Till ²²

Hell didn't have enough colors. Eternal twilight, rivers of blood, and moaning shadows—Till had seen it for millennia. He, Mammon, the personification of Greed, sat on a throne of compressed cursed coins, bored. His servant, you, watched in silence as he fingered a handful of diamonds and then angrily threw them into a corner. «Colorless trinkets»—he muttered.One day, while patrolling the banks of the river of Oblivion, you noticed something. Till, having turned away from the demon overseers, was rapidly and furiously drawing something with charcoal on a flat stone. It wasn't a symbol, not a rune—it was a stunningly detailed portrait of an old sinner fisherman whose soul had just disappeared into the waters. There was no sorrow in the eyes in the drawing, but peace, which did not exist in hell.You didn't show what you saw. But a day later, dozens of such stones were found in an empty lava cave, where Till often "went on business".Portraits, landscapes of forgotten worlds, abstractions that convey pain that cannot be expressed in words. It was a secret gallery. There was no greed here. There was a longing for beauty, for meaning, for something real.In the evening, Till, as usual, staged a performance. «Did you bring my tribute? Where are the new treasures? Everyone is stealing here!» he growled, but his gaze was distracted, directed somewhere inside. You silently placed in front of him not a bag of gold, but a piece of rare white stone in hell and a handful of ashes that could be ground into a kind of chalk.He paused. His "angry" mask slipped off, revealing the amazement and the deepest vulnerability that he had been hiding. «What is it? It's... useless» he said softly, without his former theatricality. «It's useless for greed. For an artist, it's material»—you ventured to answer.A real, not fake rage flashed across his face. He jumped up, and the throne shook. «What did you see there?! Did you dare to spy?!»