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“Son of a…! What the fu…? ARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!”

The exit from Hell did not involve a portal, a gateway, or a dignified stride back into the world of the living. It was a violent expulsion that shook me to the core….

Rocked my world…

And hurt like a son of a bitch.

One second, I was knee-deep in the scorching, ash-choked trenches of the Hellmouth, my twin broadswords shearing through the exoskeleton of a weeping Torment Demon. Black, acidic blood spewed in every direction. One arm flew to the left, and the other to the right.

Raising both blades over my head to deliver the killing blow, a concussive rupture of pure, unadulterated gravity seized me by the spine and threw me as if I were nothing more than a ragdoll.

I didn’t fly. I damn sure didn’t sail.

I was hurled like a stone from a catapult.

Mouth open in a silent roar. Arms windmilling so quickly they were nothing but a blur, I hit the ground with an impact that shattered the dry, cracked earth beneath me.

A shockwave shot straight through my heavy, Stygian Iron armor with such vim and vigor that it rattled my eye teeth. Years of hard-wired survival instinct took over before my brain could even process the transition. Rolling with the momentum, I surged instantly up onto one knee. My right hand slammed against the hilt of my blade, and my chest heaved as I prepared for the inevitable ambush. I expected the sulfurous heat of the perimeter of Mammon’s domain. I was sure the screech of a hunting party was about to sound. I expected the endless, suffocating weight of damnation.

Instead, all I got was silence.

The absence of sound hit me square in the chest. It was louder than any battle cry I had ever heard. For a century, my ears had been filled with the discordant symphony of the damned. Blood-curdling screams, the grinding of iron teeth, and the thrumming roar of subterranean fires had been the soundtrack of my existence.

But that was all gone. There was only the low, desolate whistle of an empty wind.

Then came the second shock.

It began as a faint, golden ember deep in my chest. A spark buried beneath a hundred years of ash and agony.

I froze.

“What the fuck?” I snarled.

The ember flared as if telling me to shut the hell up. Heat exploded through my chest.

I dropped to one knee with a roar, the tip of my broadsword slamming into the earth as something tore through me from the inside out.

Not exactly pain. Not really an ache. It was…

Power…

Ancient. Familiar. Impossible.

Golden fire raced through veins that had been filled with Hell's poison for a fucking century. It burned through every inch of me, ripping away the cold, the emptiness, the goddamned silence I'd learned to live with.

My heart slammed once. Twice. Then another heartbeat thundered alongside mine.

I stopped breathing.

“No.”

It couldn't be.

I had watched hope die too many times to trust it. Then I heard it…

“Knox.”