God picked up the golden gear—the one from the top of the sphere. He held it up to the light of a dying star.

God laughed. It was a hollow, horrible sound. "I can't. If I open the gates, they'll flood the system. They'll file the clouds. They'll log the silence. They'll audit the void. They'll find the one discrepancy I buried eons ago."

"The angels are for glory," God continued, His voice cracking. "For battles and hymns. But the demons? I made them for order . For the tiny, infinite cruelties of running existence. To log every fallen sparrow. To calculate the precise weight of every unspoken prayer. To ensure that for every action, there is an equal and opposite paperwork."