Chapter Text
The sap of the Tree of Eden.
The very thought was a blasphemy, a delicious poison on the tongue.
To even attempt to harvest it from Heaven itself would be an act of war, and the tree would reject the touch of such profound evil, turning the sap to poison. But the branch from which the fruit was plucked—that was another matter. A scar cast off, a forgotten relic.
Mythology, as it was so often, was incomplete.
When the fruit was taken, the branch didn't simply fall; it was shattered by divine force and cast into the furthest, most forgotten corner of creation: a pocket of the Void that had bled into Hell. It was a place of timeless chaos, a hunting ground for beasts born before sin, and it was guarded by a Cheeribin—not a mere cherub, but a warrior of the old order, an angelic power just shy of a seraphim, tasked with ensuring the branch never fell into the wrong hands.
Alastor had the power, the stolen angelic energy to sense his target. He had a rudimentary map, scrawled from the shifting constellations that acted as the Void's only landmarks. But the Void was timeless, and he was not. To spend a day inside could be to spend a century outside. He needed an anchor, a clock.
And for that, he needed Husker.
"You son of a bitch!"
Husker was a blur of wings and claws, grabbing Alastor by the lapels of his coat and shaking him with a fury fueled by pure terror.
The sky was cracking. Lucifer was down. The world was ending, and the grinning freak in front of him was at the center of it.
"You smiling piece of shit! The sky is bleeding! What did you do?!"
Alastor’s smile was a strained, brittle thing. As of right now, it looked less like a mask and more like a crack in his porcelain facade. He didn't even bother to meet Husk's wild eyes, his gaze fixed on some distant point of calculation.
"Your histrionics are tiresome, Husker," he muttered, his voice lacking its usual resonant boom. "Cease your caterwauling. Are you interested in saving this wretched little plane of existence, or shall I leave you to your tantrum?"
Husk let go, shoving him back with a snarl. "Save it? After the shit you pulled? You think I'm gonna just fall in line? You're tripping."
"I assure you, my state of mind is perfectly lucid," Alastor said, finally turning his gaze on the cat demon. His eyes were hollowed out, the usual fire banked to a dim, exhausted glow. He held out a small, intricately designed silver sphere. "This is not a request. It is a necessity."
Husk stared at the orb. It looked delicate, important, and infuriatingly smug, just like the demon holding it. A red-hot wave of spite, pure and uncut, washed over him. He thought of all the times Alastor had left him in the dark, all the cryptic nonsense, all the smug smiles.
With a roar of frustration that was half fury and half sheer pettiness, Husk didn't just bat the sphere away. He took a deliberate, theatrical swing, like a baseball player going for a home run. The sphere connected with his paw with a surprisingly solid thwack.
It sailed through the air in a graceful arc before hitting the marble floor with a deafening, crystalline CRACK! It didn't just break; it exploded into a hundred glittering shards that skittered across the floor like panicked spiders.
A triumphant smirk twisted Husk's muzzle. He crossed his arms, puffing out his chest. "Yeah? What now, you grinning freak? Gonna cry over your broken toy?"
Alastor stared at the shattered remnants on the floor. There was a beat of perfect, profound silence.
Then, a low chuckle began to build in his chest. It wasn't his usual static-laced titter. It was a deep, genuine, belly-shaking laugh of pure, unadulterated delight. He threw his head back, his whole body shaking with it.
"Oh... my," Alastor breathed, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. "Husker, you magnificent, wine-soaked imbecile. You absolute buffoon."
He crouched, tapping a finger on the largest shard. "That wasn't a map, you fool. It was a tether. A spool of temporal thread, anchored to this spot. And in your infinite, punch-drunk wisdom, you've just tied the other end... directly to your soul."
Husk's triumphant smirk faltered. "The... what?"
"The Void is timeless," Alastor explained, rising to his feet, his energy renewed by this sudden, chaotic development. He spoke slowly, as if to a very small, very dull child. "An hour inside could be a decade out here. I needed a way to measure the passage of time. Now, your every weary breath, every cynical beat of your heart, will be the clock by which I measure the eons in that place. You've just become my very own living, breathing, alcohol-scented hourglass."
Husk's fur stood on end. His brain, slow and addled as it was, finally caught up. He looked at the shards, then at his own paws, then at Alastor's beaming face.
"Oh," he whispered, the blood draining from his face. "Shit."
"Yes, indeedy!" Alastor chirped, his voice dripping with condescending cheer. He gave Husk a patronizing pat on the cheek. "Now, you will stay here. You will be protected from entering the Void, but you will remain my anchor. Do try not to die of boredom while
I'm gone. Or, you know, at all. It would make telling time terribly inconvenient."
He produced a tattered scroll—the incomplete map. "The constellations are my guide, but they shift. From within the Void, I must read their new positions and follow the angelic trail of the Cheeribin. It's a... delicate performance."
Alastor walked to the edge of the hotel roof, where a jagged tear in reality shimmered like a heat haze.
Husk stood nearby, frozen in place, his mind replaying his own home-run swing of stupidity. He was a tool, a living clockwork, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Alastor paused at the threshold, the silent, hungry emptiness of the Void pulling at him.
He glanced back at Husk, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. For a fleeting moment, he almost wished he had a more willing companion for this particular dance. But the show must go on.
With a final, dramatic flourish of his hand, he stepped into the nothingness, the tear in reality sealing behind him with a soundless snap, leaving Husk utterly alone on the rooftop with the weight of the world—and the Radio Demon's time—on his soul.