"Alice suddenly crawled onto me, drowning my body in another burst of pain. I let out a weak, gasping scream as Alice leaned down over me. They didn't say anything. They just looked at me, right in the eyes, and gave the most horrifying, hollow smile I'd ever seen on a person. It still looked genuine. But I could see through the deception, now. What I could see reflected in that smile was pure and simple; a monster."
— Jackson Winters on Alison "Alice" Witzenberg, Before Heaven
In the wars between Heaven and Hell, some creatures shaped by belief stand out for their unmitigated depravity on both sides.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Series-wide
- Ashton "Ash" Sharpe is a despicable and depraved beast of a man defined by his thrill-seeking nature. A low-functioning sociopath with a constant craving for stimulation and a seeming inability to feel empathy who has bullied his way through life, Ash joins up with Red Clover alongside his partner Chayne Summers in From Heaven's Door. Ash becomes one of the top scientists of the P.A.R.A.D.I.S.E. experiments, using his influence to torment the 100 test subjects as he pleases, culminating in him brutally raping and torturing the teenage girl Tango, leaving her mute and partially disabled. Throughout the story, Ash becomes addicted to the godlike sensations that come from contact with Heaven, becoming ever more unstable, ultimately resulting in him teaming with Chayne to unleash Heaven onto the Earth to wipe out humanity, after which he will kill Chayne herself to put in place his "perfect universe" of himself as a god. His crimes only increasing in the prequel story Before Heaven, Ash is revealed to have conceived a son whom he horrifically tortures and rapes, and, as is revealed in Heaven and Hell, forces the boy to do the same to sex slaves Ash buys. In his free time, Ash dabbles in human trafficking, subjecting his victims, often children to satisfy his pedophilic tastes, to dismemberment and flaying. Ash was a hedonistic monster who cared not for anyone or anything but how much fun he could get out of a situation, even if it meant dooming the entire Earth just to get his ultimate "high".
- Alison "Alice" Witzenberg is a cold, amoral sociopath with a sick fascination with hurting others stemming from their own feeling of "weakness". Having grown up bullied and ignored, Alice becomes determined to never be overpowered again, and takes their first step towards this by befriending a homeless drunk, then driving him to suicide. Joining up with the human trafficker Scott Niles after abandoning their old life, Alice gleefully abused the slaves they were given charge over, until they brutally murdered Niles in a paranoid rage. Next signing up for the P.A.R.A.D.I.S.E. Project just for the fun and fortune it would bring them in Before Heaven, Alice took to manipulating Jackson Winters into becoming their "friend" and ruining his life, and later attempts to murder him. Returning in The Touch of Heaven after overpowering their new personality of Mint, Alice immediately sets an occupied hospital aflame to serve as a distraction before approaching then manipulating the mentally unstable Jango into leading a full-scale slaughter against the city of Haven. Alice's final plan is to have Haven's thousands of residents murdered, leave Jango to die in the process, then unleash the forces of Hell onto the city to trap the souls of the deceased and torture them for all eternity. After failing to trap Tango in their mind for all eternity to torture them for fun, Alice returns in Heaven and Hell one final time and attempts to destroy Mint's conscience just to ruin their peaceful mindset. With a drive to be powerful and dominating at all times, Alice stands out as the youngest villain in the story, yet still one of the most wicked.
- The brutal Uriel, the lord of Heaven, is a violent, egotistical archangel who runs Heaven as a nightmarish dystopia. Any angel who puts a thought out of line or incurs his displeasure is used for fuel in Heaven, with Uriel slaughtering countless angels in a fit of pique whenever he is displeased, as well as being the one backing the Children of Heaven and their evil activities. After cravenly fleeing when Naberius is loosed upon Solomon, allowing trillions of Heaven's residents to die, Uriel returns to kick-start the war against Hell and sends his forces to massacre everything on Earth, along with every demon. Uriel begins killing countless humans himself, proclaiming that he alone is the will of Heaven and he intends to kill every human, demon and even angels who hesitate, murdering his loyal Co-Dragons Saraquel and Raguel just for delaying in a response to him. Intending to construct a new "utopia" of endless torture for all he deems below him as he builds a new order above it, Uriel proceeds to attempt to annihilate half of the universe, showcasing that an angel can be far worse than most demons.
- Naberius, the Fallen Savager, the Poet of Agony, is a depraved Tulpa wicked by even their usually low standards. Having helped kick-start the Heaven Cycle that has led to trillions of deaths, Naberius uses his time to harvest, torture and murder countless innocents while also resurrecting the depraved Alice Witzenberg to commit their crimes. Naberius destroys the city of Solomon and trillions within before taking the chance at the final Cycle to collect as many humans as he can before revealing his Pocket Dimension where he keeps trillions of innocent being in endless suffering, in pain from eternal tortures he devises. Naberius even forces them to breed so he will never run out of new victims to torture, and attempts to subject Tango and the others to the worst tortures he can think of. One of the worst beings in Heaven or Hell, Naberius constantly shows why his boast of being ten times worse than even Chayne Summers herself is nothing idle.
- The Ambition of Hell: Scott Niles is an obese, disgusting human trafficker who mentors young Alice in the ways of power and pain. Working in the slave trade for years, Niles sentences countless women to horrific lives of rape and torture, regularly "testing" the women out himself beforehand, and keeps several women in his makeshift dungeon to use and abuse at his leisure. Dealing in victims as young as four years old, Niles's cruelty and viciousness extend beyond torture, as he shoots a slave in the head for fun, cracking an awful pun about her ethnicity, and beats a child slave to death with a towel rack when learning that he is severely sick. Though terrified of Ashton Sharpe's psychotic savagery, Niles nevertheless sells him women and children, knowing they will be tortured to death. In his final appearance, Niles attempts to rape Alice in a drunken lust, and, though halting his advances when Alice fights back, Niles never once apologizes or shows remorse for the act, having earlier stated that he wouldn't care one bit if Alice lost their "precious virginity" while dealing in his business. Though lacking the supernatural resources of other villains, Niles is no less vile.
- The Radiance of Heaven:
- Azazel, Lord of Hell and one of the most powerful Tulpas alive, is a ruthless, brilliant schemer hell-bent on seeing Hell rise supreme in the final cycle. Introducing himself to Tango and Mint by subjecting an innocent couple to a horrible death, Azazel steadily unveils his machinations: Having sacrificed billions to the twisted, murderous pleasures of his brother Naberius, Azazel manipulates Tango so he may place Naberius in the Heaven-controlled city of Solomon, extinguishing trillions of lives, angel soldier and civilian alike. Azazel also cultivates sects loyal to Hell so he may lead them to their deaths, taking the strongest and most rebellious and subjecting them to agonizing transformations to serve as demonic servants. Azazel further manipulates his adopted son Erebos, a survivor of a Greek city Azazel handed to Naberius, to strengthen Azazel's own position in Hell, planning to wipe out Heaven and lead the demons to exterminate all human life with only a few human survivors twisted into grotesque parodies of life, with no care of the cost to build his diabolical paradise.
- Pluto, born Lazaros, is the leader of the Children of Heaven and The Dragon to archangel Uriel. A vicious, depraved sadist who commits a multitude of grisly murders to further his master's goals, Pluto relishes using his mental powers to dominate others, even having a nurse claw her own throat out—while she's aware of what she's doing—and attempting to force a child to eat his own mother alive. Pluto attempts to twist the soul of Mint, threatening to unleash the Phantom virus in a global pandemic to blame on Mint, and later murders Tango's father for sheer spite. During the Battle of Yonkers, Pluto sweeps through the city and has everyone within massacred just to be "done with these apes". Upon the start of the great war, Pluto leads the Children and indulges his sadism, having thousands kill and eat one another while leaving them enough self-awareness to be horrified at their actions, even killing his own ally Leviathan when Leviathan loses against Tango. Pluto reveals he always intended on wiping out the other Children in his attempt to cleanse the Earth of life and rule it like a god, seeing Heaven itself as nothing more than a means to an end to deliver him the power he craves. Of all the villains in the Heaven Cycle, Pluto stands as one of the worst: a revolting, despicable man who'd sell the entire world to avoid facing up to the pathetic sadist he truly is.
