The silence broke like glass.
The summoned demon—no, the Infernal Crown himself—stepped forward, shadows writhing around him like sentient chains of wrath. His six vertical eyes locked entirely onto Knull.
"Who dares mock my pact-bearer?"
His voice didn't echo.
It tore.
Reality around him cracked like thin ice beneath boiling iron. The pentagram below pulsed violently, thrumming with power as ancient as the void—and twice as angry.
All six of his eyes narrowed.
Recognition.
"Well, well… look who it is." He tilted his double-faced head. "The Void's little accident."
He grinned.
"You've got your father's scowl."
Knull said nothing.
The demon's grin grew wider, grotesque with mirth.
"What, no comeback? Did Daddy not teach you how to speak when addressed by a superior?" he mocked, folding two arms while the other two spread wide.
Still, Knull didn't respond. His expression remained unreadable, but the way his spear tightened in his grip—subtle rage bled through the stillness.
"Oh, ouch," the demon chuckled. "Struck a nerve, did I? You're still mad about it, huh? Still carrying the weight of being his disappointment across star systems like a good little puppet."
The crimson air thickened. The tension spiraled.
The demon turned slightly toward Kaleus, his tone shifting like a switchblade from mockery to menace.
"So…" His tongue flicked over sharp teeth."What'll it be, pact-bearer?"
He flared all six wings at once.
"Shall I erase this daddy-issue deity for you?"
A pause.
The silence thickened.
Then—Kaleus nodded.
A small, measured motion.
But it might as well have been the trigger to the apocalypse.
The Infernal Crown laughed.
Not a mortal sound. Not even close.
It was the shattering of cathedrals beneath molten thunder. It was blasphemy turned symphony. His wings arched high, eyes blazing like eclipsed suns.
"Oh, finally!" he roared. "Permission to kill."
He turned to Knull—who hadn't moved. Not yet.
But the stare between them was volcanic.
The demon's grin sharpened like a drawn blade."Tell me, runt… when you die here…"
He leaned forward, all six eyes locking onto Knull's, voice laced with venomous glee—
"…will your father even notice?"
That was it.
The moment the blade slid too deep.
Knull snapped.
With a feral roar, he launched forward—no flare, no charge-up—just pure, explosive velocity. His spear crackled with celestial malice, tearing arcs of silver-black flame behind him as he thrust it forward like a meteor with purpose.
The Demon met him smiling.
Their clash shook the world.
BOOOOOM!
Stone cracked. Skies screamed. A dome of force exploded outward from their collision, flaying the ground into red dust.
Knull spun mid-air, jabbing with lethal precision—his spear a blur of divine fury. Each strike forced afterimages through time itself.
But the Infernal Crown was faster than sin.
He weaved through the strikes like smoke turned predator—four arms moving like bladed serpents, catching, redirecting, and striking in return. Claws met spear. Power met purpose.
And the grin on the demon's face never faded.
"You hit like a tantrum!" he snarled gleefully, ducking under a savage arc, then retaliating with a diagonal claw-swipe—Knull blocked it, but the shockwave blasted him backwards through the air.
He landed in a crater of his own making, wings flaring. Blood dripped from his lip, steaming.
He didn't hesitate. He launched again, faster. Angrier.
Spear and claw danced through chaos.
The sky above shattered like a mirror—broken by their power. The air turned red, the clouds spiraling into a vortex of screaming winds and voidfire.
Below, the ground ruptured with every strike.
Each step the demon took melted the ground beneath him.
Each swing from Knull carved rifts in reality.
They moved like storms.No, worse—like truths too sharp to look at.
The Infernal Crown laughed as Knull kicked off a boulder and plunged his spear
downward like a divine execution—Only for the demon to catch it mid-air, grin widening.
"You're angry, boy. Good. Let it ruin you."
He dragged the spear sideways, flinging Knull through a ruined archway. Stone shattered on impact—dust pluming into the blood-red air.
Before Knull could even rise, the demon was on him.
Claws slammed down—
Knull rolled—
Barely dodging as the ground exploded into flame.
He retaliated with a thrust upward, catching the Infernal Crown across the shoulder—blood sprayed, hissing and black.
But the demon only grinned wider, his double-faced head tilting.
"Did I hurt your pride? Or just remind you what you'll never be?"
Knull roared, wings snapping back as he unleashed a wave of pure voidlight.
The blast consumed the battlefield—crimson and black eating everything in its path.
And from within it—
The Infernal Crown walked out.Still burning.Still smiling.
His laughter was madness given voice.
"You'll make a fine corpse, boy," he hissed, baring fangs like daggers. "Now dance with me."
And they charged again.
Faster.
Harder.
The ground beneath them died.
This was no duel.
This was the war between inheritance and wrath.
And neither side was backing down.
The battlefield howled.
The world screamed.
And still—the Infernal Crown laughed.
Even as Knull's spear scraped bone, even as black ichor sprayed across broken stone and shattered stars—he laughed.
"YES! Bleed with me, little god!" he bellowed, whirling mid-air to avoid a devastating sweep of voidlight. "This—this is what you were forged for! Pain and fury!"
Knull's eyes flared—burning with white-hot contempt. His wings flexed, and in one fluid motion, he hurled his spear with divine precision.
The Demon sidestepped, letting it scream past his cheek, carving a line across his jaw.
He didn't flinch.
He grinned.
But Knull wasn't done.
He raised his hand. And the sky answered.
Reality buckled.
A fissure opened across dimensions—ripping through the crimson haze like a wound.
From it, something slithered through. No—emerged.
A weapon.
It didn't fall.
It grew—alive, snarling, pulsing like a predator in weapon form.
A massive, organic blade wrapped in blood-slick sinew and symbiotic flesh, its surface lined with void-veined muscle fibers, and teeth-like protrusions that whispered when the wind hit right.
It was not forged. It was born.
The tendrils around it slithered up Knull's arm, caressing him like a familiar. The blade hissed—twisting slightly, its living structure adapting to his grip.
It looked like it hungered.
—Just like its master.
The Infernal Crown's laughter grew feral.He tilted his double-faced head, eyes gleaming with anticipation.
"Oho… now you're speaking my language," he snarled, cracking his neck. "Very well then…"
He raised one bloodied hand—snap.
A sigil erupted beneath his feet.
The atmosphere shattered as four crimson portals tore themselves into existence.
From each one, a colossal war hammer erupted—massive, brutal instruments of carnage, the heads forged from obsidian-dark bone wrapped in blood-drenched metal, veined with demonic essence, tattered remains of flesh still clinging to their ancient weight.
Each one pulsed like a heartbeat in hell.
He caught all four.Two in his upper arms.Two in his lower.
The weight didn't faze him.The grin widened.
"Let's see how long your toy lasts…"
Then—
They clashed.
And the world split in half.
Knull swung, his living sword extending mid-arc, slicing one of the hammers straight down the middle—but it reformed, its hellmetal morphing like fluid and snapping back into shape with a roar.
The Demon retaliated, four hammers crashing down in a symphony of obliteration.
BOOOOM—BOOM—BOOM!
Each strike carved craters into the void itself, shockwaves pulverizing miles of ruin in every direction.
Knull blocked the fourth with his forearm.
Bone cracked.
But he didn't stop.
He countered—driving the living blade forward.
It screamed—literally screamed—as it elongated, drilling into the Demon's torso, biting deep into flesh and infernal muscle.
Blood erupted like geysers of tar.
But the Demon only laughed harder.
He caught the blade—with his teeth.
"Oh, I LOVE you!" he snarled, muffled through fang and steel.
Then he twisted—ripping it from Knull's grip
—slamming him into the ground with a triple-hammer slam that reduced the landscape into a molten trench of gore and stone.
Knull didn't rise. He exploded.
Void tendrils erupted from the trench, stabbing upward, piercing one of the
demon's arms clean through.
Blood sprayed.
The Demon roared—not in pain.
In euphoria.
"YES! THIS IS GLORY!"
The ground itself tried to flee the battle.
The air could no longer hold form.
Everything was dying.
And neither of them were slowing down.
It wasn't a fight.
It was apocalypse made personal.
---
Elsewhere—just outside the epicenter Kaleus knelt in blood.
His hands trembled, slick with his own lifeforce, wrapped around the blade still buried in his chest—a cursed wound that pulsed with infernal energy, slowly eating away at his core.
The shockwaves of the battle between Knull and the Infernal Crown rippled around him like the footsteps of titans. Each crash of weapon against weapon sent dust, bone, and cracked time spiraling through the red-tinged air.
But Kaleus's focus was inward.
He closed his eyes, lips barely moving—
"Draven…. Can you hear me?"
Silence.
He tried again, forcing a surge of energy from his core—desperation bleeding through every word.
"Draven. It's me. I need—"
Nothing. Not even static.
Just...A dead void.
Like his voice never existed.
Kaleus's eyes flared open, wide with realization.
Of course.
This domain.
He gritted his teeth. "Damn it…"
This wasn't just a battleground—it was a closed pocket of reality, carved out from the prime plane by demonic will.
That's how Domains worked—sealed from the flow of time, from outside interference, from the divine frequencies of pantheons or progeny.
A cage.Not just for the body—but for the soul's reach.
Kaleus inhaled sharply. The air was fire.
He looked down at the blade skewering his chest—pulsing, still whispering curses in a tongue meant only for ruin.
"I don't have time for this…" he growled, fingers clenching tighter around the hilt.
Then—he pulled.
A sickening, wet shhhhhluck echoed through the broken terrain.
Kaleus's face twisted. Veins bulged along his neck, teeth grinding together as pain ripped through him like a lightning bolt of rot.
"Gghhh—! F-FUCK—"
The sword fought back—its infernal nature resisting release, barbs catching on sinew and bone, making every inch a war of flesh and fire.
He dropped to one knee.
His vision blurred.
Blood flooded from the wound, splashing hot across the ground.
Still, he pulled.
"Rrrgh—n-not… today…"
With one final, trembling roar, he ripped the blade free—
Blood sprayed in a wide arc.
Kaleus collapsed forward, chest heaving, the wound gaping and spitting black-red mist.
But he was alive.
Barely.
He pressed one hand over the wound, eyes narrowed toward the maelstrom where Knull and the Demon were still tearing the sky apart.