Scarlet Connection

Seven years in Hell.

You know the one—sulfurous, smoky, endless, full of the sort of thing you’d never want to find yourself trapped in. The kind of place that makes you look at your life choices and wonder if you shouldn’t have spent more time in therapy.

I’m sure you’ve seen it all. The infernal brochure and the press release where they try to make it sound...appealing.

Spoiler: it’s not.

Hell is where souls get exactly what they deserve, in ways both creative and excruciating. If you’ve sinned, you will be punished—not with some limp-wristed slap, but in whatever manner the scourges deem most poetic.

A furnace, a pit, a vat of something that looks suspiciously like bile—it’s all a delightful menu of misery. It’s not just the fire and brimstone you might expect, but the fire and filth that seems to cling to every surface, like a bad aftertaste that you just can’t wash out.

The place is an eternal health code violation. Every year, sanitation inspectors make their notes, shake their heads, and leave—probably for their own therapy sessions.

And don’t even get me started on the benefits package of the working staff. Dental care is something the insurance companies would pay you to not use.

But amid all that—forgive my French—bloody shit, admin somehow manages to keep one thing almost together: The Bulletin Board.

Yes, it’s cobwebbed. No, you wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. But somehow, it still works. The neon sign has been blinking red for the demons know how long. But today, it turns from red to green. A flicker of hope that there is an opening for a Reaper position in the Veil—or perhaps just a sign that someone is about to get fired from the Cellar.

Don’t get too excited. You see, Reaper Resources won’t accept just anyone. No walk-ins. No interviews, except for one. The powers-that-be have already picked their candidate—the one who has been serving for seven years and isn’t supposed to be here.

Because she was a saint. Her pure, luminous soul belongs to somewhere nicer. But she chose Hell. Willingly. To shatter her halo, tarnish herself enough to be worthy of the black suit.

Free will—heavens be damned.

And now, someone from the Veil is already on their way to offer her the terms.

She just needs to sign the papers, and she’ll be given her... reaping duties.

But you can’t meet her yet. Not until I take you back—to that little human cesspool you call Earth.