The corridors of Hell were not quiet.
They were never quiet. The ambient noise of a realm that housed everything that had ever been sealed, contained, or exiled was not compatible with silence. The Prison alone, buried beneath seven layers of reinforced divine lock, produced a constant low vibration that the inhabitants of Hell had long since stopped hearing consciously and had simply absorbed into the background of existing here.
But the corridors near the throne room were quiet tonight.
The servants who had been in them had found reasons to be elsewhere. The lesser demons who typically drifted through this section of the palace on various errands had collectively decided, with the self-preserving instinct that kept lesser demons alive in an environment that routinely ate lesser demons, that their errands could wait.
Because the footsteps were coming.
