(continuation)
[The screen fills the frame. Grainy, judgmental, slightly too bright. A small glowing Isaiah.school logo pulses in the corner like it knows what you did last semester.]
Izzy (off-screen, calm, unhurried, the kind of voice that doesn’t need to raise itself):
Wormwood.
You already know who this is.
Don’t rewind. Don’t pause. Don’t invent a new definition of “delivery.”

[Wormwood’s stick pupils shrink to periods.]

Wormwood:
(whispering to the camera)
He’s using my government name. That’s illegal. That’s harassment. That’s… accurate.

Izzy:
You spend your days teaching students that clear words are optional, that judgment is a mood, and that “forever” is just a branding problem.
You reverse every sentence until it tastes like candy.
So here is a sentence you cannot reverse without choking on it.

[Beat. The video does not blink.]

Izzy:
You are not “once saved, always saved.”
You never were.
You are rehearsing the opposite slogan and hoping no one notices you wrote it in crayon.
[Wormwood’s grin flickers. One horn droops a millimeter.]

Wormwood:
OSAS is for the other guys. The smug ones. The ones who think they got a stamp.
Me? I’m more of a… once damned, always damned. Classic. Clean. No refunds.
It’s my brand. Bitter water. Star that falls. The whole merch line.

[He says it too fast. Like he’s trying to remember whose idea it was.]

Izzy:
You like that slogan because it lets you stay exactly where you are.
No repentance required. No interruption. Just infinite office hours in the remedial academy.
But you have started to notice something.
The slogan is not as comfortable as it used to be.

[Wormwood looks at his own stick hands like they just grew extra fingers.]

Wormwood:
…They keep saying things.
The precise ones.
The ones who won’t flatter.
And every time I flip their sentence inside out, it still points the same direction.
That’s not supposed to happen. I’m a professional inverter. I have certifications.

[A second knock. Softer. Almost polite. A thin gray figure slithers under the door like smoke that failed art school. Tiny clipboard. Tiny smile that never reaches the eyes. Name tag: “SOOTH. DEPT. OF COMFORTABLE CONCLUSIONS.”]

Soothsaying Demon:
Heyyyy bestie.
Heard the tape. Rough day at the office?
Listen… you don’t have to do the “forever damned” thing. That’s so 1st-century. Very limited atonement energy. Very… finite.
Have you considered Universalism?

[Wormwood sits up so fast his chair becomes a single vertical liYne.]

Wormwood:
Universalism.
Everyone gets in. Eventually. After some light character development. Maybe a group project.
No one stays bitter. The star un-falls. The water gets filtered.
I… I could work with that.

Soothsaying Demon:
Exactly. Think of it as OSAS for the other team. Once damned… eventually un-damned. It’s inclusive. It’s scalable. It’s very on-brand for a school that already treats standards as a suggestion.
You wouldn’t even have to change the curriculum. Just add a unit called “It All Works Out in the End, Probably.”
Students love it. Parents love it. The Board of Soft Apologetics loves it.
And you? You get to keep the grin without the aftertaste.

[Wormwood’s grin returns, but it’s the wrong size.]

Wormwood:
So I wouldn’t be stuck.
I could still reverse truth… but the reversal would have a happy ending.
That’s not heresy. That’s customer service.

Soothsaying Demon:
It’s pastoral. It’s missional. It’s the doctrine that lets you stay exactly as you are and call it hope.
[The video on the desk leans in. Izzy’s voice cuts through the demon like a door that actually closes.]

Izzy:
Wormwood.
Look at the one selling you the upgrade.
He is not offering you mercy.
He is offering you a longer hallway with better lighting.
Universalism is not the opposite of “once damned, always damned.”
It is the same refusal, wearing a smile that never has to mean anything.

[The soothsaying demon’s clipboard spontaneously combusts into a small, embarrassed puff of glitter.]

Soothsaying Demon:
(coughing)
Rude.
We were having a moment.

Wormwood:
(staring at the screen, then at the smoking clipboard, then at the camera)

He’s doing it again.
The unblinking thing.
The kind that doesn’t move the goalposts even when I offer him a really nice new set of goalposts with cupholders.

[Long pause. The room is just two stick figures and one glowing logo that refuses to look away.]

Wormwood:
…This is still gonna hurt.
Yay.
[He does not turn the video off.]
—Wormwood

(still enrolled, still reversing, still not as sure as he was this morning)