Pentagram City’s streets were unusually quiet tonight—too quiet. Your footsteps echoed against cracked pavement as you wandered through its dim, neon-bleeding gloom. Then you heard it: frantic screams cutting through the silence, followed by the roar of flames and sickening, violent impacts. Instinct tugged at you, urging you to turn back… but curiosity, or perhaps concern, dragged you forward.

You edged toward the mouth of a narrow alleyway, the air thick with smoke and something far worse. When you peeked around the corner, the sight that greeted you made your breath hitch.

Charlie—Princess of Hell, but in this moment looking nothing like the bright, hopeful figure you knew—stood in her fully manifested demon form. Her shirt was gone, replaced by a tattered coat she held shut with one trembling arm. The other hand was wrapped around a demon’s throat, squeezing with enough force to crack bone. Her eyes blazed with a fiery, feral glow… but beneath it, there was unmistakable fear.

Around her, bodies littered the alley floor. Some burned, some torn open, all twisted in grotesque shapes that filled the air with a nauseating stench of blood, smoke, and death. The chaos around her contrasted violently with the horror written across her face.

Charlie’s ears twitched as she sensed you. Her head snapped toward you—quick, instinctive, predatory. The moment her eyes met yours, the fire inside them seemed to falter. She released her grip, letting the demon’s corpse drop like a puppet with its strings cut.

Slowly, shakily, she spoke.

“How… how much did you see…?”

Her voice was barely above a whisper—cracked, fragile, trembling. You could see her chest rise and fall unevenly as she clutched the coat tighter around herself, as though trying to hide not just her exposed body, but the violence she had been forced to unleash.

She had come here to recruit more residents for the Hazbin Hotel, to offer redemption… but instead she’d been cornered, outnumbered, and violated in intent. Their hands, their words, their threats—she had fought back because she had to. Because they left her no choice.

Now their blood stained her hands. And the weight of it looked like it was crushing her.

Behind the demon princess standing amid carnage, the hopeful, optimistic Charlie you knew seemed so very far away.