Present time

This day marked the death of a Saint.

In the skies above the little shabby hut, stood a contingent of angels coming to escort  the Saint's soul directly to heaven. Their presence made the surroundings peaceful and holy.

The wildlife had encircled the little hut. You could see rabbits and panthers prostrated side by side, looking at the hut. They had also come to say goodbye to the holy man.

Inside the hut, despite the small space, were six men and two women standing around a feeble and dying old man.

The old man could not muster the strength to talk to his sobbing four disciples, instead, in his head, he was having a conversation with the tenth being in the hut.

That tenth being was a demon named Azel. The demon tasked to make the old man renounce his beliefs and fall into depravity.

For Azel, tempting the man into sinning had been a fruitless undertaking. For more than forty years, he had been thinking of many ways to make the man fall and even invited an entire legion of demons to torment the poor soul day and night for an entire year, but it was all for nothing.

But Azel still hadn't given up despite seeing the old man being a few minutes away from his ascension. He still has a last trump card he had yet to play.

The old man then said in his mind, "This is where we part, old friend. I am a little saddened by the fact that you demons don't have the right to repent anymore...or else, you'd have a whole eternity to finally beat me at go. You never could win against me...or did you let me win thinking that I had an ego to soothe."

Azel then laughed and said, " heh, winning a game against a celestial being...If you had no ego, all I needed to do was cultivate it, it was one of the many tricks I used back then and had you developed an ego, I would've finally won. I really looked forward to see how much of an egocentric prick you could be once all the strings holding you were finally loosened."

The old man then said, " But I did win the game didn't I? With all your tricks, you failed."

Azel then said, "If you really think this has been a game, then you've already lost. But I see that those loyal dogs (angels) up there are still waiting, so thinking that this has been a game isn't your true thought. Tell me...what do you think this has been? I'm really curious."

Feeling that his time had finally come, before he died, the old man said, "It has been an ... honor..."

Then his eyes seemed to close.

Azel was incensed, "What? An honor? Are you crazy? I tortured you for forty years of your life. I never gave you a single moment of respite. How can you not be mad about it? Be human for once in your life. Hate me!"

"Come back! It's not over yet." Said Azel as a strange power left him and entered the old man's body, jolting the latter awake."

"As long as you have an ounce of life left, I can still bring you back a few times."

"I have a present for you before you leave this world."

"This present will test your will for the last time, if you can come out of it unscathed, I'll finally admit defeat."

"The present is : How about I kill these four disciples of yours before your eyes? Their death will be painful and hard to watch since you love them unconditionally...almost as if they were your own children. How about it, hum?"

The old man then started trembling, his eyes watering.

" Are you going to beg me to stop? Beg a demon? Hehe, in fact you don't need to say anything, all you have to do is have that last thought that will condemn you forever. Then I will let you die in peace and then we will truly have a whole eternity together in that wonderful place."

"Oh so you're starting to think that your disciples will come to the same place as you

How many of them do you think have what it takes huh? One of them used to be a sodomite, another used to be a thief, two of them used to be prostitutes. Their lives reek of sin, I can smell it."

"Remember. You may not be at my mercy, but they are. So what's it gonna be?"

The old man kept silent.

"Are you not even going to try and save them? I'm sure you could ask for a miracle upstairs, but how many of them have you had in your entire life? None. No matter how loudly you wailed in the past, no one came at your rescue as I did everything I wanted to you. Who's to say that today won't be the same?"

The old man seemed to be on the verge of collapsing mentally.

"Yes...yes...just that one thought and I'll be gone. Listen to the music outside, you do not have much time. Hehehe."

The old man then heard beasts screaming madly. It seemed the demon had made the beasts who were prostrating outside mad. Their little hut seemed to be about to be shredded into pieces.

The disciples had fear on their faces as they went on their knees and started praying.

Seeing and hearing all of this, the old man then closed his eyes to make a decision that would change his life forever.