They spent another week in the Unter-Ring, planning. There was no plan. They both knew that. But they made plans anyway, because the alternative was to sit in silence and think about forty-seven days, and neither of them could bear that.
"There are others," Lilit said. "In the Ashen Court. Devils who suspect. Not many—a handful, maybe. But if we could reach them—"
"And do what? Start a rebellion? The Court is loyal to Malphas. The Hosts are loyal to Seraphiel. We'd be crushed before we took a single step."
"Then we go to the mortals. Warn them. Arm them."
"With what? They don't have the technology to fight angels or devils. They'd be slaughtered."
"Then we destroy the Forge."
"And kill everything."
Silence.
This was the center of it—the point around which all other arguments orbited and from which no argument could escape. The Soulforge was not merely an engine. It was the only thing keeping the World Tree alive. And the World Tree was not merely a tree—it was the structural foundation of reality itself. Every plane, every dimension, every star and soul and moment of time existed because the Tree existed. The Tree's roots held the planes in place. Its branches held the stars. Its sap was the energy of existence.
Without the Soulforge, the Tree died. Without the Tree, everything died. Not just angels and devils—everything. Every mortal on every plane. Every creature, every thought, every dream. The Void would rush in and there would be nothing—not darkness, not silence, not even the memory of existence. Just nothing, the way there had been nothing before God planted the Tree.
And God—who was not dead, who was alive in that chamber, pinned and drained and aware—would die too. Finally. Completely. After eons of torment, He would be released into the same nothing that consumed everything else.
Was that mercy?
Vael thought about this for a long time.
If you had a loved one who was suffering—truly suffering, beyond anything words could describe, kept alive only by machines that pumped their body full of just enough energy to keep them conscious of their own pain—would you pull the plug? Would you let them die, even if their death meant the death of everyone and everything they had ever created?
Or would you keep them alive, keep the machines running, keep the world turning on the axis of their agony—because the alternative was too terrible to contemplate?
Was it mercy to let everyone die so that one suffering being could finally rest?
Was it mercy to let one suffering being endure so that everyone else could live?
Was there a word for a choice where both options were monstrous?
"The philosophers in the Spire Academies used to debate this," Vael said. "Before the Purges. Before Seraphiel closed the schools. They called it the Problem of the Necessary Evil. If an evil act is required to prevent a greater evil, is the act still evil? Does the necessity excuse the act, or does it merely explain it?"
"What did they conclude?"
"They didn't. Seraphiel had them all harvested."
Lilit closed her eyes. "Of course he did."