Chapter thirty-five: Last of the Light Mired in misery though she was, Benzosia had grown a spine of steel through her years in Hell. It had carried her through anguish and refused to bend to forced submission and now it pushed her into tamping down her pride to seek out an ally. Someone to vent to, someone to lean on, someone to help her bear the weight she couldn’t lie to herself about being able to manage anymore. Levistus.  It seemed short-sighted of her in hindsight to h

Chapter thirty-four: A melody of crimson and gold Ten years. A decade that felt less like time's gentle flow and more like a vast, cold expanse of maintained illusion, each moment lived inside a carefully constructed lie. Yet Benzosia persisted, queen and mother, clinging to the deception of her daughter's parentage—a flawless, absolute untruth that kept her anchored to hope, and to the phantom touch of a love she could never truly claim. She missed him, a deep ache in her so

Chapter thirty- three; Longing hearts The center of Benzosia’s universe was exactly three feet tall, a tumble of midnight hair, and eyes the impossible, shifting gray of a Stygian glacier at twilight. Glasya. She was the final, devastating answer to every question Benzosia had ever posed to fate. Glasya was the antidote to the venom of the Nine Hells, a secret, perfect garden of pure light and innocent mischief growing in the heart of the Malsheem. She  was the only part of B