Max woke up in his hotel room, sunlight cutting thin golden lines across the floor through the blinds. He groaned, stretched, and reached for the calendar he'd been obsessively maintaining—hand-annotated with assistance from [Raphael], which let him map out timelines far more accurately than any normal demon.
When he focused on today's date, something clicked painfully into place.
"Shit…" he muttered. "If this is right, the next Extermination and the angelic arrests for illegal magic use happen on the same day?" He dragged a hand down his face. "So all the knowledge I have—everything I remember—lasts only another six months before events diverge? Perfect. Just perfect."
He paced the room, mind racing. Two crises on opposite sides of the Pride Ring. No room for error.
"Well… I didn't want to recall all my memories, but there is that clause in the contract." He tapped his temple. "And if the others added theirs, too… Parallel Existence should let me manage both sides if needed." He snorted. "Great. Equal power to God in this universe, apparently—and yet here I am doing multiverse math before breakfast."
A knock startled him.
"Max?" Charlie's voice chimed sweetly from behind the door.
Max snapped the calendar shut and dissolved it into smoke before answering. He cracked the door with a dramatic bow. "Hello, my star. What brings you to me this hellish morning?"
Charlie smiled nervously, hands clasped. "My dad called."
"That alone concerns me," Max joked.
She giggled. "He said we can go to Heaven in his stead—meet the angel leading the Exterminations. I want you to come with me. I thought… maybe you'd like to see Heaven too?"
Her eager, hopeful expression made it impossible to say no.
"Absolutely. Just give me an hour," Max said. "I need to finish a few things first."
"Totally! I'll meet you soon." She waved and vanished down the hallway.
Max closed the door and headed straight to the old enchanted chest sitting at the foot of his bed. When he opened it, a faint glow illuminated the interior—filled with gifts accumulated over the last couple of years, most from his girlfriends.
A sleek black suit custom-ordered by Octavia.
Fingerless gloves Loona gave him "so your dumb soft hands stop bleeding every time you punch something."
A magic flask from Bee, linked directly to her personal reserve of Beelzejuice—dangerous, delicious, illegal.
The gold-and-onyx ring Charlie and Vaggie gifted jointly, humming faintly with protective wards.
Max dressed carefully. The suit fit perfectly—partly because Octavia knew his measurements, partly because shapeshifting made tailoring obsolete.
"Alright," he said, fastening the ring. "Heaven trip prep: check."
Then he teleported.
Straight into the private broadcast tower of Vox.
The TV-faced sinner-Overlord was mid-monologue, manipulating a wall of screens, pushing signals through Hell like a digital puppet-master.
Max took a breath. This needed to be clean. Controlled. Silent.
"Better be prepared," he murmured. "Might be overkill… but who gets to use these powers often?"
He spread his palm, eyes glowing.
[World Isolation Barrier]
[Dimension Lock]
[Anti-Magic Area]
Layers of reality sealed around the room. The lights cut. The screens died. The hum of electronics vanished.
Vox froze. "What the—? Who blew the power?!"
He spun and stumbled backward when he saw Max.
"How the hell did you get in here?!" Vox snarled. "Man, my security sucks. A brand-new Overlord like you shouldn't be able to—"
He lunged and grabbed Max by the throat in a flash of static—
—and nothing happened.
No crushing grip. No power. No shock. Just his hand awkwardly around Max's neck.
"What the—?!" Vox yanked, confused and furious.
Max lifted him by his throat with one hand and slammed him into the reinforced floor hard enough to rattle the walls.
"I'm not some petty Overlord," Max said calmly. "You won't remember this, so I may as well say it: I am Hell itself."
The building groaned. Power shivered through the walls.
"You got your power from me, Vox. And you used it against me."
Vox's cracked screen flickered wildly. "You?! Hell itself?! As if! Even if you erase my memories, every device here records everything—I'll just relearn it all and make your life actual hell!"
Max smiled thinly.
"Remember what I said. Your power came from me."
He released [Anti-Magic Area] just long enough to reach into Vox's digital web. The televisions flickered violently as Max used Vox's own abilities against him, wiping every recording, every backup, every trace across the network.
The Overlord stared in horror.
His static spiked—an instinctive fight response.
He lunged.
Max didn't move.
Vox merely tore the sleeve of Max's expensive suit.
A mistake.
Max's aura erupted—raw, ancient, monstrous. Even with the World Isolation Barrier, the room cracked. Vox's glass face split under the pressure.
After a long, terrifying moment, Max pulled it back. The seismic energy in the walls quieted.
"You may not remember this," Max said, voice low, "but your essence will. You won't cross me again."
A flash of angelic and demonic magic struck Vox's head. His eyes rolled back, body going limp as consciousness slipped away.
Max repaired the suit, the room, and Vox himself with a flick.
Then exhaled.
"Time to go to Heaven," he muttered. "Technically the first time I've seen it—since I was 'made into Hell' before God made Heaven." He shrugged. "Funny how that works."
With a twist of reality, he vanished in a ripple of smoke and gold light.