The Devil

In the narrator's hellish visions, the Devil presides as both accuser and prosecutor, the power who condemns mortals to wickedness and rewards virtue with sleeplessness and dreadful dreams. He works through a Babel of authorities — Augustine, Aquinas, Luther — all insisting demons are real and busy, which makes the narrator's own journal entries feel less like invention and more like evidence. His presence forces the central question of the early arc: if the Punisher exists, are the sins being punished even remembered, or are they committed somewhere else entirely?