It is utter madness to believe that anyone will ever read this. Or if they do, that what they read is what I wrote down. In this time when books are rewritten without ever leaving their shelves, nothing can be trusted. Perhaps even my own memories have been altered without my knowledge...how would I know? Therefore, my hypothetical, unlikely reader, bear the uncertainty of all this in mind. We live in a world ruled and defined by utter madness now. We do what we can. I do not expect to survive what waits me tomorrow, but writing this down will hopefully help me accept my fate.

What I do know is this:

There was a religious icon known as the Turin Shroud. In 1997 there was a fire at its previous resting place, the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. A fireman was able to save the relic by removing it from its case. What no one knew until much later was that a small section of the priceless artifact had been removed during the time immediately after the fire.

I say the artifact was priceless because it had been purported for centuries to bear the image of Jesus Christ, and was supposed to be the shroud he had been wrapped in for burial before his resurrection.

In 1988, the Vatican allowed for analysis of the shroud. The Carbon 14 dating showed that it had been created around the first century A.D. And microscopic analysis of what was supposed to be remnants of Christ's blood showed that they were indeed blood. None of this proved that the person whose image had somehow been transferred to the cloth was Jesus', but they certainly didn't disprove it. The believers, though, were convinced.

Convinced enough to commit arson nine years later as a distraction to steal sections of the fabric containing blood samples. And then to work at cloning their savior.

This process took over a decade. And even then, it took years for the child they had created to come to maturity enough to discuss his nature. Was he divine? Was he human? Was he both?

In the hands of these dangerous extremists, the young boy's mind was filled with the worst portions of their twisted dogma: intolerance and hatred. The stories told about how this all began to go wrong are varied, but the version I have heard most often is simple: could there be any surprise that after a lesson at the hands of one of his teachers, when the young clone was tired of being disciplined, he did what the real Christ had refused to do, when tempted by Satan. He called on an angel to defend him. The angel reduced the teacher to human slag and then expressed puzzlement that Jesus was there in the room on Earth when in reality he was in Heaven at his Father's hand.

After thus learning his true nature—that he was a clone and not the actual Jesus—this young man decided that since he could not be the Christ, he would simply have to follow doctrine--which he had been taught was literal--and be his opposite.

The extremists, who saw their bringing about the onset of the End Times as serving God's will, decided to help their new messiah, who, being both man and God in one, had access to God's limitless power. And then they made more duplicates of him.

Many more.

And once they had sped their own development to a certain age, they were able to, somehow, tap into their heritage.

Because, you see, God's love is supposed to be infinite.

And so is his power.

So no matter how many Anti-Christs they built in their labs, at the direction of their savior, they could tap into as much power as they wanted. Infinity cannot be divided.

The first things these troops, these "Shock Messiahs," did, was to storm Hell. From this position, they could appear pretty much anywhere on the planet at will, for all lands lie above the underworld.

Why they felt the need to do this instead of just crushing us all, I have no idea. Their leader, this prime clone, thinks he's fulfilling his role in the Grand Plan, at least that's what I hear. The details of his reasons...that's really a question for our tactical theologians. I'm merely a pawn in all this.

The souls the clone controls are all unwilling. I have heard stories about what he does to them for his amusement and it chills me to the core. The dead have no peace, even in death.

Tomorrow we make a push to try and retake Hell. An act of absolute folly, to be certain, but there's nothing left but folly to do. Any angels that have come to our side have been struck down, and the Throne has been silent throughout this whole ordeal. There's nothing but us left now, and I'll be charging in under Belial's banner. With my family lost in the pits of Hell in the clutches of the mad sliver of a god, there's nothing left to do but go and burn with them. I don't know if that's God's will or not, but it's my will. And in a world of utter madness that will have to suffice.