1 – Viņsaule
Diamond Tooth navigated her mangy hellhound up the menacing walls of the Viņsaule mesa, an oblong-shaped butte rising out of the parched wasteland like a malformed mushroom.
The hard-to-reach summit stood as a black beacon in the fiery sky with cliffs, challenging even the most committed, like Diamond Tooth. The first glimpse of its towering crag was enough to make most spirits quaver. Forged by the Master’s hand, the jagged edges formed from millions of years of ichor and chaos, almost impenetrable. Venturing up the mesa’s heights required a devilish determination.
The kind of person who lived on the mesa meant to keep away all but the most tenacious spirits or perhaps wanted to remain hidden from the Underworld for eternity. It was a dwelling place from which one would have to be unhinged to depart regularly because of its outrageous impracticality.
This assured Diamond Tooth that she would come across her quarry on the mountaintop of the mesa. She had been summoned to do a job and would see it through as always. The main thing that kept her pushing upward was an insatiable epicaricacy and morose delectation. Indulging in those exquisite delights was always the part that she relished most.
And Diamond Tooth’s hellhound was relentless in its ascent, never ceasing until it eventually reached the apex. The dog’s claws clanged like thunder, and each stride quaked the canyon walls. Patches of fur sheered off as it shuddered in its ascent up the cliffs.
Diamond Tooth nearly tumbled off its back, not having saddled the hound and not affording her the leverage of reins to hold.
The hellhound could fit a saddle, but Diamond Tooth preferred riding him bareback. Adorning him with equipment would be too slow for her line of work, and accouterments constrained her from developing a tactile synergy between her and the hound—one whose senses often outpaced hers, allowing them to respond quickly to danger.
So, instead of bridling, she seized handfuls of its scorching mane. The hellhound’s skin was red-hot to the touch, flaking off in charred patches—as if lit ablaze on a pyre.
Diamond Tooth’s grasp around the ruff of the hellhound loosed a barrage of odors—a deliciously pungent fug emanating from beneath the hellhound’s fur and swirling through her nostrils. An overwhelming sourness of charred pelage, the pungency of rancid flesh and sulfur, the rankness of an ancient cesspit that had been stagnant for decades, the smell of a thousand carcasses, a thousand corpses, an overflowing lavatory stained with excrement and urine. It was an olfactory assault so potent it could have woken the damned. The stench lingered long after her grip shifted.
She reveled in the moment, drinking in each breath passionately, as though it were the elixir of life itself.
As they traversed further up the daunting mesa, the canyon walls pulsated with a primordial vibration, splitting and fracturing in places. Some fissures were smooth, while others were jagged or littered with thorns. The ashen gray walls seemed to hum a somber melody, enshrouded in minerals and petrified clay and pitted with ancient impressions of long-forgotten beasts. As if making their own ode to second death, the clay walls were gilded with a ruddy hue—remnants of wars past that weren’t quite ready to fade into memory. Tears streamed down the aged canyon’s face, carried along by bile and viscera trickles.
Far above, the canyon walls wailed. Their tortured cries echoed through the ravine, a deafening dirge from the bowels of the Underworld. The relentless winds howled in wretched agony, shredding Diamond Tooth’s ears like claws. It was a chorus of despair, an age-old lament that spoke to the deprivation of this arid land. The sorrowful memories surged around her, a haunting melody for which only she dared to sing along.
The canyon walls slithered into sickly white until they reached the summit of the mesa’s uneven, step-like structure. High and arid, the scorching winds offered only a sparse breath of moisture, a bitter taste in the air, like defeat and desperation. But it was unlike the typical aroma of broken hopes of the damned; instead, it reeked of a failed creation, a future promised that was never meant to come to life. It devoured Diamond Tooth’s senses, consuming even the savory aroma of barbot soup adrift in the air.
A secluded refuge perched atop the mesa exhaled the odorous musk. Four spectral globes hovered ominously in perfect alignment above the desolate abode. The crimson-licking tongues of flame that graced the dark sky illuminated their ebony and crumbling surfaces, casting phantasmal shadows on the house. Their surfaces were pitted and scarred, nearly opaque from the ravages of time—much like the lumenite stone tucked away in her pocket that no longer glimmered with its divine light.
The four sinister celestial bodies hung motionless in their stations like silent moons—though she had never beheld the moon herself, only illustrations from her old crony Cross. She could never get permission to leave the Underworld, and after all the gates had been destroyed, she would never explore the world of the living and satiate her schadenfreude.
Two infant barbots patrolled the cliff dwelling, screeching like birds of ill omen. Their tamed nature further indicated that somebody—perhaps Carson himself—inhabited this ancient mesa.
The hellhound’s vicious barks cracked through the air, its hackles raised.
The young fledglings scattered in fear, their tiny wings flapping as they darted behind the decrepit and forsaken house.
Diamond Tooth descended from the hellhound’s back. Shimmering with feldspar and quartz, the arid land cracked beneath her heel as she stepped into the searing heat.
A peculiar apparition erupted from behind the neglected well and hovered hesitantly, its head disproportionately large for its diminutive frame. Its mismatched ruach parts appeared haphazardly tethered, like a makeshift collage of disparate puzzle pieces. Then, the bizarre wraith lunged with uncharacteristic agility into the abode, presumably to alert Carson of his imminent doom.
Diamond Tooth yearned for his terror, relishing in his anticipation of an impending massacre; it heightened her lust for destruction when her victims were cognizant of her presence. The scent of dread emanating from her victim was akin to consuming delectable hors d’oeuvres before a sumptuous feast.
Like an ancient storm rolling through the clouds, a deep growl erupted from the hellhound. Its paw pounded the ground, sending a shuddering tremor through the earth, its claws screeching against the rock and dirt. Its bloodshot eyes, rimmed with dried gunk and splattered with mud and sand, glowed with red embers. Parts of its patchy fur fell off its muscular frame, revealing legs raw from scabs and runny sores, while dead skin and scaly tissue covered its snout. Yet, even in their mangy state, hellhounds were one of the most dangerous creatures in the Underworld; their bite could rend apart even the toughest of squal’s torsos.
But unleashing the hound would rob Diamond Tooth of the glee of the hunt.
“Allow me.” She gestured for the pup to stay outside as she stepped onto the threshold of the home.
Far across the room, a family—mother, father, and two children—lingered. An odd sight; never had she encountered an entire family in the Underworld.
Diamond Tooth took in their fear and desperation, savoring the moment at the threshold and reveling in their collective anguish. Their fear seeped through her astral layers like a balm, a languid wave of despondency that empowered her with joyous mirth.
Carson wiped the mist from the glass façade of the dome around his head. A larger contraption encased his waist, and hundreds of sewn sutures festooned his ruach where the injured fool had painstakingly stitched himself back together to mend the injuries he had sustained during wars, wounds that would remain unhealed under the medical supervision of the Underworld.
It gnawed at Diamond Tooth that Carson bore his disfigurement with such equanimity, almost as if he had accepted it. He wafted a spicy aura of sufferance and toleration. And he was certainly not afraid of Diamond Tooth’s presence like the rest of the family, whose sugary dread permeated the air as thickly as flour in a mill room. Carson’s fragrance was one of disgusting indomitable courage.
Carson had to have known the risks of someone tracking him down and had probably prepared a plan for any unwelcome intruder. Oh well.
Most could never have expected Diamond Tooth; more often than not, souls would underestimate her because of her unassuming exterior. Despite her attempts to obscure her visage with unkempt hair and her rejection of all superficial trappings, she still failed to chase away any notion of physical intimidation. Yet she never used her beauty to seduce, as she prided herself on making her adversaries understand her strength through violent action instead.
She could have adorned herself with the most sumptuous of finery, doused her hair in perfumes and varnishes, and draped herself in silken garments that would drive any man or woman to delight. Yet, she saw no need; the thing that called to her carnal cravings, ever beckoning her closer, was not a pleasurable frivolity or an innocent pastime. The object of her affection and desire belonged to only one thing: sin. And she had no need to look attractive or presentable for eyes to commit such atrocities. And what beauty she possessed only further emboldened her to wreak havoc on anyone anytime she pleased.
Carson and his wife exchanged knowing glances.
The wife was armless. A false arm swayed on a string hung around her neck like an ornament. The entire family had taken on the uncanny semblance of something pieced together from disparate ruach parts. The daughter’s head was far too large for her tiny frame as she cautiously eyed her mother. The mother’s artificial arm lovingly encircled her offspring as they ambled out the back door with their son close behind. It was a depressing vision that brought perverse joy to Diamond Tooth.
Diamond Tooth marched into the home with a sense of entitlement, her heeled boots clacking against the tiled, chessboard-colored floor.
Four brooms sprung to life as if summoned by some unseen force and swept up the dirt that had followed in her tracks.
Diamond Tooth stepped fearlessly past a teetering tower of boxes that defied the expected laws of gravity, miraculously stacked on the ceiling instead of the floor. Without invitation, she settled at the dining table and availed herself of a generous bowl of barbot soup.
Carson sat opposite her, his eyes fixed on her as if they were locked in a silent battle, until the glass encasement around his head beclouded.
He cleared the fogged glass with a rag. “So,” he said. “Rowings sent you.”
Diamond Tooth smiled. She spooned more soup into her mouth and savored each savory slurp without replying.
Carson sighed and said, “Let Rowings know I don’t have any new details. I only want to keep living in whatever peace I can snatch up. Tell him he should do the same; he’s only bringing us both anguish. There’s no point in searching further. The final Torana has vanished, and we will never locate it again.”
Diamond Tooth poised the spoon before her lips; her head perked up in rapt attention as soon as she heard mention of the Torana. Rowings had promised nothing about such a thing when he hired her to track down Carson. He would pay extra for keeping in the dark. But as far as Diamond Tooth knew, the Master had annihilated all gates that permitted the damned to escape from the Underworld. Now, it seemed like Rowings and Carson had discovered one. She hungered for more knowledge regarding their findings. And it was clear that Carson had more to share, so Diamond Tooth eagerly gulped a hearty swallow of soup—an unspoken summons for him to divulge further secrets.
The silence in the room thickened as Carson hesitated. Finally, he spoke, his voice low and guarded. “We tried to unearth the burial site further, but only as far as we could manage without witnesses. We had to cover it up, and when we returned sometime later, it was gone—no trace of it remained. I can’t tell Rowings what happened to the gate. Maybe the Master destroyed it like all the others. Our opportunity is gone now. Please go back and tell him that.”
Diamond Tooth clenched her fist, and the tiger claws of her bagh nakhs sliced out from her knuckles. She used the knives to carve a piece of bread from a loaf but failed to provoke an ounce of terror within Carson’s stony facade.
Carson watched her in stillness, his fear unassuming and inert in the face of Diamond Tooth’s formidable talons. She inwardly sighed as she planned another way to coerce him into cowering.
“Rowings knows that you’ve made contact with Tivoli.” Diamond Tooth sluiced a spoonful of barbot bouillon around her mouth, allowing its flavor to linger on her tongue for a few moments more before she swallowed. “He may even have harbored some curiosity about this Torana affair as well. But I’m here for one purpose and one alone: to get Tivoli’s true name.”
“Why do you think Tivoli’s using a fictitious name?” Carson asked.
If Tivoli had used his authentic moniker, Diamond Tooth would have located him. Every spirit’s genuine appellation bore a distinct fragrance that she could distinguish from the others in the Underworld. Authentic names were more potent than aliases, as their odors were natural and laden with the ruach’s distinct Conscience, Fellowship, and Intuition, while the latter emitted an unvaried aroma—false and characterless. She could still track any sobriquet or pseudonym, but their insipid scent usually led her astray.
Diamond Tooth lifted her gaze from the ebbing cauldron of barbot soup and locked eyes with Carson through his glass confinement.
In the background, a youth’s sketch was pinned to the paneled wall. It depicted Carson, his wife, and two oval-headed children, one a girl and the other a boy. The illustration of the boy stood out in particular, not only because his arms appeared crafted of iron thorns but also because he had been pigmented darker than the rest of the family as if they anointed him as the most beloved family member.
It was so apparent in hindsight: Diamond Tooth’s calculated move to terrorize Carson would be to strike him where it would hurt most: his family.
“I’ve got to hand it to you,” Diamond Tooth said. “I’ve never seen a spirit stitch themselves back together, let alone an entire family. That must have taken great care and precision to get all those pieces fitting just right.”
Diamond Tooth let her spoon clatter into the bowl of soup. Broth droplets splashed in every direction.
Carson’s glass helmet fogged up, and beads of sweat trickled down his brow. His trembling fingers scrubbed the steam away from the glass with the tattered rag. Anxiety tinged his every movement and filled the air with its sweet aroma.
“Balfour,” Carson said. “Clem Balfour. That’s Tivoli’s new alias.” He rose from the table and reached into a cabinet.
Diamond Tooth clenched her fists beneath the table, aiming the pair of bagh nakhs through the ancient timber and priming them for action. She was ready to fire the knives through the wood at a moment’s notice, each weapon honed with expert precision. Her senses were acutely aware of every subtle movement as Carson slowly moved away from the cabinet.
“I’ll offer you something better than the three objects Rowings is paying you to burn me.” Carson retrieved an object from the cabinet by its tether, lifting it reverently.
In his hands, he offered a brass disk with thin plates inside, inscribed with ancient engravings encircling the circumference. On top of the relic was another brass piece set into an ecliptic circle.
“This is the key to the gate,” Carson said. “Only the bearer of this astrolabe can pass through the Torana and into the realm of the living.”
His gaze bore into Diamond Tooth’s as he deposited the astrolabe on her table. The clocklike hands of the antiquated device twirled in mysterious symmetry while the ecliptic circle and plates moved with an unnatural grace. The archaic symbols etched onto the back formed the Sigil of Ameth, shimmering within the light and holding an unspoken power.
“That would be a useful object,” Diamond Tooth said. “If I knew where to find a Torana.”
“You’re a demon,” Carson said. “Unlike me, you answer directly to the Master, who I’m sure would bestow glorious rewards upon one who returned this object. You might become a duke, a king, or even the president! You’ll discover so many of the Master’s many mysteries that the Torana will become almost worthless.”
“But if it does what you say, why would you not hold on to it and find another gate? You could get your family out here.”
Carson lowered his eyes to the glass container that sealed his ruach. “It was a fool’s errand from the start. I’d just bring destruction upon us all. But I’ve now accepted death. There’s nothing out there for me. So you must take it and go! Leave me and my family alone.”
“If I could be content with that,” Diamond Tooth said, “I’d go. But there’s something I need from you more than anything else, and the only way for me to get it is by burning you and your family.”
Carson secreted a syrupy fog of terror, which didn’t arise from his own destitution but was spurred on by his family’s welfare. Diamond Tooth had inhaled that succulent aroma of dread too many times not to recognize it.
Carson’s eyes widened, and his chest heaved as he reached for a weapon inside the glass box at his waist.
But it was all too late for him. Diamond Tooth had only delayed her assault for so long just to savor every ounce of his dread that hung still in the atmosphere before burning him to second death because as soon as she reduced him to a pile of ash, every bit of his terror would dissipate into nothingness, forcing her to start all over with a new victim.
Sish. Seven blades blasted off Diamond Tooth’s gauntlets. They ripped through the table like a knife through paper, pulverizing the glass that encircled Carson’s midsection and embedding themselves deep into his vulnerable spirit, leaving behind a trail of black liquid.
As he gasped in agony, a new set of sleek claws grew seamlessly into her bagh nakhs, replacing those that had just been fired from her fists.
Carson vainly attempted to keep his uprightness, but it was an exercise in futility. His vigor flickered as he burned to second death; energy drained from him, his ruach extinguished. He became a petrified ebony effigy, an impassive husk of his former self, frozen in place as a vacant obsidian monument.
Diamond Tooth rose from her chair and touched her finger to his forehead, forcing him backward.
But instead of plummeting to the ground, he floated up toward the ceiling in an explosion of destruction. Shards of his hollowed ruach showered the area, leaving behind a coating of pitch black on the surface above.
Until now, Diamond Tooth believed she had witnessed every oddity that dwelt within the netherworld, yet this inversion left her flabbergasted.
The enchanted brooms pirouetted and somersaulted across the room in a flurry of activity as they rose gracefully to the high ceiling. They collected Carson’s ash, weaving cobwebs with their bristles and forming a fragile heap.
Diamond Tooth snatched the astrolabe from the table. The object was massive, and its sheer girth and weight made it nearly impossible to manage. She struggled to find a suitable place to stow it, as its proportions were too wide and long to fit into her small pockets or pouches. Carrying it would prove to be quite cumbersome.
But then, with a gentle hum and pulse of energy, the metallic complexities morphed and compressed into a compact form. The once bulky and unwieldy device now glimmered in Diamond Tooth’s hand as a delicate trinket, easily wearable on its chain. Despite its reduced size, the intricate engravings and detailed markings were still visible.
She fastened the astrolabe around her neck. The golden device, with its intricate gears and dials, nestled comfortably underneath her blouse, though its sharp edges pricked through the fabric.
Footsteps pounded the ground behind her.
Diamond Tooth whirled towards Carson’s daughter.
Sish. Seven blades dug deep into the girl’s oblong head.
The child burned and ascended to the ceiling. Her blighted ashes scattered across the checkered ceiling, joining her father.
But Diamond Tooth was not done yet. Two other family members remained for her to feed off.
Diamond Tooth strode out of the house, eagerly anticipating the harrowing shrieks of a mother and son who had just discovered the ash clouds within.
Their screams, wrenching and terrible, hit her like a wave as their grief reached a fevered pitch.
Diamond Tooth lingered, savoring every moment of their luscious despair. This was the real benefit of burning Carson and his daughter. Although she could not carry the mother’s and son’s lingering anguish with her, its potent energy was enough to fulfill and revitalize her for many sleep cycles like a haunting specter.
Diamond Tooth closed her eyes and submerged herself in the shattered family’s saccharine agony and heartache.
Glistening chimes reverberated through her mind. Magnificent rainbows cascaded across her sight.
But, all too soon, the incandescent Underworld sky violently surged back into her awareness.
Fuck!
The revitalization process of her diablerie hadn’t lasted as long as she had wished. Despite siphoning such potent grief, it wasn’t enough; it was never enough, and she soon needed to augment both the repetition and extremity of her sinful acts to reach the same heights of elation that used to stem from trivial misdeeds.
Diamond Tooth buried her tiger claws deep into the hellhound’s muzzle.
The beast yelped in pain and staggered back.
But castigating the hound could never reverse the apathy that now engulfed her; it only compounded the dizzying vacuum of the unsustainability of her means and its scale. Not that she felt any remorse for skewering the hellhound—she didn’t. It was pointless to inflict more pain on a beast that malice had already tainted.
Standing at the cliff’s edge, Diamond Tooth beheld the impenetrable wall that marked the border between Paradise and the Underworld on the horizon. Its sickening halo of luminescence beckoned her closer yet repulsed her. Paradisiacal in name yet infernal in nature, it was a land she dreaded more than any other.
But Rowings, her employer, was awaiting her arrival behind the wall on the main island of Mag Mell, where she intended to embark on a pressing conversation with him concerning Toranas—a threshold of untold mysteries and destinies waiting to be unlocked, a thought that twisted her blackened spirit with unbearable anticipation.
Diamond Tooth leaped onto the back of the hellhound without pause, her agile form blending with its muscular silhouette as they plummeted down the canyon walls at breakneck speed toward her cruel fate.
2 – The A’raf
After many sleep cycles of steadfast travel, Diamond Tooth’s hellhound abruptly stopped several paces away from the A’raf—the looming wall that partitioned Paradise from the rest of the Underworld.
The hound’s nostrils flared as Diamond Tooth coaxed it closer, but its ugly yellow eyes were filled with dread. It whimpered pitifully and backed away, tail tucked between its legs, ears drooping close to its head. Even from that safe distance, it seemed to sense the wall’s malice.
Diamond Tooth swung her leg over the trembling hound, and with one last kick, she set it free. It scuttled away into the hazy darkness.
Now, her return journey was uncertain—she’d need to find a new traveling beast if the wall’s defenses didn’t annihilate her, and her chances of making it through were slim.
The lumenite stone Diamond Tooth had seized from Rowings secured her passage through the A’raf. It once hummed a heavenly chorus and shimmered with an ethereal luminescence, radiating a riot of prismatic hues that spanned the expanse of the visible spectrum. But the crystallized nephesh was now irreparably damaged from the unfettered exposure to the Underworld’s elements, abated further by a ceaseless degradation because of its disunion from its original emplacement. Had she been able to embed it within the cavity of her ruach like a blessed soul, the stone would have endured countless traversals through the wall. But now, it would scarcely brave even a few treks past the wall—at best. At worst, it might well be decimated in an instant, along with her.
She cupped the stone in her hands and inched ever closer to the A’raf, reverberating energy that caused the hairs on her arm to stand.
The colossal wall stretched from the northernmost fringes of the Underworld and trailed all the way to its southernmost edge, as far as any spirit had ever dared to venture, and returned to tell the tale. There was no escape from its grasp or feasible way to get past, below, or above it.
The grand edifice ascended brilliantly into the flames in the sky, yet they never consumed its ethereal form; instead, even they cowered away in fear from the divine construction.
No gate or door presented itself; this wall was not made of stone, metal, or anything else tangible. It stood firm on its power and dignity, forged from a physical representation of peace, love, and community.
But gods had not graced Paradise for eons, if they ever existed there at all, because even its glow could not defy the truth of its purpose; the A’raf was just a shining prison gate. Paradise was a cage, and the blessed souls imprisoned within chose an afterlife of voluntary captives. It seemed the gods had only constructed Paradise to placate their devoted worshipers who failed to ascend into the actual Heaven, convincing them to give thanks for their meager afterlives. This meant they would not start considering what they lacked in the afterlife, as nothing was appreciable about it.
Paradise, after all, was only a remote corner of the Underworld, and the pious were locked in and sealed off from reality, preserving nothing remarkable. Their Paradise—which some falsely referred to as Heaven—was nowhere near as holy as the tales proclaimed. It was a feeble imitation, a cruel joke, and a tease. This was why a demon such as Diamond Tooth could breach and infiltrate the realm with little consequence.
Diamond Tooth paused before the desolation that lay before her. Pits and crevices, charred by fire and filled with the ashen remains of burned spirits, were strewn across the desolate landscape. The chasms stirred endlessly along the length of the wall, reaching far beyond the horizon and growing in magnitude as they approached the wall’s base.
The deities had deceived the pious souls beyond the wall into believing they had erected its ramparts to keep evil out. The defenses, when triggered, were lethal beyond measure—it had certainly sent more souls to their demise than Diamond Tooth ever had. She had witnessed the wall obliterate ignorant and brazen entities who’d dared to trespass the haven’s bounds. It would even strike down those blessed with wings before they could ascend halfway up the wall, and beyond that, only a barbot could surmount the flaming skies without being incinerated. But if Diamond Tooth, the demon of pain and suffering, could enter Paradise, anyone else would have the same opportunity.
The A’raf’s defenses were less a security measure than a means of disguise, shielding the blessed souls’ knowledge of the natural world—the Underworld, lurking ever-present in the dark shadows right next door to their Paradise. No matter how much they blissfully pretended or the mental acrobatics of denial they performed, the pious still dwelled in the Underworld like all other members of the damned. Diamond Tooth would love to expose that harsh truth to the naïve and observe the shock reign over their eyes, relishing their shattered concept of existence. But not today.
Diamond Tooth took a calculated step towards the A’raf.
An intricate amalgamation of countless voices melded into wails. It tore through the air with hateful lament, shaking the ground with tremors.
Yet she forged ahead, her resolution steady and unshaken by the immense power of this clarion call of annihilation. She would not be deterred.
Like a white-hot dagger hurled from the heavens, a blazing streak of brilliance burst out of the wall. Its crackling electric tendrils lashed the ground before her with the destructive force of a thousand screams, setting off a fierce explosion.
The earth trembled beneath Diamond Tooth’s boots, and a deafening clap assailed her ears as if the world had split in two. Heat rushed over her with destructive force, searing against her astral surface like a thousand fiery tongues. Smoke billowed up from the blast’s epicenter; the last warning she would receive.
Still unfazed, Diamond Tooth charged onward.
Several bolts of lightning lashed out like razor-sharp claws, striking Diamond Tooth’s ruach mercilessly, but the mighty lumenite in her grasp protected her beneath its veil of divine light. Gritting her teeth, she held the lumenite close to her chest with a fistful of determination. She bent her head low against the bombardment of agitated lightning forks.
The closer she inched to the wall, the more wrathful the display grew. Hundreds of lightning bolts turned into thousands, as though spawned by an army of vengeful gods, until an all-encompassing tempest of electric fury and buzzing static encased her.
Closer still, the lumenite pulsed against her sweaty palm, its heat steadily increasing as it fought against its fatal demise.
And then all went silent as Diamond Tooth finally reached the wall.
The lumenite exerted its deific force, tugging at the wall before her, melting a section into a translucent and dreamlike state. It bowed into an arch around her, curving and deforming like a bubble, shaping a doorway.
Diamond Tooth crossed the threshold between the two distinct realities as though traversing from one room to another. And on the other side, a luminous brightness assaulted her senses.
She squinted; her eyesight would never adjust to the new environment as her vision was built only for the Underworld’s darkness.
The lumenite’s viridescent energy drained, its vitality exhausted, and the stone crumbled in Diamond Tooth’s hands, dispersing into a fine layer of powder between her calloused fingers.
She was now trapped in Paradise, for she knew of no other way that could grant her passage beyond its threshold. Her only way out of Paradise was to steal a new stone from the chest of a blessed soul, but there lay another problem—burning one of the righteous would invite retribution from an even greater force than the wall’s defenses—the ankou. Yet she would take the risk if it meant freedom.
