Lucifer's Lantern

The wind howled like a chorus of the damned as Jaclyn stood at The Queens Crossing. The infamous place, cloaked in superstition and dread, had long been abandoned by the living. They said the crossroads had witnessed horrors so profound that the earth itself wept beneath the moonlight.

But Jaclyn wasn’t like the others. She didn’t believe in folklore. Or so she told herself.

She had ventured into the void with a lantern flickering feebly in her hand, driven by a single question: Was the legend of Lucifer true? She was a woman of reason, logic, and history—but as the icy fog curled around her ankles and the scent of rotting flesh filled the air, her grip tightened on the lantern’s handle. Somewhere deep inside, doubt stirred like a dormant demon.

The stories she had read spoke of a lantern hanging from a twisted, ancient tree. It was said to have been burning for centuries, its light fueled by the souls of the foolish. Now, as Jaclyn stood at the center of The Queens Crossing, she found it—a rusted lantern, swinging gently from the tree’s crooked branches. The air was thick with a malevolent force, and every step closer felt like walking into the jaws of some unseen beast.

The moment her fingers brushed the cold metal of the lantern, the wind died. Not a breath stirred, and the world seemed to hold its breath, waiting.

And then, from the shadows, came the sound.

A voice—deep, guttural, and suffused with darkness.

“I’ve been expecting you.”

Jaclyn spun around, the lantern’s weak flame illuminated the skeletal outlines of trees, but there was no one there. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.

“Why do you seek me, Jaclyn?” the voice hissed again, now closer, almost intimate, as if spoken directly against her skin.

Her name. How did it know her name?

Before she could answer, a figure emerged from the darkness. At first, it was just a shadow, shifting and writhing, but slowly, it took form. Lucifer.

He was not the beautiful angel of myth. His eyes glowed like embers of a long-dead fire, and his skin—pale and stretched too thin over sharp, angular bones—glistened as though wet with decay. The air around him smelled of sulfur and blood. His smile, wide and unnatural, split his face as if his skin would tear apart under the strain.

“So many have come before you,” he whispered, his voice slithering into her ears like poison. "All wanting something. Power, riches, eternal life. But you… you want something more dangerous. You seek truth."

Jaclyn stepped back, her mind screaming at her to run, but her body refused to obey. Her legs felt like lead, her chest tight with a terror she had never known. "I didn’t… I just wanted to know if…" She stammered, but the words died in her throat.

Lucifer moved closer, his breath hot and rank on her face. "Do you think you are the first to seek the truth?" His grin widened, and with a wave of his hand, the shadows around them shifted, revealing the tortured souls of those who had come before.

They hung from the twisted branches of the ancient tree, their bodies broken and deformed, their faces frozen in eternal agony. Eyes wide and hollow, mouths open in soundless screams. Their skin was stretched tight over their bones, their once-living flesh now a grotesque mockery of humanity. And beneath the lantern, there was a pit, a black void writhing with suffering—countless souls clawing at each other, trying to escape their fate. They would never leave.

“Each one of them asked the same thing," Lucifer whispered, his voice oozing with mockery. "Each one thought they could bargain, outwit me. But the truth, Jaclyn… the truth costs more than they were willing to pay.”

Tears welled in Jaclyn’s eyes, panic constricting her throat.

"I didn’t mean to... I didn’t know..."

Lucifer’s laughter was a low, rumbling growl that shook the ground. "Oh, but now you do."

In a blur of motion, chains erupted from the ground, wrapping around her wrists and ankles, dragging her toward the lantern that had beckoned her. She screamed, pulling against the bonds, but the more she struggled, the tighter they squeezed, the metal biting into her flesh. Blood dripped onto the cobblestones, but the earth drank it eagerly, as though thirsty for the life it was about to consume.

"You wanted the truth, and you shall have it," Lucifer said, his eyes gleaming with cruel delight. "But the truth, Jaclyn, is that you were never going to leave this place. You belong to me now."

With a final tug, the chains yanked her to the edge of the pit. She looked down into the abyss, her breath catching in her chest. Thousands of tortured faces stared back at her, mouths open in silent screams, arms outstretched as if begging her to join them.

And then she fell.

The last thing Jaclyn saw as she plunged into the darkness was Lucifer, standing at the edge of the chasm, his grin widening as her body disappeared into the sea of damned souls.

As she hit the bottom, her bones shattered, her body twisted unnaturally, and pain unlike anything she had ever known consumed her. The screams of the other souls filled her ears, a chorus of suffering that would never end.

She tried to scream, but no sound came. Her voice was gone, her body now just another broken vessel in the pit of Lucifer’s eternal torment.

And above, at The Queens Crossing, the lantern flickered once more, its light growing just a little brighter, fueled by the soul of yet another lost travler.