The heat beneath the volcano had become intense. Iblis and Helios stood facing off one another. Rudolph stationed the dark troops behind in the blind spots while still keeping his guard up for any trickery that could be pulled off by the evil before them.
"Welcome, to the underworld. Your final abode." Iblis announced.
Rudolph was ready waiting for Helios to relay his orders to them.
"You're not quite what I imagined you to be." Helios pointed out.
"Of course this is but a mere vessel I possess. Of the former crowned prince of Wahrheit. Your daughter was supposed to marry." Iblis snickered.
He briefly appeared in his true grotesque form that nearly made one of the alchemists retch while others stood in horror.
"God's wrath has turned him into a monster." They exclaimed to each other.
Iblis let out a laughter so deafening that was ear piercing.
"Indeed that's what your kind has fed onto young minds. It's amusing to hear this line whenever a century comes to pass."
"I see there's no room for negotiation with you. Considering your vile nature that is." Helios glowered as he unsheathed his blade with Rudolph following his movements.
"Come at me." Iblis grinned.
"I've waited long enough."
Helios without hesitation charged at him. Iblis who held no weapon effortlessly evaded Helios's moves until the holy light was emitted.
With several efforts Iblis, tired of the meaningless swings clicked his fingers.
And then there was a sudden evasion. A wave of unforetold force clashed with Helios's blade.
A burning ash stretched above, weeping embers into a world where fire had swallowed the land whole. The battlefield was a graveyard of the fallen, their armor still glowing hot from the rivers of molten rock. The air choked with the stench of scorched flesh, the dying moans of Helios' warriors barely rising above the bubbling inferno below.
Helios could hear faint sounds of his comrades behind him in the thick smoke that slowly cleared away.
And standing amidst it all—untouched, unbothered, unholy—was Iblis.
Helios who at the same time looked at them in horror, tightened his grip around his sword, his hands slick with the blood of his own men. His golden armor, once radiant, now reeked of charred despair.
"I see it now." Iblis sighed, examining the crimson staining his fingertips, his voice honeyed with mock disappointment. "I expected gods. I received… livestock."
Helios bared his teeth. "Fight me yourself, you coward."
Iblis laughed. Not a battle cry, not the laughter of a warrior, but something cold and knowing. Something designed to crawl beneath the skin.
"Oh, my dear descendants of Amanécer… I have already won. And you, my poor fool, are still swinging at shadows."
Helios lunged, but before his blade could even taste air, Iblis raised a single finger.
A pulse of unseen force yet again slammed into Helios like a giant's fist. Bones snapped. Nerves screamed. He was thrown backward, crashing through jagged obsidian shards that bit into his flesh like hungry fangs.
He gasped, struggling to rise—only to freeze.
His warriors—those who still stood—had stopped moving. Their weapons hung limply in their hands, their eyes glazed over like the newly dead.
Iblis tilted his head. "Look at them, Helios."
The golden warrior turned, horror creeping into his eyes as he saw what had become of his soldiers. Their bodies had not fallen, but their minds had been stolen. They stared at nothing, lips trembling as if whispering prayers only their broken souls could hear.
Iblis stepped forward, his black blade dragging against the molten rock, sending up a shriek of metal against stone. He placed a single hand on the head of one of Helios' knights—an alchemist who had once sworn oaths of eternal loyalty.
"Tell me, warrior," Iblis cooed, voice dripping with cruelty, "who is your true god?"
The alchemist shuddered. His lips trembled.
And then, with a voice barely more than a breath, he whispered a name.
"Iblis."
A single tear slipped from his eye. A tear of blood.
Helios roared and charged, but before he could reach them, Iblis twisted his fingers—and the knight's body convulsed. The heart like structure that controlled Vlad's body and mind was now extending its roots to claim the alchemist as if it were a meal of the day.
Hhe turned her own dark mechanical life forms to launch an attack upon himself.
A single, smooth stroke. A soft gasp. And he crumpled to the ground into pieces of raw flesh, dead.
Helios staggered, watching his warriors one by one drive steel into their own throats, their own hearts. Smiling.
"I did not need to fight them, Helios." Iblis spread his arms, as if basking in the warmth of their dying gasps. "I simply let them see the truth."
Helios shook with fury, his heart pounding against his ribs like a beast desperate to escape its cage. He had to act. Now.
With a cry that tore from his soul, he raised his blade, igniting it with holy fire. The last of his strength. The last of his hope.
And then—the shadows moved.
Not as an absence of light. Not as something passive.
They leapt. They screamed. They tore.
Darkness wrapped around Helios like tendrils of a starving beast, yanking him upward, dragging him above the battlefield, limbs straining, his sword knocked from his grasp.
He struggled. Kicked. Clawed. But the tendrils only tightened, pulling at his joints, stretching his limbs with agonizing slowness.
Iblis stood below, watching. His grin was patient, delighted.
"You thought you had a chance," he mused. "You really thought if you swung your sword hard enough, prayed loud enough, you could change the ending of the story."
Helios gasped for breath as the tendrils tightened around his throat, crushing it inch by inch.
"You see the difference between us now? I who had been sealed for more than three millennia. Ahh~! This is what freedom is."
He looked down at the emperor of Amanécer with satisfaction.
"I have rewritten the ending, Helios." Iblis whispered, his voice the last thing the golden warrior would ever hear. "And in my story, light doesn't win."
With a final snap, the shadows ripped him apart.
Not with a dramatic explosion. Not with fire and fury.
Just a quiet, wet sound, like fabric tearing. Like the soft exhale of a candle being snuffed out.
Helios' body fell in pieces, scattered among the corpses of his fallen warriors.
Iblis sighed, stepping over the ruin, brushing imaginary dust from his gloves. He turned his gaze to the last remnants of Helios' forces—those who had fallen to their knees, weeping in surrender.
"Your war is over," he murmured, sheathing his blade. "And your god is dead."
The embers in the sky pulsed, the fire swallowing everything.
And then, there was only darkness.