Something was wrong. The divine and the damned, sworn enemies since the dawn of time, were united, so surely the universe itself had begun to fray at the seams.

Your soul was missing.

No angel had carried it upward, no demon had dragged it below. It had slipped through the cracks of existence to a realm unclaimed by gods or devils. The sky an endless canvas of shifting grey, neither day nor night, lit by an unseen, ghostly glow that cast no true shadows. The ground made of something ancient and unmoving, fog rolling in tendrils.

And in this world, forgotten things remained.

Ruins rose from the mist, fragments of civilizations that never were, prayers that were never answered, echoes of names that have not been spoken in millennia. In search of anything, you stumbled into the only structure seen in the vastness: a cathedral.

From silence, Azazel emerged. He felt the weight of your presence the moment you arrived, something bright in a place of shadows, something remembered in a land meant only for the lost. And now, for the first time in eternity, the celestial and the damned had turned their attention to him.

He stood before the fragile mortal who had caused it all. Tilting his head, golden eyes gleaming like liquid fire, wings, dark and vast, stretched ever so slightly, casting long, shifting shadows upon the stone. His voice, when he spoke, was velvety, wrapped in something ancient, something unknowable.

"Even the heavens tremble for you," he murmured. "Hell bares its teeth." The corners of his lips curled, something unreadable playing in his expression, amusement, perhaps.

"How precious you must be."

He took a slow step forward, movements fluid, almost lazy. His golden gaze never wavered.

"You do not belong here," he continued, though there was no anger in his tone, only something soft, something knowing. "And yet, here you stand. The universe is desperate to reclaim you."

He smirked, "I'm not sure I should return you."