One of the Demon Elders had fallen. Astaroth—the Butcher of the Void, the Warden of Flame—was dead.
But in the silence that followed, something older and far more dangerous began to stir.
---
The battlefield was a graveyard of fire and sorrow.
All around, the ground was cracked and blackened, scorched by the final clash of powers not meant for this world. Pools of molten earth bubbled in the aftermath, and the wind carried with it the acrid stench of burning flesh and sulfur. Once-towering spires—those infernal monuments Astaroth had raised in his image—now lay shattered and skeletal, clawing at the storm-ridden sky like the fingers of a dying god.
Smoke curled through the ruins in lazy spirals. The sky above was bruised, painted in streaks of ash gray and blood-red, as if the heavens themselves had been wounded by what had occurred.
Dexter stood in the center of the ruin.
His breath came slowly, ragged through cracked lips. His sword—once gleaming with celestial steel—hung low at his side, blackened and notched from the war. His armor was fractured, layered with soot and caked blood, its original color lost beneath days of torment. Each movement was a struggle, as if gravity itself had thickened to hold him down. But still, he stood.
Around him, the Sons of Flame gathered—those demon-blooded warriors who had returned from exile on Earth to stand beside him. They moved like phantoms through the haze, tall and silent, their eyes burning with inner fire. Their weapons dripped with the blood of their kin and of ancient things that bled black smoke when slain. They were wounded—some limping, some missing limbs—but they were alive. And their fire had not dimmed.
Beneath them lay what remained of a titan.
Astaroth.
The Demon Lord who had once turned cities into tombs and whose scream could level mountains now lay still as stone. His wings, vast and terrible, were torn and burnt—reduced to smoldering stumps. The obsidian plates that covered his body had shattered, revealing veins of crimson magma that no longer pulsed with life. His horns—twin blades of dark ivory—had been broken, one driven into the earth beside him like a crude monument to his fall. The crown he had forged from the bones of slaughtered kings lay twisted near his severed hand, no longer glowing, no longer feared.
Silence settled over the field—not the silence of peace, but the kind that came after something terrible had been ripped from the world. The kind that hummed with what it left behind.
And then, without warning, Astaroth began to burn.
At first it was subtle—a flicker of light dancing across his broken chest, like the final breath of a dying flame. Then it surged. A burst of blue fire erupted from within his body, leaping skyward in a column of impossible brilliance. The flames did not consume his flesh in the way ordinary fire would. No, this fire peeled away the layers of reality, exposing something deeper, something ancient.
It gave off no heat. Only light—and memory.
The Sons of Flame recoiled instinctively, shielding their eyes with charred arms. Dexter staggered, his vision swimming as a wave of energy blasted outward. It wasn't just power—it was a vibration that passed through everything: the stones, the sky, his bones, his soul. A song without sound. A scream without voice.
From the haze stepped Tulopia.
Her silhouette shimmered against the light like something not fully of this world. Her cloak fluttered in the heatless wind, streaked with ash and demon blood. Her golden eyes locked onto the fire, unblinking. She moved calmly, reverently, like one approaching a sacred altar.
"Don't move," she said softly, but the authority in her voice rooted them in place. "This is not death. This is remembrance."
Dexter blinked, struggling to stay upright. "What… what do you mean?"
"The fire is not burning him," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's revealing him. What he was. What he feared."
The flames danced higher, taking shape.
Symbols—bright and ancient—spiraled through the air above Astaroth's corpse. Runes of the Old Tongue, older than any human civilization, older even than the First War. They twisted and turned, glowing with cold light, drawing trails of silver through the air like brushstrokes across a canvas of smoke.
And then came the visions.
They struck Dexter like a wave. His eyes went wide as the memories poured into him—not his own, but Astaroth's.
He saw a throne of fire rising above a field of corpses. He saw kingdoms burning beneath Astaroth's wings, oceans boiling, moons crumbling to dust. He heard the screams of empires shattered beneath his roar. He saw the forging of his crown from the skulls of kings who dared resist.
But beneath the power, beneath the terror… was something else.
Fear.
Astaroth's fear.
Dexter gasped, falling to one knee.
He saw a shape in the darkness, coiled and endless. Not a god. Not a demon. Something before. Something sealed away.
And Astaroth, mighty as he was, trembled before it.
"I don't understand," Dexter muttered, clutching his chest. "Why would he be afraid? He was—he was—"
"He was never the end," Tulopia said, her voice quiet but unwavering. "He was only a gatekeeper. A prison guard. His strength wasn't for conquest—it was for containment."
The fire blazed higher. The symbols grew frantic, spinning faster, as if warning of something that had slipped free.
"You said something was stirring," Dexter said slowly, rising to his feet again. "Something older."
Tulopia nodded. "The Convergence is more than a prophecy. It's a reckoning. When Astaroth fell, so did the chains he helped forge. Something is waking now—something that was never meant to wake again."
All at once, the flames collapsed inward, sucked into Astaroth's cracked chest. His body convulsed once—and then crumbled to dust. No ash. No bone. Nothing remained.
Just silence.
Then a sound began—low and distant.
A heartbeat.
No—it was deeper. A pulse, like the slow drumbeat of the earth's own heart. It came from below, deep beneath the battlefield, shaking the stones with every beat.
The Sons of Flame turned toward the sound, their eyes narrowing. They recognized it.
"It's the Ninth Flame," one of them muttered. "It's rising."
Tulopia looked to Dexter. "We've killed a tyrant… but we've unleashed a god."
Far in the distance, a tear appeared in the sky. Thin at first, like a crack in glass, but then it widened—revealing a swirling void of crimson and black. Thunder rumbled. Not the thunder of weather—but of footsteps. Of wings. Of something vast.
Dexter sheathed his sword slowly. His hands still trembled, but not from fear.
From understanding.
The war was not over.
It had only just begun.
---.