Chapter Text
Chapter 1: The Unraveling
Hell had always been a cesspool of masculine depravity—where cruelty wore the face of men. For Alastor, existence here felt like a sentence within a sentence. He loathed their company: the endless posturing, the rancid stench, and the boorish displays of power.
He had spent decades carving out a fragile sanctuary in the shadows, clinging to memories of soft laughter and the camaraderie of women from his mortal life.
He had always preferred the company of women, refusing to submit to the harsh realities of competitive masculinity.
The pissing contests, the brawls over women—men flaunting their virility in a ceaseless bid for dominance—had been unbearable in life. Now, surrounded by nothing but men in all of Hell, the situation had become intolerable.
Each day, the leering grins of damned souls and the cacophony of male voices mocked him with echoes of a past that now felt like torment.
So he embraced solitude, slaughtering any who dared approach. His refuge became a hollowed-out memory of gentleness in a world ruled by savagery.
Until the morning his shadow—his ever-faithful companion—awoke and signaled that hell could still descend into deeper nightmare.
It prodded him awake, quivering like a startled animal in the dim light.
"Enough," Alastor snarled, swatting at it.
But the shadow persisted, slithering forward to thrust a cracked mirror before him.
The reflection stole his breath.
His once-masculine frame had shrunk into something slight, curved, and softened. In disbelief, his hand landed on the unfamiliar swell of breasts. Panic surged as he tore at his clothes, revealing the truth. With trembling eyes, he saw what lay bare before him.
“No. No. NO!” he screamed, hurling the mirror against the wall. It shattered—each shard glinting with a hundred feminine faces, wide-eyed, as if witnessing a cosmic joke of fate.
His shadow wrung its fingers in a mimicry of despair. Alastor’s voice—now higher and smoother—broke the silence.
“Is this my punishment?” he whispered. “To become what I once longed for in life… only to be condemned here, among these men, in a realm stripped of the companionship I once cherished?”
His words faltered as he noticed the final horror: his reflection bore no mark of a sinner. Instead, it shimmered with life.
He was human. He was alive.
The shadow tilted its head, its eyes reflecting ancient sorrow and tender worry. For now, Alastor was something else entirely—a fragile human trapped in Hell, where safety was a fantasy and cruelty reigned.
How could he protect this new self? How could he hope to survive and keep what remained of his humanity intact in a domain ruled by endless brutality?
In that chilling moment, Hell's true punishment was revealed: not just a transformation of flesh, but the unraveling of a soul that had once found solace only in women.
Now, Hell had bound him to a fate more perverse and terrifying than any it had ever devised:
Alastor now has to face the fear of being the sole female in hell.