The Caveat

1. Back to Earth

On that night, Diana unknowingly agreed to trade her mortality and soul for what she most desired. A reaper was sent to collect its bounty and they were all slain dead. Diana and Ma Gilbert were taken to Hell, where Diana would be made into a demon, as per the agreement. Due to the fact that he had tried to save all three women, Lucius and Elly were taken to a more peaceful afterlife. Lucius, like his sister, was given a new purpose in his afterlife and was reborn as an angel.

At the time, Diana had thought that her deepest desires were to speak to her parents to find out what exactly their bloodline held, but what she'd actually been given was far greater and if she were to be offered now the answers she sought then, she'd be less than interested. As it turned out, their bloodline was rife with ties to the Nephilim, with their mother's Christian family leaning toward the angel side and their father's Satanist lifestyle leaning towards that of demons, or so it was explained to Lucius.

A caveat to the immense power she had been given was that she had to share it with her brother, and the power seemed to ebb and flow between them, so sometimes she would be the most powerful being alive, others she would be among the weakest, while her brother held all the power. Another was that the two were not fully-fledged demon and angel, so the two could kill each other, and would be sent back to their respective afterlives, unable to return until the deaths of their doppelgangers, created solely for the purpose of Diana's deal. Every time the two had returned to Earth, they had managed to kill each other, resulting in an inadvertent loop that had spanned almost a millennium.

When on Earth, she had the potential to overpower archangels, however, when in Hell, she was nothing; and was treated just like any forsaken soul trapped for eternity. When it was her time to return to Earth, she would be summoned by the gatekeeper who would return her to the newly deceased human body of her doppelganger. Sometimes, it took her 20 years – other times it would take her as long as 92 years to die. In the afterlife, time doesn't exist, so there is no telling how long Diana had to wait in agony until she could return to the surface. It was also possible for the two siblings to miss each other completely, if they happened to die by someone else's hand, however that had failed to happen as of yet.

Unannounced, Diana's bodiless form was summoned to the gatekeeper to welcome the passage of her doppelganger. The gatekeepers were stone-faced demons whose features were similar to that of ordinary human men, although their skin was turned inside out, they had no eyelids or lips, their bodies were covered in rock-hard scabs and razor-sharp claws replaced their hands and feet. They remained by the gate to Hell, one stood each side, completely unmoving, ever vigilant. Diana joined the right gatekeeper in silence, both of them watching the never-ending slug of sinners enter their eternal doom. Finally, they spotted the particular soul they were after. Diana's doppelganger entered the crowd and with a stomp of his foot, the gatekeeper had her transported over to them. Diana and her doppelganger stood face-to-face, both expressionless as the only emotion in Hell is remorse and the only feeling is pain. The gatekeeper thrust his hand into the doppelganger's chest and yanked out her heart. The doppelganger made no noise, she merely looked down at the gaping hole in her chest. The last thing Diana saw was the empty look in her doppelganger's eyes before the gatekeeper shoved the heart into her chest.

Diana's eyes snapped open as an explosion of pain hit her chest, as well as the sudden realisation of plastic being pressed against her body, she cried out and her body jerked, causing her to fall from wherever she was and land face-first on the ground, hard. Diana clutched her hand to her chest until the acute pain of a reawakening heart inevitably passed, instead replaced by the pain of the injuries her doppelganger was killed by. When she could concentrate on something other than pain, Diana noticed that she was inside of a body bag and employed her superhuman strength to rip it open like a paper sheet and looked around the mortuary she was being kept in. Diana lifted herself from the floor but stumbled back against the table she had been placed on as her legs readjusted to being used. The worst thing about returning to Earth was trying to wait out the effects of Rigour Mortis, it made things far more difficult than they needed to be.