The chamber breathed. Not metaphorically—it actually inhaled. The fleshy walls contracted, a low groan vibrating through the rot-slick floor, as if the earth itself was subservient to the throne that loomed within. The high demon rose.
"So much has changed since the last time we met a true knight," it said, voice rolling like thunder across a storm-torn sea. "And yet… you remain."
He stepped forward, feet bare and blackened, trailing the scent of lightning and ash.
"I have worn many names. In the north, they knew me as Thor. In the old lands, they prayed to me as Ares. The pale Nords of ice sang to me as Baldr."
The Forsaken tensed. Sword in hand. No reply, just shallow breath. Then the demon smiled.
"But my name… is Karaziel.
Firstborn of Moloch, Nephilim of the Watcher Host. Now treated as if myth, but here I am."
And then, softly—gently—he spoke the name no one had spoken in years.
"Caelin Thorne."
The knight froze. It was a spear to the chest. Not pain. Not heat. Memory.
The name he was never meant to hear again. The name that had been struck from heaven's own ledgers. The name he would never dare utter himself.
Karaziel grinned, wide and inhuman.
"Even your priests have forgotten. But I do not forget my enemies."
Karaziel circled slowly, almost reverently, as if inspecting a monument he'd seen fall before.
"You look smaller than I remember, Caelin Thorne.
But perhaps that's what shame does to a man—it trims off the grandeur, leaves behind something... useable."
Caelin said nothing.
> "Still not speaking? How very devout of you. Chained by silence, weighted by your beloved Church's shame. But I remember what they buried."
A pause. A hiss of delight.
"I remember her."
Caelin's jaw tightened. His fingers flexed around the hilt of Dareth's sword.
Karaziel's grin widened, impossibly.
"The little nun. The quiet one. With the smile like spring rain. What was her name?" He tilted his head. "Ah yes—Sister Maeria."
The chamber pulsed again. Caelin's heartbeat echoed in his ears.
"You broke your vow for her. Swore chastity to Heaven, then defiled it in a bed of whispers.
And not just lust, Caelin. You bred her.
A child. A bastard in the womb of a consecrated woman."
Caelin's lips parted—just barely. A flicker of breath, like a man drowning beneath memory.
"She begged them for mercy, didn't she?" Karaziel's voice was silk. "And they gave her none. You were both discarded. But you—you they made an example of."
"Enough," Caelin growled.
"They tore her from the cloister, dragged her into the cathedral square while you watched from chains."
The Nephilim leaned closer. "Do you still see it when you close your eyes?
The look on her face when the fire caught her robe?"
The sword trembled.
Karaziel laughed. "There it is: The wrath, the hate. Let it out, you'd be stronger, you know. Just say the word, and I could give you what your God never did—forgiveness."
Caelin looked up, and in his eyes was not hate—but grief sharpened to resolve.
"You're right," he said, voice low.
"I remember. I remember every scream, every flame, every tear, and that's why I'm still here. Not because I seek forgiveness from you, or the Church... but because you will never receive it."
The Cross on his armor smoldered—not with fire, but with righteous defiance and Karaziel's smile faltered for the first time. Karaziel recoiled half a step, smile tight, expectant of rage. But Caelin didn't raise his sword. Not yet. Instead, he stepped forward.
"You speak of sin," Caelin said, voice slow, steady, and raw, "as if you understand love."
The Nephilim blinked.
"It wasn't lust," Caelin went on, eyes hard with memory. "We became known to each other—body, spirit, soul. She was my first and only, and I hers."
He placed his palm to his chest.
"That was a covenant. A marriage, not one of politics or ceremony, but one forged in blood and truth. The kind that angels envy and demons mock because they'll never taste it."
Karaziel hissed, amused but cautious.
"The Church called it heresy. They said I defiled my vows. But Peter, the rock on which our faith was built, he had a wife. Mark Chapter 1, Verses 29-31 say Christ healed his mother-in-law with His own hands. He did not shame Peter for love. He blessed his home."
His voice broke, then sharpened.
"What they did to her—that was heresy. Burning Maeria alive and damning our child before he ever drew breath… That wasn't the will of God. That was man playing God."
The demon tilted its head, smile gone.
"They took everything. My name. My title. My right to grieve. But never my faith. I wear this rusted armor not to atone for loving her—but to survive long enough to hold them accountable."
Karaziel's eyes flared, a pulse of hellish light flashing across the chamber.
"You still serve them. The same Church that spat on her ashes."
Caelin raised Dareth's sword, freshly wrapped in the strip of crimson cape.
"I don't serve them. I serve God."
The Cross of Saint Peter on his chest flared once more, burning of sorrow and love lost.
Karaziel's mouth twisted—not into a smile this time, but something closer to concern. He took a step back, shadows bending around his form like wings made of smoke.
"You're broken, Caelin. They shattered you—body, name, soul. And now you bleed yourself for them?"
Caelin said nothing, footsteps slow and steady across the nesting chamber floor.
"I could give you back everything," Karaziel offered, voice velvet and low.
"Not forgiveness, nor absolution, but power. Enough to make the High Cardinals tremble, enough to tear down the throne of the Pope and build your own in its place."
The shadows surged, and behind Karaziel, a vision formed:
Maeria, whole and untouched by flame. A child, dark-haired and laughing, running through endless sunlit fields. They reached for Caelin.
"I can give her back to you," Karaziel whispered, voice tender now. "Your wife, your son and ot illusions but real. Flesh and soul and Blood. All I need... is your 'yes.'"
Caelin's sword stayed steady, raised across his chest. His eyes remained locked, unblinking, undaunted.
Step by step, he closed the distance.
Karaziel's eyes narrowed. "What is vengeance, Caelin, if not justice denied its saints?"
The Forsaken drew closer. His presence was a storm now—silent but rising.
"You would see her again," Karaziel murmured, last thread of desperation bleeding into his tone.
Caelin's lips parted.
"Quiet, demon."
The chamber shuddered. Karaziel backed into the far wall—a Nephilim pressed into the stone like a false idol confronted by truth. Caelin raised his sword.
The wall behind Karaziel cracked as the Nephilim pressed a clawed hand to it, steadying himself. His smile was gone, his charm—shattered, and only war remained.
A deep hum resonated from his throat—like the tolling of some ancient, buried bell. And then the shadows obeyed.
They coiled from the walls, pulling into his body. His skin split, revealing molten flesh beneath. Two great horns curled from his brow, not like a beast's—but a crown, carved in hellfire.
"You think yourself brave," Karaziel thundered, voice shaking the chamber like a war drum.
"I've worn the name Ares to your ancestors. Thor to others. Baldr when I needed their love. I was their wrath, their glory, their shield."
The shadows around the chamber froze, then shattered—the same watching presence Caelin had felt since the start now slamming into his memory. That wasn't a scout.
It had always been him, watching, testing.
"I walked beside you since the moment your boots touched this planet," Karaziel snarled.
"Every prayer you whispered, I heard. Every wound you bled—I tasted it."
He vanished into the black with a violent rush of air.
Caelin turned, but it was too late—Karaziel emerged from the shadow behind him, slamming a fist into his side, sending him hurtling across the chamber.
Steel screamed. Bones buckled.
His patchwork armor split, another piece falling away with a clatter.
"You wear disgrace like a badge. Let me tear it off of you."
Caelin coughed, stood, and raised Dareth's blade. The weapon shimmered faintly, blood-wrapped cape strip fluttering in the sick air. He spoke no words.
Karaziel struck again—teleporting from shadow to shadow, each hit guided by centuries of battle wisdom.
Caelin's sword clashed with infernal claws, the strikes heavy, brutal, ringing like church bells made of iron.
Blades met bone and Holy steel hissed against demonic flesh. The heartbeat of the nest pulsed around them like a dying god's drum.
Karaziel disappeared again—emerging from a rib of living tissue above Caelin, twisting midair to plunge down like a thunderbolt.
Caelin rolled, barely dodging, using the opening to slash upward—a searing cut across Karaziel's midsection. The Nephilim shrieked—not in pain, but in surprise.
Holy steel could wound him.
"You carry the relic of a man I once respected," Karaziel growled, blood steaming from his side.
"Let's see if you're worthy to wield it."
The fight deepened—a dance of rage and faith, of tactics and grit. Karaziel fought with the grace of a divine warrior, and the brutality of a beast from hell. But Caelin fought with purpose. With Dareth's legacy and with Maeria's love. With nothing left to lose.
Karaziel's laughter slithered through the chamber like smoke.
"I am the father of all war. The whisper behind every battle cry. The breath in every soldier's final scream. I taught your kind to kill before your God ever taught them to pray."
He stepped into shadow—and vanished.
Caelin spun. The demon reappeared behind him, blade whistling. Sparks flew as Caelin blocked with Dareth's sword, the impact rattling through his arms.
"This planet is already lost!" Karaziel roared, fangs bared.
"Nests bloom like cancer beneath your temples. Even if you kill me—you have already failed!"
Caelin gritted his teeth and struck. A vicious horizontal slash. The Nephilim ducked, vanished again.
He appeared to Caelin's left. Slashed. Cut. Blood. But Caelin didn't falter. Instead, he began to speak.
"In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth—"
Karaziel flinched mid-swing. "What are you—"
"Son of the Living God," Caelin growled, parrying a scything claw and striking at the demon's chest.
"I bind the deceiver—and I cast you down."
Their blades clashed again. Steel against shadow. Bone against will.
"You speak His name in MY chamber?!" the demon howled, staggering as light cracked across the walls.
"Your throne is dust!" Caelin shouted, pressing forward. "Your kingdom, rot!"
He fought like a storm. Every word a hammer. Every step a sermon. Every cut—a hymn.
"You wore the faces of gods. Thor. Ares. Baldr. But you are nothing but a liar in borrowed skin!"
Karaziel snarled. His form pulsed, shifting between demon and radiant false idol. One moment war-god, the next blackened fallen. A Nephilim torn in its own blasphemy.
"I name you deceiver. I name you serpent. The Lord rebuke you!"
The chamber convulsed. Veins in the walls throbbed. Flesh split open as holy fire licked the air.
Caelin drove the next blow straight through the demon's shoulder. It shrieked, reeling back into the dark.
"You are not a god," Caelin said, voice low and burning. "You are a failure who mimicked one."
He raised his sword—Dareth's sword—coated in ichor and blood, shaking with righteous fury.
"And I am not afraid of you."
Karaziel froze. His many eyes narrowed. Something deep within the hollow of his chest began to quake.
"No…" the demon whispered, almost too softly to hear. "No more chains…"
Then the shriek came, piercing and inhuman. He exploded forward and gone was the composed war-god, the tactician of ten thousand campaigns. What came now was a beast—all fang and claw, limbs distending, wings unfurling in ragged bone and flame. The air warped around him, the chamber itself recoiling from his fury.
He smashed into Caelin with the force of a meteor. They crashed against the walls. The floor. The pulsing ceiling of the chamber. Claws raked across Caelin's chestplate, tearing off a section. Sparks and blood followed. Caelin grunted, caught beneath the demon's weight—but still, he did not yield.
"In the name of Christ," he growled, headbutting the demon back, "I cast out this evil—"
Karaziel recoiled as if struck by a blade of light. His skin cracked, glowing white-hot at the edges of Caelin's words.
"Stop SAYING that!" he bellowed, grabbing Caelin by the throat and slamming him down.
The prayer didn't stop. Even through gritted teeth, even with blood filling his mouth.
"Lord Jesus, Son of God," Caelin choked, forcing his sword up through the demon's arm, "have mercy on me, a sinner—"
The demon screamed. Smoke poured from the cracks in its body. The false flesh sloughed like tar. Its face—once radiant, once beautiful and godlike—melted. The human illusion burned away, revealing the twisted, scaled, horned truth beneath. Caelin kicked it back, sword rising.
"This battle is not mine," he roared, voice echoing with holy fire,
"but Yours, O lord!"
He struck again, and again....and again. Each blow landed with the sound of thunder and tearing metal. Karaziel stumbled, shrieking, blind, raging and lost.
"Your name is ash!" Caelin shouted.
One final strike. His sword, Dareth's sword, pierced straight through the demon's heart.
The chamber pulsed once, violently. And then—silence. Karaziel gasped. His burning eyes met Caelin's one last time.
"You… were mine… once…"
Then he turned to smoke and flame, his body crumbling inward like a dying star.
And was no more.
The chamber rumbled, the ground screamed. The death of the Nephilim did not go unnoticed. All around him, the bowels of the wound convulsed. Pulsing walls split open, bile pouring out like floodwaters. Distant howls echoed through the tunnels—high-pitched, panicked. The lesser demons had felt it… and they were maddened by it.
They were coming.
Caelin dropped to one knee, his breath shallow, his body shaking. The armor was broken in more places than not, the tattered pieces barely clinging to him. Blood dripped from a dozen wounds. Dareth's sword remained clutched in his gauntlet, the blade now slick with black ichor and ash. He tried to rise, one foot slipping in the filth.
He steadied himself on the sword. Around him, the earth shuddered violently, cracking open along the wound. Shrieks drew closer, a cacophony of rage and confusion from the horde that still roamed the tunnels.
Caelin looked up, vision blurred, lungs burning. And then—light.
From above, through the jagged fissures of the earth and ruin, a single ray of golden light pierced the darkness. It shone down upon him like a spotlight from the heavens.
It was warm. Gentle and unmistakable.
Caelin smiled, barely. A whisper escaped him:
"Lord… I did not fall today…"
And then he collapsed backward into the ichor-soaked earth, collapsing trom exhaustion. The demons howled around him, but the light in the chamber did not fade.