Chapter 59:
– Silas Thorn –
Sophia’s legs wobbled just a little as she walked beside me.
Not enough that anyone else would have noticed, probably. She was too proud for that. Too stubborn. Too Sophia. She had her costume back on, though the mask was still tucked away somewhere in my inventory because she’d decided she didn’t feel like wearing it yet. Her dark hair was mussed, her cheeks still had a faint heat to them, and her mouth kept twitching like she was trying very hard not to smile.
She looked dangerous. She looked smug. She looked beautiful enough that I kept catching myself glancing sideways every few seconds like some idiot teenager who had just gotten his first girlfriend.
Sophia noticed, of course. Her eyes cut toward me. “Stop.”
I blinked innocently. “Stop what?”
Her fist snapped out and punched my shoulder. It actually made a little dull thump against my armor. It did not hurt. It did, however, carry enough attitude to bruise my soul.
“Stop being all sappy and romantic just because we fucked.”
I choked on air.
The alley behind us was already several blocks away, swallowed by Kuoh’s sleepy industrial district and the soft hum of streetlights. The stray devils were dead. Sophia had her new murder-crossbow. The night was peaceful in a way Brockton Bay never managed.
Just the two of us walking under clean Japanese streetlights while Sophia casually tried to kill every tender emotion I had with blunt-force embarrassment.
“I’ll try,” I said, because I was a brave man and also deeply stupid. “But you’re just too cute and beautiful.”
She punched me again. This one was harder.
“Ow,” I lied.
“Good!”
“You know, for someone who just told me she maybe loves me, you’re very committed to assault.”
Sophia’s face did something complicated. Her eyes flicked away from mine, and the tips of her ears darkened. “Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird.”
“You are too making it weird!”
“I am cherishing the emotional development.”
She gave me a look of pure disgust. “Cherishing?”
“Treasure hoarding, technically. Dragon instincts.”
“Don’t use your magic lizard biology as an excuse to be corny.”
“I would never.”
“You literally just did.”
I grinned.
Sophia rolled her eyes, but she didn’t move away from me. If anything, she walked a little closer, her shoulder nearly brushing mine as we followed the quiet road out of the industrial area. The Shadow Reaper Crossbow had vanished into her breaker state earlier.
There had always been a part of her that hated being benched. Hated being told no. Hated being treated like a problem to be managed instead of a weapon to be aimed. Tonight, the System had handed her something that belonged entirely to her.
Just Sophia Hess, hunter of monsters, with a shadow crossbow fused to her soul.
Honestly, the supernatural world might not survive her. The thought made me smile again. We walked in silence for a few steps.
Then Sophia exhaled through her nose and shook herself like she was physically throwing the mood off her shoulders. “So how much longer are we staying in this world?”
I glanced at her.
She kept her eyes forward, pretending the question was casual. It wasn’t. Her fingers tightened around mine just slightly. “You already found Tiamat,” she continued. “That was the mission, right? Reclaim your dragon waifu or whatever the stupid blue box said.” Sophia snorted.
I looked up at the sky. Kuoh’s lights softened the stars, but they were still there if I searched for them. Somewhere across realities, Earth Bet was merged with Marvel Earth. The CUI government was in ruins because of me. Scion was recovering from the cosmic equivalent of flipping the table. Dragon was probably juggling twenty-seven planetary crises while pretending she wasn’t exhausted. Amy, Vicky, Taylor, Rebecca, Hannah—
And then there was Tiamat. Tiamat, who had waited nine hundred years. Runeas and Gabriel, who had built lives around a promise I hadn’t even realized I’d made. Astoria and Lyra, my daughters, who were older than civilizations and still looked at me like I was something precious they had been told stories about since childhood.
My life had gotten weird before. This was a different category of weird. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
Sophia looked at me then. I expected irritation. A sharp comment. Maybe another punch. Instead, her expression was more careful than that.
I took another second to think.
This world was dangerous. Obviously. It had devils, angels, fallen angels, dragon gods, ancient conspiracies, sacred gears, stray monsters, and apparently enough family drama to make Carol Dallon look emotionally uncomplicated.
But it was also standing.
Kuoh was peaceful. Heaven and the Underworld had survived for a thousand years without the Great War reigniting. Gabriel was alive. Runeas was alive. Tiamat was awake. Astoria and Lyra had grown into powerful women. The factions had problems, sure, but they had institutions, leaders, alliances, and enough ancient monsters on the side of peace to make most villains hesitate before doing something stupid.
Earth Bet did not have that luxury.
I exhaled slowly. “This world seems peaceful enough for now,” I said. “Or at least stable enough that it won’t collapse in the next twelve hours if I’m not staring at it. Our world needs us back more. So we leave tomorrow morning.”
Her shoulders loosened in a way most people would have missed. “Good,” Sophia said.
Suddenly, a bright silver magic circle flashed into existence beneath our feet. The lines formed too fast for me to process normally. Complex geometric arrays. Interlocking runes. A spiral of unfamiliar symbols that burned cold instead of hot.
Sophia looked down. “What the fuck?”
Every instinct I had screamed.
Trap!
My hand tightened around hers. Lightning surged up my arm. My wings started to tear free from my back. I tried to yank Sophia sideways, tried to move, tried to flood the circle with enough electricity to fry whatever magic was locking onto us.
Too late. One second I was on a quiet street in Kuoh holding Sophia’s hand. The next, reality folded around me like a fist. Cold silver light swallowed everything. My stomach lurched. My ears popped. For half a heartbeat, I felt Sophia’s fingers in mine.
Then I didn’t. My hand was empty.
I landed hard on black stone, boots scraping against cracked ground as I staggered forward.
“Sophia?” No answer. “SOPHIA!”
She wasn’t there. I stood in a barren wasteland beneath a purple sky. I was back in the Underworld. Sophia was not with me.
My heart went cold.
Then someone clapped behind me. Slow. Deliberate. Mocking.
My teeth clenched together. I turned slowly to confront whoever was dumb enough to try some shit like kidnapping me and my girl!
A man stood on a rise of dark stone maybe twenty feet away, smiling like he had been waiting centuries for this exact moment. He had silver hair, neat and bright beneath the violet sky. A matching silver goatee framed a mouth curled into an arrogant smirk. His clothes were expensive, old-fashioned, and ridiculous in that particular supernatural aristocrat way that screamed, I have never paid taxes and consider murder a personality trait.
Everything about his face was punchable.
“Welcome,” he said, spreading his arms like a stage magician greeting an audience. “Silas Thorn. Hero of the Great War. Savior of the Underworld. Dragonborn. Father of legends.” His smile widened. “I have been wanting to meet you for a very long time.”
I hissed out his name, recognizing who he was. “Rizevim Lucifer.” I took one step toward him. The ground cracked beneath my boot. “What the fuck did you do with Sophia, you piece of shit?”
Rizevim’s smile did not falter. If anything, he looked pleased. “There it is,” he said softly. “That fire. That wonderful heroic outrage. I was worried the stories had exaggerated you, but no.” He tilted his head, studying me like I was some interesting animal in a cage. “No, I can see it now. You really are exactly what they said.”
I did not blink. I did not breathe. “WHERE. IS. SHE?”
Rizevim sighed theatrically. “See, this is why I arranged the separation. If I had merely appeared and challenged you, you might have tried to talk. Heroes do love talking. You would have asked questions. Made threats. Attempted negotiation.” His expression twisted with faint distaste. “Boring.”
Lightning popped between my knuckles.
Rizevim noticed and smiled wider. “So I thought to myself, how does one properly greet the hero who ruined everything before I even had a chance to enjoy it?” He tapped one finger against his chin in mock contemplation. “How does one motivate a dragon?”
The air around me started to vibrate. “Careful,” I said.
He laughed. “Oh, Silas. You have no idea how long I have been careful. Centuries of careful. Centuries of watching Runeas play queen while Gabriel played mother while the Underworld softened into a polite little garden. Centuries of watching the world worship peace because you appeared for a handful of days and broke history over your knee.” His eyes gleamed. “I am tired of careful.”
I spread my senses outward. Magic, stone, empty air, distant structures underground. No immediate sign of Sophia. No bioelectric signature close enough. No familiar shadow pulse. No heartbeat I recognized.
My dragon instincts clawed at the inside of my skull. Find her. Protect her. Kill him.
Rizevim lifted a hand. “Do not bother searching. She is not here.”
My vision narrowed.
His smile became poisonous. “I wanted you to have a reason to get mad. A reason to fight me properly.” He leaned forward slightly, savoring every word. “So right now, your pathetic little human lover should be getting acquainted with some of the stray mongrels I keep in my basement for entertainment…”
– Tiamat –
Tiamat had almost finished reacquainting herself with the modern version of her own world.
It was much easier since she had Silas’ world as a prelude.
But still, it was a difficult thing, catching up on nine centuries of history in a single evening. Devils had invented formalized sport-war for entertainment. Angels had reorganized Heaven into something warmer and less brittle beneath Gabriel’s rule. Fallen Angels had somehow managed to become less suicidal and more politically annoying. Humans had filled the world with glowing rectangles, metal carriages, flying machines, invisible communications, and vending machines that dispensed cold sweet drinks at all hours of the day.
That last part, Tiamat privately approved of. Human civilization had advanced in fascinating directions while she slept.
Devil civilization, less so.
“So Rating Games replaced actual war,” Tiamat said, sitting with one leg crossed over the other in Rias Gremory’s ridiculous clubhouse. She wore the blue yukata the red-haired girl had offered her earlier, though she still found the garment strange. Comfortable, yes. Pretty, yes. But unnecessarily restrictive around the hips. But she didn’t take it off. She wanted Silas to see her wearing it when he returned. “And devils consider this progress?”
Runeas lounged across the couch like a queen who had survived history and decided decorum was for people with less attractive legs. “It kept idiots busy. That counts.”
Gabriel sat with perfect posture beside her, silver crown gleaming softly above golden hair, twelve white-silver wings tucked neatly behind her. “It reduced casualties dramatically.”
“It also created generations of spoiled children who treat battle like a performance,” Tiamat replied.
Runeas pointed at her with a pastry. “That part is true.”
Tiamat huffed, not quite a laugh but close. The sound drew both women’s attention for the briefest moment. Gabriel’s expression softened. Runeas’s smirk turned warmer.
They had been talking for hours.
Despite that, they didn’t have her full attention. More like half of it. The other half was on Silas. Even as she listened, questioned, and absorbed centuries of history, Tiamat’s senses had never truly left Silas.
Of course they had not. He was hers, and she had already lost him once for nine hundred years. She would not be careless a second time.
Her awareness stretched across Kuoh like a vast invisible wing. Draconic senses were not like devil magic or angelic light. She did not need familiars, surveillance circles, or crude human cameras. The world itself carried impressions. Heat. Breath. Blood. Magic. Fear. Desire. The pressure of footsteps against stone. The tiny tremors of heartbeats inside fragile chests.
Silas burned brightest.
He always had. A storm wrapped in flesh. Dragon soul, lightning, magnetism, foreign power, impossible destiny, and that infuriatingly warm human heart that made females from half the multiverse apparently want to crawl into his lap.
He was currently out on a courtship outing with the human girl Sophia Hess.
Tiamat approved of her more than she intended to admit aloud.
Sophia was not soft. She was young, yes. Mortal, yes. Crude enough to make even Runeas laugh and Gabriel blink in scandalized silence. But there was a predator’s certainty in her that made Tiamat understand why Silas looked at her with such warmth. Sophia did not need to be sheltered from violence. She needed worthy prey and someone strong enough to stand beside her afterward without flinching.
Silas had understood that. He had given the girl a hunt instead of flowers. A good instinct. Then the hunt had ended, and Sophia’s blood had been singing too loudly for either of them to pretend.
Tiamat had watched that too. Shamelessly.
She saw no reason to deny it.
Tiamat had watched from across the city with her chin propped lazily on one hand, eyes half-lidded, tail curling and uncurling beneath the table.
She had not been the only one watching them fuck.
Runeas had grown suspiciously quiet during that particular stretch of conversation. Gabriel had stared very hard at her tea with a pink flush on her cheeks and wings held a fraction too rigid. Neither of them had said a word.
Cowards. Tiamat would have accused them both of spying if she had not been enjoying herself too much to interrupt.
Now, however, the hunt she was spying on was over. The mating after the hunt was over. Silas and Sophia had walked beneath the clean lights of Kuoh, hand in hand, speaking quietly. Their emotions had been calmer as they headed back to the clubhouse.
Tiamat felt no jealousy after watching all of that. She was very proud of herself for that. She deserved praise for it later. Preferably from Silas, while he was naked.
Runeas was midway through explaining a particularly absurd dispute involving three devil houses, two sacred cows, and one insulted Hindu minor deity when Tiamat’s senses snapped tight.
Silas vanished. Sophia vanished with him.
One heartbeat they were there, the next, nothing.
Tiamat’s teacup shattered in her hand. The room went silent. Gabriel’s head lifted instantly. Runeas stopped with a pastry halfway to her mouth.
Tiamat rose. Her lips peeled back from her teeth. A snarl rolled out of her throat, deep enough to rattle the windows in their frames.
“Silas…” Gabriel whispered.
Runeas was already on her feet. “What happened?”
“Someone took him from us…”
For a single frozen second, there was no movement.
Then all three women became violence.
Tiamat’s yukata tore apart as her wings erupted from her back, sapphire and enormous even in humanoid form. Her horns lengthened. Her claws curved black and gleaming from her fingertips. Power slammed outward from her in a wave that made the lights flicker and cracked one of Rias’s precious clubroom tables straight down the middle.
Akeno yelped somewhere near the door.
Rias, who had been doing her best to remain inconspicuous after the day’s humiliations, went pale. “What happened? Tiamat-sama—”
Tiamat did not wait for her to finish.
She launched herself through the window. Glass exploded outward in a glittering storm. The night air hit her face, cold and clean and irrelevant. She rose above Kuoh in a violent blue blur, wings beating once hard enough to scatter clouds and send a shockwave rolling over the academy rooftops.
Behind her came Gabriel, silver-white wings blazing with holy light, face no longer gentle at all. The Allmother’s crown burned like a second moon above her head, and every trace of softness had been folded away behind ancient, maternal fury.
Runeas followed on crimson devil wings, red hair whipping behind her, eyes narrowed with an expression Tiamat had not seen since the Great War.
Good. Let the enemies of peace remember what the old monsters looked like when angered.
Tiamat hovered above Kuoh and spread her senses wider. The city lay below, bright and oblivious. Humans slept. Cars moved. Trains ran. Somewhere, a drunk man sang badly outside a convenience store. None of them understood that the night had just tilted toward catastrophe.
Tiamat ignored them.
She searched for traces of magic, whatever could have vanished Silas from her senses.
There! Northwest of the industrial district. Faint. Almost hidden beneath layered misdirection and old devil craft. Whoever had taken Silas and Sophia had been skilled. Ancient. Familiar with masking traces from Heaven and Underworld both.
But not from her. No one hid her mate from Tiamat. Her eyes narrowed. “He was taken back to the underworld!” she snarled.
– Sophia Hess –
Despite how sappy things had gotten toward the end there, the night had been perfect.
Disgustingly perfect. Embarrassingly perfect. The kind of perfect Sophia Hess would have mocked anyone else for admitting out loud.
She had hunted monsters with Silas through the clean, fake-feeling streets of supernatural Japan. She had killed three stray devils, one after another, and proven exactly what she already knew: monsters bled, screamed, and died just like gang trash and Nazi filth if you hit them right. Then Silas’s stupid glowing System had decided she deserved a reward and given her the most badass weapon she had ever seen.
A crossbow made of shadows and hellfire.
Hers. Not PRT-issued. Not Armsmaster-approved. Not something Director Piggot could lock in an evidence room or slap a console duty penalty over. It was fused to her. Part of her. A weapon that came when she called and vanished when she dismissed it.
Even Vista’s stupid lightsaber could suck it.
Then there had been the alley.
Sophia’s mouth twitched despite herself as she remembered it. Silas’s hands on her. Her own voice, embarrassingly wrecked and shameless by the end. The way he had looked at her like she was not some broken thing with anger issues and a probation file, but something fierce and beautiful and wanted.
She could admit it, inside her own head.
It had been amazing.
The best orgasm she had ever had by such an absurd margin that it made every time she had touched herself before seem like she had been practicing with broken instructions. Now she understood why the rest of the sluts circling Silas were constantly trying to climb him like horny vultures.
His dick was apparently a legitimate supernatural artifact.
Annoying, but true.
Then they had been walking back toward the clubhouse owned by that redhead exhibitionist, Rias Gremory. Silas had been getting all soft-eyed and romantic, which was terrible, because it made Sophia feel things in her chest she did not have a clean strategy for punching.
He had said they were leaving tomorrow morning. Good. That had been good. She liked the hunting here. She liked the new weapon. She even liked some of the supernatural insanity, mostly because shooting devils with exploding shadow bolts was objectively fun.
But this was not home. Brockton Bay was home. Shitty, violent, half-broken Brockton Bay with its gang ruins, rotting streets, PRT bullshit, and people she actually knew how to hate properly.
She and Silas belonged there.
Then the silver circle appeared under their feet. Sophia had barely gotten out a “what the fuck” before the world folded sideways and ripped Silas’s hand out of hers.
That was the first thing she noticed. His hand was gone. Sophia landed in a crouch on rough stone, instincts screaming before her thoughts caught up. Her hand snapped out automatically, reaching for Silas, but there was only empty air.
She was alone.
Her eyes adjusted fast. Too fast, maybe. Her breaker state always liked darkness better than light, and whatever this place was, it had darkness for days.
A dungeon? Lovely.
The walls were old stone blocks, blackened by smoke and age, with iron rings bolted into them at uneven intervals. Rusted chains hung from the ceiling. Tables lined the walls, covered in hooks, clamps, blades, saws, needles, and tools Sophia did not have names for but understood immediately. The floor was stained dark in patches 0f blood that had soaked too deep for cleaning. Some were old. Some were not.
There were cages too. Big ones. Small ones. Some sized for humans. Some sized for things that had never been human and probably never wanted to be.
Sophia slowly straightened. A grin pulled at her mouth. “Cute,” she muttered. Whoever had taken her had dropped her in a horror movie basement.
They really had no idea who they were dealing with.
Shadow curled around her fingers. The Shadow Reaper Crossbow formed in her hand like it had always belonged there. Black metal. Crimson accents. Glowing runes. Sleek limbs shaped like something between a weapon and a threat. The moment her palm closed around the grip, warmth spread up her arm—not fire, exactly, but a hungry, eager pressure.
The weapon wanted to kill. Sophia could relate.
Something hissed in the darkness. Then something else shuffled. Then something laughed. A wet, broken sound echoed from the far end of the dungeon, followed by claws scraping across stone.
Sophia turned her head slightly.
Dozens of eyes opened in the dark. Yellow. Red. Black. Milky white. Too many pupils. Not enough pupils. Some glowing. Some reflecting the faint crimson light coming from the runes on her crossbow.
Stray devils crept out from the shadows.
They came in different shapes, all wrong. One dragged itself on arms too long for its body, spine bent backward like it had been folded by a bored giant. Another looked almost human except for the skin stretched tight and gray over too many ribs, its mouth splitting wider than its face should have allowed. A third had a snake’s lower body and a torso covered in patches of scales and raw meat. Something bulky hunched behind them with three heads pressed together on a single neck, each mouth drooling black slime.
The smell hit her a second later: Rot. Sulfur. Blood. Wet fur. Old meat.
Sophia wrinkled her nose. “Jesus, do you ugly fuckers bathe?”
The nearest stray devil grinned. Its teeth were needle-thin and arranged in three crooked rows. “Food,” it rasped.
Another licked its lips with a tongue that forked into four ends. “Pretty prey.”
A third dragged claws along the wall hard enough to throw sparks. “Human girl. Soft girl. Scream for us.”
The snake-looking one slithered forward, scales scraping wetly over the stone floor. Its eyes crawled over her body in a way that made Sophia’s skin prickle with cold disgust. “We play first,” it hissed. “Then eat.”
Behind it, the others laughed.
Sophia stared at them. Then she started laughing too. The kind of laughter she was glad Silas wasnt around to hear because she was sure that she sounded deranged just then.
The strays hesitated when they heard her crazy laughing. Good.
Sophia lifted the crossbow and sighted down the weapon at the snake-looking fucker’s head. “You pieces of shit think I’m trapped down here with you?”
The snake devil’s grin faltered.
Sophia’s grin widened. “No,” she said. “You’re all trapped down here with me.”
She pulled the trigger. The crossbow did not kick like a normal weapon. It purred. A bolt of black-red shadowfire screamed across the dungeon and punched straight through the snake devil’s open mouth. For half a second, the monster’s entire body lit from the inside, crimson lines cracking through scales and flesh like lava beneath glass.
Then it exploded. Not cleanly. Chunks of snake, devil, and whatever else it had been splattered across the floor, walls, and three of the strays behind it. Hellfire clung to the pieces, burning black and red without smoke.
The dungeon went silent.
Sophia lowered the crossbow slightly. Then she smiled. “Oh,” she said. “That is so fucking cool.”
The strays charged.
Sophia shifted. Her body blurred into shadow just as claws tore through where her throat had been. The first devil passed through her intangible form, momentum carrying it forward. Sophia let it stumble two steps past her before she solidified, turned, and fired into its back.
The bolt struck between its shoulder blades.
Boom! Meat and bone became burning mist.
A second stray lunged from her left, with four arms and far too many teeth. Sophia dropped into shadow again, sliding across the floor like spilled ink. Its claws carved sparks from stone above her. She rose behind it, crossbow already reloaded because this beautiful weapon understood her needs better than half the people in her life.
She fired into the back of its knee. The leg vanished. The creature crashed down screaming. Sophia put the second shot through its head. The scream stopped.
More came.
She ducked under a swinging hook-arm, phased through a snapping jaw, and kicked off the wall to flip over a bloated thing with a mouth in its stomach. It spat acid where she had been, the liquid hissing against stone. Sophia landed on top of an iron table covered in torture tools, crouched low, and fired three shots in quick succession.
The first bolt punched through the acid-spitter’s torso.
The second took the head off a crawling imp thing that had been scuttling toward her ankles.
The third hit a cluster of devils packed too close together and detonated in a blossom of black flame that threw limbs in every direction.
Sophia laughed again. She could not help it.
This was insane.
THIS WAS AMAZING.
She should have been furious. She was furious, obviously. Someone had kidnapped her. Someone had separated her from Silas. Someone had tried to use her as bait, as weakness, as leverage. But they had made one big mistake. They had assumed being separated from Silas made her helpless. Probably some dumb supernatural being in this world thought she was weak because she was human. And yet, there’s a reason humans are the apex predators!
Sophia Hess was not helpless. She had been a predator before she had powers. The powers had just made it official.
A devil with a face like melted wax stumbled out of the shadows holding a rusted cleaver. “Kill human,” it gurgled.
Sophia shot the cleaver out of its hand. The explosion took the hand with it.
It stared at the stump in shock and horror.
Sophia stepped close and drove her boot into its knee hard enough to fold the joint backward. It fell, and she pressed the crossbow against its forehead. “Try again.”
It snarled. She fired. The upper half of its head became ash.
Something heavy slammed into her from behind.
Sophia went forward, hitting the floor in a roll. Pain flashed across her ribs. Real pain. One of them had clipped her while she was solid.
She came up on one knee and saw the three-headed brute barreling toward her, thick arms swinging. It was big enough to almost fill the corridor, each head snapping and roaring independently.
“Finally,” Sophia muttered. “Something ugly enough to be interesting.”
It hit harder than the rest.
The first punch shattered the stone floor where she had been. Sophia phased through the second, but the third came with crackling purple energy around its fist. Instinct screamed, and she jerked sideways instead of trusting her breaker state.
The blow grazed her shoulder. Pain ripped down her arm like it was lightning that just struck her. Sophia hissed. “Magic bullshit. Of course…”
The brute roared in triumph.
She grinned at it through clenched teeth. “Okay. No phasing through that.”
It charged again. Sophia ran straight at it. The three heads snarled in confusion. Apparently prey was not supposed to do that.
Sophia dropped into a slide between its legs as the magic-charged fist smashed into the wall behind her. Stone exploded. Dust filled the air. She came up behind the brute, jammed the crossbow against the back of one knee, and fired.
The leg blew apart.
The brute collapsed sideways with a crash that shook chains from the ceiling.
Sophia vaulted onto its back before it could recover, boots digging into corded muscle and slick hide. One head twisted around to bite her. She shoved the crossbow into its mouth and fired.
The head vanished in a burst of hellfire.
The other two screamed.
Sophia fired again. And again. By the time she jumped off the collapsing corpse, the brute was nothing but burning chunks and twitching limbs.
She landed in a crouch, breathing hard. Her shoulder hurt. Her ribs ached. Her blood was up, hot and wild and singing.
The dungeon had become a slaughterhouse. Devils were dead everywhere. Parts of them burned in black-red flames that cast jagged shadows across the walls. The smell was worse now, but Sophia barely noticed. She turned slowly, crossbow raised, looking for the next target.
She would finish up enjoying herself down here and then she’d reunite with Silas before they hunted and killed whoever was dumb enough to try this shit in the first place.
– Silas Thorn –
My dragon wings popped out of my back. They did not unfold so much as tear themselves into existence, black and jagged and furious, ripping through the air with a sound like leather snapping in a storm. The moment they spread, I launched myself at Rizevim.
I knew Sophia. That was the only reason I did not completely lose my mind.
Some stray devils in a basement were not enough to put Sophia Hess down. Not after the night she had just had. Not with her new crossbow.
Rizevim was a racist, arrogant, ancient piece of shit. Of course he had underestimated her because she was human.
That mistake would cost him. But knowing Sophia could handle herself did not make me less furious. My dragon instincts screamed through my skull. Kill him!
The Nightingale Blade appeared in my hand, cold black metal settling into my grip like it had been waiting for this exact bastard. I swung for Rizevim’s head with enough force to split a building.
Rizevim lifted one hand. Darkness poured into it. A sword of pure black formed in his grip, its edge drinking the dim Underworld light around it. He met my swing with a grin.
Our blades collided. The shockwave cracked the ground beneath us. Black sparks and blue lightning sprayed into the air. My wings beat once, forcing me down into the clash, muscles burning as I tried to drive through his guard and cut that smug expression off his face.
Rizevim’s grin widened. “Oh, yes,” he purred. “There he is.”
I snarled and twisted my blade, dragging sparks across his weapon before driving a knee toward his ribs. He slipped aside with lazy grace, but I caught the edge of his coat, tearing expensive fabric as he danced backward.
I pressed him. One swing. Two. Three.
He parried each one. He was fast. His sword moved like liquid night, meeting the Nightingale Blade again and again. He was strong too. Not Tiamat strong. Not Rebecca strong. Not even close. But old devil strong. Ancient bloodline strong.
Fine. I had fought stronger. “Divide,” I snapped. The word left my mouth with cold satisfaction. Divine Dividing surged inside me, silver-blue power reaching for him, hungry and automatic.
For one beautiful heartbeat, I imagined his smug face when half his strength vanished.
Then Rizevim smiled. “Denial of the Divine.”
The world lurched.
My eyes went wide. Something inside me went silent. Just... switched off. The silver-blue presence of Divine Dividing vanished from my grasp like someone had slammed a door between me and the power. At the same time, the quiet, warm hum of Twilight Healing fused into my body dimmed into nothing.
I could still feel my dragon soul. My lightning. My magnetism. My Skyrim magic. My wings. But the Sacred Gear powers were gone. Locked away.
For half a second, I was so shocked I forgot I was in the middle of a fight.
Rizevim did not. His boot slammed into my stomach.
The kick hit hard enough to fold me around it. Air burst from my lungs. Before I could recover, his palm flashed with black-red magic, and a blast caught me square in the chest.
The world became motion. I hit the ground once, bounced, tore through a ridge of black stone, and slammed into another outcropping hard enough to crater it. Rock exploded around me. Dust filled my mouth. Pain rolled through my ribs and spine.
Real pain. No Twilight Healing knitting everything together in the background.
Right. That was a problem.
I pushed myself up with a growl, one hand braced against the cracked stone beneath me.
Rizevim walked toward me through the dust, twirling his darkness sword like this was some kind of performance. “Those disgusting Sacred Gears the dead God created are cheating,” he said lightly. “Repulsive little tools. Crutches handed to mortals and half-breeds so they can pretend they matter.” His smile sharpened. “Thankfully, I inherited my dear dead father Lucifer’s ability to turn them off whenever I feel like it.”
I spat blood onto the stone. It steamed faintly. Dragon blood apparently did that.
Good to know.
My stomach throbbed. My chest ached where the blast had hit. The absence of Twilight Healing felt strange, like realizing a background noise I had grown used to had suddenly stopped.
Rizevim’s eyes gleamed as he watched me stand.
He expected fear. Maybe panic. Maybe the dawning realization that some of my best new tools had just been taken off the board.
Instead, I laughed once. It was not a happy sound. “It doesn’t make a difference,” I said honestly.
His eyebrows rose.
I rolled my shoulders, feeling bone pop and muscle stretch. Lightning crawled back down my arms. My wings flexed behind me, scattering dust. “I didn’t have Divine Dividing when we beat Trihexa,” I said. “I didn’t have Twilight Healing when we sealed that ugly apocalypse bastard away.”
Rizevim’s smile twitched.
Ah. There it is...
The name mattered. Trihexa. The thing his father had failed to control. The thing that had eaten Lucifer and the false God like snacks before we buried it outside time with Krayt dragon pearls and desperation.
“I didn’t need those powers then,” I continued, lifting the Nightingale Blade again. “And I don’t need them to kill you.”
For a moment, Rizevim stared at me.
Then he shivered, but not with fear, but with excitement. His grin split wider, too wide, too delighted. His eyes brightened like I had just given him a gift. “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, you really do mean those words don’t you? Hahahaha! This is going to be perfect!”
This guy was insane. Genuinely insane and I don’t think he even has any kind of plan past this point besides trying to kill me because it excites him. Gross… He’s like this world’s Jack Slash…
I launched myself forward again. He met me halfway.
Our blades crashed together in the middle of the wasteland, black steel against living darkness. I twisted my wrist, sparks flying as I forced his sword down, then drove lightning through the Nightingale Blade.
The blue-white current surged along the edge.
Rizevim’s darkness sword drank some of it. Not all. His hand twitched. His grin faltered.
I saw the opening and slammed my forehead into his face.
Cartilage crunched. Rizevim staggered back, silver hair whipping, blood bursting from his nose.
That felt fantastic!
He blinked once, looking stunned.
I followed with a punch to his jaw. The blow snapped his head sideways and launched him across the stone.
He hit, rolled, and came up laughing. Blood ran over his mouth. His smile was red now. “YES!” he shouted. “THAT! THAT IS WHAT I WANTED!”
“You need therapy…”
“I NEED A WORTHY ENEMY!”
“You kidnapped my girlfriend to get one.”
“AND IT WORKED BEAUTIFULLY.”
I hurled a bolt of lightning at his face. He cut it in half with his darkness sword. The split current carved smoking trenches on either side of him.
Rizevim raised his free hand, and silver magic circles bloomed in the air around me. Dozens. Hundreds.
My senses screamed. I threw myself upward as the circles fired.
Spears of condensed demonic light stabbed through the space I had occupied, crisscrossing beneath me in a lattice of death. I beat my wings once, rolled in midair, and fired down with both hands. Lightning poured from my palms in thick, branching torrents.
Rizevim vanished in a flicker of silver. Teleportation. He appeared above me.
His boot hammered between my wings. Pain exploded down my spine.
I dropped.
He followed, laughing, darkness sword raised overhead.
I twisted mid-fall and shouted. “FUS!”
The first word hit him like a battering ram. Not enough for a full Unrelenting Force blast, but enough to knock him off-course. His swing missed my shoulder by inches. I caught his wrist with my free hand, claws punching through his sleeve and into flesh.
His eyes widened.
I grinned at him.
Then I drove us both into the ground.
The impact cracked the wasteland open.
Stone buckled outward in a crater. Dust and demonic energy burst up around us. I landed on top, pinning him for half a heartbeat, and brought the Nightingale Blade down toward his throat.
A black barrier snapped into place.
My sword bit into it and stuck.
Rizevim’s grin returned through bloodied teeth. “Too slow.” The barrier exploded outward.
I was thrown back, skidding across the ground on my boots. My claws carved lines through stone as I caught myself.
He rose from the crater, brushing dust from his torn coat like he had not just been pile-driven into the Underworld.
His broken nose was already straightening. Of course he healed. Of course he did. “Do you know what the worst part was?” Rizevim asked conversationally.
I did not answer.
He continued anyway, because he was exactly that kind of asshole. “It was not that you killed Beelzebub. I never liked him. Filthy insect-obsessed creature. It was not even my father’s death.” His smile thinned. “Father was magnificent, yes, but also tedious. Always grand declarations. Always destiny. Always Heaven, Heaven, Heaven.”
His grip tightened on the darkness sword. “The worst part was that you made everyone content.” Magic pressure built around him. The air turned heavy. “Peace,” he spat. “Trade. Treaties. Rating Games. Angels visiting devil territory. Devils marrying humans. Fallen building schools. Runeas smiling like she won history. Gabriel pretending mercy is strength. Sirzechs wearing Lucifer’s title like a child in his father’s stolen coat.” He lifted his sword. “And all of them looked back at the Great War and said, ‘Thank Silas Thorn. Thank the Dragonborn. Thank the hero who showed us a better way.’” His face twisted. “I was born to inherit the apocalypse. And you made the world boring!”
I stared at him. Then I lowered my sword slightly. “So all this really is because you are throwing a thousand year tantrum?”
His eye twitched.
XXX