Alastor," she said sweetly. "Did you enjoy the ritual?"

I didn't answer.

I couldn't.

Because for the first time since I arrived in Hell—

I wasn't sure if she was the one being watched...

...or if we all were.

She smiled again.

That damned smile.

For weeks now, I've been tangled in her rituals, her riddles, her immaculate lies wrapped in pastel bows. Every time I try to pierce the veil she casts over herself, I come away more entangled, more frustrated.

But no more.

Tonight, I had resolved to end this charade.

I cornered her in the rose garden—a place she frequented often, always humming some childish tune under her breath. She was there again, pruning thorns with her bare hands, wearing a sunhat and a yellow dress like this was some kind of quaint countryside picnic.

She turned to me when I approached, eyes twinkling.

"Good evening, Alastor~" she cooed, voice soaked in syrup and sugar. "Did you come to smell the roses or bury a body?"

I didn't respond.

Not with words.

The static crept first, crackling in the air around us, distorting reality in waves. My shadows lengthened. The sky warped above. The garden trembled as the smile dropped from my face for the first time in decades.

She tilted her head.

"Oh my. Is this your serious face? You should wear it more often."

"You mock me," I growled, and for the first time, I didn't veil my voice in polite cheer. "You've danced around me long enough, Princess."

Her lashes fluttered. "Aw, are you feeling a little—"

"I said enough."

My form shifted.

The polite shell cracked. My skin tore with a wet sound, peeling away like paper soaked in ink. Antlers warped into jagged spires, shadowy appendages dragged themselves across the flowers, curling around trees like roots from some ancient, cursed forest. My teeth split into jagged rows, smile grotesquely wide—real, this time. No mask. No civility.

Charlie stepped back slightly, blinking.

"Alastor..." she murmured, as if surprised. Maybe she was. Maybe, for one brief moment, she believed I was dangerous.

I took a single step forward, claws twitching.

"Do you know what I am beneath the suit, darling?" I whispered. "Do you know what horrors I've drowned entire worlds in? What kind of ancient, twisted god wears this smile for fun?"

She didn't speak.

Good.

My claws reached forward. Slowly. Deliberately. I wanted her to feel it—to feel fear for once.

I touched her cheek.

A small scratch bloomed across her skin.

A single drop of red.

And then—

Everything stopped.

The world sank.

The garden rotted in a breath.

The flowers withered. The sky inverted. The air curdled into something ancient, heavy, wrong.

Her hand touched her bleeding cheek... and she looked at the red on her fingers like it was a butterfly she pitied.

Then she looked up.

And smiled.

But it was not her smile anymore.

Her eyes darkened into twin voids, swallowing light. Her skin cracked, fracturing like porcelain under pressure, revealing something beneath—something vast and golden and monstrous and divine. Wings—massive, impossible, layered in eyes and fire—burst from her back, stretching across dimensions. Her halo split into a burning ring of black flame, twisting like a crown carved from Judgment itself.

She wasn't a princess anymore.

She was Reckoning.

And I had scratched God's daughter.

"Oh, Alastor," her voice rang, soft and cosmic and endless. "You poor, little radio man."

And for the first time since my creation...

...I felt fear.

Real, trembling, soul-wrenching fear.

She stepped forward, the world cracking beneath her.

I stumbled back.

She stopped just before me, bent slightly, and whispered like a secret:

"You should've stuck to tea parties."