### The Economy of the Afterlife
#### The Heavens
**Currency**: **Lumen**—jagged shards of frozen starlight that sing in high, crystalline tones when touched. Each facet holds a memory of perfect mercy: a child’s hand steadying a stranger, a soldier’s last breath spent shielding a comrade.
**Primary Production**: In the **Solar Forges** (vast, open-air crucibles suspended between golden clouds), archangels plunge their six-winged arms into rivers of liquid **Grace**—a substance like molten dawn. They hammer it with hammers of pure sound until it cools into Lumen. A single ingot the size of a heart can light the **Eternal Choir** for a thousand years, its glow painting the spires in shifting auroras of rose, pearl, and dawn-gold.
**Mortal Supplement**: Every mortal act of unselfish valor slices a **thread of resonance** from the world (thin as spider-silk, bright as lightning). When an angel ferries a soul upward, it plucks the thread mid-flight, coiling it around a luminous spindle. In the Forges, these threads are braided into the molten Grace. One medic dragging a wounded enemy through artillery fire births a thread thick enough to forge **three Lumen**; a tyrant’s public execution yields none. The mortals never know, but their quiet kindnesses keep the heavens **blindingly alive**. Without them, the spires would gutter like candles in wind.
#### The Seven Circles of Hell
**Currency**: **Brimstone Shards**—razor-edged crystals veined with molten scarlet, each one exhaling a breath of scorched cinnamon and screaming iron. Touch one and you feel the echo of a betrayal: a knife in the dark, a throne bought with orphans’ blood.
**Primary Production**: Deep beneath the **Ninth Chasm**, greater demons (towering, brass-scaled, eyes like furnace mouths) swing picks of solidified scream into the **Obsidian Veins**. When a geode cracks, liquid **Malice** (black, viscous, tasting of rust and regret) gushes out. It is ladled into molds shaped like screaming faces, cooling into Shards that hiss and spit sparks. A fist-sized Shard can fuel a **Torture Engine** for a millennium or heat a duke’s obsidian palace until the walls sweat blood.
**Mortal Supplement**: Every mortal sin carves a **pulse of resonance** (a black ripple that stinks of gunpowder and grave-soil). When a demon claims a soul, it drags the pulse behind like a chain, feeding it into the Veins. A single warlord ordering a village razed births a pulse thick enough to birth **a dozen Shards**; a petty thief’s lie yields a flicker. The mortals never see the tally, but their cruelties keep the Circles **roaring with furnace heat**. Without them, the engines would choke, the lava rivers would crust over, and the Circles would **freeze into silent tombs**.
**No Lumen ever glints in a mortal palm; no Brimstone Shard ever warms a human tyrant’s vault.** The currencies remain locked beyond the veil, fed by the echo of human hearts but never wielded to twist them. Angels and demons count, ferry, and vanish—leaving only the after-scent of ozone or sulfur in the air.