The ash-red sky above the Sepulcher began to rumble.
At first, the gathered armies barely noticed the change. Abaddon’s legions were still forming ranks across the black plains outside the ancient prison. Ran Va Daath’s monsters prowled through the blood-soaked trenches, snapping at anything that came too close. Beelzebub’s flies had covered entire cliffs in moving layers of yellow-eyed insects, while Asteroth’s cultists continued feeding blood into their ritual lines.
Then the thunder rolled again.
Every demon in the valley looked upward as black clouds twisted across the red sky. Golden flashes tore through them in violent patterns, followed by thin veins of dark red light that crawled between the storm clouds like something alive.
Asteroth’s expression changed first.
“He's here,” he said.
The first bolt came down before anyone could respond.
Black-gold lightning struck the center of Abaddon’s forward legions and erased them in an instant. Thousands of armored demons, war beasts, damned soldiers, and siege creatures vanished beneath one flash of power. Their weapons hit the ground without owners, while the blast carved a trench through the battlefield that stretched beyond the horizon.
Then the second bolt struck.
Then another.
Then hundreds more.
Infernal Judgment descended across the entire rebellion with merciless precision. Every bolt found an army, a hidden supply route, a blood ritual, or a staging ground that had been prepared in secret over the last century. The lightning destroyed everything.
The damned screamed.
The demons screamed louder.
Then they disappeared.
Abaddon watched his armies vanish beneath a storm he couldn’t command. Ran Va Daath’s monsters rushed forward in blind hunger, only for black-gold lightning to turn entire packs into drifting ash. Beelzebub’s swarm tried to fill the sky, but each wave of flies was swallowed by red fire and erased before it could reach the clouds.
Mammon threw up walls of gold, cursed relics, and ancient contracts around himself. The barrier lasted less than three seconds before lightning broke through it and sent him crashing across the blood-covered stone.
Belphegor’s body rotted, rebuilt itself, and rotted again beneath a single strike. Baal Berith’s floating parchments ignited around him as every contract he had prepared burned away. Neron vanished into a shadowed doorway, though the lightning followed him through the portal and tore him back into the open.
Azazel’s smoke form twisted violently as several of his eyes burst apart. Blaze raised both hands and formed a red shield around herself, but the shield shattered when the next bolt landed close enough to throw her through a broken wall.
Only the great lords survived and a small portion of their legion who stayed close to them survived.
Even then, most of them barely remained standing.
The storm stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Smoke rolled across the ruined plains. The rebellion’s armies were gone. Their weapons, banners, bones, and blood rites remained scattered across Hell’s broken ground, but the forces meant to overthrow the throne had been reduced to nothing within seconds.
Satan stood at the center of it all without a scratch.
A red shield flickered around his body before fading away. His torn cloak barely moved in the aftermath, while the rage in his eyes settled into something colder.
Then Blaze felt someone standing in front of her.
John had appeared before she could even lift herself from the broken stone.
His black coat moved slightly in the hot wind, though there was no sign of the storm that had annihilated the armies moments earlier. Black-gold lightning crawled quietly across one hand, and the pressure around him made the shattered ground tremble beneath Blaze’s knees.
She knew this was it.
Her eyes moved toward Satan.
She had freed him and given him the chance to reclaim Hell from Lucifer’s proxy. Surely he would do something.
Satan simply stood there and watched John.
Blaze’s face tightened.
John looked down at her with an expression that held no anger. That somehow felt worse than rage.
“You had a chance, but you chose revenge,” John said as he spread both arms toward the destruction surrounding them. “Well, now you get to live with that choice.”
Blaze opened her mouth, though she never got the chance to answer.
John kicked him hard.
The impact folded her body around his feet before launching her across the ruined battlefield. She tore through broken pillars, shattered several cliffs, and vanished through the smoke like a red meteor.
Miles away, a portal opened above a cracked stretch of black stone.
Blaze slammed into the ground hard enough to leave a crater.
Maze stood beside the portal in dark leather, her eyes bright with anticipation. John had refused to let her join the main fight because he wasn’t going to hold back against Satan and the gathered demon lords. One mistake could have caught her in the blast, and he refused to risk that.
Maze had accepted the decision.
Blaze was her consolation prize.
Before Blaze could rise, Maze grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her toward the portal with a slow, sinister smile.
“You’ve caused me a lot of trouble in the past,” Maze said as Blaze clawed at the ground. “Now I finally get to return the favor.”
The portal closed behind them.
John turned back toward the surviving demon lords.
Asteroth stood with one arm hanging uselessly at his side. Abaddon’s armor had cracked from shoulder to waist, while Ran Va Daath’s hood had burned away and exposed the scarred features beneath it. Mammon’s gold had melted into the ground around his feet. Azazel’s damaged eyes opened and closed across his smoke-covered body, while Beelzebub’s flies circled him in frantic, broken swarms.
They had come with an army capable of starting a civil war.
Now they stood alone and realized that if John wanted, they'd be dead by now, yet he held back.
John looked across the battlefield and held up one hand.
“This is your final warning,” he said. “Leave and survive, or stay and die. You lot got five seconds.”
Satan blinked.
He appeared directly in front of John with his fist already moving.
Hellfire covered his hand, burning deep red and black as it struck John across the cheek. The impact shook the ground beneath them and sent a pressure wave through the ruins.
John didn’t move.
The flames died against his skin.
Satan’s eyes narrowed as John slowly turned his face back toward him.
“You need some food?” John asked while brushing imaginary dust from his cheek. “Maybe a glass of water? You look like you’ve been starving inside that prison for too long.”
The battlefield fell silent again.
John’s black-gold lightning gathered around his arm as he looked directly into Satan’s burning eyes.
“You’ve still got three seconds left,” he said.
The surviving demon lords looked from the thin fracture hanging beside Satan’s fist to John’s unmarked face, and the calculations behind their eyes changed at once.
Abaddon’s grip tightened around the axe on his back before he slowly lowered his head. His armies had vanished under a few seconds of black-gold lightning, and Satan’s full-strength punch had failed to leave even a bruise on the human standing before them. Whatever battle happened next, Abaddon knew if he stayed, he'd be dead meat.
Ran Va Daath bowed after him, her scarred face twisting with frustration as she opened a jagged tunnel beneath her feet. Her monsters were already dead, and she had no intention of feeding the rest of her domain into a fight she could not understand. Mammon gathered his melted gold into a swirling shield and vanished through a gilded portal, while Baal Berith escaped through a rift that closed behind him.
Belphegor’s decaying body faded into a cloud of black dust. Beelzebub’s surviving flies scattered across the sky before merging into a distant swarm. Neron gave John a polite smile, though the fear behind it was obvious, and stepped backward into his own shadow.
Azazel remained for a moment longer than the others.
Dozens of his red eyes stared at John, then at the lightning wrapped around John’s hand. His mouths whispered among themselves until one finally spoke.
“We will meet again.”
John barely looked toward him. “I know where you live.”
Azazel’s smoke twisted before he disappeared into the darkness, leaving Satan alone among the wreckage of a rebellion that had taken a hundred years to build.
The First of the Fallen (Satan) watched every lord abandon him, and something ugly spread across his face. His rage became focused and cold enough to make the ruined battlefield feel colder.
John studied that expression for another second before grinning faintly.
“Wow, that’s some nasty look,” John said as black-gold lightning crawled across his fingers. “Let me guess, you want to kill me. So, let’s start before you make this any more embarrassing for yourself.”
Satan’s eyes burned brighter as the broken plains around them shook beneath his hatred.
“You are sitting on a throne that never belonged to you,” Satan said while red fire gathered around his hands. “You are wearing Hell’s authority like a child wearing his father’s crown. Lucifer made the same mistake when he thought power meant ownership.”
John rolled his shoulder and stepped forward through the smoke. “I don't give a fuck. All I want is to test my power on you. So, less yapping, more fighting.”
Satan vanished.
The shockwave came first.
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AN: I'll release 1 more chapter today.