Wasn't sure if this required a warning but just in case: mention of suicide as a way to sort souls in Purgatory

Minseok leaned over and patted Yixing’s fingers down from their nervous drumming. Any longer and he was sure that his friend’s skin would have had permanent fingertip indents.

“Isn’t there a better way to test your barrier-making other than having Chen hurl a bolt of lightning at you?”

“Sure, there is, and it’s nowhere near the possibility of him being eaten by a veneris.”

Yixing shot Kai a look, then sighed.

“Oh, alright, fine. But if I have to heal you, you will not walk the irregularity. We’ll figure something else out.”

Minseok nodded, making a mental note to call the sheep farm, and patted Yixing’s shoulder. The sun cooled a bit today, so him, Minerva, Yixing, D.O, Kai, and Chen gathered at one of the empty aerobic compost fields during lunch hour, when no employee would be walking around to witness their Responsible Disposal Advocate Specialist Manager getting zapped by lightning.

Yixing practically vibrated in his being with worry with Minerva perched on his shoulder. D.O watched the distance, acting as their warning system in case someone wandered this way, and Kai leaned on one hip, his arms crossed. Chen stood a ways away, stretching, cracking his fingers, and rolling his neck.

“You hear that, Chen? We’ll be back to square one if you fry our human, so watch it.”

Kai didn’t speak loud enough for his voice to travel, but Minseok still saw Chen rolling his eyes. He said something back, and the three angelics behind him all reacted—either with a pout, a slight narrowing of the eyes, or a raised eyebrow.

“What, would you rather have me hurl a knife at the guy then? You’re the closest to a venom-spitting toad without arousing the other humans’ suspicions, so yeah. If it was close combat, then I’d be testing him, but it’s not. I’ll be there to protect him against anything with a blade or claws anyway.”

As Minseok wondered if he really wanted to know the other half of the two demons’ conversation, he felt a poke to his shoulder. D.O still had his eyes narrowed at Chen and Kai, but his words directed towards Minseok.

“How did Chen teach you to make a barrier?”

“Actually, he didn’t really teach me anything specific.”

D.O’s head whipped to him, and his eyes widened the slightest bit. Yixing’s hands flew to his head as he made a short screech of panic.

“But I’m confident in making a barrier! And you know that Chen approved of it before we all came here.”

He gently extracted Yixing’s hands from his head and patted them again. He did have the confidence. While he had been not-avoiding Chen, he practiced magic in his garden and around his workplace. The little owl had been a silent helper, either with yes or no hoots or their heal sessions. Healing Minerva let him have a grasp of auras and understand the different nuances that Chen had mentioned before. Minseok learned that neutral souls really were ‘neutral’ in comparison to demons and angels.

Where Chen’s power hummed with a darker tone and unpredictability, Minerva’s held stead-fast, shifting here and there, but always within a middle range between low and rumbly and a constant lofty glow, which was Yixing’s aura felt like. Sometimes Minseok felt his friend’s aura hum a bit under his glow too, but figured that a bit of movement here and there was normal (except for D.O’s), especially after knowing the spatial demon’s aura.

Kai’s aura reminded Minseok of excited electrons—always vibrating and everywhere at once and wispy. The spatial demon visited his office once as a surprise, scaring the email out of Minseok (he quickly hit undo before it sent), and Minseok had felt it then. The spatial demon also showed him how he could scatter his aura to the point of nondetection, handy for an assassin.

“Not that I don’t trust Chen’s teaching capability, but making barriers and reacting fast enough to erect it in time are two different skills.”

“I’ll be fine, Yixing.”

His friend sighed again, and Minseok patted his back before stepping forward. Kai stuck his tongue out at Chen, then grinned at Minseok.

“Good luck.”

His body tensed. He was really doing it. Real- lightning was about to be thrown at him, and his insides may or may not be barbequed before Yixing healed him.

No pressure.

Taking a deep breath, Minseok looked within. A day or two after he and Chen watched the sunset on the tower crane, he could feel a different aura than the ice brick, something soft but also compact. He wondered if that was his own power forming. For now though, since it was faint and he didn’t have the courage to not-avoid Chen to confirm that answer, he looked for the block of ice and its breath of cold. Then he turned to Chen.

“Ready?” the demon shouted.

As soon as Minseok nodded, a blur flew at him, and his first instinct was to drop to the ground. He barely managed to roll out of the way and look back before something struck his shoulder, something solid and definitely not lightning. He hit the grass and shot back up, martial art training telling him to find his opponent, but just when he thought he saw a flash of black leather, it disappeared. Sense it—he couldn’t just use his eyes.

Buzzing aura zigzagged from behind. Pushing out will, Minseok sprung a wall from the ground, covering his back. The buzz dipped last second, and a force knocked him down from the left. Tingles trickled down his shoulder, and he shuddered as they seemed to pull at his flesh, towards a buzz that seemed everywhere and nowhere.

He had to stop Chen from moving, but Minseok was too slow. What could he do? Chen could just dart out of the way whenever he made some sort of structure and attack him from a different direction. Minseok scrambled for ideas through his increasingly panicking mind and stumbled upon something probably stupid, but he didn’t have time to ponder the sensibility.

The tingles gravitated to the right.

Minseok swung the wall to cover him, and the buzz swerved out of the way, towards his front, and dove. At the last second, Minseok collapsed the wall into ropes and flung it across his body, throwing himself backwards and flattening into the grass. The chill of cold slung across his face, and the blue sky beamed down on him. The buzz stopped zipping around, just shifting, and Kai’s laughter erupted onto the field.

“Holy hells! He got you, Chen!”

He turned his head and blinked a few times to register Chen wrapped like an ensnared bird, squirming in the bola of frost. The lightning demon wriggled sideways and gave him a glare. Amber flashed in his eyes, and Minseok gulped, but when his eyes pinned him in place a little longer, they also gleamed… impressed?

“He literally poached you! Hunted and poached you! Oh my hells, this is hilarious!”

The glare transferred to the spatial demon without the underlying gleam as Kai pulled out his phone. He barely got a picture in before Chen ripped out of the strings and chased after him. Minseok closed his eyes and let himself heave in air as the lightning demon let out a string of profanities in his wake after the spatial demon. A glow and a rumble pattered near him, and he opened his eyes.

“Good job, Minseok,” D.O said, an actually noticeable smile on his face. Minseok tried not to gape, which wasn’t hard when Yixing pretty much dropped himself down and drove the breath out of him. Minerva fluttered up to perch on D.O’s shoulder instead.

“Minseok! Holy hells, please don’t ever volunteer to fight someone again.”

“Well, to be fair, I didn’t know Chen was actually going to be up close and hit me. You guys tricked me.”

“Yup!” Kai said, and Minseok jumped. “We thought that we’d just test you in general just in case.”

The spatial demon blipped out of reality just as Chen bolted up to him. Minseok flinched, but the lightning demon stopped with precision, looking down at him. For a moment, Minseok couldn’t read his gaze, and that evening on the tower crane creeped back around his mind. Then the lightning demon huffed.

“I went easy on you. Don’t you dare think that you could actually beat me.”

“Chen, did you have to hit Minseok so hard? Look how winded he is!”

“I didn’t hit him that hard. Besides he lugs and hauls thing for work. He can handle it.”

Minseok was caught between staring up at the lightning demon and burying his face in his friend’s shoulder at his rising blush, and he knew that Yixing knew when he gave him a sly smile, unseen by the demons. He just thought it was nice and… responsible that his grouchy guard noticed—nothing else! And Minseok made sure to direct that in a glare towards his friend as he swatted Yixing’s arm.

“And how long are you going to be squashing him? Hurry and get up.”

Yixing moved off him, and Minseok got to his feet. D.O nodded to a tree where Kai crouched in the branches, and Yixing waved for him to come to their huddle. Popping next to them, he ducked behind Minseok and drummed his hands on his shoulders.

“Putting aside that Chen wants to smack me right now, I think that Minseok did a pretty good job.”

“Agreed,” D.O said.

“Yeah, yeah. He did well for a little human.”

Minerva nodded too, and Yixing sighed.

“Yes, even I have to agree. But be extra careful you two.” Yixing looked between Minseok and Kai. “The rest of us will wait for your return and report, and I’ll clock you out of work, Minseok.”

“I’ll have him back in one piece, Coordinator.”

Yixing’s face still screwed together with worry, so Minseok reached over and squeezed his friend’s hand. “Don’t worry, Xing. We’ll be fine.”

Pouting, Yixing nodded and stepped back. Minseok turned to Kai and saw him staring at him, tapping a finger on his bicep like he was thinking. Minseok shuffled closer, and the spatial demon looked up at him, then behind and over his head. He broke into a grin and took Minseok’s wrist.

“Don't worry, Chen. I'll have your guardee back faster than you can run around the earth twice over. See you later, team.”

Kai tossed his hand sideways, and as seamlessly as the aura folded in around it, the black and red swirls of a hell port rended the air. Minseok stepped through with Kai, and the light from Earth was swallowed by the dimness. The black and red swirls seemed to fade in and out around them, and below them to the left, he saw a cluster of tiny lights in a patch of darkness.

“That’s only in my hell port for some reason,” Kai said, following his gaze. “I’ve tried to follow it, but it never lets me.”

Curious but polite, Minseok nodded and looked back to the demon.

“So there are nine circles of hell, right? Which one is Purgatory on?”

“Purgatory sits through the first four circles, then after that is the Fields of Ruin for three, then it’s Gehenna, which takes up part of the seventh circle and all of the eighth. Oh, I think you humans also call it Tartarus, Lake of Fire, Abi diyu, Avici. You humans have a lot of languages. Anyways, the devil himself lives on the ninth circle with only his most trusted demons. That’s also where the pit of hell is. Most demons never see it because you can’t just knock on Satan’s personal level, ya know?”

Minseok nodded even though he most definitely did not know and his brain was swimming with more questions trying to register all that information.

“The portal irregularity is on the third level of Purgatory, where Hayong’s old post was. Before we go though, can I ask you something?”

Minseok’s mind skidded to a halt, but he tried not to let his surprise show when Kai looked down and rubbed his elbow. He didn’t think that he would see such uncertainty or nervousness with the spatial demon.

“Sure. What is it?”

“Back there, when you told Yixing not to worry, you called him ‘Xing.’ Why?”

Well, Minseok was not expecting that.

“It’s my nickname for him. I called him that even before I knew he was an angel. It’s just because I’m close with him.”

“It is? I thought nicknames were so that no one would know your real name.”

Minseok looked at the demon with incredulity, then blinked it away at Kai’s entirely curious but serious face. Maybe demons didn’t do nicknames? Now that he thought about it, almost every angelic he met so far had a short name.

“I guess that could be true, from what I’ve seen in books and movies. Some people would rather be called something else, so they go by a nickname, but that doesn’t necessarily mean, like, someone is after them or anything. Nicknames are also one way to show closeness.”

“How would I know which is which?”

“Uh, usually, you just ask.”

“I ask whether they’re being followed?”

“No, I mean, you ask if you can call them by a nickname.”

Kai blinked his eyes wide, and Minseok could see the moment when epiphany lit in his eyes. Literally. A lighter violet wisped through his irises.

“Okay, thanks for telling me.”

“No problem.”

He rubbed his elbow again, shy, and Minseok chuckled. A pale light soon leaked out of the space before them, and they stepped out into hell. The first thing Minseok did was squint and shiver as his very being seemed to seep out of him towards the environment, then his mouth fell open. He could name the features of the landscape, yet they weren’t in a way familiar to him.

The ground underfoot felt evened and bare like freshly cooled volcanic rock, except when Minseok stared too long, the rock seemed to undulate, molten. The crags of a mountain line rose in the back, but its silhouette seemed to glow yellow, and he saw that one of the tops had been blown off, now a plateau. The sky glowed in a red dusk, and no stars shone through. He smelled something like wet grass but also ash. Nothing seemed to breathe besides the soft sigh of the wind. Somehow, he could still see, but sometimes the shadows would cloud his vision, and he had to shut his eyes and shake his head.

“You okay?” Kai asked.

“Yeah. Is this the third level?”

“Not quite. I just took us to hell first. I could teleport through spheres and go straight to the third level, but it takes a lot more energy.”

“Where are we then?”

“Fifth Circle, at a part of hell called the Serene Darkness. I think humans called it Youming too. Whenever I open a port back to hell, I end up here no matter how hard I try to think of someplace else.”

Minseok opened his mouth to ask why but changed his words when he saw Kai frown.

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” Kai said, a little too quickly. “Let’s go.”

The rocks and mountains folded, and when Minseok felt his body snap back into place, a gate towered above him. At first, he thought that the bars and ornate details were made of iron, but then the bars started to glow. Two guards stood at the front, each brandishing a weapon, and both immediately locked onto Minseok. Their auras flared, and Minseok clenched his fists at the malice. Kai stepped forward unfazed, unfurling a scroll out to them.

“By order of Coordinator Yixing of the Glory Malakim, we have authority to enter Purgatory Level Three for the purpose of testing the reported portal irregularity.”

Reading the scroll, the guard on the right raised an eyebrow and glanced at Minseok.

“That the proxy?”

“Yes.”

“Feels like a regular human to me.”

Kai rolled up the scroll and sighed, almost with the same spark of exasperation that Chen would use.

“Minseok, can you show them that you are indeed a proxy?”

He nodded in spite of his internal flailing and opened his hand towards the ground. He wasn’t about to strip in front of two demons he didn’t know, so he opted for an alternative. The guard on the right said that Minseok still felt human, so a human using demonic aura ought to prove his proxy status.

He crafted the breaths of cold into a stalagmite, then decided last minute to make a club, like the one the person on the left was holding. He smiled when the ice solidified like he wanted, and he kicked the end to loosen the club from its icy hold. Holding it sideways, he held it out to the guard on the left, whose eyes looked the embodiment of utter confusion.

“That proof enough for you?” Kai said behind him.

“Yes. Proceed.”

The gate didn’t swing open but melted apart, pieces of lattice slinking into the ground like one of those 3-D floor murals. Kai walked through, so Minseok left the club near the guard and followed after him. As soon as they stepped past, the bars slid back into place, emitting a pulse of light at the places where it reconnected itself.

“Nice craftsmanship, Minseok. You showed them.”

“Thanks.” He rubbed his neck at the compliment. “So, uh, does everyone know who I am? Because that’s a little creepy.”

“Well, it’s not every day that a Purgatory guard becomes wanted and makes an even bigger mess by turning a human into a proxy.”

Kai grinned and took his wrist again despite there only being one path leading to the building ahead. The tall square-ish brick and mortar reminded Minseok of a modern visitor center, and he had to do a doubletake when they walked in. A service desk and a sign faced him.

Welcome to Purgatory Level 3 Visitor Center!

« Trials

Dorms »

For assistance, please ring the bell 🛎

And he watched Kai do just that. The spatial demon leaned on one hip and glanced around, while Minseok gaped at pretty much everything—from the tile floors to the glowing mushrooms growing out of the wood walls and metal supports to the various tour guide pennants stashed behind the desk.

“This is Purgatory?”

Kai chuckled.

“Only the entrance. Don’t want to freak out fresh souls on the first day, so it’s something familiar to most humans. The alternate entrance is at the north gate.”

Before Minseok could ask what the alternate entrance looked like, the curtain in the back wall parted, and a woman in an European eighteenth century dress—poof and ruffles and all—beamed at them with lips and mascara thick on her face.

“Oh? A handsome demon and a handsome human at my desk. You must’ve been quite naughty to be singularly escorted to the third level.”

“Why, thank you, but I’m not a guide, and this human is still alive.”

“So I see. Then your business here?”

Kai bowed his head a little, then unfurled the scroll to her. Her eyes darted to the scroll, then towards Minseok, amusement flashing her eyes turquoise.

“Ah, the proxy. Welcome to hell. Let me you gentlemen to the irregularity.”

The woman her heel and bid them through the door that the right arrow had pointed at, ‘Dorms,’ but Kai paused once he saw their direction.

“The irregularity was found in the Soul Quarters?”

“Indeed. One of my own found the portal while trying to do attendance.”

“Hmm.”

They passed through a wide corridor before the path opened into another room. The walls were painted blue, and a mix of mushroom and chandelier lights lit the space. Circles ran all along the room like spotlights. One suddenly started to glow, and someone wearing a school uniform stepped out of it, looking over at them.

“Miss Araneae, good day to you!”

“Shelly! Hello to you! Passing the fires today?”

“Yes! I hope to anyway.”

“Good luck, darling.”

The person smiled and skipped away, and Minseok smiled at the way she merrily passed through the corner of the wall.

Wait, what—

“This way, darlings.”

They stepped onto the circle the schoolgirl had used, and light flashed around him, opening to a different corridor lined with doors hanging number plaques on their faces. The walkway was empty except for one other who passed them. Naturally glancing over, he suppressed a gasp when he saw wisps and pieces of them floating out and the way the edges of their figure wavered. Minseok had never been more confused in his entire life.

“Uh, Kai?”

“Yeah?”

“The people here are souls?”

“Yup.”

“And this is where they stay while they… attend Purgatory?”

He winced at his own use of wording, but the kindest thing he could think of was a somewhat permanent boarding school. The woman, Miss Araneae, let out a loud chortle and looked at him from over her shoulder.

“Poor Proxy had no one to explain this to you? Perhaps your coordinator should've told this to you before sending you to hell.”

“It’s not Yixing’s fault.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she said dismissively. “Let me answer your questions, Poor Proxy. Here is where the humans reside during their stay here at Third Level Purgatory. Those circles we stepped in are gateways to the various dorms—still in Third level Purgatory but inaccessible through outside means. Now that doesn’t mean that the souls here are prisoners. There are human amenities accessible to everyone.”

“So they’re not prisoners, but they live in a fancy prison.”

Miss Araneae raised an eyebrow at him, but a smirk played her face too.

“Feisty proxy we have here. They can’t leave because Devil knows what would prey on them once they leave the safety of Purgatory.”

“Ironic.”

“Hmm. Purgatory divides its occupants by the weight of their sins, the fourth level being the most severe before one is offed to the F.O.R.”

“Who decides the weight of a sin?”

“God.”

Minseok noted the clip in her voice and wondered if there was any residual hatred between demons and the holy sphere.

“What’s a Third Level sin then?”

“A bit of gray area. But mostly, those who committed grave offenses with desperate or pitiful intentions. Suicide, for example. The Judge of Hayyoth gets the first decision for any… complicated soul though.”

Minseok gripped his arms, trying not to think of that schoolgirl they had passed. But his thoughts strayed to his brother and parents, and he couldn’t hold his tongue.

“What happens to those who were killed or die by accident?”

“They don’t generally come down to Purgatory, though it depends on how they lived their life. The first few rings of heaven take those souls, darling.”

Minseok let out a shuddering breath as relief clenched and released his chest. Kai looked at him, but Minseok shook his head. He couldn’t let the curtains drape over him while he was on a mission for Yixing.

“Hell is not a permanent living place for only bad people though. That’s a common misconception the humans have. Some even prefer to stay here, whether in Purgatory or hell. We have some soul employees, in fact.”

“What’re the trials?”

“Depends on the sin and the sinner. Or are you asking how they’re done?”

“Yes, that.”

“Humans walk through the trials corridor, enter one of the rooms, and they face their greatest fear, regret, or sin. Souls tend to get lost in the mind or in