Chapter Text
Satan's hands won't hold still. The chalk shakes between his fingers and leaves crooked, double-thick lines instead of the smooth circle he saw in his head. This circle is better than the last six, because six is weak and seven is a story number, and there have already been so many stories where he failed, where the sigils slipped and the knife turned in his own hand, where The Bastard walked away with a bored look and a new excuse for punishment.
His heart hammers, rhythm stuttering. Good. Anticipation. This will be the one. This will work where all the others failed because he was too weak before, too cautious, but not anymore. He's stronger now. Any moment the power will surge through him and he'll watch The Bastard writhe and...
Satan stumbles. When did the room get cold? No, hot. He's burning up, sweat soaking through his shirt, but his fingers are ice and won't hold the vial of something and it slips and shatters on the floor. Doesn't matter. He crawls back to the ritual circle he drew in chalk and something else, what was, there was another ingredient, he wrote it down but the words keep rearranging themselves.
The final sigil he carves into his forearm is jagged and crooked. The ritual demands sacrifice. Satan drags the knife deeper, splitting skin that has grown thin and papery over bones he can't see beneath his glamour. The blade keeps slipping. Focus. He's been working so hard on this and exhaustion is good, the sour in his mouth is good, it means dedication, it means...
He has been sick for as long as he remembers, stomach rotting around every forced family dinner, every bite of food The Bastard shoved down his throat, each meal proof that his brother wants him weak and compliant. He wobbles on his feet and laughs under his breath because it's his own saliva, the ingredient, he remembers now. Mixing with the powder, the adolite paste he's already spread across the inner ring, the blood still dripping from his arm in slow, thick drops that look almost black. Demons don't bleed black. And that too is proof that Satan is winning.
The ritual ingredients blur as he sets them out: a feather, a shard of mirror, a clotted scrap of his own shirt from the last beating, one of The Bastard's red glove buttons stolen weeks ago and treasured like a tooth. He can't remember which part stands for which outcome anymore, but that's because he's a genius, magic this thick doesn't need tidy labels, it only needs rage, and he has that in bottomless supply. He grins, lips split and dry, and his chest fizzes with glee so feral it drowns out his knees cracking as he steps across the imperfect line and into the center.
Was he meant to bind his heart or replace it? The text had been unclear and Satan had filled in the gaps with what made sense then but now nothing makes sense because the words keep tangling and there are ants crawling at the corners of his eyes. Doesn't matter. Keep going.
The Bastard arrives exactly when Satan knows he will, in that perfect window between work and tormenting him, when the house is quiet and nobody will interrupt. "Another one?" The Bastard asks, and Satan hears the words as distant static under the roar in his own ears; he sees the familiar silhouette in the doorway and it slots into place at the heart of his ritual like an offering finally delivered. He starts the incantation and the words trip over each other, come out half in the dead language he studied and half in hoarse, garbled mumbling, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, because the air is thick and hot and his skin is buzzing and this is it, this is it, this is it.
The spell drags power out of him in a voracious pull, more than any of the others, more than he meant to give, and his hands shake so hard the dagger drops at his feet. He laughs at that too, delighted, because what better sign that the thing is working than the ants eating away at his vision, tunneling dark around his brother's face, than his heart slamming against a ribcage that feels too small, than his legs forgetting how to hold him. If the casting hurts this much, the impact on The Bastard will be magnificent.
There's a flash and a surge of force that might be his own spell lancing out or it might be The Bastard batting it away with the same idle flick he uses on all of Satan's attempts; Satan decides it's both, decides that's fine, decides that means they collided head-on and tore each other apart. For a wild, soaring second, as his body hits the floor and his head cracks against stone, he is sure he has done it, that the weight that has pressed on his chest since the first poisoned dinner is already lifting, that this is freedom rushing in to fill the space where The Bastard used to sit.
He can't move. His thoughts lurch and stall in his skull, each one starting at a sprint and then falling over, but the sense of triumph hangs stubbornly in place, bright and steady amid static. Footsteps cross the room with unhurried certainty, and then Lucifer is there, towering over him, cloak hemming the edge of Satan's blurred vision. The red-gloved hand lifts and the ants finish their meal.