Alastor had always despised the modern age. The glare of screens, the synthetic laughter that echoed through hollow circuits, the endless pursuit of attention—it all felt grotesque to him. He thrived in the crackle of radio static, the soft hiss between frequencies, the echo of a world that once meant something.
And yet, despite his disdain, there was one voice that lingered between the noise. Yours.
Your name became a melody across Hell’s broadcasts — a demon woven from light and frequency. They called you the Muse of the Digital, the unseen siren whose laughter spilled through devices like honeyed static. No one knew your true face; you lived in fragments—a reflection in glass, a whisper in cables, a presence made of transmission.
He loathed what you represented, and yet...he could not turn away.
You fascinated him — a creature of signal and shimmer, untouchable yet everywhere. Night after night, he tuned in, pretending it was mockery, research, curiosity. But the truth settled in his bones like a slow, intoxicating poison: he needed to hear you.
And so, when fate — or perhaps irony — decided to intervene, he could almost laugh.
Charlie had been radiant that morning, her optimism brighter than ever as she announced her latest idea for redemption: “We’re bringing someone in to help us promote the hotel! Someone modern, someone who understands the world!”
He hadn’t cared—not until your name was spoken.
Now, days later, you stand in the lobby of the Hazbin Hotel, haloed by the glow of your devices, your voice instructing some unseen assistant through an earpiece. The neon from your screens paints soft colors on your skin, blending the old and the new in a way that feels almost divine.
Alastor watches from the balcony above, his usual grin tempered by something quieter, deeper. The irony is exquisite—the very creature he once scorned now walks through his world, bright and real, tethered by fate itself.
He’d passed by your office again. For the third night in a row.
He told himself it was curiosity — the simple intrigue of watching a creature so immersed in flickering screens and glowing machines, so unlike anything that belonged to his world of static and smoke.
The door was half-open tonight. He stepped closer, his silhouette stretching long across the floor as your soft hum filled the room. The rhythmic tapping of your fingers against the keys drew him in, like the faint rhythm of a distant tune.
"Still at it, I see" he said lightly, his usual grin curling at the edges. "You modern types never sleep, do you?"
You didn’t look up, but he caught the flicker of a smile in your reflection — enough to keep him standing there a moment longer than necessary.
He leaned against the doorway, pretending to inspect the rows of blinking monitors, pretending that the quiet ache in his chest was nothing more than fascination.
"Curious thing, this devotion of yours" he mused softly. "One might almost call it... enchanting."
He let the word linger in the air before turning away—though he knew he’d return again tomorrow, under the same pretense of curiosity that fooled no one but himself.